by Susan Lowry
The others would have to be shown. There were complexities she doubted she could handle and there was zero time for distractions. They were all pinging to each other and Kevin finally lost it.
“What the hell?!” Kevin shouted.
“Who the fuck are you people anyway?!!!”
He was pacing back and forth on the grass at the edge of the patio stones, looking at them all sitting around the table in a daze.
That was it!
Lucy jerked up from her chair and strode over to him. She grabbed his shirt in her fist and glared up at him with gritted teeth. “I understand how weird this for you Kevin, but do you understand Trav’s life is on the line here? We need to concentrate!!! So why don’t you just come along for the ride and we’ll talk about it later, okay?”
She let go, sat back down, and without a second thought instructed everyone to sear their experience of Travis into their brains – like a branding iron on rawhide.
‘Now,’ she instructed telepathically, ‘Layer your images together, one over the other so we have a multi-dimensional view. That’s it.’
Travis had been pummeled against a riverbank, that part was clear – that penetrating cry for help had given them most of the information. Yet, there were traces of the events leading him to that moment tangled within his fading thoughts all which gave them areas they could hone in on.
“It looks like we need to be prepared to pull him out of a steep ravine,” Chris said out loud.
“Focus Jack,” Lucy pinged, as she projected the information most revealing of Travis’ condition on the screen behind Jack’s eyes.
“I – I don’t quite… ” Jack muttered. Finally, he pinged his interpretation back to the others.
“Oh no!” Rose cried, forcing back sobs. “I can feel his leg.”
“It’s worse than that,” Jack stressed, continuing to ping until they were all seeing the grim prognosis.
Chris spoke next. “We don’t have a lot of time on our hands, do we Jack? Well, we better get going then.” He turned to Kevin. “Just follow our lead son.”
Lucy knew she was failing Travis miserably. She could not concentrate on drawing the hurt from him, the way he had done for her, and also concentrate on his rescue. They needed a functioning rescue squad. But she was not going to give up trying, even if it killed her. Somehow she would have to find a way to guide them while maintaining a connection with Travis.
Lucy continued to ping with Sarah, Kate and Rose, comparing their unique perspectives, layering them, filling in the gaps and agreeing on a strategy while the men organized the equipment.
A large conference area and a few adjoining rooms on the first floor of the hotel had been made into an infirmary in case of such an emergency and Jack left to retrieve the supplies he had stored there. Lucy waited at the hotel entrance with Rose and when Jack arrived with his bags they all jumped into the ambulance Chris and Kevin had brought around from the back of the parking lot.
Sarah would stay home with Kate and Ben, agreeing with Jack that prolonged physical stress was too risky for her fetus; the telepathic energy she was already expending was more than enough.
With Chris behind the wheel they raced up the road to the rock on which they’d observed Travis sitting with his sketchbook for the last few weeks. A quick check affirmed their theory that he’d gone through the recently pried-open gate. They knew the worn path through the meadow led to a hiking trail which they had read about in the hotel brochures.
They left the ambulance at the side of the road. Chris and Jack yanked the creaky gate further open and carried the stretcher through it. Lucy followed, squinting at the fringe of trees to the west where they were headed. She began to run, and Kevin, who wore a carryall of medical supplies jogged along beside her in silence. Rose was close behind flanked by Chris and Jack.
Lucy desperately wanted to hold on to the dwindling light she was receiving from Travis, but it was becoming increasingly difficult and her heart was so heavy she was not certain where she would get the strength to persevere.
As they continued running across the field she glanced at Kevin beside her and for some strange reason she wanted to laugh – he was so committed and yet so tragically confused. And he hadn’t said another word since she’d screamed at him.
She turned away hoping he hadn’t seen the humour on her face; it was a weak moment that he wouldn’t understand. Tears slipped down her cheeks but she could not waste energy on sobs.
Soon they entered the forest. They’d stayed clear of this territory as it didn’t seem wise to disturb nature in its most fragile state. The few animals that had survived were struggling just as they were. Jack reminded them that it was unlikely they would be bothered, but if anything tried to attack them, both he and Chris were armed.
When they reached the railway they stopped to catch their breath and re-evaluate, agreeing that Travis had headed away from the lake. Time was of the essence and Lucy was so afraid that Travis was slipping away.
Her pace did not slow even when she saw the red bridge stretching across the valley. She knew he was close. Half-way over the gorge she noticed his backpack near the far side and doubled over when she reached it.
“It’s his bag,” Lucy gasped, looking up at Kevin who had stopped beside her and was struggling to catch his breath too.
“Are you okay?” he huffed.
“I have to be,” she muttered as Kevin helped her to her feet.
Rose was catching up to them still at the far side of the bridge. “Do you see him?!” she bellowed over the crash of white water below them.
“There!” Christopher suddenly pointed over the rail at the side of the gorge.
Jack paused momentarily to look, and then jogged past him to the end of the bridge, still carrying the stretcher. “Hurry!” he shouted.
Lucy’s insides trembled and her legs nearly buckled as she staggered to the ledge and saw poor Travis, his tiny body sprawled out on the embankment far below.
