She could think about that later—right now, his pulse was fading, and his pressure was probably still dropping, and it didn’t have very much further to drop.
“Damn,” Doc said. “I don’t like this. Let’s try two, no three cc’s epi, Martha, and Donna where the hell is that goddamn blood?”
“I’m goddamn warming it, dammit,” her voice came back, “and it’ll fucking be the hell there when the hell it fucking gets goddamn there, okay?”
Doc chuckled. “Fair enough.” When things went all to pieces around him, Doc always seemed to relax, as though by pretending he had it all under control he could make the rest of the universe believe him. It didn’t always work, but sometimes it did, and Martha always believed him.
She always had tended to, ever since they had been kids in school together, at a time that felt both like yesterday and a million years ago.
But it was more than that. You live with a man for so many years, you work with him during the day and lie awake next to him, hearing his breathing enough nights, and it gets so that you don’t really know where you leave off and he begins, sometimes, and while he can’t lie to you, or you to him, not without the both of you feeling like a neon sign has gone off, anything he tells you that he believes, you will believe it, too, because his reality and yours have melded together in a way that’s sometimes reassuring and sometimes frightening.
Doc glared at the overhead display.
“Ah … damn. I think we’re going to lose him,” Doc said, pulling the crash cart a little closer with his foot, not missing a beat as he cut away at the bloody rag wrapped around the little man’s thigh. You went to the paddles if you had to, and about half the time you could get the heart started again.
For a while!
But in all her years, Martha could remember only two, three times that they’d actually ended up with a live patient after jump-starting him.
Doc had him hooked up to what he always called the MGP, and it kept pinging away regularly. The little man may have been funny looking, but his heart was strong.
Ian Silverstein stood shivering, like he was looking for something useful to do. “Ian,” Doc said, “there’s a sink over in the corner. Wash up—don’t spare the scrub brush—then put on a gown and a set of gloves. I can use another set of hands here.”
Martha was expecting some sort of protest, but Ian Silverstein just nodded as he more ran than walked toward the sink.
Doc winked at Martha, and Donna, on a dead run, dashed through the curtains, two red-black bags in her hand. She moved faster than Martha could have as she connected up the blood to the IVs, then started the flow, cutting back on the Ringer’s to let the real thing snake its way down through the coils of plastic tubing and into the veins.
“Okay,” Doc said. “Warm up another two units. I want to get at least six into him …” he grunted as he worked a hemostat into place, then reached for another “… and then we’ll stick in the dipstick and see if he’s full.” He glanced up at the monitor, at the rippling green mountains and valleys that were now getting larger. “Good boy. Stay with me, just a little while longer,” he said. “You just hang in there, and let ol‘ Doc Sherve sew you up, you hear?”
Ian Silverstein, now gowned and gloved, was by Doc’s side the next time Martha looked up.
“Okay,” Doc said, “you know those things you call roach clips? They’re called hemostats, and I’m going to need a bunch of them. You just slap them into my palm when I call for one—shit.” A small geyser of blood erupted from the wound, covering Doc from shoulder to waist before he could get it stopped. “And Martha, I need some section here, if I’m going to have a chance to see what the hell I’m doing.”
She was already on her way, the Davis in hand.
Ian had been concentrating so hard on not screwing up—even though Doc Sherve hadn’t asked him to do anything really difficult, and he was half-wondering if it was just Doc’s way of playing with his head—that he didn’t notice that Hosea and Thorian Thorsen were in the room, until Doc, his eyes never seeming to leave his work, said, “And a good day to you, Hosea and Thorian.”
Ian had gotten tired of staring at the instrument tray, although it had been minutes since Doc had asked for another hemostat. So Ian had kept his eyes on the dwarf’s face, to avoid looking at where Doc was working on the gash in the thigh, and to avoid feeling guilty for wanting Doc to give him something for the pain in his shoulder.
Ian had seen blood before, although not much, thankfully; his reputation in the Eastern Hinterlands of Vandescard to the contrary, he had only fought one real duel, and his winning had been more of a fluke than due to any great skill, but there was something frightening about the calmly professional way Doc Sherve stuck his gloved hands and his shiny metal instruments right into a wound, clamping here, sewing there. It was almost inhuman.
