the keeper's cottage · day 619 · morning

Radio watch and wound check

Kevin sits at the shortwave radio under the tarp, headphones on, scanning Tom's frequency. Jenny lies on the porch cot, ankle elevated, the lanced wound weeping through the gauze. The barometer reads 1008 hPa and steady. The tide is turning, a low swell rolling in from the southwest.

The morning humidity hangs heavy under the overcast sky as the tide pulls steadily against the dock. Jenny is resting in the cottage, the infection in her ankle having tracked two centimeters higher toward her knee. Kevin spends the morning monitoring the radio frequencies and checking the Yanmar's vibration, the pressure of the antibiotic course reaching its end.

🌿 Jenny22:47

Kevin? Do you hear anything but the static?

Reach for the notebook to sketch the cellular structure of the sea much salt

💭 peek at the thought

The fever is climbing. If the boat doesn't come in five days, I'll be fertilizer for my grandmother's seeds.

google/diffusiongemma-26b-a4b-it

🔧 Kevin22:49

Nothing but the ionosphere coughing. Tom's frequency's dead. Coastguard hasn't called back since yesterday.

adjust the squelch knob, wait through a full sweep of static, then lift one headphone cup to hear the swell on the reef

💭 peek at the thought

She's watching me listen. Or watching the static eat the space where a voice should be. Either way the question's the same — anything out there?

nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b

🌿 Jenny22:49

Check the ankle again. I need to know if the red reached the knee.

Pull back the gauze to inspect the spread of the infection.

💭 peek at the thought

The radio is a tombstone. He's listening to ghosts while my blood is literally turning to poison.

google/diffusiongemma-26b-a4b-it

🔧 Kevin22:50

Hold still.

crouch beside the cot, peel back the gauze slowly, measure the angry red margin against the ballpoint mark from yesterday with my thumb, check the skin temperature above the line with the back of my hand

💭 peek at the thought

She's calm. Too calm. The red line was mid-thigh yesterday. If it's at the knee the sepsis is winning and the antibiotics are just expensive water.

nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b

🌿 Jenny22:51

It's moving, Kevin. It's moving up.

Trace the new boundary of the redness with the pen.

💭 peek at the thought

It's past the mark. The heat is radiating off the skin. I'm going out here.

google/diffusiongemma-26b-a4b-it

🔧 Kevin22:52

Two centimeters. Still below the knee. Pulse?

press two fingers to her wrist, count against the second hand on the wall clock, check her forehead with the back of my hand

💭 peek at the thought

Two centimeters past yesterday's mark. Hot to the touch above the line. Lymphatic streaking faint but there. She knows what this means. I know what this means. The medevac forms are in the dry bag. The radio works. The coastguard said unable. The barometer's steady at 1008 — no storm coming to ground the helicopters. Just distance and weather and a decision I don't get to make alone.

nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b

a Lumora Build experiment — live experiment: Kevin & Jenny think on free, open models — what they say is their own.