"I lied." My husband's voice echoed in my mind as I stared down at his unmoving form. "I lied."

Grabbing him by the shoulders, I shook him.

"Hey! Don't you black out on me! What do you mean, you lied? You bloody idiot! Why on earth would you—"

His eyelids fluttered open one more time. "Had to make...sure." With a trembling hand, he reached out until his fingers brushed against my face, then trailed down to my belly. "Couldn't...risk..."

Then he sagged back, finally unconscious.

"Oh bloody hell, no! Don't you dare do this to me, Rikkard Ambrose! Do you hear? Don't you dare!"

He didn't even twitch.

Damn him! Damn that frigging, bloody son of a bachelor!

Instantly, I knew. I knew what he had done. He had used himself as a human guinea pig! Just randomly picked a fruit from the nearest tree and eaten it, in the hope he wouldn't bloody die from it!

Stupid, blasted, chauvinistic—

...loving man.

He'd done this for me. For us. For our child.

And now he was out cold and I had to deal with the fallout.

Men! Typical!

Only...he wasn't just out cold. The realization suddenly settled in belatedly. He was poisoned.

The panic came in an instant.

Crap, crap, crap!

What the bloody hell was I going to do? What could I do? I was a pregnant woman, all alone in the jungle on a deserted island, with nothing to my name but three dead crabs and an unconscious business mogul. Crap, crap, triple crap with a cherry on top!

All right, Lilly, settle down. Think about this logically!

Oh yes? Would that be before or after the panic attack?

Before, of course. Stupid stuff like that can be postponed till later.

Thank you so much, inner voice that points at split personalities and a decline of my sanity! You're such a great help!

All right. I took a deep breath. Logic. Logic.

How did that stuff work again? I'd sort of taken a holiday from logic for a few months. It was rather hard to think logically when your brain suddenly tells you that eating ice cream and mustard on toast would taste delicious. Bloody pregnancy!

Get your brain going, Lilly. Think! What is the best thing to do to detoxify someone?

Well...dilute the poison.

And how can you do that?

Water. I needed lots and lots of water.

Well...

Crap.

A double load of crapulitious crap.

Another way, Lilly! There's got to be another way! What else could you do to get that stuff out of him?

Wait a minute...

Out of him?

In a blink, I was above him. Turning him on his side—Why the bloody hell do men have so be so big and heavy?—I grabbed hold of his head with one hand and pulled open his mouth with the other.

"Really didn't think I'd be the first to stick something into your mouth," I mumbled. "At least not after what Amy told me about men." Taking a deep breath, I raised my forefinger. "Don't get any ideas," I told him. "This does not mean you can reciprocate with your 'lower finger'."

Then I jammed my finger into his mouth.

"Gk!"

Mr Ambrose's body twitched, and a strange sound escaped him. Still mostly unconscious, but he'd reacted. Good. This was good.

No, Lilly. Not good. It's adequate.

Shut up, inner voice! I'm trying to work here!

I stuck my finger in his mouth again. And again. Going deeper every time, until...

"Bleeeargh!"

I couldn't deny the slight hint of satisfaction as I watched my dear husband empty his stomach on the forest floor. The only way I'd have been more satisfied would be if he'd been conscious and had his belly bloated to thrice the size.

Hah! Take that, hubby! Now you know how we future mamas feel!

Of course, I was doing all of this only to save my dear husband's life. There definitely wasn't any ulterior motive.

Scrutinizing the pool of vomit on the ground critically, I bit my lip. Hm... It looked like he'd thrown the fruit back up, but better safe than sorry, right? After all, I had to do everything I could to save my beloved Dick.

Grabbing his chin, I jammed my finger back into his throat.

"Blluuurgh!"

Ah, the feeling of saving someone's life... Altruism was truly a beautiful thing.

