by Jamie Davis
After about a twenty minute walk, they arrived at a shack set up against a hill. As they got closer, Dean realized it was built into the hill itself. The moss had grown over the wooden roof shingles, and vines hung down the sides of the small building’s facade. He would not even have noticed it if he were hiking nearby.
“Is your sister inside?” Ashley asked as they approached.
“Yes, Eldara,” the little girl said. “Zora tried to stop the men from cutting the tree down. They pushed her away, and she fell as a limb dropped from above. It struck her on the legs. The men just left her there and ran away when she was hurt.”
“We tried to help her ourselves, Eldara, but I fear our healers are not up to the task to save her,” the mother said, tears in her eyes. “Will you try to do something?”
“Of course,” Ashley said. “My friend is a healer from Elk City to the East. He and I have worked together before. May I bring him with me inside to see your daughter?”
The mother looked at Dean skeptically, and the man who had first addressed them spoke up.
“It was a human who did this to her,” he said angrily. “They have never helped us before, why would one of their kind help us now?”
“Have you heard of the tattooed ones?” Ashley asked. “The new group of humans who heal rather than harm?”
The man nodded.
“Show them your hand, Dean,” Ashley said. “The stamp is still fresh enough.”
Dean held out his right hand, showing the back of it to the gathered Unusuals. He turned and held it up with his palm toward his face and the back of his hand outward so all could see the Station U stamp with the ultraviolet ink that marked him as a paramedic for the Unusual community. There was a gasp from the crowd.
“So it is true,” the man said. “I had not believed it, but had heard the rumors of the human healers who moved among our kind, helping the sick and injured.”
“It is true,” Ashley said. “He may be able to help me tend to Zora if you let him.”
The Unusual man nodded his assent, and Dean took the bag from Ashley as she led him inside the shack’s rickety door. It was dark inside with only the light of a flickering oil lamp shining on a table in the center of the room. Zora’s mother picked up the lantern and led them to a back hallway that Dean realized was cut into the hill. It led to a series of rooms. At one doorway, the woman pushed the door open and Ashley entered the dimly lit room, followed closely by Dean.
There was another lantern on a small table and an old wooden bed with what looked like a straw mattress across the lattice of ropes crisscrossing the bed’s frame to hold the mattress up. There was a sickly sweet smell of rot in the room, and he saw the blackened crust of blood on the bandaged legs of the teen-aged girl huddled on the bed. She moaned quietly but didn’t look up as they entered. She seemed oblivious to their presence. He could tell by looking at her that she was in bad shape. Ashley knelt down beside her as she opened the bag Dean handed her. She pulled out a blood-pressure cuff and stethoscope.
“Dean,” Ashley said. “Put on some gloves. There are some in the kit, in a zipper baggie. Peel back those bandages and see what the injuries to her legs look like. We need to clean her up at the very least.” The nurse wrapped the blood pressure cuff around the girl’s arm and laid the stethoscope’s bell against her arm below it as she pumped up the cuff.
Dean found the gloves in the bag and noticed the abundance of trauma supplies inside including IV bags and tubing and a suture kit. He pulled on the gloves and started to peel back the bandages from the leg closest to him. The injury was high on the legs at the mid-thigh, as if something had come down across both of them simultaneously. He felt the heat coming off the wound through his gloves. The girl’s skin was hot to the touch. She was septic, he guessed. A massive infection from the wounds was coursing through her system.
The more he unwrapped, the worse the smell got in the room, as the putrid wound was exposed. He found a similar wound on the other leg. Whatever had struck the legs, whether a tree branch or the tree itself, it had packed significant force. Both femurs were broken and had cut through the skin from the inside. The thigh bones had been reset by someone, but the wounds had become infected and had putrefied. Although he had never seen gangrene before, he had seen photos in school and on his Figure1 medical mobile app. The skin was blackened around the wounds. There was a flow of yellow pus from the openings in the skin, and red streaks stretched up under the skin towards the girl’s groin. This was bad. He wasn’t sure if a full trauma team could save her legs at this point. They might not have been able to even save her life.
