The other healers hummed in agreement. Then they noticed us watching.
“What can I do to help?” I said.
Pamela shook her head, her jaw clenched. “Nothing right now. We’ve just got to keep battling this thing till we find a way to beat it. Why don’t you two go grab some fresh air for a few hours? We’ve got others coming to take a shift. I don’t want you two getting too tired and lowering your immunity to whatever this virus is.”
Frustrated, I went outside, making a beeline for the truck. I needed something manual to do, something that would take my mind off my lack of ability to help the situation in any real and meaningful way.
Hayden followed at a slower pace, hanging back probably because my frustration wasn’t too subtle right now. He hesitated a few yards away from the truck after I got in, then he turned towards the flatbed trailer, which he’d unhitched and left a few yards behind his truck. A few minutes later I heard him tear into the tiny house kit. A smart choice since I didn’t want to take my anger out on him but couldn’t figure out how to stop being angry in the first place. Hearing him working on his own thing outside while I had some alone time to cool off and reset my thoughts was soothing on its own. The mindless task of cutting out Christmas card designs to hang as ornaments on our tree took care of the rest.
An hour later, I felt like an idiot for getting so angry in the first place. After stowing all the craft supplies again, I climbed out of the truck and joined him by the flatbed trailer, which had been transformed from an orderly, plastic-wrapped cube into a huge mess across the snow. It looked like a home improvement store had exploded.
“Want some help?” I said.
“Does Pamela need us yet?”
I shook my head. “If she had needed us, she would have sent one of the kids for us. She’s probably busy working with real healers now.” Even to my own ears, I could tell I’d failed to keep the bite out of my tone.
One corner of Hayden’s mouth twitched, but wisely he didn’t laugh at me. Instead he offered me the kit’s instruction booklet. “I can’t find part A, B or C. Everything’s got a sticker on it, but there’s a million pieces to wade through first just to find what we need to get going.”
We didn’t make a lot of headway that afternoon. Our bulky gloves made it hard to pick up the smaller stuff, but taking them off was pure agony in the cold. We did get everything more organized and a couple of sections of subflooring down, though, which was a start.
“I think Grandma Letty just gave me that kit to tick me off,” he joked as we headed back to our house to warm up.
“No, it just requires patience.”
He gave me a pointed look.
I laughed and was immediately grateful I still remembered how to. “I know, I know. I’m being a huge hypocrite, preaching about having patience when even I can’t hold onto my own patience lately. But I never said I was perfect. I’m human. Which makes me a work in progress.”
He grinned. “A work in progress. I like that.”
Still smiling, I grabbed his hand and tugged him after me up the cement steps of our house and through the front doorway into the living room.
Where we found absolute chaos.
CHAPTER 19
Hayden
“What’s going on?” I asked as Mike hurried by with a stack of washcloths.
“Four more sick from the other houses,” he muttered, his steps never slowing.
Cursing, I told Tarah, “That’s it. The quarantine’s not working. Get everyone but the patients and the healers out of here. They’ll have to bunk on the couches or floors or something in the other houses. And spread the word...anyone who even starts to feel like they’re sick needs to be sent here immediately.”
Wide eyed, Tarah darted down the hall to tell the families the new game plan, while I went to the master bedroom.
“Hayden, thank God,” Pamela said. “We need more room. The quarantine’s—”
“Not working. Yeah, I know. Tarah’s sending our healthy families to stay at the other houses. We’re setting this house up as the infirmary. What do you need?”
“More washcloths. Whatever fever reducers and flu meds anyone’s got. And anyone else with even basic healing abilities should come help too.”
I nodded. “Mike helped flush the drugs out of people at the internment camp. You might see what he can do.”
Pamela nodded.
I ran off to check the other houses for more supplies and to make sure the displaced families had what they needed. Some of the others acted like everyone from our house were walking talking germ pools. They’d have to get over it.
After I spoke with all the houses and delivered the requested supplies to the growing number of healers in the infirmary, I stopped outside, needing a moment to breathe and refocus. Except I was at the end of my game plan. I had no idea what to do next.
So I went out to my truck for somewhere quiet to think. I had to smile a little as I saw the latest additions to the tree. Tarah had cut out Christmas card designs and hung them like ornaments using paper clips. Which reminded me…. I dug under the backseat for the box containing Tarah’s gifts. Then I pulled out the gift wrap supplies from the tree box stand, careful not to destroy its fragile new decorations.
While I wrapped her presents, I tried to work on a solution for the village’s crisis. But I couldn’t come up with anything. The problem was I didn’t understand the first thing about healing and had to rely on whatever the healers told me. Maybe if I could learn how to heal, I could understand the situation a little better and help find a way to stop the illness from spreading any further. The adult healers were way too busy to interrupt for tutoring, though. Then I remembered a teen who did know how to heal and might not mind taking a few minutes to teach me.
With Tarah’s presents now wrapped, labeled and under the tree, I headed off to find Mike.
“Has anyone told you lately that you’re kind of an idiot?” Mike said an hour later as we froze our butts off down by the creek.