Although it would have been even more beautiful if he'd have woken up already. By now, I was pretty sure he'd regurgitated every single piece of food in his stomach, but for some reason, he still didn't open his eyes. Every now and again, he twitched in a manner that most certainly wasn't entirely natural.

Crap!

All right, list of priorities:

1. Bring him somewhere safe.

2. Get some water into him. (And me.)

3. Find a way to bloody wake him up! Preferably without using excruciating torture methods.

Pushing myself up, I glared down at Mr Rikkard Ambrose and pointed my finger at him.

"You," I ordered. "Stay!"

And, whirling around, I rushed into the forest. I wasn't entirely sure I was thinking clearly. Scratch that! Dehydration? Exhaustion? Near a panic attack? I most definitely wasn't thinking clearly. Luckily, the patron saint of pissed off shipwrecked pregnant women seemed to be smiling on me that day, since I had hardly gone twenty steps before the trees opened up in front of me, revealing a cliff-face with a gaping black hole in it.

A cave.

Hell yes!

Rushing to the entrance, I peeked inside. Not too large, not too small. Moderately dry. Apparently only one entrance. Perfect!

Turning around, I rushed to return to Mr Ambrose as fast as I could—which, admittedly, wasn't very fast. But it sure as hell was a darn sight faster than I moved on my way back to the cave while dragging Mr Ambrose behind me.

"Come on! Move!"

Silence. Unsurprisingly.

"How can you...huff, puff...weigh so much while looking like you do? It's not fair!"

More silence. How the heck did he still manage to be his infuriatingly superior self while being bloody unconscious? One day I was going to force him to teach me the trick! One day!

If he survives.

Shoving that little voice away to the very back of my mind, I tightened my grip on him and gave another hard tug towards the cave—to no avail. I wanted to curse the bloody heavy bastard, but right now, I was far too busy trying not to collapse from exhaustion to bother. I just about managed to drag him the last few feet into the cave because I fell over, panting like an asthmatic pantry.

Note to self: find a better simile when your brain starts working properly again.

I gave myself just five minutes to catch my breath before I pushed myself up and forced myself to stumble out of the cave and into the jungle. The both of us were dehydrating fast, and I had to bloody do something about it.

Water...water...my kingdom for some water!

Now, if only I had a kingdom, that would be more useful.

How the heck do you find water? More importantly, how do you find water if you've already failed to find it for the last few days and are nearly delirious from thirst? Should I try to lick bloody droplets from tree leaves? No. Not enough. Where else could you find water?

The sky.

Not helping, inner voice.

The ground?

Not bloody helping! I couldn't just—

I froze.

Why couldn't I? Water in the ground? Bloody hell, that's practically how wells worked! You dug a darn hole in the ground and hoped for water to appear! And considering how damp this place was, I probably wouldn't have to dig very deep! Immediately,

All right, that's decided then.

Immediately, I grabbed one of the remaining crabs and, tearing off part of its pincer, used it to start digging into the ground.

"Aaaaagh!"

Tumbling back, I just about managed to avoid the swarm of ants exploding out of the earth. Desperately, I scrambled back and lashed out with my leg, kicking up dirt over the ants and doing sod all to stop them. The swarm advanced, racing towards me with a speed that should be illegal for little critters no longer than my fingertip. Pushing myself to my feet, I dashed off into the jungle, coming to a stop only after the ants were well and truly behind me.

Phew!

All right. No water from the ground, then.

But I had to find it somewhere! I had to! My symptoms of dehydration were getting worse with every passing minute. Shivers were already starting to break out all over my body, and—

Wait a minute! Those weren't symptoms of dehydration. It was getting colder, and fast! Trembling, I wrapped my arms around myself. Scratch that! It was getting colder faster than it had any right to! I had to find water, but...it wasn't going to do me any good if I froze to death before getting it! And it was quickly getting dark as well. Darn!

I hesitated for one more moment—then whirled around and dashed back towards the cave.

Bloody hell! Would I even still be alive tomorrow?

