Tía was crying, deep shaking sobs. Jay held the light trembling. Karen realized he was quietly crying. They’ve given up. I can’t give up!
“Come on!” she screamed. “One-two-three-four-five, breathe. Come on, breathe!” She felt like she wanted to start slapping the unresponsive form. “One-two-three…” a gagging cough and a deep wet inhaling breath. “Oh my God!” Karen released a near hysterical laugh, “Breathe baby!”
Jay gasped out a choked cry. Tía rambled into a muttered prayer with tears in her eyes.
Lomara coughed up spit and bile and her eyes popped open, a startled expression on her pale face. “Hermana,” she said weakly.
“Estoy aquí, Hermanita.”—I am here, Little Sister.
Lomara’s thin arms reached up, she was still gasping. Karen took her into her arms and felt all over for injuries. She found nothing other than a faint moan when she touched her left side. She’d had the wind knocked out of her and almost her life too. Jay was there with a water bottle. Lomara took little sips once her breathing steadied.
Pain jolted through Karen’s leg and Jay gently coached Lomara into his hands as Karen rolled onto her back in the dewy grass, the leg wound forgotten until it rudely reminded her.
Lomara pulled herself away from Jay and threw her arms around Karen crying. Tía knelt over her with deep concern on her own pain-etched face.
“¿Qué pasa?” Tía asked.
“Mi pierna derecha.”—My right leg.
“¿Hay alguien herido?”—Is anyone else hurt?
“No, estamos bien,”—No, we are good, muttered Tía as Jay aimed the flashlight. “El saínos sólo nos daba miedo.” —The saínos only scared us.
“Saínos, los llamamos jabalíes.”—We call them javelinas.
“Nosotros los llamamos malos,” —We call them bad, Tía said dryly. “Y esto es malo.” —And this is bad.
“Geez, Karen. That looks real bad,” said Jay.
Chapter Thirty
Karen shut her eyes and then looked at her leg, a four-inch gash on the side and front three inches above her knee. A lot of blood mingled with mud. Her jean’s leg was soaked red. Nausea hit her and her head, already battered, throbbed more.
“Jay, you’ve got to be my hands.
“I can’t. I don’t know what to do.”
“I’ll tell you. I’m counting on you.”
“Okay.”
Lomara held the flashlight. Karen didn’t have time to think about the close call with Lomara. Self-directed anger flashed through her for getting herself hurt. They’re depending on me. I can’t afford to be hurt.
“Okay, cut away the pants leg above my knee. Use the IV saline solution to clean the gash.”
Her cut-off jean’s leg had been rolled down over her knee. With a handful of wadded gauze four-by-fours he mopped out the wound.
“Now scrub it with handy-wipes to clean out the mud and leaves.” Karen was up on her elbows. He scrubbed hard and she arched her head back, almost passed out, and fell onto her back in the grass. She was gasping out deep groans while he swabbed, pouring on more saline.
“I’m sorry, I won’t do it anymore.”
“No, you have to.” Wild thoughts raged in her mind as the pain burned through her. It would get worse before this was done. She knew what she had to do.
“You gotta put pressure on it. Use a fresh wad of gauze.” He held it there for some time as the gauze turned crimson.
“Okay, let me look,” Karen grunted, propping herself upon elbows again.
Jay moved the sopping gauze, blood still trickled. He looked pale even in the yellowish flashlight glare.
It was a smooth slash through the flesh, down to the muscle. There were no big veins severed, but still a lot of blood.
“Okay, I gotta do this.” Her head swam; her breaths were deep and ragged with apprehension. It felt like she was going all lightheaded, that she might blackout.
Tía looked at her confused.
Karen groped through the medical bag pulling out the antibiotics and painkiller pills. She swallowed two of each, gulped water, shuttered.
She told Lomara to put two water bottles on the fire to heat, not boil.
“Jay, pull me to that tree and stack the packs so I can lay against them. Not the medical bag, I need to get into it. Okay, lay a folded T-shirt on my lap.”
