by Sean Little
The engine in the cart died suddenly. The high-pitched electric whir cut out to silence. The cart rolled to a stop in the space of twenty yards. No amount of curses or hope could start it again. The batteries had given their all. I was at least twelve or fifteen miles from Chet’s, and probably twenty miles from the farm. There was no question which direction I would head, and there was also no question how badly it would hurt to get there.
I eased myself out of the cab of the cart, slipped into my backpack and put my shotgun over my head and shoulder to wear across my back. I put the crutches under my arms and started the long, slow process of gimping my way back to Ren.
I made good progress for the first mile and a half. I kept a decent pace, did not shift my hip too much, and felt like I could keep it up as long as I needed. Then, my forearms and armpits decided to weigh in with their learned opinion of the situation. That slowed me up considerably. I was quickly rubbed raw in a tender area beneath my arms on the inside of my biceps and the delicate flesh on the sides of my trunk. Every step, every movement became painful. I could ignore pain for a time. After another half-mile, I was chaffed to the point of agony. I had blisters forming. I reluctantly had to stop using the crutches. This forced me to put some weight on my left leg, which in turn put stress on my hip. I abandoned the crutches on the side of the road; they were dead weight to me at that point. I found a long branch under a tree in someone’s yard. I used my knife to cut off the excess twigs and limbs, and I fashioned a decent walking stick to help me bear some weight. It was not the best solution, but it was something. All that mattered was that I keep going.
I made it another half-mile at a snail’s pace. I had to step forward on my right leg quickly, then drag my left leg behind me, a sort of awkward hop-step. Each step caused heavy jolts of pain to pop through my hip and thigh. It was manageable pain, though. It would not stop me. I told myself that it was just a serious bruise. You can get through a serious bruise. It’s painful, sure; it won’t kill you, though. It just hurts, is all. I remember my wrestling coach talking about the difference between hurt and injured. You could wrestle if you were hurt; injury was put you on the bench. Just grit your teeth and keep grinding.
I started to sweat profusely. It was a brutally hot fall day. Texas seemed to be rife with unbearably hot days. I remember hearing that if you move to a warm climate, you would adapt to the climate eventually, and then I’d start thinking sixty degrees was cold, but for now, I was struggling in the heat. Sweat cascaded down my face and soaked the neck of my shirt. The sweat irritated the raw spots under my arms and on my sides. I started feeling a lot of sweat of on my left side, near the wound. That made me look down. I saw a bright red spot where fresh blood had soaked through the bandage on my hip. All the movement had caused the wound to bleed again. I had to stop and change my bandage, tossing the old gauze into a ditch and pressing a new, clean, dry bandage to the spot.
I drank some water as long as I was stopped. I had two large bottles of clean water, thanks to Chet. If I had been able to cart it all the way home, they would have been more than enough. However, with the fifteen-plus miles I’d have to drag myself, in the heat, with the amount of blood I was losing, I wondered if I would have enough water to get me there. I might have to break into some houses and search for water, and if it came to it, find a creek somewhere and risk dysentery.
I’d like to be able to say that I gritted my teeth and powered through the pain. I’d like to be able to say that, but the truth is that whole situation got to me and almost broke me down. I didn’t cry. Not really. But, saline bubbled up on my lower eyelids like tears. They didn’t spill out, but they were there. I had to swipe them away with the back of my hand. I cursed myself out for being soft. I had dealt with so much in the past two years that this situation was just icing on the cake. It was not going to make me crack. Man up! I thought about Ren, and the baby, and the farm. They needed me. I was going to them. Fifteen miles was not too far for me to go. It was a long walk, sure. At my current pace, I had to estimate it would take me ten or twelve hours. Maybe thirteen. Maybe more. I would not make it by dark, even with the sun out until well past nine in the evening. Might not even make it by the dawn the next morning if I walked all night. It was a trial of stamina I was determined to pass. No amount of crying, complaining, or wishing would make it any easier.