“Did anyone ever tell you you’re a crappy teacher?” I barked back. “Geez, between you and this stupid spell book, y’all make healing sound so mystical or something. Can’t you just tell me how to do it step-by-step? You know, like we’re back in school and it’s a lab project for science class?” I had to force myself not to chuck the useless book into the snow.
Mike shook his head. “Healing doesn’t work like that. It sounds mystical because it is. You’re basically astral projecting here. You’re sending your spirit, or soul, or essence, or whatever you want to call it, out of your own body and into the patient’s so you can then detect the source of disruption in their body. Then you work with their spirit in a partnership to take out that disruptive vibration. But in order to do that, first you have to let go of what you want. Let go of yourself, of who you are, and let your consciousness just float into the patient’s body until—”
“Until the illness or wound draws me to it. Yeah, I heard you the first twenty times. And I’m really trying here, man—”
“And yet my hand still has a cut on it.” He held up the palm with his tiny, self-inflicted test wound like an accusation.
I was feeling drawn, all right…drawn to punch a tree.
I shook my head. This healing business was way harder than I’d expected. No wonder not everyone in the camp could do it. “Look, just forget I asked, okay? I’ve already taken up too much of your time, and they’re going to need you back in there.”
After another minute of silence, Mike sighed. “Don’t give up on it. It takes a while. But if you really want it, you'll figure it out.”
Before or after everyone in the settlement was dead?
The crunch of his footsteps faded in the distance, leaving me alone in the cold darkness.
I came to this village for a reason, to help make a difference for these people. Now they were all getting sick, and I was powerless to help. I couldn’t even heal a simple cut! I was completely useless here.
&
nbsp; But the healers weren’t having much success either. They said they couldn’t even figure out what the virus was. Maybe that was the real problem. If we at least knew what the disease was, then the healers could know how to go after it. Unfortunately none of the outcasts here wanted to resort to seeing a regular doctor in town for fear of being turned in to the government. They’d all rather take their chances with our own healers.
But Bud wasn’t Clann...
I jogged back to the infirmary, up the steps and inside past the pallets of patients that now filled the living room, till I found Pamela. I was surprised to also find Steve helping his wife change the sweat-soaked sheets beneath one of the patients.
“I want to take Bud to the local hospital,” I told them. “He’s not wanted by the feds, and neither am I.” At least, that I knew of. “The doctors there can diagnose him, and then that should help you figure out what this virus is so you can treat everyone else. Right?”’
Pamela rubbed her forehead, her movements slow and weary. “I guess so. But what about you? Even if no one knows you led the prison break in Texas, they still might recognize you because of who your dad is. What if he’s searching for you?”
“Grandma Letty would have warned me if he was.” No doubt dear old Dad was trying to keep my disappearance quiet to avoid the media coverage and what the reporters might dig up about our family.
“They’ll want ID for Bud,” Pamela said.
I searched for Bud’s clothes, finding them in a pile in the bathroom. His wallet was still in his jeans’ back pocket.
Steve helped me get Bud dressed and haul him out to my truck. Pamela followed with a blanket.
I stashed the miniature Christmas tree and Tarah’s presents on the backseat so we could set Bud in the front. It would be too hard for me to get him out of the backseat later by myself. But I should be able to roll him out from the front seat.
“Let Tarah know where I’m headed?” I asked Pamela. In the rush to get Bud ready for transport, I hadn’t seen Tarah. She must have been in one of the back bedrooms helping the other healers.
Pamela nodded as she started to close the passenger side door.
Steve’s hand shot out to stop her. “Wait. What if he tells someone about this place?”
Pamela looked at the elderly man for a long minute then shook her head. “He probably doesn’t have enough time to tell anyone anything. And even if he did, they would just think he was delirious from the fever.”
After another hesitation, Steve let her shut the door and I started the engine.
I drove into town as fast as I could on the icy, dark roads, using the paper map of Spearfish the logging team had used to find the village site in the first place.
At the hospital’s ER entrance, I parked, then ran around to the passenger side and opened the door.
Bud was awake.
“Uh, hi. Remember me?” I said, unsure what the heck I should say to him.
He frowned and mumbled, “Where are we?”
“Hospital. You’re sick. But we’re going to get you some really good help.” I slung his right arm over my shoulder and pulled him out of the truck and onto his feet.
He tried to walk, but I still had to carry most of his weight into the ER. Once inside, a nurse saw us and brought a wheelchair to take Bud off in. Another nurse handed me a clipboard and asked me to fill it out in the waiting area, but I didn’t know any of the answers she wanted. I explained that he was just our bus driver, not a relative. Immediately her face became closed off, and I knew she was going to tell me that I was no longer allowed to know anything that was going on.
“Look, I know you’re supposed to kick me out since I’m not his family. But there’s another kid who’s sick on our bus, and I need to know what Bud’s got in case the kid has it too.”
“You should bring the—”
“The mother won’t let me. She’s from another country and suspicious of our doctors here.” I faked a smile that hopefully said “I know, crazy, right?”
