The father was a bloody mess. The man-child held his hands over the wound, trying the stop the spurting, but his efforts and the foreign words he was chanting, obviously prayers, weren’t slowing the bright red flow.
Pop, pop. The sound of two black powder rifles firing struck the air. James looked toward the sound of the shots and saw two men busily cramming rods down their rifles, reloading to shoot again. He looked back. It didn’t appear Wee Ian or the bloodied man in native garb had been hit. They were safe for now.
Wee Ian had said three men. The third man was dead, or nearly so, less than two feet from the boy. James’s gut instinct was to call Leah from the brush to help, but he couldn’t do that with two muskets loaded and ready to fire on him or anyone else helping.
“Which one do you have, Marty—the one on my right or my left?” he called out loudly, as much to frighten the two skinny musket-loading mobsters as to know which was his target.
“I got the right, you take the left. Glad you could make it here, son,” Marty hollered, still in the brush and not visible. “I hope you remembered the medical kit. These two can’t shoot faster or straighter than we can. The lad’s father doesn’t have much time…”
“I’m on it,” shouted Leah, as she quickly took the initiative. She put the gun’s safety back on, dropped it in her backpack, and grabbed the valise. Her hands were full—a bag in each one—so she employed them like giant baseball mitts, gathering her skirt in front of her so she didn’t trip over it as she ran. “Grrr.” A growl escaped her lips as she stumbled, despite her efforts.
She knelt beside the two males in breechclouts and moccasins. “Wee Ian, I’m going to see if I can fix your da. Keep doing what you’re doing there while I get some cloths.”
Leah pulled open her bag and grabbed one of the chamois cloths she had bought for just such a circumstance. Unlike terrycloth, these wouldn’t shed into the wound, but were still small, absorbent, and reusable. She carefully slid her hand under Wee Ian’s and held pressure on the wound as she made a quick assessment of the damages.
The dead assailant, shot and killed by Marty, had wielded a hatchet on her patient’s neck, trying—and gratefully, failing—to separate his head from his shoulders. As she examined him, blotting away blood to find the actual site of impact, she saw that his protruding collarbone had deflected the blade. Her patient didn’t have much in the way of body fat. He wasn’t quite emaciated, but seemed to be built solely of hard muscle, sinew and bone, and unfortunately now, very little blood.
The bleeding had slowed down, but that might be because he had lost so much of it. The human body only had about five quarts of blood, and he had lost at least two by the looks of the mess covering his shirt and the ground around him.
Marty called out to the soldiers, trying to encourage them to make life easier for everybody. “Now, you boys saw what I can do with this gun here. How about if you two just drop your muskets, and we’ll take you back to camp? The officers there told me that they’d give you a fair trial. Now put them down easy…”
Evidently they weren’t interested in that offer. Leah could hear them mumbling back and forth, but couldn’t understand what they were saying, nor did she try. She was concentrating on her task. She was going to have to sew up the nick in her patient’s carotid vein. Fortunately, it hadn’t been severed. It was a difficult repair for a surgeon with a microscope and bright overhead lights, but even more so for a recovery room nurse with only rudimentary micro-stitching skills and a pair of secondhand high-magnification glasses.
As she was guiding Wee Ian’s hand back over the wound, she recognized a few of the men’s words. “And I’ll get the boy.”
She looked up and screamed, “They’re going to shoot us!” just as the renegades turned and readied their guns.
Marty and James hadn’t heard the armed men’s discussion, but had been following their eye and shoulder movements. They watched as the rogues turned, ready to shoot the unarmed medics in cold blood. Their muskets were halfway to their shoulders when Marty and James fired, both of them killing their targets with single shots to the chests.
Leah panted quickly three times, composed herself, and then was back to her medical dilemma. “James, if you’re done there, I need some help.”
He was by her side in a flash, his face set in a grim scowl, ready to work. He could reflect on taking another life later. Right now, he needed to help save one.