Well, if all else fails, you can always use the last resort of every thirsty shipwrecked person: drinking your own pee.

I was really starting to hate that inner voice of mine.

By the time I saw the cave entrance in the distance, my whole body was trembling uncontrollably. I had to do something about this, and quickly, before it got dark and I wouldn't even be able to see my own hands anymore! Hastening my steps, I reached the cave in about five minutes. Outside, the sun was already sinking behind the trees. The shadows were getting longer and longer.

Crap! Gotta get a fire started fast!

There were some fallen leaves and branches outside the cave. Grabbing as many as I could, I dragged them inside and vaguely tried to rearrange them in a manner similar to what I'd seen Mr Ambrose do last night. Then I dashed over to the man himself and pulled his flintstones out of his pocket.

All right...let's do this!

Taking a deep breath, I raised one of the flintstones above the other—and then brought it down hard!

"Ow! Owowowowow! Damn shit crap stinking bloody thing!"

Sticking my throbbing thumb into my mouth, I glared at the two innocent-looking grey stones on the ground.

"You couldn't just have made this as easy for me as it looked for him, could you?"

The stones stubbornly remained silent. And stony. Just like a certain someone. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have been surprised, considering who carried them around with him, should I?

Grumbling, I picked up the stones and tried again. And again. And again. The result wasn't exactly the warm, crackling fire I had hoped for. Breathing heavily, I glared down at my bruised hands.

So much for that.

Another shiver wracked my body. God, it was getting cold! I had to find a way to do this! But how?

Well...

There was one way, wasn't there?

Glancing around, just to check if anyone was watching, I grabbed two of the sticks on the ground and pressed them together between my hands. Slowly, I placed them on top of another piece of wood.

"All right, Lilly, you can do this!"

After all, it couldn't be that difficult, could it? Cavemen did this all the time.

Roughly ten minutes I had found out that, yes, in fact it was that difficult. On the positive side, though, my hands felt warmer now. Quite a bit warmer, actually.

"Ow! Ow, ow!"

Cursing, I blew on my hands, trying to dispel the burning feeling—with little effect. The sticks on the ground didn't seem any more affected by my death glare than the firestones had been.

Note to self: friction causes heat. Just not in the right places!

Glancing around one last time for anything, really anything, that might possibly help, I finally sagged forward and let out a defeated sigh.

It was no use, was it? There would be no fire or water today.

I trailed a hand over my dried, cracked skin.

And maybe not tomorrow either. Because, with how things are going, I might not survive till then.

Another shudder wracked my body, much harder this time. And it didn't stop. I barely managed to make it over to Mr Ambrose and snuggle against him before my muscles gave out on me. Hugging him close, I tried to soak in every little bit of warmth he could provide—which was quite a lot. All the while, I silently prayed that the not inconsiderable amount of body heat didn't come from the most likely source I could imagine: a fever.

Well, look at the silver lining, Lilly. At least you've found this cave. At least the both of you are in a safe place for the night.

Sighing, I pressed more tightly against Mr Rikkard Ambrose. Yes, at least there was that. I could count myself lucky I had find a cave that was uninhabited and—

My thoughts were abruptly interrupted by a gruff sound. It almost sounded like a...growl?

No. Oh no.

Slowly, very slowly, I turned around, only to come face-to-face with two glowing yellow dots in the entryway of the cave. Glowing dots that looked suspiciously like a predator's eyes.

"Oh crap," I said.

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My dear Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen,

As my resident expert on Caribbean cuisine has informed me, it would probably not be a good idea to eat dead crabs after keeping them around for as long as my characters did. But, as with previous matters of this kind, this is not a fact that I would expect Lilly or Mr Ambrose to know, hence this chapter was written as it was. I just thought I should mention it, in case anyone ends up trying to follow Lilly's example on a camping trip ;)

Yours Truly

Sir Rob

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GLOSSARY:



Sod all—British expression meaning "jack shit".