Telepath (A Hyllis Family Story #4)

by Laurence Dahners

  “Mrs. Gates,” Tarc said expressing a lot of disappointment with his tone. “I thought we were getting to be friends. These’re tiny little cancers and I think Eva just didn’t notice them. We can wait until they get bigger if you want, but big ones tend to drop seeds in your blood that sprout new cancers in other places. I’m hoping that if we kill these, they won’t drop seeds and you won’t get any more.”

  “Oh, go ahead,” Gates said, sounding disgusted. Tarc thought he detected a note of hope as well. She pessimistically continued, “You know I’ll get more anyway. You’ll get to keep practicing on me until the day I finally die of these things.”

  When Tarc had finished, Gates sat up and gave Tarc the eye. “Well, you didn’t take my advice, did you?”

  Embarrassed, Tarc didn’t look at Vyrda. He said, “Um, you mean about…”

  “Tellin’ that girl she was pretty, yeah. You didn’t do it, did you?”

  Tarc felt himself flushing and glanced uncomfortably at Vyrda, “Um… I didn’t get a chance—”

  “I didn’t think so,” Gates interrupted disgustedly. “And you lost her, gone off with the caravan. And now, being such a pretty boy, you’ve got some new girl who’s so crazy about you she’s cross-eyed. I suppose you’re not even giving her the time of day, are you?”

  Tarc said, “New girl?!” Blinking in confusion, Pretty boy? he wondered.

  “Cute little one in the kitchen. So starry eyed she can hardly bear to look at you. I’ll bet you manage to drive her off too.” Gates took his hand and dropped a silver in it. “I don’t care what kind of mess you make of your love life, at least you can stop saying I never pay you.” She swept across the room, stepped out the door and headed down the street.

  “Wow!” Vyrda said. “She’s really something.”

  Tarc was staring at the kitchen. Nylin? he wondered. Vyrda’s thanks for what he’d taught her barely grazed his consciousness.

  Later, when he went into the kitchen to get his bolts, Nylin was animatedly talking to Kazy. As soon as she saw him, she stopped talking and turned away.

  Kazy glared at him.

  Not knowing what to do, Tarc backed out of the room and took his bolts down to the cellar.

  Chapter Nine

  When the family met that night, Tarc told them about the bolts he’d brought back and that they’d dug out three more gurneys. Then he told them about digging out the door and how the lock was frozen. “But,” he said to his rapt audience, “I think if Daussie comes out with me, she could port some oil into the mechanism and we might be able to turn it. Well, we might have to let it sit for a few days first.”

  “Why not just have Daussie cut the bolt?” Kazy asked.

  Tarc shrugged, “We could, I guess. It just seems like, if we left it locked, anyone who got down into the big room would think we’d never gotten in there. Besides, the door’s made of steel so it provides extra protection against robbers.”

  Kazy frowned, “Seems to me that if they think you haven’t gotten in there, it’d be even more reason for them to try to break through the door.”

  Tarc thought for a moment, then said, “Maybe you’re right. I’ll still need Daussie to come out there with me once to cut the bolt.”

  “Or,” Daum said, “Daussie could just cut the part of the lock’s mechanism that keeps the bolt from sliding. Then you could use your ghirit to slide the bolt in and out.”

  Tarc snorted, “Duh. I’m just going to have to let you guys do my thinking for me from now on.”

  As everyone was leaving his room to go to bed, Tarc caught Kazy, “Why do you keep glaring at me?”

  Eyes flashing, she said, “Why do you keep ignoring Nylin?!”

  Dumbfounded, Tarc stared at her for a moment, then said, “I’m not ignoring her!”

  “What do you call it? You won’t talk to her. You never even get near her.”

  “I can’t even catch her eye! The few times I’ve tried to talk to her, she’s hardly said a word.”

  “Well, of course! She’s shy! And her crush on you is so bad she has a hard time even thinking… on those rare occasions you deign to notice her.”