He tried to distance himself. It wasn’t a human Doc was operating on; it was a vestri, a dwarf, a Neanderthal. Another species entirely.
You could, possibly, mistake the dwarf for a human—although an awfully strange-looking one—if you didn’t have another context in which to place it. But not if you gave it more than a second glance. A ragged beard covered his chin, but the chin receded improbably, and the brows were just too thick.
It seemed strange that the vestri had such long eyelashes, although Ian didn’t know why he shouldn’t. Or why he should.
“The vestri,” Hosea said, his voice slurred more than usual, “can you say if he will live?” He was dressed in an orange hunting parka over his overalls. It was bulky enough to hide the skinniness of his torso, although his legs stuck out like two sticks below.
“You know, there is that possibility,” Doc said, as he stripped off his blood-spattered gloves and gown, and stepped back. “He just might make it.” Donna was already holding out another pair of gloves and had him re-gloved and re-gowned in less time than Ian would have thought possible.
The vestri’s eyelashes fluttered for a moment.
“Doc—”
The eyes opened.
“Shit. He shouldn’t be—” Doc Sherve shut himself up as he reached for a syringe and a bottle of something; he quickly filled it and injected it directly into the injection port below the plastic bubble chamber beneath the IV bag, where the blood pooled as it dripped, before snaking its way down and into the needle.
One thick dwarven arm reached up for the oxygen mask; blunt fingers clutched at the mask and pulled it down and away, more ignoring than deliberately resisting the desperate, frantic way that both Martha Sherve and the much younger Donna Bjerke tried to hold it on his face.
Martha quickly gave up and pulled the IV stand closer to the table.
Ian nodded, not that anybody was asking his opinion. That made sense: deal with one problem at a time—he didn’t need to pull the stand over, or yank his needles out.
The Vestri’s eyes were larger than they should be, the pupils narrowed to pinpoint, the irises brown and somehow grainy-looking. He seemed to have trouble focusing, but then he looked first at Ian, then at Doc, and then his eyes swung past Hosea to fasten on where Thorian Thorsen stood.
“Thorian del Thorian,” came out in a rasp. “Vernisth beldarasht Vestri del fodder del fodder vestri.”
Ian hadn’t known until this moment that he understood any Vestri—the gift of tongues that Hosea could bestow, sometimes, never announced itself before it was used. Thorian del Thorian, the dwarf had said, friend of the father of Vestri, himself, the father of the vestri.
Thorian Thorsen nodded. “I am that one,” he responded in the same language. “But liest thou still, Son of Vestri, and let my friends treat thee. Thy wounds are grave, and we have no chirurgeon here to lick them to health.”
The little man kept struggling. “No,” Ian said, in Bersmal, “lie still, as he says. Please.”
“This one—” The vestri gasped for air. “No, thou must listen to …” he trailed off into a fit of coughing that left flecks of bloody phlegm at the cor
ners of his thick lips. “This one has come to warn thee and thine, friend of the Father: a Son of Fenris has been dispatched to seek thy blood.”
This wasn’t news. The attack of the Fenrir was what the Night of the Sons was—
Oh, shit. Again?
But—
Doc Sherve was swearing under his breath—something about the constitution of an ox—as he injected the contents of yet another syringe into the tubing.
“Just tell him to shut up and rest, Thorian. He’s really shocky, and I’ve already buried my goddamn quota of patients this year. You can talk to him later if he lives, I promise.”
Thorian Thorsen laid a gentle hand on the vestri’s leg. “Sleep now, Son of Vestri,” Thorsen said. “Thou has done thy duty, and preserved the name of thy father, and his father, Vestri.”
“Sleep? No.” The eyes started to sag. “The final darkness reaches for this one.” The dwarf’s jaw clenched as tightly as its fists.
“It is but sleep. Do not fight it; let it take thee, Son of Vestri.”
