The Donors

by Jeffrey Wilson

  Now Jason pushed the stretcher with Jazz’s inert body while Jenny used the green plastic ambu-bag to force air into his paralyzed chest. They had pulled a sheet up to cover his gaping abdominal wound and long, bloody strips of missing skin on his chest and flank.

  Jason planned to get the boy into the Trauma Bay and then push meds in him quickly. In the elevator he hit the button for the first floor; a moment later the doors opened onto an empty staff hallway. Jason jogged the fifty yards to the code-key panel by the double doors, pushed in seven-one-zero-zero and the doors swished open together. He pushed the stretcher through, nearly lost Jenny as he turned the corner, and moved toward the Trauma Bay. As he approached a large and unhappy-looking woman in blue scrubs peered over her glasses at him in disapproval.

  “Just what’s this?” she asked with an exaggerated frown.

  “No time, Jan. Call the Trauma Team stat. And bring me some morphine, etomidate, and succinylcholine right now.” He wheeled past her and turned left into the large Trauma Bay just beyond her and across from the large admissions desk. The woman stood motionless, her mouth open. “Goddamnit, Jan—now! And get me some help in here.”

  They pulled the stretcher into the first bay and pulled the curtain between them and the next bay where an old man lay with his hands over his face and his left leg pulled straight between two narrow rods that kept his broken femur stable. Jason looked at Jenny who stared back at him impassively as she squeezed rhythmically on the ambu-bag. He winked at her, hopeful that the gesture might reassure her.

  She’s hanging on by a thread.

  Two nurses burst into the bay, a man and a woman in matching blue scrubs.

  “Sux, morphine, and etomidate,” the woman said and handed Jason three syringes with red-label tape on them. An ER resident shuffled in behind them. Jason felt relief to see his buddy Rich Rizutto in a stained white coat over green scrubs. The unspoken fraternal code of ER required that he look bored and unhurried, but his voice sounded anything but bored.

  “Whisky-tango-foxtrot, bro? Where the hell did this guy come from?”

  “Hey, Scooter,” Jason answered as he pushed a bolus of morphine into the IV tubing. Jazz had all the succinylcholine he needed so he casually wasted it onto the wet sheets, hopeful no one noticed. “Shit if I know. Jenny and I were coming in through the ambulance entrance when some medics pulled this guy out. Some kind of transfer from another hospital—some sort of fucked-up surgery gone bad, I think. They went tearing out of here when I offered to help them—something about a chemical explosion somewhere, so you guys may have a bunch of patients coming.”

  “Mass casualty?” Rizutto asked with arched eyebrows. “Tasty—how’s this guy?”

  “Seems stable,” Jason said and moved away so Rizutto could take over. “I don’t really know anything else. Just tryin’ to help the medics out.”

  “Well, shit, dude,” Scooter said and rubbed his chin. “I mean what was the surgery, who was the doctor, which hospital—is there any fucking paperwork on the stretcher?” He pointed at the male nurse who shook his head. “Great—fuck me—okay, let’s hang some ringer’s lactate until we know how he got here. And where are the surgeons?”

  Jason grabbed Jenny’s hand and pulled her away as a respiratory tech rolled a ventilator in to hook up to Jazz’s breathing tube. “I’ll let the triage desk know what I heard about the mass casualty thing,” he called to Rizutto. Scooter waved his hand and continued to look over his patient.

  “What the hell? Someone just gave up, packed his abdomen, and transferred him without a receiving surgeon? What kind of cosmic fucking bunny hole have I fallen through? Is it a full moon out? Anyone? Is it?”

  Jason let the door close on his friend’s rant and then dragged Jenny back down the hall and out of the ER. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Help Nathan,” he answered simply. He didn’t know anything more than that. Jenny nodded like that was enough.

  “In the cave,” she said. It sounded more of a statement than a question, but he nodded and she hugged him. The ding of the elevator’s arrival interrupted their embrace.