Ashley finished taking her vital signs and was grim-faced as she, too, assessed the wounds. Dean caught her eye and quirked an eyebrow upward. “What do you think?” he whispered.
“I think she needs a lot of help, and I’m not sure she would make it all the way back to Elk City if we moved her,” Ashley replied. “She’s septic. Her blood pressure is so low I can’t read it. Her respirations are rapid and shallow, the carotid pulse is rapid and thready, and her temp is over 105° Fahrenheit.”
“I can start an IV and try to get her pressure up with fluids, but she needs antibiotics, Ashley,” Dean said.
“I know, but maybe,” she said, pausing as she dug in the bag. “Yes!” the nurse exclaimed. She pulled out a vial of powder and a small bag of fluid taped together. “Erin, you’re a paranoid genius!”
“What is it?” Dean asked.
“A broad spectrum antibiotic in powdered form,” she explained. “It would last virtually forever and just needs to be reconstituted with sterile water. Erin, my friend, packed this bag with things that would last. I’ll start working on this, you get the IV started and get her some fluids.”
Dean turned back to the bag of supplies and pulled out a one-liter bag of normal saline solution, tubing, and an IV catheter needle. He assembled the bag and tubing, handing it off to Zora’s mother telling her to hold it up so the fluid would drain through the tubing. He cleared all the air out of the tube and then turned to start the IV with the needle. The girl’s veins were flat because of her sepsis and dehydration, but he was able to find one and inserted the needle, getting a small flash of blood to show he had connected. He attached the tubing to the plastic catheter hub and started the fluids flowing.
Ashley was still mixing the antibiotic, so he turned to see what he could do next. He decided to work at cleaning out the wounds. He got a small bottle of sterile saline and some four by four gauze pads out of the supply bag, and started irrigating the wound and cleaning out the pus and infection as best he could. He had seen a wound care nurse at work in one of his hospital rotations and knew that packing the wound with damp sterile gauze would help the opening heal more cleanly. He opened another pack of sterile gauze pads and poured the remainder of the sterile saline in the plastic packaging wetting down the gauze. He put on a fresh pair of gloves from the bag and then carefully packed the wound from the bottom up. He covered the wound with some more sterile gauze dressings and wrapped a new fresh bandage around it to hold the packing and dressings in place over the wounds on both legs.
His girlfriend had already piggy-backed the small IV antibiotic bag to the tubing of the other, larger saline bag, and the medication was flowing into the girl’s veins now. Ashley looked down at the job Dean had done bandaging the wounds on the legs and nodded in approval.
“Is it going to be enough?” Dean asked her quietly.
“I don’t know,” Ashley responded. She closed her eyes and laid her hands on the girl’s legs over the bandages. He watched her brow furrow in concentration and a light sweat broke out on her head. A gasp sounded from the doorway behind him and from the girl’s mother, still holding the IV bag for her daughter. Dean couldn’t see what they were seeing, but Ashley was doing - something. He watched as the red streaks on the girl’s legs retreated back towards the bandages and disappeared underneath them. Zora’s breathing became less ragged and slowed some,
too. Whatever his angelic girlfriend was doing, it appeared to be working. Suddenly, Ashley let out a long sigh and sagged to her knees in exhaustion. Dean caught her as she slumped over.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asked in alarm, stroking her hair back from her face. She was flushed and sweaty, as if she had just returned from a workout.
“Wow! I haven’t done that in a while,” she said. “It takes a lot out of me. I think she’ll be alright now. I was able to draw some of the infection out of her wounds. The antibiotic will take care of the rest.” Ashley looked up at him and smiled. “I’m glad you were here. Take me back to the cabin. I need to rest.” She collapsed and fell asleep in his arms.
