by Lou Cadle
“Pilar!” Sierra leaned over him. “Wake up!”
“Maybe jab him with something,” Dev said.
“No,” Kelly said. “We have to wait.”
“Splash him with cold water? Slap him?” Dev said.
“All wrong.”
“They do that in movies.”
“Not the best source for medical training,” Kelly said, distracted. Her focus was on Pilar.
“Pilar, please, wake up,” Sierra said.
“Sierra, Dev, go in the barn. Find a piece of plywood or something to use as a stretcher. And straps or ropes, in case we need to tie him on.”
“Okay,” Sierra said, happy to have something to do. She didn’t want to leave her father’s side, but she did want to do something. Standing here and watching him just lie there, not moving? It was torture. “C’mon, Dev.”
“I’m sorry about this,” he said, meeting her eyes.
“Nothing to be sorry for yet. He might wake up and be fine.”
They jogged together to the barn. As they ran, he said, “Hope so. Did he fall all the way?”
“I don’t know. He was up at the turbine last I saw him.”
Dev shook his head.
“What?”
“Must’ve hurt.”
“Thanks. That makes me feel better. I should have been out there with him!”
“You couldn’t have caught him. If you’d tried, two of you would be hurt, not just one.”
Sierra yanked open the barn door and left it open. “There’s wood over there. I don’t know what, exactly.”
“We have lumber if you don’t have anything that will work.”
But they did find a piece of plywood Dev said should bear his weight, about eight feet long and wide enough. Sierra knew where the rope was stored, so she got two kinds and they went back out.
Kelly was holding her father’s hand, talking to him. She looked up. “He made a sound. I think he’s coming to.”
Sierra dropped to her knees by Kelly. “Pilar? It’s me, Sierra. You need to wake up.”
“Ssss,” her father said.
“Right. Sierra. Talk to me?”
“Mnn,” he said. Then he tried to shake his head and roll over, but Kelly stopped him.
“Stay still until we figure out how you’re hurt.”
“Hurt,” he said, and his eyes flickered open. He blinked, focused on Kelly, and then on Sierra. “What happened? Was I shot?”
Sierra felt cool relief that he was talking. But why did he think he’d been shot? “You fell.”
“Where?”
Kelly said, “In your yard. From a turbine tower.”
“And I’m alive?”
Kelly’s voice was wry. “Apparently. Where does it hurt?”
He thought about that for a moment. “All over.”
“Hang on. Don’t move until I tell you.” She scooted down and grabbed a hunk of his leg through his jeans. “Feel this?”
“Ow,” he said. “You pinched me. And you just did it again on my other leg.”
“Good,” Kelly said, scooting back up to his head. “That’s good. You don’t remember falling?”
“I don’t even remember climbing,” he said. “Did I?”
Sierra said, “You did. To adjust the turbine again.”
“Okay,” he said, but as if he doubted her honesty.
Kelly said, “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Um, let’s see. We all talked about the boys and decided what to do. I was on watch. Joan relieved me. And....” He frowned. “That’s it. That’s the last thing that happened. Joan waving at me as I walked away.”
“Concussion,” Kelly said. “You must have hit your head.”
“If I fell from the turbine tower and hit my head, I’d be dead.”
“Well, you aren’t. But you have to tell me where you hurt most. Your head? Neck? Back? Abdomen? Hips? Where?”
“My side. The one I’m laying on. Can’t I get on my back?”
“Wait. Dev, slip that board under him, so he’ll be on it when he turns, and we don’t need to move him a second time.” Under Kelly’s direction, the three of them gently turned Pilar onto his back. Kelly said, “Stop it, Pilar,” sharply when he tried to do it himself. “Lie still. Let us do the work.”
She prodded gently at his newly exposed side, using three fingers pressed together. “Here?” When he shook his head, she moved her fingers to another spot. “Here?” The fourth spot she tried, Pilar gasped in pain. “That must be it.”
“Oh, that hurt,” he said.