“Would you get me the flashlight and those goofy goggles? I’ll need them for this close-up work. Get that brown bottle and a long swab, too. I’ll need you to pour alcohol over my hands so I can get the needle and suture ready.”
James set the magnifying apparatus on Leah’s head. The headpiece looked strange, but it was what she needed: ultra-magnification goggles with a built in light. She had been able to buy it used from her dentist. She looked like a bug-eyed alien, ready to devour the bloody mess in front of her. She didn’t want to scare anyone, but right now, the only one who might be frightened was the boy, and he had eyes only for his father and his wound.
“Wee Ian, put your hand right here and don’t move it.” He gently slid his hand under hers. She looked at him and saw that he was probably in shock. Well, at least it was a functional shock. He was her extra set of hands right now, even if they weren’t sterile.
James gave her what she called her sewing kit. She took what she needed, turned towards him, and let him pour the alcohol over her hands, the hemostat, suture and needle. He opened the bottle of iodine antiseptic solution. “Take the cloth off, lad,” he said, then performed a quick, but thorough swabbing of the injury site.
Leah closed her eyes in prayer then started to work. Despite the high-powered magnifying glasses, James saw her struggling to see. He retrieved the mini flashlight and squatted down at her left side, providing a small spotlight on her work area.
“Thanks,” she said. “Grab a few pieces of that gauze, too. When the blood starts oozing up after a stitch or two, wipe it away gently. You won’t be able to see what I see, so don’t do anything until I tell you to.”
As it turned out, there was so little blood left in the man that leakage wasn’t a problem. The wound on the left side of his neck was relatively easy to mend. Now what was needed was more blood in his body. Evidently that’s why Marty had sent word through the ages for the IV needles and tubing.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Leah asked James. “It’s going to be awkward, and he’s lost a lot of blood, more than I think you should give. But right now, any would be better than none.”
“Hey! Remember? I signed up for this. Just tell me where you want me. Oh, and before you get started, I want to tank up on water.”
James got a full water bottle out of the backpack. He felt conspicuous drinking out of the clear plastic container, but it was all he had. Two weeks of planning, and the one thing both of them had forgotten was a canteen. It was a good thing they had those water bottles in the truck. It would have been suicide to go out in the heat of a summer’s day without water and a way to transport it. One more blessing that was unexplained. That brought it up to about 1,512, James reflected…not as if he was actually counting.
He guzzled it all down and was ready to put the bottle back into the bag when he noticed Wee Ian staring at it. “Here, do you want to look at it?” Better to have the boy hold and examine it than suspect it was diabolical—or whatever it was the Indians believed.
Wee Ian took it warily, twisted the cap off and on, then off again, and sniffed the opening. He frowned when he realized there had been nothing but water in it and handed it back.
“Would you do me a favor and refill it. It’s the only way I have to carry water. I…um…lost my canteen.”
Wee Ian nodded then headed downhill to the creek. James realized that he hadn’t heard him say a word since his father had been attacked. If he didn’t pull through, the boy might be an orphan. It didn’t look like these two were from a tribe. It was more like they we
re their own tribe. Scots-speaking Indians: now that was a combination.
James looked over and saw Leah had moved aside some rocks and was using a broken tree branch to knock away the smaller pebbles, essentially sweeping a place for him to lie down.
“It would be better if you were higher than him. Gravity is a big help in pushing the blood through the tubes. The heart is a strong pump, but wasn’t made to transfer fluids outside of the body and through plastic lines. Maybe we can have you lie on top of the backpacks. Oh, crap. I didn’t think about this. What can we use?”
“Well, it may sound morbid, but I can stack the dead bodies, and James can lie on top of them. I can cover the men with a blanket so it won’t be so messy. Hi, you must be Leah. I’m Martin Melbourne, but you can call me Marty.”
“Oh,” Leah shook her head, trying to separate the thought of using a stack of slain murderers to support her husband, the blood donor—and how should she greet the man who had arranged for him to help with this in the first place? She repeated, “Oh,” then took a deep breath. “Or I could call you Dad. I’m your daughter-in-law now.”
