May
wanted Julia to inhale the buds’ richness. Julia smiled and said, “They smell
like peaches.”  But a day later, May felt
a sharp pang.  The flowers’ aroma hadn’t
driven away the, “harmful unknowns,” which had hurt Julia’s lungs. Her eyes
were blurry. Her face was clouded.

Worse,
she still coughed. In addition, Julia’s arms were as thin as matchsticks. May
frowned.

 To remedy this, May decided to bring a fresh
batch of apples. They grew in the orchard which Julia’s parents kept near their
wide lawn. After May had presented an apple to Julia, Julia’s head merely
dropped on an eiderdown pillow. She moaned. May leaned forward and asked,

            “What’s the matter?” May knew that
Julia could eat three apples in one sitting.

Julia
only shook her head and said, “They’ll probably taste like Mama’s cod liver
oil.”

Apparently,
Julia had completely lost her appetite. May fell into despair. May’s last
resort was to send rays of warm sunlight, they reminded her of the warmth of a
friendly human touch. Surely, her friend, who was like a ray of sunlight
herself, would respond to such a viable force of nature.

            But Julia didn’t seem to care
whether the sunlight was there or not. She could only turn her face towards her
bare bedroom wall and cough into her pillow. The sunlight was unable to kill
any hidden enemies which were lurking in the soft eiderdown. May was ready to
shout in frustration. She wasn’t frustrated with Julia. She was frustrated with
herself. In spite of all that she had tried, Julia was as thin, pale, weak, and
cough-ridden as she had been at the start of this new regime. Eventually, a
dark night forced May to consider another healing approach.

The
doctor, who wasn’t a particularly cheerful man, had taken Julia’s temperature
with a strange-looking instrument, peered into Julia’s fogged eyes, shook his
very slowly and said,

“It doesn’t appear as though she’s
getting better. I suggest that you prepare for the worst outcome. With the
blizzards that plague our climate, her lungs can’t survive them.”

Julia’s
parents looked absolutely horrified at this news. May felt for both of them
very deeply.

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