  Tarc blinked, “Her what?!”

  Kazy stared at Tarc for a moment with a surprised expression that faded to a frown, then to realization, “Oh… You didn’t know.”

  Speaking slowly, Tarc suspiciously asked, “What’s a crush?”

  “She likes you,” Kazy said. Then she grinned, “Lord knows why. You can’t catch her eye because she’s too shy to look at you. At least when you’re looking at her.” Kazy snorted, “Though, apparently she spends a lot of time looking at you when you’re not looking at her.” Kazy stepped closer and poked Tarc in the ribs, “You should hear her talk about those blue eyes of yours.”

  Tarc stood gaping at his cousin as she went to the door.

  Kazy stepped outside and began to close the door, then poked her head back in for a moment, “Try talking to her. I promise it won’t hurt.” She closed the door.

  Tarc couldn’t get to sleep.

  ***

  Nylin woke with a fright.

  Someone was pounding on the tavern’s door downstairs. She wondered whether she needed to get up since she probably wouldn’t be able to deal with whatever the problem was, but then she did anyway. Partly because she was curious. More because she wanted to know whether whatever was happening might pose a threat. Most importantly, she wanted the Hyllises to think of her as someone they could count on to help… and should continue to employ.

  By the time she and Grace got up, lit a lamp with one of their precious matches, and put on shoes and heavy duty shifts, she’d heard some people run down the stairs. How’d they get ready so fast? she wondered, leaving the room just ahead of Grace.

  Nylin stopped partway down the stairs to peer into the main room. Daum was holding the door open and Tarc was helping another man carry in a stretcher. Nylin couldn’t help admiring how easily Tarc carried his end of the stretcher. The person on the stretcher was thrashing about, but it didn’t seem to phase Tarc.

  To Nylin’s astonishment, Daussie was already down there, leaning over the person laid out on the stretcher as it came in.

  Carrying big lamps, Kazy and Eva passed Nylin just as she and Grace resumed their way down the stairs. In moments, they were huddled over the patient with Daussie and Tarc. Oh, she realized, and Vyrda. Vyrda’d come in the door just behind the stretcher, as if she’d been the one to tell the men to bring it to the tavern.

  To Nylin’s surprise, shortly after the Hyllises gathered around the stretcher, the man on it stopped thrashing. Has he died? Nylin wondered.

  Kazy was bent down by the man’s head murmuring calming words to him. Tarc picked up the man’s arms—fallen in an outstretched position—and laid them by his sides. Daussie and Tarc bent over the man’s body from the right and Eva from the left, though they didn’t seem to be doing anything.

  Daum had stepped over to the men who’d helped carry the stretcher. They were saying something to him about a drunken fight at the Odd Duck. From the conversation, it seemed their patient was a well-liked member of the Guardia. He’d tried to break up the fight and gotten knifed for his trouble.

  “Knifed in the gut,” one of the men said. “I guess he’s done for, but Vyrda said to bring him here. Said you had a healer who might be able to work a miracle.”

  “Sometimes,” Daum said grimly. He turned to Nylin and Grace, “Eva may need some stuff heated. Can you start a fire in the stove?”

  Grace said, “Yes,” and pulled Nylin after her despite Nylin’s strong desire to stay and watch. Surely she doesn’t need me to help her start a fire, Nylin thought irritatedly. Then as they approached the dark kitchen, she realized that Grace needed the lamp Nylin was carrying. Both to light what she was doing, and possibly to start the fire.