“I’m no doctor, you know.”
“But?” he said.
“I think it’s a broken rib.” She looked up at the tower. “Best I can work it out, you were partway down when you slipped. The climbing belt was still on you, so I’m not sure how you slipped, but you did. That belt might have slowed you down. You fell, and your head either snapped down to hit the ground in a second impact, or maybe it banged off the metal post at some point in the fall and that knocked you out. I’m going to check you over more, make sure you don’t have swelling or pain in your abdomen.”
“You’re thinking I’m bleeding into my belly?”
“I think that’d be the worst possible outcome, if you didn’t break your back or neck, which apparently you did not.”
“This is bad enough,” he said, wincing as he tried to shift on the plywood.
“Stay still. I’ll give you something for the pain as soon as I’ve checked you over better.”
Sierra was torn between relief and concern. “Why can’t he remember falling?”
Kelly glanced up at her. “Pretty typical for a concussion. It’ll probably come back to him. Or, if the concussion is bad enough, it never will. He might have a blank of a few hours in his memory forever.”
“Isn’t that bad?”
“It could have been worse. Much worse.” She shook her head at Pilar. “You have to be careful. Sierra needs you. We all need you.”
“I need me,” he said, with feeling.
“All right. Tell me when anything hurts.” She prodded and poked him all over. Only once did he make a sign he was in pain, when he touched his hipbone right under where his rib hurt. “Might have taken a chip of bone out there, but I suspect it’s only going to be a bad bruise. We’ll get you out of your clothes later and I’ll check.”
“Don’t tell your dad about that part, Dev,” Pilar said, with a pained smile.
Sierra was happy he had made a joke. He couldn’t be in too much pain if he could joke around.
Dev said, cautiously, “Okay.”
“He was kidding,” Sierra said.
“I was kidding,” Pilar said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Kelly said. “You won’t be up for any shenanigans of that sort for weeks, I’d imagine.”
“Shenanigans,” Pilar said and then laughed. It cut off quickly. “Remind me not to do that again.”
“Okay. I’m going to give you a lozenge.”
“My breath bad?”
“No. It’s a strong, nasty opiate. You only get one, because I don’t have a lot of them, so enjoy it while you’re high. After that, ibuprofen or whatever you have on hand.” She dug into her kit again and pulled out a metal box. She found gloves—which she hadn’t been wearing until now—and put them on. Then she opened the box, pulled out an envelope, closed the box with a click, and said, “Back off, you two. I don’t want you anywhere near this.”
“Then why are you near it?” Dev said.
“I’m holding my breath, just in case. Sometimes powder from this stuff can float out and make you high. I can manage not to breathe for a minute. Get back, both of you.”
Sierra and Dev backed off several feet while Kelly gave him the lozenge. “Your job is to keep it between your gum and cheek. It’ll dissolve in a few minutes.”
“Tastes awful,” he mumbled.
“Shhh. Lips closed.” She put the empty envelope onto the grass and took off her gloves caref
ully, inverting them. Then she put on a different glove to pick the first pair up, and inverted that over the first pair. She pulled out a little plastic bag (Sierra was reminded of the little bags you had to use in town parks to pick up dog poo) and put the gloves and envelope in there and tied it off.
“Must be strong stuff,” Dev said to Sierra.
A few minutes later, Pilar started singing. Then he giggled.
“Must be strong stuff,” Sierra echoed.
“Oh, my side feels so much better now,” Pilar said.
Kelly said, “Let’s carry it inside. I think the three of us can manage. Tell me if you don’t think so, you two.”
Sierra nodded. “I can carry him.”
Dev said, “Sure. Three of us can do it. He’s not as big as Dad.”
“Let’s not drop him. I don’t want to end up driving a piece of broken rib into his lung.”
Pilar was humming the same song, one Sierra did not recognize.
They carried him without incident to his bedroom, but Sierra’s hands were cramping by the time they put him down on the bed. Kelly rolled him toward her, held on, and Sierra and Dev pulled out the plywood. Dev said, “I’m supposed to be on watch now. Can I go, or do you still need me?”