Her eyebrows shot up. “I’ll let the doctor know. If the patient gives her permission, then she’ll be able to tell you the diagnosis.”
“Thanks.” I found a chair in the waiting room and sank down into it. Opposite me, my normal reflection stared back from the window’s undivided glass pane.
Minutes passed, then hours. I watched the Late Night show on a TV mounted high in the corner with the sound turned off, closed captioning filling me in on what I wasn’t allowed to hear. Then the news came on. The world seemed like one big endless war zone out there, the news filled with so much civil war and anti-Clann rioting that they didn’t have time enough to cover it all, much less anything else.
After awhile, I couldn’t watch it anymore. I tried to see the mountains in the distance through the window, but it was too dark outside. All I could see was my reflection staring back at me.
My hair was getting too long again. Mom would be nagging me to get a hair cut if she could see me now. I’d managed to at least shave this morning, but I looked scruffy again. It had been a long day.
And it just kept getting longer.
“Sir?” A sharp female voice jerked me out of my thoughts.
I stood up and turned toward the voice. A short brunette in scrubs and a long white coat stood waiting for me at the swinging double doors.
“You came in with Bud Preston?” she asked.
I nodded.
“He’s asked to see you and given me permission to discuss his condition with you as well.”
I tried to hide my surprise on both counts as we headed down a corridor that could have come straight out of a movie, except the paintings and photographs on the taupe walls here were mostly of the Black Hills mountains.
She stopped outside a room. The door was shut, and she made no move to open it yet.
She hugged her plastic clipboard to her chest, oddly reminding me of Tarah back in school, though she had to be in her thirties or forties.
“To be honest,” she began. “We don’t know what’s wrong with Mr. Preston. We’ve managed to stabilize him for now, and of course we’re still running tests, so we may know more in a few days. But as ill as Mr. Preston is, I would really like to send him to a larger hospital. Unfortunately, he refuses to let me transfer him out of here without speaking to you first.”
“Are you saying he could die?”
“Of course we’re doing everything we can to prevent that. But if we can’t figure out how to treat him and he continues to refuse to be transferred to another hospital, then yes, that is a possibility.”
Bud could die from whatever this was. Which meant everyone else in the village could too. I swallowed hard. “Is it something...exotic, or abnormal or something?”
“It appears to be the flu. At least, he has every symptom of your garden variety, everyday type of flu. But we can’t seem to catch any of it in his blood work in order to verify that. We’ve notified the CDC who are sending someone to examine him in case this is something new we’re dealing with. Now you said—”
I didn’t need to hear anything more. All she was saying was exactly what Pamela and the other village healers had said, with one difference...the virus was possibly lethal and could kill its victims in a matter of days. Which meant I had no time.
And yet there was one more thing I needed to do before I left here. “You said he asked to see me?”
“Uh, well, yes, but first—”
“You also said he may not have much time?” Without waiting for a reply, I opened the door.
Bud looked even worse under the fluorescent lighting, his cheeks sunken in beneath the long folds of wrinkles that lined the sides of his nose and mouth. His thin gray hair looked even thinner now that it lay matted and limp over his head.
From a strong and fairly sharp and spry old man to this—wasted and dying—in just a few days. From an illness that neither doctors nor witches with healing abilities could name, much less cure.
And others could b
e dying of it too, right this very minute, in the very place where I had promised them only safety and protection and shelter.
If we didn’t find a cure, how many more might die? Bringing them here to the hospital obviously wasn’t the answer. For all their high tech equipment and education, these doctors seemed just as confused as the healers back at the village.
But as the doctor closed the door behind me, putting aside her professional curiosity in order to give Bud and me some privacy, I understood one thing at least. In this moment, the people at the village weren’t who I needed to focus on.
Just for one moment, it was Bud who deserved time and attention. And more apologies than I could ever say.
I stepped closer to the bed. The hospital staff had left the plastic covered rails up, as if afraid Bud would roll off the bed. But he looked way too weak to sit up, much less roll around.
His breathing had grown harsher, each breath a small battle all its own for life. And an accusation. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had caused this. If I had never asked him to drive our group…
I leaned in close and murmured, “Bud...I’m sorry.”
His eyelids eased open. “Hayden.”
He remembered me. “Yes sir.”
“I keep getting older, and you...” He struggled to swallow. “You keep getting younger.”
For a few seconds I was confused. Then I remembered. The last time he’d seen me in bright lighting, I’d been disguised by Steve’s face aging spell. All the other times we’d spoken to each other had been under the dim lighting of the bus interior lights or parking lot lamps. “It’s the lighting.”
“It’s sorcery.” His eyes searched mine with a cloudy desperation. As if begging me to tell the truth at last.
I nodded.
One corner of his mouth trembled upward, the ghost of a smile. “I knew it. Witches.”
I nodded. He wouldn’t be able to lead anyone back to our village, and if he died, at least he would die knowing the truth as he deserved. “They’re good people, despite what the news and government say. I was trying to get them to safety.”
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