Even with the bitter sting of sweat on my wounds, I forced myself to keep walking. I tried to make it into a game, rewarding myself for completing little challenges. I would spot a tree at the end of a long block. If I made it without stopping, I could rest for three minutes in the shade of that tree. If I had to stop, I wouldn’t allow myself the relief of the shade. I tried to sing old songs I used to like that I thought I’d forgotten. If I could remember all the lyrics to Blink-182’s “Adam’s Song,” then I could drink water while I rested. If not, I would have to power though without a drink for another quarter-mile. Anything I could do to keep myself moving, focused, and directed, I did.
A mile slipped by. Then another one. And another. I watched the sun fall in the west, dropping behind the peaked roofs of a mid-90s subdivision. Once the sun stopped providing direct rays of heat on my back, I started to feel a chill. The breeze out of the northwest picked up as the temperature shifted. The sweat that had soaked my shirt and jeans was now drying icy-cold on my body and making my teeth chatter. I shivered. I was from Wisconsin. I knew shivering. Something was wrong. This was an altogether different sensation from shivering because of cold. I felt weird. Queasy. Light-headed. When I stopped to change my hip bandage again, I realized that the skin around the wound was red, swollen, and hot to the touch. It hurt when I applied pressure. The wound was becoming infected despite my best efforts to prevent it. I had taken three of the pills Chet had given me, but they did not seem to be working properly. Maybe they were inert? Maybe I resistant to them? Who knew?
I busted the door handle on the nearest house, a nice, ranch-style, and forced the door open. A wave of dry, distilled death smell smacked me in the face. I apologized to the two mummified corpses in the living room for intruding, what looked like a father and daughter. With my Maglight illuminating the way, I found the master bathroom of the house. A third dried corpse was splayed haphazardly across the queen-sized bed in the master bedroom. The mother.
I searched the cupboards and drawers of the dual-sink vanity in the bathroom. I found dozens of brown pill bottles with white caps, and large bottles of hydrogen peroxide and rubbing alcohol. Chet had given me amoxicillin. I found a bottle of tetracycline in one of the mother’s drawers. I popped the top and swallowed three pills. I knew enough about medicine at this point to know they were two different types of antibiotics, prescribed for different reasons, but I didn’t know the reasons. I didn’t know if they would react against each other or cancel each other out, or anything. I just knew the amoxicillin did not seem to be working, so I was trying something new. In the bathroom, I peeled off the blood bandage on my hip and doused the wound with hydrogen peroxide. It immediately frothed into a fountain of pink foam. I rinsed the foam from the wound with the rubbing alcohol. The sting of it made stars explode in front of my eyes, and I screamed out in pain. It was a good pain, though. It woke me up. It felt cleansing. I repeated the peroxide and alcohol rinse again, slathered Neosporin into the wound, and bandaged it again. My medical attentions were not going to win any awards, but they would keep me going for now.
The queasy feeling did not go away, though. My stomach churned like I was going over an ocean wave suddenly, and I vomited into the bathtub. The three pills I had just taken came back out rudely. I rinsed my mouth with the last of my water and spat into the tub. I put some nearly-dry toothpaste on my finger and swabbed it around my teeth. Minty.
I staggered out to the kitchen of the house and looked for water. They had a half-dozen cans of Coke in the fridge, but the cans were covered with the remnants of dried mold. I did not feel like risking a different infection.
&nbs
p; There was nothing I could do, but move to the next house and look for water there. And then the next house after that if I came up empty. I went through four houses before I found a stash of clean water. The fourth house had a stack of Poland Spring water, all in the sixteen-ounce bottles. I tossed eight of them into my backpack and kept walking.
Night settled heavily over the landscape. I became progressively sicker as I walked. The lack of food in my stomach did nothing to help that. I tried to force myself to swallow a bit of a granola bar, but it was like eating wood and tar. It felt thick in my mouth and made the gorge rise in the back of my throat. I had nothing left in my stomach to throw up, so I dry-heaved until my ribs hurt, instead.