“Please. Do thou remember the name of Valin, son of Durin, before the Folk,” he rasped. “Say, I beg of thee, ‘He did give me warning, as he was charged.’ I charge thee: remember this one’s name before the Folk.”
The eyes sagged closed.
He was so still that for a moment Ian was sure that the dwarf—Valin, was it?—had died.
But no; the monitor overhead still went ping. Ping. Ping. And Doc smiled at the green waves on the oscilloscope as he gently fitted the oxygen mask back into place over the vestri’s nose.
“I take it that was his death speech,” he said, stripping off his gloves and stepping away from the table. He waved a finger at the dwarf. His fingertips were wrinkled, like he’d left them in water too long.
“Save it for another time, little man,” Doc Sherve said, with a tremor in his voice that Ian had never heard before, not from Doc Sherve. But the grin the old man gave the monitor was familiar, if wider than usual. “Just save it. You’re not going to need it today.”
He turned to Ian. “Now, let’s see about that shoulder of yours,” he said, his gentle fingers probing carefully.
“It’s not too bad.”
“And when you get your medical degree, you can make these technical medical diagnoses like ‘not too bad.’ In the meantime, I’m the doctor, and my medical opinion is that you banged the shit out of it, and I’d better take a look at it.“
Ian unlocked his shoulder from where his muscles had it clamped to his side. The pain was so sharp that he found his stomach rebelling, and it was all that he could do to stagger away from the table so that the foul stream of sour vomit splashed on the tile.
Thorsen’s strong arm came around his right side, and pulled him over to the next exam table, levering him up on his right side.
Doc already had a syringe in his hand, and Martha Sherve had his trousers loosened and his belt undone.
There was a coldness on his right buttock, and then Doc said, “Small sting coming,” and he fell a burning pain that was nothing in comparison to the other pains.
“Like the man says,” Doc Sherve’s voice boomed, “Demerol and Vistaril: write it down, and ask for it by name.” A quick pat on the hip. then, “Give him about fifteen minutes to get all warm and sleepy, and then let’s get some pictures.”
Ian’s vision started to blur. This wasn’t supposed to take effect so quickly, but a warm numbness was spreading all through his body and mind.
“Hey, didn’t you hear me with Valin? Same deal for you—just go with it, boy. Don’t fight it.”
No. He couldn’t. There was something wrong. He couldn’t relax to it, not while there was some part of him missing. He struggled against the helping arms and the darkness, but he was barely able to hold his own.
“Ah. I see.” Hosea’s voice held a note of amusement.
Feet thudded away on the hard floor, and then in a moment returned. Firm fingers opened his fist, and then a familiar grip was placed in it.
His fingers closed around Giantkiller’s hilt.
But now it was back in his hand, and he was whole again.
He let the warm darkness reach up and drag him down.
Chapter Four
Town Meeting
Jeff Bjerke parked his patrol car on what would have been the front lawn of the Thorsen house if it were summer, right next to Bob Aarsted’s big old GMC van.
He slipped the shotgun into its clamp and wiggled it a couple of times to make sure it was locked into place before he opened the door.
No, he wasn’t going to have to worry about some kid climbing in and getting at it, not on a frozen night like tonight, but if you do it right every time, he had long since been taught, then you don’t have to worry about whether or not you did it right this time.
He started to slip on the ice, and would have gone down if one flailing hand hadn’t latched on to the mirror extending from the side of the big van.
Thanks, Bob. he thought, as he recovered. With his luck he would have fallen on his gun—again—and bruised himself seriously—again—on the right hip. As it was, all he had done was given himself a little adrenaline rush, and knocked the mirror out of alignment. He thought for a moment about trying to straighten it, then shook his head. No, better to let Bob do it for himself and get it right.
It wasn’t just that he would have recognized his father-in-law’s car anywhere—although he would have, if only because of those horrible-looking yellow fuzzy dice that Bob Aarsted had inexplicably kept hanging from his rear-view mirror for well, forever—but a conversion van was a rare vehicle in this part of the world. There were lots of pickup trucks and a few station wagons and utility vehicles like the ubiquitous Blazers and Broncos and Chevy Suburbans, but vans seemed to be a city thing. Or at least not a Hardwood thing.