  On the fifth floor, Jason forced himself to slow down and not look so suspicious as he entered the Pedi Ward. The tall nurse from earlier waved at him from the other end of the hall and he raised a hand back. Together they slipped into Nathan’s room.

  Sherry and Nathan lay just as he had left them. He heard loud snoring sounds from Sherry’s bed and gently adjusted her head so that her airway stayed a little more open. Then he pulled the covers down off Nathan’s shoulders and stroked his hair. He felt a tear well up, but didn’t know why.

  “I’m coming, little buddy,” he said and then leaned over and kissed Nathan’s soft cheek. Jason turned to Jenny and took both of her hands. “I have to go,” he said softly.

  “I know,” she said. “Both of you come back, okay?” She looked around the room. “I’ll mind the store, I suppose, and keep everyone out of here as long as I can.”

  Jason looked at his watch—nearly four a.m. The Burn Team residents would be here for rounds no later than six or six-thirty. It would all be over one way or another by then. “Thanks,” he said awkwardly. She kissed him and he settled onto the vinyl bench seat by the window. “I’ll be right back,” he said and smiled. She looked like she tried to smile back, but couldn’t.

  Jason closed his eyes.

  This is a mistake, young Jedi. You won’t survive.

  Watch me.

  Remember how you failed before?

  I was just a boy. I’m a different person now. I have others to be brave for.

  That isn’t what it takes. There are other things that matter. That’s why we sent the boy.

  Well I’m going to help him or die trying.

  Why?

  Because. I love him.

  The voice said nothing for a moment and Jason tried to imagine the wet feel of the cave. Then the voice came back.

  Listen carefully, then, and take with you what you learn.

  He had no idea what that meant, but he could feel himself shift or dissolve or whatever it was they did. The air got heavy and he opened his eyes.

  What he saw made him want to cry or scream or both.

  * * *

  Jason stood at the foot of his mother’s bed—her deathbed in fact—and wondered if he had finally lost his mind. Whatever had brought him here (insanity or something worse) it couldn’t be real, because it looked exactly like it had nearly twenty years ago.

  I’m hallucinating, right? Or remembering somehow, a really vivid memory?

  It doesn’t matter. Pay attention.

  “Jase?” His mother’s voice sounded weak and gravelly. The arm that stretched out to him looked wasted. Her face appeared so gaunt that she might have been a skeleton except for the pasty skin that stuck stubbornly to her skull. Her mouth moved again, but no sound came out and then her body shook with a cough that seemed to come from her center. She spit a wad of bloody goo into a paper cup she held in her other hand. “Jase, baby, it is you, isn’t it?”

  “I’m here, Mom.” Tears streamed down his cheeks.

  “Come here, baby,” she said and her thick, dry tongue tried to lick the paste from her teeth and lips. “Oh, Jason, honey, come here to Mommy.”

  The words sounded exactly the same, and his mom looked the same, but before someone had been with him right? A social worker had stood with him. He looked around, but saw no one—in fact he didn’t really even see a room. He stood in a half room, like a stage that had been partially built, just the sides that face the audience. Behind him he saw blackness; even the two walls that came out at right angles to the wall behind her bed, came only a short distance and then disappeared.

  But his mom looked exactly the same. And he knew immediately, without searching his memories, that her words were being repeated. He tried to remember what he’d said next.

  “What’s wrong, Mommy?” he choked out. “What’s wrong with you?”

/>   Jason felt no surprise that the voice that came from his throat was an eight year old’s. Right now, somehow, he was eight-year-old Jase again. He reached out and took his mother’s bony hand. As he approached her, he got a faint whiff of the smell he had grown to hate since that day, the death smell that hangs on people in their last days.

  “Mommy has to go, baby,” she said and tears fell from her eyes, but pooled in the gully formed by loss of muscle and fat beneath her skin. “I can’t fight them anymore. I’m worried they’ll hurt my baby. Oh, my poor brave little man.”

  Twenty years ago he had thought she might be delirious and talking nonsense.

  He asked the question now that he had been too afraid to ask then.