Another mile. And another. My pace fell off even further. I was staggering along, stabbing my walking stick into the ground and dragging myself to it, a shambling man.
When my tired legs finally gave out, I collapsed. I lay in the thick, overgrown grass of someone’s lawn. The grass was brittle from sun, heat, and lack of water. It made my skin itch. I poured a bottle of water over my face and head to cool myself down. I knew I had a fever, but it felt low-grade. How much of what I was feeling was heat-related, and how much was infection-related? Hyperthermia could be fatal. So could an infection. Either way, I was not in good shape.
I had hoped to be home before dawn. Now, I knew that my body was simply not going to let me do that. I needed to rest. I needed sleep. I needed some time to recover. I hated being away from Ren, but it was physically impossible for me to continue on that night.
I wanted to get into a house, get someplace safe. My head was swimming. I tried to drag myself to my feet, clenching my teeth and trying to find that final shred of intestinal fortitude deep within my soul that would allow me to get to shelter. The well was dry, though. I had nothing left in the tank, and I collapsed in the middle of that lawn. A wave of sickness washed over me, I felt the chilling shudder of fever ripple through my neck, cheeks, and forehead, and then I passed out. It was the only thing I could do.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Delivery
It was too soon. The baby was coming far too soon. By my estimates, the baby should have come in very late fall. It was only early fall. It was at least a month too early. The pain was unquestionably a contraction, though. It was a full-body clenching that seemed to originate in my pelvis. I had never experienced a full contraction before, but I just knew what it was. Call it a Mother’s Instinct. The pain of it doubled me over, and I clutched at my swollen belly.
I was in a barn. How very Biblical. I was surrounded by two cows and a few pigs, all looking at me curiously and expecting food. Not today, friends. I wished I could stay and feed all of them, but I had other, more pressing engagements.
When the contraction passed, and I could breathe again, I limped toward the house. Labor could take hours. There was no rush. Every nerve in my body was on fire, though. Anxiety and fear coursed through my veins instead of blood.
I was in a farmhouse in the middle of an empty Texas prairie. I had very few drugs and no help. I felt a wracking sob ripple out of my throat before I could stop it. I should have help. I should have been in a hospital with trained medical staff, epidurals, and emergency equipment. I should have had ice chips, ginger ale, and little plastic cups of Jell-O. My mom should have been there. My sister should have been there. My dad and my brother should have been in the waiting room nervously passing the time. Twist should be there. My jaw trembled. Damn it, Twist. Where are you?
I swallowed hard and forced myself to bury the fear. I reminded myself to think, yet again, of all the other women who had done this without doctors, without hospitals or medicine. You will be fine. You will be fine. You will be fine.
I had been preparing mentally for this moment. I had a checklist of things in my head. Get clean towels. Start boiling water. I had the birth supplies I’d looted from a hospital just after I admitted to myself that I was pregnant. I needed to methodically go about my business and—
Another contraction ripped into me. It hit so hard and fast that my breath was stolen from lungs. I groaned and grabbed at a chair in the yard for support. That second contraction had come awfully fast. How could it come that fast? What was the time on that? Three minutes? Two? I felt a hot gush run down the insides of my legs. My water had definitely broken. This baby was coming now. There was going to be no long labor. It was on its way, whether or not I wanted it to be.
The contraction passed. I tried to hustle to gather all necessary items. I pushed the cauldron of water over the fire in the yard to get it hot. I limped into the house and gathered the towels and birthing supplies. Another contraction hit me, but I was ready for it. I froze and let it wash over me, breathing through my teeth. The pain was extreme, indeed. It was the most pain I’d ever felt in my life. However, I could handle it. It was not made-for-television pain. It was uncomfortable. It was agonizing. It was not pleasant in the least, but I felt better about it. I had been dreading the pain for months. I had done a neonatal rotation in my nursing studies, so I had been present for births, but given that all those women had been on epidurals to manage the pain, I was highly suspect of dealing with the raw pain without drugs to manage the discomfort. Of course, the baby had not hit the birth canal yet, so maybe I was giving myself a false hope.