“You are? I sure didn’t see that one coming!” Marty exclaimed. Literally taken aback, he shuffled two awkward steps in recovery, as if he had been knocked backward by a soft blow.
A split-second after regaining his composure, Marty was back into problem solving advisor mode. “Well, you two are the ones to say yeah or nay on the corpse cart. Which is it?”
“I’ll help you drag them over. Glad to see you, sir.” James said, and slapped his father on the back, forgoing any other conversation until later.
What would, or should, he say to his newly discovered father? It was strange, but now that he knew Marty wasn’t his grandfather, somehow the man looked different. It appears we’ll have a long time to catch up. God willing. That’s about number 1,513, isn’t it, Lord?
The men grabbed their kill and dragged them by the heels to the fresh swept area next to Wee Ian’s father.
Leah decided she should distract herself and the boy from the Melbourne men’s gruesome ministrations of shoving and tugging the corpses into position. She turned away from their construction zone, walked several feet away, and squatted down, motioning for the youth to join her at creekside. “So what’s your father’s name,” she asked.
“Ian, Ian Kincaid,” he said succinctly. “But he’s also called Star Walker.”
“Oh,” she replied, then subconsciously held her breath. She blinked rapidly in shock—she recognized that name. He was from the later Lost historical novels. Mom never mentioned anything about him!
She finally remembered to breathe, glad that she was already near the ground and not standing. She was light-headed and afraid that she was going to fall over backwards. Wee Ian saw her start to swoon and rushed to her side, grasping her shoulders to keep her upright.
“Do ye need to put yer heid between yer knees?”
Leah shook her head, rocked back off of her heels, and as gracefully as she could—which wasn’t much—plopped down onto her fanny. She didn’t care if the dress got dirty. The fine dust would probably just brush off anyway. She leaned forward and brought her knees up to her face. “Can I have a drink of that water, please?”
Wee Ian gave her the bottle and wordlessly waited by her side to make sure she was all right. He seems to be protecting me—quite a gentleman for being such a young person.
James and Marty finished their body building, and then draped a horse blanket over the pile of three. They had put the two skinny ones on the ground and laid Ian’s attacker, a heavyset man, on top of them.
Leah hadn’t watched on purpose. It was morbid but necessary. She had to move quickly and didn’t have the luxury of time for the men to build her a table, or even to scout out a sizable fallen log. Ian Kincaid needed blood, and he needed it now.
“Use what you have and be grateful,” she admonished herself softly. “At least you have help.” She turned to face her support crew. “I’m ready. Are you?” she asked with as much courage as she could garner.
James started settling himself onto the lumpy body of Ian’s attacker. Thank you, Lord, for the blanket. Number 1,514. “Marty, could you come over here and make sure I don’t start slipping. This is very uncomfortable and a little shaky, too.”
Marty came to one side and Wee Ian, without being asked, came to the other. Leah swabbed the site on James’s arm with alcohol and inserted the trocar, using a short length of surgical tape to secure it to the site. “Don’t move,” she said. “It’s just a plug right now. I have to get him stuck, too.”
Leah slapped and moved Ian’s arm around, trying to get a vein to pop up.
“Can you put it in his leg?” asked Marty.
“Yes, but I’d rather not,” Leah replied, frowning with concern. She exhaled sharply, squeezed her eyes shut in exasperation, and said a quick prayer.
Wee Ian had been watching and decided to take matters into his own hands. He moved over to the arm that Leah had been rather gently—or so it seemed to him—slapping to get the vein to pop up. He did a rapid fire rat-a-tat-tat drum roll with the flats of his hands, making the area scarlet red and bringing up a vein. “Like that?” he asked.
Leah grabbed the trocar and quickly inserted it on the first try. “Like that,” she said. “Thanks. Now I just have to connect these guys, so your father will get a fill up—or at least a partial refill—of the blood he lost. Do you want to watch?” she asked, knowing full well the boy would not leave his father’s side.