  “Who, Mommy? Who do you have to fight?”

  “Why the creatures, of course,” she said and her eyes glazed further. “They’re here in my head even now, you know. They put things there, horrible things, and I have to go. I have to go, so I won’t do the things they want me to do.” Her voice cracked and Jason understood for the first time. The Lizard Men had been afraid of him, just like they were afraid of Nathan now, and had tried to get his own mother to stop him. She had given up and gone away to protect him.

  The tightness in his throat nearly choked him and he heard himself sob out loud.

  “Oh, my big boy,” his mother said and pulled his face onto her frail, bony chest. “My brave boy. You have to be strong for Mommy, okay?”

  Why had they not just hurt him themselves? They had chased him through the cave just before all of this, had damn near caught him and he had no doubt they would have killed him had they gotten their claws onto him. Why try to make his terminally-ill mother hurt him instead? It made no sense.

  “Why, Mommy?” he bawled in his eight-year-old voice. “Why do they want you to hurt me?”

  Her bony fingers felt cool and almost like plastic. She pulled his face off her chest and stared at him with the last bit of fire her eyes would ever hold. They looked crystal clear in that moment, bright and full of life.

  “Because they know you’re too young for them to stop,” she said, voice teetering on maniacal. “I see that now. They can’t hurt the young. You still have the power of the other place, the before place, and they are afraid of you.”

  “Why, Mommy?” he sobbed again.

  “Because, to the young mind, anything is possible. Children—they can still find the power because they can still believe. They believe in Santa, and the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, not because they’re stupid, but because they still know that everything really is possible. Tell a child he can fly like Peter Pan did and he will fly away to Never-Never Land.” Jason saw a little glow, a candle flicker, deep inside his mother’s eyes. She spoke again, her face the same nearly dead one from that hospital room so long ago, but the voice now sounded like the other-him voice. “Only a child can believe like that. Only a child can fear without regret—but also believe in not being afraid. And only a child can remember the power that all of you come here with.”

  His mother’s eyes glazed over again and she collapsed backward onto the bed. “I have to save my little boy…I have to…” He listened to her repeat it over and over, just like he remembered she had done that night, the night before he had abandoned her in the cave.

  And then a bolt of blue light exploded out from her and she disappeared. He squeezed his eyes shut at the brightness of it and then gasped as the cool dark air turned hot and wet. He opened his eyes and looked around the large cavern in the cave.

  Jazz lay where he had been, but his body seemed to shimmer slightly, like tiny little fireflies surrounded it. In the corner, Sherry lay on her side, motionless.

  Help him then. But don’t forget.

  Where is he?

  He is on his way down the glowing tunnel to your right. You will have to hurry. He’s nearly there.

  Where?

  The place you couldn’t go because you stopped believing.

  Jason had no memory of that. He scrambled to his feet nonetheless, dusted the moist dirt off of his bare legs and ass, and headed down the passage at a slow jog.

  I’m coming to help you, Nathan.

  His thought-voice traveled down the passageway.

  Chapter

  28

  Nathan fought the overpowering urge to turn around and run full tilt out of the tunnel that seemed now to close in on him. The glow he remembered from earlier had grown to a hazy light not yet bright enough to hurt his eyes. The air itself gave off the light and it penetrated through his skin. He could feel a constant irritation, like when he got a sun burn at the beach and the soft cloth of his shirt would just make it—not really hurt—just feel funny.

  The tingling in his feet and ankles felt much worse. He now waded and splashed through the cave-blood river that sloshed over the tops of his feet at times. The tingly feeling moved up his legs now, gave his butt and privates a very unpleasant tightness, and made his stomach feel like he needed to spit up.

  But he kept going. Every time he nearly turned around he pictured Mommy lying naked on her side in the big room. He knew if he pulled her hair away from her eyes that they would look like old milk, just like Jenny’s. The Lizard Men would kill her if he didn’t stop them.

  “I gotta keep going,” he mumbled and waded on through the awful purple yuck. He had no idea where he would end up and certainly no idea what to do when he got there.