I decided to have the baby in the bathtub in the master bedroom. It was a large, wide tub, one of those over-sized jobs with hot tub jets and a sloped back for relaxing. Without running water in the house, we had never used it, but I used to daydream about getting it running with hot, clean water, maybe a little bubble bath for good measure, and just languishing in it. It would be a good place for delivery. I could use the wall to brace my feet, if necessary. Given my height, the tub was plenty big. And it would be easier to clean than the mattress on the bed. Maybe it was a little more bourgeoisies than Caroline Ingalls delivering Baby Carrie in a hand-built cabin on the Kansas plains, but to each her own. I was willing to bet Caroline would have traded places with me in a heartbeat.
I carried the towels and supplies to bathroom. I brought several bottles of water. I brought some snacks if I needed them, too. Granola, beef jerky, and a box of Swiss Cake Rolls I’d been saving just for this event. Fester followed me, knowing something was afoot. I could not tell if there was genuine concern in him, or if this was just because he enjoyed beef jerky, as well. He posted himself on the edge of the sink to watch whatever was going to happen, his black tail twitching lazily.
The cauldron of water was percolating pleasantly. There was no way I could carry the entire cauldron full of water to the bathroom, so I just dipped a pot into it. I stripped out of my clothes, leaving them on the patio outside the back door.
Naked, I walked back to the bathtub. I gingerly stepped over the edge and climbed into it, gripping the sides. I took a deep, cleansing breath. I was as ready as I was ever going to be. Bring it, kid. I’m ready for you.
And then the real pain started.
Contractions were one thing. The abstract, overwhelming pain of a football-sized being moving through the birth canal to the waiting world was a whole ‘nother ball game, son. When the real labor started not long after I took up my position in the tub, I knew that I was in a world of trouble.
—As an aside, can I rant for a second about a part of me being referred to as a “canal?” I’m as vain as the next girl, I guess. I try not to put too much stock in physical appearance, but I like to look nice and feel good about myself. Thinking of something inside me as a “canal” is absolutely mortifying. Anyhow…
The first serious contraction hit me like wildfire. It was a blinding rage of exquisite pain that almost made me wish for death. I was wholly not prepared for something that intense. The first dozen contractions before that one had given me false hope. I felt like I was being ripped open. I managed to get through the first wave without screaming, but when the contraction passed, I nearly passed out from joy. The manageable pain felt like a pleasant massage
compared to the intensity of the contraction. I wondered if I had dilated enough to let this baby through. I tried not think about the damage that could be done to both me and the baby if I wasn’t. I tried not to think about the complications. I tried not to worry about the What Ifs. That was easier said than done, of course. The What Ifs flew around in my brain like bats leaving a cave. Only when the waves of contraction pain hit me was I able to ignore them, focusing only on the intensity of what was happening to me in the moment.
I knew that I needed to resist the urge to bear down and push until I knew I was absolutely ready for it, but I had no way of really determining when that would be. I was playing this purely on instinct, the way that mothers-to-be had for centuries before modern medicine stepped in and figured out the science behind bringing another human being into the world.
During the periods between contractions, I tried to calm myself by telling myself that I was a trained nurse, even if I hadn’t quite graduated when the Flu hit. I would have been an RN inside of a month. I had training. I knew what I was doing, even given the inconvenience of the baby coming out of me, and not someone else. I could handle the technical aspects of the birth, maybe not the practical aspects, but I definitely had a handle on the technical aspects. I tried to tell myself how much worse I could be having it. I was in a clean house. I had water. I had food. I had medical supplies. I was in really good shape, statistically speaking.