  Nylin held the lamp while Grace got some tinder, then stirred through the coals in the firebox. She found one hot enough and started the tinder. Nylin set
down the lamp and got some wood, handing it to Grace who carefully stacked it over the little flame.

  ~~~

  As Daussie crouched over the man, she was horrified by what her ghirit showed her. His abdomen was awash in blood. They had his shirt off and her gaze had seized onto the three-centimeter wound above and to the right of his belly button. She forced herself to follow the trajectory of the wound into his abdomen where she found a big oozing slice in the man’s liver. That’s where all the blood’s coming from! She thought, then forced herself to take her ghirit on a tour of the abdomen to be sure she hadn’t missed something.

  She followed the depths of the wound in the liver. At one point it penetrated deep enough to go through the other side and make a nick in the man’s diaphragm, but it hadn’t gone through into the lung. I don’t think he’ll survive this much blood loss, Daussie was thinking when Tarc grabbed her arm and shook her.

  “Daussie!” he hissed emphatically, obviously trying not to shout. Suddenly his voice came from within her ear, “Wake up! Start porting that blood out of the abdomen and back into the vena cava!”

  Daussie jerked up wide-eyed, feeling like she’d been having a nightmare. Eva was staring at her with a look of grave concern. Eva leaned close and said, “Be sure to only port liquid blood. Nothing that’s clotted.”

  Focused now, Daussie leaned close and… She sat back for a second. A big pool of the blood had collected down in the pelvis. She’d only need to move blood about a centimeter and a half from there to the iliac vein. She’d practiced with water and knew that she could port sixty ccs over such a short distance almost once per second. But will the iliac vein accept an instantaneous influx of sixty ccs? she wondered. If I blow out the vein, we’ll have a worse problem then we already do.

  She ported ten ccs. A bulge formed in the iliac vein—which was flat from the lack of blood in the man’s system. The bulge almost immediately vanished as the blood she’d ported flowed away along the empty vein. She tried twenty ccs and was alarmed by how the sudden bulge stretched the vein. This bulge also quickly vanished, but Daussie still felt worried.

  Daussie went back to teleporting ten ccs at a time. But, because it was much less than her capacity, she realized she could easily do it more often than once a second. In a couple of moments she was porting ten ccs twice a second. That’s 1.2 liters a minute, she realized.

  Eva leaned close, saying, “Oh, that’s awesome. Keep moving that blood back in there. But for God’s sake, don’t get overly enthusiastic and transport any clots!”

  From her reading of Eva’s old texts, Daussie knew that even the ancients would’ve thought more than a liter a minute was a very high rate; after all, the body only held five liters of blood. I think two, or maybe two and a half liters of his blood are here in the abdomen. That’s enough blood loss to make a patient seriously ill and frequently kill them. It’d have been bad even back in the old days when they could perform blood transfusions and other miracles. It’d certainly be fatal today if I couldn’t move his blood back into his circulatory system. She paused and got a grip, Whether I can do it or not, it’s still likely to kill him.

  And, a lot of the blood that’s free in his abdomen has clotted. Since I’m only moving back the serum—the part of the plasma that’s left after the clotting factors are gone—and the red blood cells that haven’t gotten trapped in the clots, he’s still going to be significantly short of blood. Oh! And short of clotting factors. How’s he going to stop bleeding from that wound in the liver without those?

  Taking a moment away from pumping blood out of the abdominal cavity and into the patient’s veins, Daussie focused her ghirit on the wound in the liver. To her dismay, she sensed blood still oozing from the wound. Then a tiny spark flashed hot in the lateral surface of the wound… What the hell?

  Eva spoke to her, “Daussie, what’s wrong?”

  Realizing that Eva must have sensed the cessation in her blood porting, Daussie said, “I was just checking on the bleeding from the liver. If it doesn’t stop—”

  “Tarc’s cauterizing it,” Eva interrupted. “You need to get back to your job.”