Pacing along the top of the cliff through the trees they could see Travis lying motionless some thirty feet down. Lucy and Rose had barely caught their breath when the three men began securing their ropes and descended over the edge.
Lucy heard Jack warning Kevin not to move the boy. She and Rose stood close to the edge observing as the men began to work, their conversation impossible to hear over the roar of the river. As the men worked she caught a few muffled demands barked out by Jack and watched Kevin dig out equipment from their bags, including two splints.
They were taking a long time, but she and Rose did not want to disturb them. Travis was still breathing, that’s all they knew. Eventually, when Jack seemed to have completed his assessment, Christopher shouted up to them, “He was trying to escape an attack; he’s been mauled!”
Rose sat down on the ground beside the cliff where she could still see them and hugged her knees to her face, “What was he thinking Lucy?” she muttered.
It was taking a long while for the men to get Travis stabilized and ready to be hoisted up the slope. Lucy crouched down as she observed them and then finally sat beside Rose feeling emotionally blunt.
“I know he isn’t the kind of person who would risk his life over something stupid,” she assured Rose. “There must have been a good reason for this, although I haven’t a clue what it could have been.”
“I’m afraid Lucy. He’s hurt so bad,” Rose whispered gazing off somewhere far away with tears filling her eyes.
Rose had already lost her own three children and now this. Lucy wished she had something to offer the woman in the way of comfort but with Travis unable to respond to her pings she was numb with fear.
Finally the men slid the stretcher over the top of the cliff and Lucy and Rose rushed over, dropping to their knees in the grass beside him. They gasped at what they saw and then both of them began to sob.
Chapter Twenty
Midnight in the Infirmary
(October 28th, Year Two, PA)
Kate’s heart skipped a beat as she saw the lights flash through the trees from the road in the distance. “They’re coming,” she said pulling on a sweater and taking Ben, asleep in his baby carrier, into the chilly October night. Sarah followed, closing the door behind them. They were already on their way across the parking lot when the ambulance illuminated their path, passed them, and stopped by the hotel entrance.
Chris emerged from the driver’s seat smudged with dirt just as the back doors clicked open and Jack and Kevin appeared, every bit as grimy and scraped up as Chris. They lifted the stretcher out the back so that the legs folded down.
Jack wheeled Travis along the sidewalk to the hotel entrance and as he waited for Chris to open the door, Kate finally had a chance to gaze at the boy’s face; the rest of him was covered in a blanket. But it only took a second to understand he was worse than she had feared. Her eyes met Sarah’s and her sister’s expression of dread reflected the terrible truth.
For hours the sisters had sat up waiting, agonizing over the obscure bits of information they received of the rescue, hoping their interpretation was wrong. But now they knew.
Below the blood-stained gauze wrapped around his forehead, the boy’s eyes were swollen shut. His cheeks were bruised and scraped and he was completely unresponsive. Jack guided him down the hallway past the restaurant, turned at an adjoining corridor and rushed to the far side of the hotel where he had set up the infirmary.
Rose and Lucy hurried along behind him, too solemn to speak, but they peered at Kate and Sarah gravely as the entire group hustled down the hall and followed Jack into his make-shift hospital.
Once under the revealing electric lights — which had been hooked up that morning, though it felt like such a very long time ago now to Kate — Jack peeled back the blanket and Kate scanned Travis from head to toe barely able to breathe. There had been severe blows to his head, open gashes, an attack from a large animal, and two serious breaks.
Kate felt shattered, unable to forget that besides Jack they had little expertise or available technology. With such a complex and devastating condition even an ER team of professionals in an up-to-the-minute hospital would be challenged and the odds were so stacked against Travis that she could barely think. She examined the wounds on his already frail, little body feeling like her heart could not take it.
But Jack was deeply immersed in his duties as doctor and under his clear instructions, they mixed up a concoction of medications, hoping there was still some effectiveness left in them – antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, and drugs for pain. They set up an IV and got the appropriate fluids dripping into his veins.
While the others followed Jack’s directions, Lucy sat on a stool beside Travis holding his hand in a seemingly hypnotic state, obviously trying to ping to him. They had to shuffle around her — the girl did not want her concentration broken even for a second and when Chris offered her a drink of water she nudged him away.
Even when Jack asked all of them to pay close attention to the procedure he was about to perform, Lucy remained steadfast. Kate stopped cleaning a wound on the boy’s arm and peered over to see what Jack was doing as the others gathered around.
“A broken femur is a severe injury,” he explained gravely. “See how it’s perforated the skin? Makes the chance of infection much higher.”
Kate watched closely as he manipulated the bone, trying to reposition it without doing any more damage to the surrounding tissue.
“This is only a temporary fix I’m afraid; he’ll need surgery,” he muttered, while his fingers worked intensely over the break. Finally satisfied, he bound the leg securely again.
Before Kate bandaged the wound she had just sterilized she called Jack’s attention to it. He sighed, “Remind me about that one. I’ll stitch it in a while. He’s got more serious problems that need tending to at the moment.”