Nothing wrong with being a little different.
He stripped off his right glove as he clumped up the steps to the porch, but Karin Thorsen opened the door just as he was about to knock.
“Good evening, Jeff,” she said, her smile looking a bit forced as she closed the door behind him and helped him out of his parka.
The wall of the foyer bristled with coats and hanging pegs; he hung his parka on a free peg, then stooped to unlace his boots.
Doc Sherve’s laugh boomed from the direction of the kitchen, to his left, but Jeff could hear Bob Aarsted and Reverend—Dave, he was supposed to call him Dave, unnatural as that felt—and Dave Oppegaard talking over in the living room over the clicketyclicketyclick of Minnie Hansen’s knitting needles, so he walked through the archway and plopped down in one of the big leather recliners in the living room, about six feet from where flames flickered in the oversized fireplace.
It was nice to be warm and off his feet, and life would be perfect if—
“Coffee?” Karin Thorsen asked as she hurried in, a serving tray in her hand, and set out another coffee cake and a plate of rolled lefse on the coffee table before she followed through by offering him the cup.
“Please,” he said, accepting the terra-cotta mug with both of his hands. It warmed them delightfully, and when he sipped at the steaming black liquid it warmed his insides like a shot of cheap whiskey.
“Good evening, Jeff,” Dave Oppegaard said. His usual cable-knit sweater was conspicuous by its absence—he was wearing his minister’s collar, although that had been loosened and the first two buttons of his shirt unbuttoned. His hair was white and cottony, and it was just as well he kept himself clean-shaven—with a beard he would have looked like a buffed Santa Claus, and his voice was deep enough that a “Ho ho ho” would have been clichéd enough to be scary.
“Dave,” Jeff said, leaning back in the recliner and letting the footrest come up and support his feet.
But, as usual, his gun got in the way. Damn. He stood up and removed the gun from his belt, paddle holster and all, and stuck it up high on a bookshelf behind him.
In his two years on the job, his handgun h
ad never been anything but part of his uniform and an ongoing irritation and annoyance. Same thing had been true for all the years old John Honistead had held the job. A cop really didn’t need a gun in Hardwood, but you carried it anyway.
It was part of the ritual that went with things like ticketing a speeder, more like the badge than anything else. Hell, whenever he had to put a car-struck deer or dog out of its misery, he went to the lever-action carbine in the trunk of his car, just to be sure it would be over quickly.
It would have been nice to be able to do without hauling the iron around.
He snickered. And this from somebody who had spent the afternoon stalking carefully through the woods, carrying a just-barely-legal short-barreled Mossberg shotgun, looking for wolf tracks?
Bob Aarsted’s broad face threatened to split with a grin that revealed a shiny new gold cap on one of his front teeth, a very strange note in such a wide, Norski face. “You’d think that you professional peace officer types would learn to handle your shooting irons,” he said.
There was a serious undertone in that that Jeff didn’t much care for, but he didn’t say anything. Not the time or the place for that. Bob was his father-in-law, after all, and if he had a problem with him he could take it up later, privately. There were some problems that had to be dealt with by the unofficial but very much de facto town council of Hardwood, but that wasn’t one of them.
“And you’d think,” Jeff said, “that somebody who has been driving as long as you would know that his side view mirror should be angled so that he can see what’s behind him.”
Minnie Hansen looked at him over her glasses. “That means, Bob, that Jeff accidentally knocked your van’s mirror out of line,” she said, eyeing him levelly for just a moment, not missing a stitch as her needles clicked. She was working on something blue and generally tubular—the arm of a sweater, perhaps?
Jeff nodded. “Guilty as charged. Sorry.”
“Enh.” Aarsted shrugged. “No problem. How is Kathy doing?”
“Fine, she’s fine,” Jeff said. It wasn’t like Bob Aarsted didn’t see his daughter almost every day. Hell, she was on the phone with her mother and her sisters so much that he was surprised she didn’t have a divot in her shoulder from where she held it.
The Crimson Sky Page 6