“Yes, you can go. Thanks for your help,” Kelly said.
“Thank you so much,” Sierra said.
“He’ll be okay,” Dev said to her. “Don’t worry. My mom’s a good medic.”
After he left, Kelly said wryly, “I’ll be opening a clinic before too long. Try not to get hurt anytime soon, Sierra. I don’t need any more patients.”
Pilar sang new words to his song: “And we need the guard shifts filled.” He giggled again.
“Man, he’s high. I’ve never seem him more than a little tipsy from wine,” Sierra said.
“It’ll wear off. Too soon, from his perspective. Let’s get him undressed before it does.”
“Okay. I’ll get his boots off.”
They got his boots and pants off, but Kelly cut off his T-shirt. “It’s old anyway. I’ll wash it and use it for bandages if you don’t want it.”
His chest and legs were pale compared to his arms and face.
“Yeah, look, you can see the bruising coming up here.” Kelly pointed to his side, and then to his thigh. She tugged the waistband of his underpants down and she whistled. “Yeah, that hip’s going to be black and blue in another day. Pilar,” she said to him, “that is going to hurt.” She eased the waistband back up.
“Doesn’t hurt now.” He frowned. “Or it does, but it’s like it’s hurting someone else next door, not me. There’s pain, but a big fluffy pillow between me and it. Fluffy pillow,” he said, smiling.
“You have aspirin or ibuprofen?” Kelly asked Sierra.
“Big bottles of both.”
“Anything stronger?”
“I don’t think so.”
“In a couple hours, this will wear off, and you can start giving one or the other to him. I’d do three ibuprofen every four hours for the first forty-eight hours, then cut back to a dose only at night if he can stand the pain. He might still have a hard time sleeping for a few weeks.”
“Should I feed him lunch? I was halfway done with making it when he fell.”
Kelly shook her head. “Wait until tonight. This drug makes some people vomit, and I don’t want him vomiting with a broken rib.”
“You think it’s broken?”
“Broken, cracked, or seriously bruised. At least it doesn’t feel like it’s out of place.”
“Can you do anything for it?”
“I’ll wrap it before I go. That’s all a hospital would do, though they’d have X-rays to prove or disprove it was broken.” She shook her head. “We lucked out here. He won’t be saying so in four or five hours, but we did. It could have been a lot worse.”
Sierra still felt guilty, though she knew she wouldn’t have been able to stop it happening had she been with him. “Maybe I should do the climbing from now on. Maybe Pilar’s getting too old.”
Kelly looked at her with a strange expression. “He isn’t fifty yet.”
“Forty-four.”
“He’s plenty young enough. He was unlucky today, is all. If he can remember eventually how it happened, then he can take steps to make sure it won’t happen again.”
“If his rib is broken, how long will it take to knit?”
“Six to eight weeks, I should think. I’ll look it up later and let you both know for sure.”
“Does he have to stay in bed all that time?”
“Not entirely, but he can’t do any hard work for at least a week. The one good thing about a broken rib, from what I’ve heard, is that it hurts bad enough the pain will tell him when to stop. He needs to obey the pain and not try anything too physically demanding.”
“I’ll make sure he does.”
“I hope you have better luck with him than I’ve had with Arch.”
“Is Arch getting better?”
“He’d get better faster if he did exactly what I said.”
“Bossy women,” Pilar said, startling Sierra. She thought maybe he’d dozed off, he’d been quiet for so long. “I love me a bossy woman. Or any woman, really.”
“Pilar!” Sierra said. “Too much information. I don’t want to hear about it.”
Kelly said, “Help me wrap him up. That’ll get his mind off any pleasant topics.”
They both pushed him up to a sitting position and then Sierra held her father upright while Kelly wrapped several bandages around him. It took two long bandages before Kelly was satisfied with her work. “He needs a bedpan, a jar or something to pee in.”