  “Oh,” Daussie said, embarrassed. Now she realized what the hot spark in the liver wound had been. I guess if he can melt steel, he can cauterize flesh, she thought. To Eva, she quietly said, “If there is a nick in the bowel, this guy’s probably going to die anyway, you know?”

  “Finding nicks in the bowel’s my job,” Eva said tightly.

  “Oh,” Daussie said, glancing up and seeing Kazy by the man’s head, presumably helping him sleep through it. “Are you finding any?” she asked Eva.

  “One, but it’s not all the way through. We’ll get Tarc to put a stitch in it later. Now, please, let me concentrate. I can’t do two things at once the way you can.”

  Daussie had to focus herself. She finished sending back all the blood that’d drained into the part of the pelvis near the iliac vein. She started searching for other pockets of blood in the abdomen, finding them and porting them into the closest large vein. Sometimes she had to port smaller quantities because she didn’t think the vein would take ten ccs. Sometimes she had to port longer distances to get to a large enough vein—which slowed her down because it took significantly longer to port a large volume over a significant distance.

  At one point, while she was mechanically transferring blood out of a large pocket she’d found, she had attention to spare and looked up. Daum was bringing in Eva’s remaining large bottle of sterilized saline. Eva had felt broken hearted that she’d left the other bottles in the king’s fortress escaping from Realth. But this guy needs more fluid than I’m going to be able to salvage out of his abdomen, she thought, so we really need to get some saline into him.

  Glancing around, Daussie saw the men who’d brought the stretcher standing there looking dubious. This probably does look pretty weird, Daussie thought, all of us sitting around him with our heads bowed as if we’re praying. That’s probably what they think we’re doing—something they’ve probably seen fail in the past.

  She looked up at her mother and said, “I think I’ve moved about all the blood I can. Can I try starting the IV?”

  “Good idea,” Eva said, bustling to her feet. “Come around here to his left side. We need to leave Tarc over there next to the liver.”

  Eva and Daum positioned the bottle so the coil of glass tubing hung near the front of the man’s elbow. Eva had Daum rotate the bottle until the needle was pointing the right direction for the needle to be inserted into the antecubital vein.

  Daussie blinked. “Um, Mom,” she said softly, “I’ve just realized I don’t need an IV. I can port fluid into patients’ veins. Maybe it’d be better if someone else learned to start an IV?”

  Eva looked at her for a few moments. Daussie thought her mother was pondering the fact they wouldn’t ever need an IV if Daussie was around. The only reason someone would need to learn to start an IV would be in case Daussie was gone—dead or moved away. Or something else her mother probably didn’t want to contemplate, if Daussie was the one who needed the IV and Eva wasn’t in the picture to start it herself.

  Eva gave a sharp nod, accepting all the unpleasantness involved in the possibility that someone else might need to start an IV. She said, “Vyrda. You want to try starting an IV?”

  Vyrda stared at Eva, “I only just learned they even exist during my reading last night. Shouldn’t I see someone else do one before I try to do it myself?”

  Eva nodded, then looked at Kazy thoughtfully. “Kazy, you think you can try to start an IV while you’re… you know.”

  Kazy was similarly wide-eyed. “I could try, but I’ve never seen one either.”

  “Yeah, but you been around this stuff a little longer. It’s really pretty easy.” She jerked her head at her niece and Kazy got up and walked around to Eva’s side. Eva spoke quietly so the strangers in the room wouldn’t be able to hear. Daussie could hear most of it because she was close by. “Your ghirit show
s you the vein right there beneath the needle?”

  Kazy slowly nodded.

  “So, I’m gonna pull the sterile cloth cover off the needle, then you’re going to push the tip of the needle right through the skin and into the vein. If you can’t do it, I’ll be right here, okay?”

  Kazy crouched over the man’s elbow and grasped the glass tubing behind the needle and its cloth cover.

  Daum shifted a little to relax the coils in the tubing. Eva lifted a piece of soft cloth that’d been soaking in some of Daum’s moonshine and wiped down the front of the man’s elbow. Then she slid the cloth cover off the needle and gave Kazy a nod.

  Trembling, Kazy pushed the needle against the man’s skin, then seemed to freeze up with the skin indented but not punctured.

  Eva calmly said, “Go ahead…”