Cima

Cima is Pops’s daughter, a doctor, and a decisive presence in the final movement of the story. Though still sick when Hig reaches her, she helps leave the canyon and later tends Bangley through a prolonged crisis. At the airfield, her medical work also carries her beyond the quarantine boundary that has kept the Mennonite community isolated, turning care into both a practical necessity and a visible act of trust.

Identity and Arrival

Cima first appears in this evidence at a moment when she is still unwell and has not yet taken in the full implications of what has happened. Hig calls to her, and she nods; the group has little choice but to move because its fuel is nearly gone. The circumstances give her introduction urgency rather than ease: she is not presented as someone arriving with strength to spare, but as a person who must act while sick and under immediate pressure.

After Hig brings Pops to the airfield, Cima becomes part of the work of keeping the injured man alive. She says Bangley needs the level of attention associated with intensive care and around-the-clock monitoring. The survivors take turns watching him. Her assessment helps organize their response, and her presence is not merely supportive: she brings the medical judgment on which the others’ care depends.

Medical Work at the Airfield

Cima treats Bangley through a dangerous recovery lasting more than two weeks. He is gravely weakened, and she cares for him while his condition remains uncertain. She sets and splints his badly injured leg, cleans and closes another wound, and gives him water and Sprite with a turkey baster when he cannot drink normally. His improvement is gradual: it takes days before he recognizes Hig, and later he opens his eyes while Cima is feeding him. The episode makes her competence concrete through sustained attention, not a single dramatic intervention.

The airfield also changes how Hig understands her. He sees her working as a doctor with an ease and capability that seem to make her larger in his eyes. He associates this confidence with a return to a hard-won usefulness, but senses that something more personal is happening: Cima appears to relax into her surroundings and let go of an old constraint. Hig describes the change as a kind of flowering. It is his perception, not an account of Cima explaining herself, and the distinction matters: the reader sees her transformation through the attention of someone increasingly drawn to her.

Crossing the Quarantine Boundary

Cima asks to visit the Mennonite community as soon as she arrives with Pops. Carrying her medical bag, she goes with Hig to the settlement, where people gather along the quarantine line. Their first response to her approach is wary; the community has been kept apart by fear of the blood disease. Cima crosses the DMZ, and the people give her space. She identifies herself as a doctor and begins treating them.

In a room in the old farmhouse, she examines the community members one by one. She wears latex gloves, tends cuts and other wounds, calls for warm water, counsels a pregnant young woman, and comforts an older man. She also explains to Hig that the danger has been misunderstood: in her account, transmission requires contact with blood or other bodily fluids, rather than ordinary proximity. Her explanation gives Hig permission to cross the boundary too. The quarantine warning had helped keep attackers away, but it had also made the sick seem untouchable; Cima’s visit challenges that isolation without pretending that the illness itself has disappeared.

Relationships and Change

Cima’s care connects her to both Pops and the wider group. Pops, recovering at the airfield, calls her Mrs. Hig. Hig responds by identifying himself as a doctor, and Cima later recounts the exchange with amusement. The moment brings her into the possibility of a family relationship with Hig, but keeps the tone lightly self-aware rather than formal: Pops’s words test a name for the bond, and Cima’s laughter registers the human humor in his challenge.

Hig’s account of Cima’s work blends respect for her skill with the recognition of growing love. He is moved not only by the fact that she can treat people, but by the way she inhabits that expertise. Her decision to cross the quarantine line extends this change beyond the airfield: she becomes useful to people who have been avoided, and she acts where fear has made contact difficult. The story’s closing emphasis is therefore not on a declaration but on what Cima does—monitoring Bangley, tending the community, and making compassionate contact possible. Through these acts, her medical ability becomes a form of belonging, while Hig’s account of her flowering marks the emergence of a shared future.