Chapter 44
Dean needed help to get Ashley back to the cabin. Zora’s father, Enric, and another man helped him carry the exhausted Eldara Sister back to the cabin in the woods. Once they got her settled in the bed upstairs, Dean came down to find Anya, Zora’s mother, busy in the kitchen of the large open room that made up the downstairs of the cabin.
“Anya,” Dean said. “Thank you very much, but I can take care of getting dinner together. I think Ashley is going to sleep for a while.”
“It is nothing,” the Dryad woman said with a wave of her hand. “The Eldara Sister used her power to heal my daughter, and I will not have her or her companion left to fend for themselves. You sit and rest yourself, Paramedic Dean.”
He thought it was amusing that she used his job as a title. He looked around and decided to go back upstairs and sit with Ashley. She had looked quite pale when she collapsed in his arms after doing whatever it was she had done to halt the spread of the infection. He pulled a chair next to the bed where she slept, opened a book on his phone’s reader app and started it, occasionally glancing up to check on her. He didn’t know how long he had been sitting there when Anya came up the stairs with a plate of food and a glass of cold beer.
“Paramedic Dean,” she said. “You must eat something to keep up your strength. I made some roast venison with gravy, roasted potatoes and some fresh biscuits.”
Dean’s mouth watered as he smelled the plate of food. She came over and set it down on the bedside table. He thanked the woman, putting his phone away and picking up the plate and a fork.
“I have made a simple broth for the Eldara,” Anya said. “It is on the stove. If she awakens before I return in the morning, simply heat it up to a simmer and then give her some spoonfuls to sip until she has gathered her strength. Our legends say that such healing is taxing for the Eldara. We are very fortunate she chose to use her power to help our Zora.”
“I know Ashley would not have had it any other way,” Dean said. “She always tries to help people.”
“Of course she does,” Anya chuckled. “It is her nature. To do otherwise would be to deny who she is. But it could have drawn her to the other side, healing Zora when she was so close to death. I would have not wanted her to send herself away on our behalf when she may have other, more important tasks here to accomplish.”
Dean was confused. “I’m sorry,” he said, seeking clarification. “What do you mean – ‘send her away’, and the ‘other side’? Was she in some sort of danger?”
Anya seemed confused. “Paramedic Dean, I do not understand,” she said. “You are the companion of an Eldara, a most honored position, and you do not understand such things?”
Dean shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I do not. Ashley and I are friends. Perhaps more than that now, but she has never told me of her powers, or of any danger in using them.”
Anya bit her lower lip in consternation. “I have overstepped myself, I fear. It is not my place to explain such things to you. Perhaps you are not her companion, but a protected one instead. You must ask her for the explanation.” She turned to go back downstairs. “Do not forget the broth I made. I will return in the morning. One of the men will remain outside during the night should you need anything. Goodbye, Paramedic Dean.”
Dean watched as the woman proceeded down the stairs, then turned his gaze to Ashley. What had she done back there in the shack? Had it put her at risk for — something bad to happen to her? He settled in to watch over her tonight while she rested. He took her pulse and counted her respirations while he sat there. She seemed fine from the aspect of her vital signs, but she barely stirred when he lifted her wrist to check the heart rate. She was in a very deep sleep, at least he hoped it was just sleep. The night passed slowly around him as he watched her on the bed.
———
“Dean.”
Startled, Dean sat up suddenly in the chair where he had been sitting next to Ashley. He must have dozed off. He looked up and saw her staring at him from the bed. A wan smile on her face betrayed how weak she was.
“Dean,” she said again. “Have you been here all night?”
He glanced at his watch. It was nearly dawn. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.” He remembered the broth on the stove downstairs. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.” The paramedic rushed downstairs and turned the knob that fired up the gas burner under the pot on the stovetop. He lifted the lid and picked up a spoon from the ceramic spoon rest next to the stove, stirring the liquid as it warmed. When it started gently bubbling he turned the burner off and looked around the kitchen cupboards and drawers until he found a ladle and a mug. He filled the mug about halfway and then returned upstairs with the mug and soup spoon.
