Boy's illness and recovery

After the discovery of the shipwreck and the recovery of supplies, the boy fell suddenly and dangerously ill on the beach. The man, who had been walking a short distance away, returned to find the boy standing wrapped in blankets, waiting for him, and complaining of not feeling well. The man cupped the boy's forehead in his hand and found it burning with fever. He carried the boy to the fire, where the boy bent and vomited, and the man wiped his mouth with his hand, telling him he had done nothing wrong. The man was terrified.

The Fever and the Vigil

The man carried the boy up to the camp and covered him with blankets, trying to get him to drink water. He put more wood on the fire and knelt with his hand on the boy's forehead, repeating that he would be all right. The boy begged him not to go away, even for a little while, and the man promised he would not. He held the boy all night, dozing off and waking in terror, feeling for the boy's heart. In the morning the boy was no better. The man tried to get him to drink juice but he would not. He pressed his hand to his forehead, conjuring up a coolness that would not come, and wiped the boy's white mouth while he slept. He whispered to himself that he would do what he had promised, no matter what, and that he would not send the boy into the darkness alone.

Treatment and Desperation

The man went through the first-aid kit from the boat, finding aspirin, bandages, disinfectant, and some antibiotics with a short shelf life. He helped the boy drink and put one of the capsules on his tongue. The boy was soaked in sweat, and the man stripped him out of his blankets, unzipped him out of his coat and clothes, and moved him away from the fire. The boy said he was so cold, but the man explained that his temperature was too high and they had to cool him off. The boy asked for another blanket and the man gave it, again promising not to go away. The man carried the boy's filthy clothes into the surf, standing shivering in the cold salt water naked from the waist down, sloshing them up and down and wringing them out. He spread them by the fire on sticks angled into the sand, piled on more wood, and went back to sit by the boy, smoothing his matted hair. In the evening he opened a can of soup and set it in the coals, ate, and watched the darkness come up. He woke later lying shivering in the sand, the fire almost dead, and reached wildly for the boy, whispering "Yes." He rekindled the fire, wet a cloth and put it over the boy's forehead. When dawn came, he went into the woods beyond the dunes and dragged back a great travois of dead limbs and branches, breaking them up and stacking them near the fire. He crushed aspirins in a cup, dissolved them in water with some sugar, and lifted the boy's head to hold the cup while he drank.

The Man's Collapse and the Boy's Recovery

The man walked the beach, slumped and coughing, staggering with fatigue. He stood looking out at the dark swells, then went back to sit by the boy, refolding the cloth and wiping his face. He told himself he had to stay near, to be quick, to hold him close—this was the last day of the earth. The boy slept all day. The man kept waking him to drink sugar water, the boy's dry throat jerking and chugging. The boy said "Okay" when told he had to drink. The man twisted the cup into the sand beside him, cushioned the folded blanket under the boy's sweaty head, and covered him. He tried to stay awake all night but could not, waking endlessly to sit up and slap himself or rise to put wood on the fire. He held the boy and bent to hear the labored suck of air, his hand on the thin and laddered ribs. He walked out on the beach to the edge of the light, stood with his clenched fists on top of his skull, and fell to his knees sobbing in rage. It rained briefly in the night, a light patter on the tarp; he pulled it over them and lay holding the child, watching the blue flames through the plastic, and fell into a dreamless sleep. When he woke again, the fire had died and the rain had ceased. He threw back the tarp and pushed himself up on his elbows to see the boy watching him. The boy asked for a drink of water, and the man fetched it, knelt, and held the cup for him. The boy drank, nodded, and asked for more. The man built a fire, propped the boy's wet clothes up, and brought him a can of apple juice. The boy remembered shooting the flare gun and getting the stuff from the boat, and said he had had weird dreams but did not want to tell them. The man checked all the food tins but found nothing suspect, throwing out a few rusty ones. That evening they sat by the fire, the boy drank hot soup, and the man turned his steaming clothes on the sticks, watching him until the boy became embarrassed and told him to stop. The man did not stop.

Aftermath and Significance

In two days' time, the boy was well enough to walk the beach as far as the headland and back, trudging along in plastic bootees. They ate huge meals, and the man put up a sailcloth lean-to with ropes and poles against the wind. The boy's illness had been the most direct confrontation yet with the possibility of his death, and the man's desperate nursing—washing clothes in the freezing surf, crushing aspirin, holding the boy through the night—revealed the depth of his commitment. The boy's recovery restored a fragile hope, but the ordeal left both of them more aware of the precariousness of their existence. The man's earlier dreams of a phantom peach orchard and his waking from siren worlds of color and beauty now seemed even more distant; the boy's own nightmares, like the one about the unwound penguin, had been a premonition of this helplessness. The illness also deepened the boy's understanding of his father's vulnerability, as he had heard the man crying in the night and knew that if the man should not cry, neither should he. The recovery, however temporary, reaffirmed the man's role as protector and the boy's will to survive, even as the man continued to cough blood and the world shrank further around them.