“Okay. What about, you know, the other?”
“That’s the only time I’d allow him to get up for the next forty hours. Morning after tomorrow, he can try going into the kitchen to eat. And for the next eight hours, until bedtime, I need you to wake him up every hour if he falls asleep. Can you handle that, plus everything else you need to do here?”
“Yeah,” Sierra said.
“How about managing your electricity?”
“There isn’t much to do. Shut down the turbines if it gets too windy. If they have to stay off for more than a day, then we have to shut down certain stuff to conserve what’s in the batteries.”
“You know how to do that?”
“Sure. It’s simple. And you do it from the ground. No climbing required.”
“And the hens and garden. Cooking coming along okay?”
“Yeah, I’m getting a little better at that. I won’t poison him, at least.”
“I’ll have Arch take you off guard duty for the duration.”
“No, I can manage.”
“I’m sure you can manage. But I don’t want Pilar getting restless and trying to get up because you’re not here.”
“Maybe I could borrow Misha from Joan and have her sit with him for a couple hours while I’m onguard. Or Joan herself might be better. Or just give me a night shift and not a day shift.”
“Are you sure you can manage all that?”
“I’m sure.” She wouldn’t want to be entirely responsible for the house and yard chores forever, but for a few weeks, she could manage. “I’m so relieved he wasn’t hurt worse. I feel like....” She didn’t know how to explain it. Like she would be willing to work as hard as she knew how because of that. Like in gratitude, that Fate hadn’t done worse to her, and this was her way of paying it back, or of preventing something else bad from happening. But she shook her head, unable to find the words to explain her sense that there was something she had to balance out by working hard. “I’ll be fine.”
“You come right over if you need anything—or if you can’t wake him. I’ll check on him once tomorrow. Or I’ll send Dev.”
“Either way. I appreciate it.”
“Okay. Pilar,” she said sternly. “I’m leaving. You stay right there and do everything your daughter says.”
“What if she says to kiss my own elbow?�
�
“I doubt she will,” Kelly said. “Rest if you can.”
“Not sleepy.”
“Rest then. Listen to music or something.” She said, “Anything you need, Sierra. Just let me know.”
“Thank you. For coming, and doctoring him, and for being so nice.”
“We’re neighbors. You risked your life down in town and brought us new people and a dog. I wrap up your father. We don’t need to keep score, but it all comes out even in the end.”
“Maybe, but thank you anyway. I was so scared, I couldn’t think. I couldn’t have done it myself, even if I knew what to do in an emergency.”
“Yes, you could have. You just push the worry and fear out of your head and do what needs to be done.” She packed up the rest of her first-aid supplies, the scissors and ends of tape.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Now you do. About broken ribs, at least.” Her first-aid kit shut with a sharp snap. “Bye.”
As Kelly left the bedroom, Sierra said, “Bye.” Then she leaned over her father and said, “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Going nowhere,” he said. “Can I open my eyes yet?”
“They are open.”
“Oh. Can I close them?”
“Yes.” Sierra hurried to the kitchen and poured him a glass of water, thought better of the glass she had pulled down and transferred the water to a plastic glass instead. She remembered a Mason jar with a chip in the rim from their last canning day, and she rooted around under the sink until she found it. She took a canning label and printed in block letters on it, “PEE HERE,” and slapped the label on. Then back to the bedroom, and she set them by his side, with the label pointed toward him.
He seemed to have fallen asleep. “Pilar?” she said quietly.
He said nothing.
She looked at him, noticing how there were wrinkles around his eyes. The furrow between his brows seemed deeper too, as if the last two months had aged him. Or maybe it was just pain, seeping through the drug haze and making him frown. He was so dear to her, such a good father. But she could have lost him today. The thought made tears spring to her eyes. She could lose him any day to an attack, a bullet, or an accident. It didn’t seem fair that life was so fragile. Think of everything that went into making people exist, all the years and generations of ancestors and effort and meals and parenting and medicines. And for it to all end in a split second with a fall?