Ashley opened her eyes as he approached. He sat down again next to her. Dean stirred the broth in the mug to help cool it some more and leaned forward. “Here is some broth that Anya, Zora’s mother, made for you. She said you would need it after what you did for Zora.” He lifted the spoon over to her lips and she took a tentative sip. Her eyes brightened as she tasted it. He smiled and got her another spoonful to sip. She finished about half the mug’s contents that way before she said she’d had enough. He set the mug down on the bedside table and used a napkin to dab a spilled drop from her chin. She smiled as he did it.
“Thank you, Dean,” she said. “Though, I’m supposed to be the one taking care of you, not the other way around.”
“I like taking care of you, Ash,” Dean said. “It shouldn’t just be one way.”
“No,” she murmured. “I suppose not.”
“How do you feel?” Dean asked. “You still look pale and pretty weak. Are you all right?” He didn’t know how to approach talking with her about what the Dryad woman had let slip the night before. He was worried about her and mostly about losing her so soon after he had found her.
“I’m weak, but I will be alright,” she said. “I just need a day or so of rest. I have not done that in some time, and I forgot how taxing it is.”
“What, exactly, did you do? Anya talked about you going away to the ‘other side’ or something? What did she mean by that?”
Ashley chuckled quietly. “So many questions, Dean. Do you never stop trying to learn?”
“It’s just something that Anya said last night about you using your powers to help Zora,” Dean said. He took Ashley’s hand in his and squeezed gently. “Did you do something that could have hurt you?”
He looked at Ashley, meeting her gaze and she held it for a time before she sighed and answered him. “Dean, it’s difficult to explain. I was never in any danger, but I have a finite amount of life force when on the earth in corporeal form. I have some limited ability to heal, but when I do so, it uses up some of that corporeal life force. If I use a lot at one time it makes me weak for a few days. If I use too much, I will lose my corporeal form and have to return to the higher planes to regenerate.”
“So you could have died?” Dean asked, concern and a little bit of anger shading his voice.
“No, Dean,” she said wearily. “I cannot die here on earth in corporeal form. But, if I use up the life force that keeps me here on earth I would return to my spirit form for a time before I could come back.”
“How long would that be?” Dean asked, afraid to hear the answer.
&nb
sp; “Dean,” she said, laying her other hand on top of his where their two hands clasped on the bed. “For you, it would be a long time, a hundred years or more. But to me it would be but an instant.”
“So I could have lost you back there,” Dean said defensively.
“No,” she replied firmly. “I knew what I was doing and I used my power judiciously.”
They were both silent for a while. Dean pondered what she had said. He didn’t want to stop her from being who she was, but he also didn’t want to lose her to some higher plane.
“Dean,” Ashley said softly. “I want you to understand. You shouldn’t be concerned for me. It’s supposed to be the other way around. I am supposed to watch over you.
“Sorry, Ash,” Dean said. “I’m a guy. I’m not built that way. I’m supposed to protect you.”
“You’ll get over it,” she said, smiling up at him. “I’m human in this form, but the Eldara are not of this earth. We are visitors, messengers, healers and guardians. I’ll be fine. After all, I’ve been around for a very long time.”
“How long is a long time?” Dean asked. He wasn’t sure if this was crossing a line or not, like asking a woman her age, but he was curious.
“I first took a corporeal form to help a woman who was a healer in what you would have called Mesopotamia in present day Iraq,” Ashley said. “Let’s just say it was a very long time ago. Since that time I’ve returned to help other healers find a solution to a problem, or navigate a crisis in their communities many times.”
“Is that why you’ve come here as a nurse,” he asked. “Because you’re a healer?”
“I guess I’ve always been a nurse, as you call the job,” Ashley said. “It’s a name that has gone through many changes over the years. Now we call these caring healers nurses but in the past they’ve been midwives, wise ones, or elders. The name does not matter. It is the focus on communities of care, and healing of the whole person that defines the people I’m drawn to.”