How It All Goes Down
- Sister Tabitha fetches Mary in the morning to bring her to the moanin' groanin' patient.
- She reminds her about the "no speaking" rule, and Mary opts not to tell her that she's already finished reading through the Scripture five times. She's enjoying her alone time.
- When she arrives in the sick room—gasp—it's Travis in the bed.
- He recognizes Mary and pulls her hand to his face; she feeds him snow while Sister Tabitha gets some bandages.
- She feels Travis's tongue on her hand, and ooh-la-la—it feels good. Too bad he's not her man…
- Mary presses her head against his cheek to comfort him, and then creepy Sister Tabitha enters. Oops.
- Travis covers for Mary, though, and says she's been praying with him. Phew.
- Sister Creepy pulls down the sheet and Mary almost goes belly-up: Travis's leg wound is all kinds of nasty.
- The good news, according to Sister Creepy, is that the wound isn't infected. The bad news, though, is that Travis will be lying in bed all winter and might not ever walk again. At least it's not infected?
- Travis asks if Mary can come to pray for him, which Sister Creepy ain't happy about but says okay to, so long as she's only praying.
- Mary looks at her hand in Travis's hand and thinks it's a whole lot better than her hand in Harry's. Not that she has either of them anymore. Shucks.
- Mary ends up with Travis every morning, but he's mostly fever-crazy.
- She kneels by his bed and whispers to him. She's not a praying girl anymore, though, so she tells him about the ocean.
- And she figures out that—gulp—she loves him. Like, really loves him. So much so that she's both jealous he chose Cass and red-hot-angry at the same time.
- What it boils down to is that she loves Travis more than anything, even God (which isn't too tough, given the fact that she doesn't believe in him anymore).