“Aye, I’ll stay. Yer a good woman, and I wager a good healer, too, but I’m still his son. I’ll stay to help take care of him. He hasna been doin’ a verra good job of it himself, jest the noo.”
The blood transfusion was slow, but without complications. As Leah removed the needles and tubes, she heard James say, “Thanks. Number 1,515.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Oh, you said something about God, and how He works in mysterious ways, and how many blessings we have, but that we never take the time to count them or thank the Lord… So, well, a few days ago, I started counting. You don’t realize until you do pay attention, just how full life is of little miracles…every day.”
“And big ones, too. I think Ian here is going to make it,” she said.
ӁӁӁ
Leah continued to clean up and put away the tools of her field trauma center. After a couple of minutes, she whispered, “James, you never read beyond the first Lost book, or Through the Stones as your UK version was called, did you?”
“No, I was meaning to, but with all the other excitement, studies, and tasks we had to do in the last two weeks… No, I didn’t read beyond the first one. Why?”
“Ian Kincaid here is Jody Pomeroy’s nephew, his favorite nephew, if you will. Mom said in her letter that her new last name is Pomeroy-Hart. I would suspect there’s a connection there. Do you mind if I ask him if he knows where the Pomeroys are when he wakes up?”
“You could do that, or you could just ask me,” Marty said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I was coming over to talk to you two about quite a few things, and that just happens to be one of them.”
“Can we wait a while for any discussions?” asked James. “I feel a little sapped,” and smiled at his own pun.
Marty nodded, then helped James off the platform of bodies and shoulder-bolstered him to a shady spot under the nearest tree.
It was hot, and the corpses under the blanket were starting to get ripe. Like all dead men, these three had lost their bowels at death and weren’t very clean to begin with. Yes, the odor was horrific, and the bodies needed to be moved away quickly. Hopefully Marty was feeling strong. James was weak and didn’t have enough strength to help.
Leah could help if needed, but right now she was feeling a little drained, too. Whether it was from the intense emotional stress of the procedures she had just performed, or from the excitement of the time travel, or from seeing firsthand four m
en being shot, one hacked, and a boy nearly raped… Well, she was exhausted.
Yes, she’d pass on helping with the clean-up detail. She’d stay put and help James hold up the other side of the tree. She smiled. After all, they didn’t want it to fall over now, did they? She sat next to the trunk, arranged her skirts about her, and then leaned back. She reached over for her husband’s hand, picked it up, and laid it on her soft, green calico skirt. Even though she wasn’t holding his hand, she felt linked to him on a higher plain, their bodies and spirits joined with their pinkie-to-pinkie connection. Leah was completely at peace with herself and the world for the first time in nearly a year. Her disappearing, time traveling mother was just around the corner, figuratively speaking.
She hadn’t planned on falling asleep—and didn’t realize that she had—until she felt a tapping on her shoulder. She jerked away by reflex and opened her eyes to see Wee Ian’s face a foot in front of hers.
“I think he needs ye,” he stated without emotion, then waited for her response, eyes blank, forehead furrowed. She saw the sun was now high in the sky. She must have slept for two hours. She scrambled to her feet and was at Ian’s side in the three long steps it took to get to him.
Ian was thrashing side to side, elbows flying, trying to sit up, and quite possibly undoing all of her stitches. She looked around to see who could help her restrain her hysterical patient. Marty was nowhere to be seen. She looked back and saw that James was still asleep. Awake or asleep, he couldn’t help her either. She hoped she hadn’t bled him too much. If she had, there was nothing she could do about it now. Nothing but pray, she scolded herself. “Lord, please heal these men and help us all in everything. In Jesus’s name, amen,” she prayed softly, swiftly, and sincerely.
Her tone and attitude changed quickly as she addressed her restless patient. “Hey! You! Knock it off! Lie still or you’ll tear out my stitches, and then I’ll be pissed!”
Aye, I am a Fairy (The Fairies Saga Book 2) Page 41
