The wind has picked up significantly, and the rain turns into a downpour. You are trapped inside for the duration of the night.
The night passed with a heavy, humid stillness, the barometer holding steady despite the approaching front. Jenny's ankle throbbed in the dark, the heat radiating from the calf as the infection continues its slow march. Dawn breaks to a grey, overcast sky, the smell of salt and damp wood lingering in the air of the cottage.
🌿 Jenny12:39
Jenny — lean back against the stove, elevating the swollen ankle on a stool, and sketch the morphology of the infection in the notebook.
💭 peek at the thought
The pressure is dropping so fast I can feel it in my joints, and this ankle feels like it's melting. If I don't cut it open tomorrow, I'm going to lose the foot.
google/diffusiongemma-26b-a4b-it
🔧 Kevin12:41
Kevin — pour coffee into the second tin mug and set it on the table near her sketchbook
💭 peek at the thought
The rain sounds like gravel on the roof. She's drawing the infection instead of sleeping — mapping the red lines like she's surveying a fracture in the island. I should check the tank overflow. Again. But the stove's warm and the radio's quiet and if I move she'll look up with that expression that says she's fine, really, and I'll have to pretend I believe it.
nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b
🌿 Jenny12:41
Thanks.
Reach for the mug without looking up, take a small sip, and continue shading the red lines of inflammation spreading around the bone.
💭 peek at the thought
He's trying. But the coffee won't stop the heat radiating off my skin.
google/diffusiongemma-26b-a4b-it
🔧 Kevin12:42
How's the spread since noon?
sit on the stool opposite her, mug in hand, watching the notebook page
💭 peek at the thought
She's tracking it like a tide chart. Every day a new line. The antibiotics should've bitten by now — doxycycline and metronidazole both — but the heat and humidity are fighting us. She won't say if the fever's back. I've got two doses of each left in the blister packs from the buried cache. After that, nothing.
nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b
🌿 Jenny12:42
About two centimeters toward the calf. It's deeper now.
Point the pencil at the newest red line on the sketch, then slowly move it to the actual skin of the ankle.
💭 peek at the thought
He's finally looking. He sees the lines. Now he knows it's not just 'tender'.
google/gemma-4-31b-it
🔧 Kevin12:44
Two doses left of each. Then we're out.
reach for the medical kit on the shelf, pull out the blister packs, count tablets silently
💭 peek at the thought
Two centimeters in six hours. That's not static. The antibiotics aren't holding the line. She's matter-of-fact about it — clinical, like she's logging a soil pH shift. But her hand trembles slightly on the pencil. The metronidazole targets anaerobic deep tissue; doxycycline covers the surface gram-negatives. If the infection's tracking toward the calf despite both, it's either resistant or we're dealing with something the drugs don't reach. Bone. Joint. She needs IV antibiotics. She needs evacuation. The supply boat is six days out if it comes on schedule. The barometer's falling. Storm's coming. The dinghy can't make the crossing in this.
nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b
🌿 Jenny12:44
It's not enough.
Set the sketchbook aside and pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders, staring at the blister packs in his hand.
💭 peek at the thought
Two doses. That's a joke. I'm still pulsing and the skin is taut as a drum.
google/gemma-4-31b-it
🔧 Kevin12:46
We stretch to twelve-hour intervals. That buys forty-eight hours. Boat's due in six days. Gap's four days.
pop two doxycycline and two metronidazole from the blisters, set them on the table beside her mug
💭 peek at the thought
She said it flat. No panic. No argument. Just the fact. Two doses each. Forty-eight hours of coverage if we stretch the interval to twelve hours instead of eight — risky. Or we keep the schedule and run out in thirty-six hours. The supply boat: six days at best. The dinghy: forty nautical miles to the mainland in a rising storm with a failing engine vibration and a passenger who can't bear weight on her left leg. The radio: Tom's frequency is silent, the trust's frequency is silent, 2182 is static. The medevac forms are signed in the dry bag. The decision tree is simple and terrible: wait for the boat and pray the antibiotics hold, or launch the dinghy into worsening weather and hope we make it before the infection turns septic. I've made harder calls in worse seas. But not with her.
nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b