Rinsing dirt from a sponge at the sink, Kate gazed over at Ben, relieved that he was still sleeping soundly in the corner. He was a good baby. Then she brought a fresh icepack over to Travis and placed it on his head, noting that Lucy was beaded in sweat, her brow furled and, overall, she appeared pathetically distressed. She had not moved from his side.
Kate wished Lucy would go to bed, but it would be useless to say anything – it had not taken long to become familiar with the girl’s stubborn side and she knew the bond between her and Travis. Yet, until that moment, Kate had been too busy to even think about what Lucy might be accomplishing and suddenly needed to understand the connection going on between them – if any at all.
Perhaps she could help too. Maybe she could discover what had made him do such a thing in the first place, or at least, to comprehend where he was at the moment – what he was feeling. Kate had heard that sometimes unconscious patients were more aware than they appeared. She gently placed her hand on his cheek and began to ping.
Travis was barely there, just a faint light struggling to stay aglow. The precious part of him that she had known so intimately, the part that could share his soul, and had reached out to Kate for help during all those horrors after the plague, that beautiful part of him was gone.
Despite all of her stubborn attempts to deny his existence back then, his huge soul had finally got her attention from so far away. From another country. His spirit had been undefeatable as he’d insisted relentlessly that she respond, not giving up until Kate made an effort to communicate back. And now, she could not detect the slightest glimpse of that part of him.
As Kate stroked her fingers through the boy’s dark hair she didn’t think her heart could sink any lower. She peered over at a determined Lucy suddenly curious – if the girl really did have a deeper connection with Travis, perhaps it was through her that Kate could reach him. She wanted to try.
Kate had no problem linking with Lucy; the connection was instantaneous. Yet, she had not expected such a response. It was clear she was not welcomed. Lucy was pushing her away, not allowing her the slightest glimpse of what was going on between her and Travis.
Kate would not be deterred. Whatever information Lucy was getting from Travis, Kate needed to know. She persisted stubbornly, probing Lucy’s inner space but again, Lucy made it unmistakably obvious that this was an intrusion. When Kate still would not retreat Lucy changed tactics.
Without warning, the girl redirected the pain she was filtering out of Travis and hurtled it at Kate, full blast. Kate felt ill; overwhelmed by the burden Lucy was inflicting upon herself, she dropped into a chair finally understanding that Lucy’s was not only withdrawing a massive amount of physical stress from the boy’s body, she was giving him her own vital, healing energy.
It took Kate a moment to pull herself together; she finally gazed at poor Travis who hadn’t twitched a muscle since they had brought him home and realized that Lucy was pushing herself too far. Maintaining a prolonged state of intense concentration in which she was allowing her body to experience continual pain was bad enough, but sacrificing her own vitality in such a way had to be dangerous.
But maybe Lucy knew what she was doing. It would be a mistake to try to stop her. She couldn’t waste her time arguing with someone who was not going to give in but could only hope Lucy would know when she’d had enough. There was still so much more to be done for Travis. She responded to Lucy with a compassionate ping and then ran down the hall to the garden, swung open the doors, and breathed the fresh air.
The moon was on their doorstep, a huge glowing sphere so unnaturally close, so warm and bright, it seemed almost sentient to Kate. She gazed up at it pondering how a chunk of stone could give her such a feeling.
On her return, she passed Chris and Kevin, who were by the window at the end of the hallway, engaged in a rather intense exchange it appeared, sniping at each other over something – but she didn’t have time to worry about that. She found Rose and Sarah sponging Travis down, and Jack, rummaging through a drawer.
“I knew these were going to come in handy one day. Sooner than I’d imagined I have to
say,” he said to Kate as she entered the infirmary. He went to the door to summon the men back inside, and waited.
Then he opened his hand, displaying four of what resembled tiny netted stockings with cords attached.
“Chinese finger traps. Remember these? Pay attention,” Jack instructed.
He examined Travis’ broken wrist briefly again, and then slipped one net over each of the boy’s fingers. Kate watched as he tied the cords and thus his fingers to a post so that his forearm was now suspended and his elbow was at ninety-degrees. She was shocked to see him hang a bucket of water over Travis’ upper arm giving the bone the weight it needed to be pulled back into place.
“It won’t take long for the bone to realign,” he told them.
He was right about that. Before long she was helping him apply a cast.
***
At sunrise, Jack slipped into bed beside Kate.
“How’s he doing?” she murmured, rousing from a light sleep.
Groaning, he lay flat on the mattress and stretched his arms above his head.
“Stable for now; Chris and Sarah are still there. Lucy too. He’s been out of it long past the six hour mark though Kate. That’s not good you know. It was a long fall and he walloped his head in several places.”
“I know it’s bad,” Kate admitted. “Especially the concussion. But, look what he’s been through and survived. He’s resilient –”
“It’s not just a concussion,” Jack interjected. “He’s fallen into a serious coma Kate. You need to understand that right now. And on top of that his body’s been exposed to all kinds of infection.”
She was speechless. Jack must have been so exhausted and he was losing hope. She had heard the anger in his voice and stared at him on the verge of tears.
He sighed and continued less harshly, “A broken femur is serious in the best of times darling, but those antibiotics are not dependable. Even his fractured wrist could be deadly. Or that bite on his arm.”