  You’ll know, Power Ranger. You discovered a new power before, didn’t you? One you never knew you had?

  I guess so.

  He didn’t feel powerful right now. He remembered the feeling of the power when he saved Jenny, but like remembering a dream, like watching a movie.

  That power is real, Ranger. No dream, I promise. You can use it only if you believe it, though, and your fear will make it evaporate.

  How can I make myself not be afraid?

  That was like saying you wouldn’t cry when you got a shot at the doctor—you really wanted it to be true, but when the time came you either cry or you don’t. Not much you can do to change that. The idea that he had to make himself not be afraid or he would lose his power made him really afraid—which sort of meant…

  This sucks.

  It does. It sucks and it is not fair, but there it is.

  The other-him stayed quiet for a moment and Nathan waded on through the goo and the nasty feelings it gave him. He tried to think about his mom and how much he loved her and how much he wanted to save her. Maybe the trick was just to be mad enough—then you didn’t get scared ‘cause you didn’t care what happened to you, right?

  Stop for a moment.

  Nathan stopped. He moved to the edge of the passage near the wall, close enough that the cave blood seemed a little less deep, but not so close that the little streams of it on the walls might splash on him. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stand it on any other part of his body. He waited a long time.

  I’m coming to help you, Nathan.

  Jason’s voice.

  He felt a little panic now, not fear for himself but for Jason. He started to call out in his head, to make him go away, but the other voice stopped him.

  It’s okay. Let him come. He may be able to help you.

  You said he would die. You said I had to do it alone.

  He may be able to help you.

  Nathan bit his lip, uncertain what to do.

  Will he get hurt?

  I don’t know, but he has to help you. It has become his mission, too. Let him come, Nathan. Let him help you if he can. He will come no matter what, because he loves you.

  There was a long pause and Nathan stayed still. He had no idea what to do. He thought he should probably go on by himself, but he thought maybe if Jason was with him he would have a better chance of not being scared.

  You have a better chance to save your mom with his help—no matter what happens.

  Okay.

  He turned and looked back the way he had come. He reached out to his fri
end in his head.

  Jason. Jason, I’m way down here inside the tunnel.

  Wait for me, buddy. Don’t go anywhere. I’m coming.

  Okay.

  He waited. The worry he had for Jason seemed like nothing compared to the relief that in a minute he would no longer be alone in this awful place. He waited at the end of the tunnel.

  * * *

  Jason felt nothing short of amazement that Nathan had come this far on his own—amazement and terrible guilt. He continued his jog up the passageway and tried to ignore the tingling in his bare feet every time they splashed through one of the blood puddles. The purple streams ran together into the depths of the tunnel as if pulled there by some gravitational force. He couldn’t afford to slow down to avoid them and they seemed to coalesce into an unavoidable river in any case.

  His back ached from his hunched-over jog, but he ignored it. Even though he cleared the ceiling by a foot, the closeness made him feel gross and so he bent awkwardly without meaning to. As he got deeper into the tunnel and the glow became a light floating in the air, he called out.

  “Nathan! Nathan, are you there? Can you hear me?”

  “Up here.”

  The voice sounded close, but the echoes in the tunnel made it hard to tell. Jason cupped a hand over his eyes to shield them from the light, but since the light seemed to come out of the air, it didn’t help much. It felt a lot like looking at a streetlight after hours in a chlorinated pool, a kind of eerie halo, except filling the room. He stated the obvious.

  “I’m coming.”

  A little farther up, a small shadow seemed to interrupt the glowing air. He picked up the pace as he saw Nathan’s hunched form near the wall, not touching it. Nathan stretched out his arms to him and Jason picked him up and hugged him tightly.

  “I gotcha buddy—you’re okay.”

  “I’m glad you came,” Nathan said and began to cry. He buried his face in Jason’s neck and then wiped his eyes. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  Jason smiled and rubbed the boy’s hair. “I think you’re allowed a few tears,” he said.