Feeling in the bag she found the alcohol bottle and instrument set then took out the scissors and a forceps clamp laying them in her lap. Then she pulled out a packet with a pre-threaded suture.
Tía gasped, “¡No Karena!”
“Tengo que hacerlo.”—I have to. “No digas más,”—Do not say more, she pleaded.
Jay was wide-eyed, white-faced.
“More pressure,” she ordered Jay as he pressed with a fresh gauze wad. They needed to reduce the blood flow or she couldn’t do this.
She soaped her hands and had Jay pour alcohol directly onto the instruments in her lap, smelling the biting odor. She had him dash it on both his and her hands and cleaned it up with handy-wipes. She didn’t care if it splashed all over her.
“Okay, more water.” She nodded at the IV bag of sterile saline solution.
He irrigated the gash, mopped it out, reapplied pressure.
“Dang, that hurts.” Karen opened the package and clamped the needle at the tread end, locked the forceps.
She waved away Jay’s hand with the gauze. “You need to pinch the cut shut for me.”
Jay was pasty-faced. Tía stared in near horror and told Lomara to turn her eyes away. She instead wrapped her arms around Karen, tight.
“Gracias, Hermanita. I’m so going to need that.”
“I don’t think I can do this.” Jay swallowed. “How can you do it to yourself? I guess you read about it in a book.”
“Look, I’ve seen sutures given before. Now do it!”
He gingerly pinched the edges of the torn flesh together at one end.
Karen groaned and rolled her head back grunting, “Don’t stop.”
Holding the forceps and steadying her shaking right hand with her left, she set the curved needle’s point a quarter-inch from the gash’s edge at what she guessed was the right angle. It was hurting so much from his pinching that what she had to do couldn’t be any worse.
Tía was fervently muttering prayers. Lomara held her tight. Karen took short breaths.
She pushed the needle and couldn’t have been more wrong. A shuttering groan ran through her. “Oh God.”
Lomara whimpered and held her tighter if that was possible. Tía ratcheted up the intensity of her prayers, begging mercy for this girl.
Her head cleared and she looked. The needle was through, both sides. Okay, now, grip the forceps near the pointed end and pull it through…not so bad, only a teeth-clincher. Her breaths were deep and ragged. “You still with me?” she gasped at Jay.
She barely heard his, “Yes.”
Each suture was supposed to be cut and tied individually. She couldn’t do it with her hands shaking so. She’d just sew it up like stitching up torn cloth in a series S’s. Less than ideal, but the stitches should hold.
Okay, next one. She shut her eyes tight steeling herself. “Do it!”
She thrust with the forceps and arched off the ground with a prolonged groan. Jay sponged away the blood, hands trembling. Lomara was softly crying. Karen pulled it through.
Jay, his breathes short, leaned over her, their heads touched. She thrust again, mouth gasping open with a silent groan. She was panting hard. Jay’s breaths were matching hers, his arm around her shoulder.
“Hah! This isn’t getting any easier.” Four more. “I can’t do this.” Tears dribbled from her eyes. She looked at Jay, their heads still touching. She couldn’t ask him to. He was barely managing keeping it together just pinching the gash. Her breaths turned into rapid puffs. She was nearing hyperventilation, her leg aflame.
His hand took hers. “I can’t let you do that to yourself.”
�
�You can’t…”
“Yes, I can.” It was the most forceful thing she ever heard him say.
She closed her eyes, dropped her head back. “Okay, okay. Do you really think you can do it?”
“I have to, for you.”
She gazed a long time into his eyes. His were brimmed with tears. “Okay tough guy. Go for it.”
He took the forceps. His hands weren’t shaking as much as hers.
“Okay, set the point, like with the others. Yeah, right there.” She scrunched her eyes shut. “Now do it.”
“On three, okay?”
She counted, “One, two, three…four, five. Jay, let’s not take all, Ahhhh.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Now pull it through, slowly.”
The last three were as bad as the first.
It really wasn’t enough stitches, but it would have to do.
Collapsed on the pile of packs, her lungs dragged in air. Jay still held the dripping needle in the forceps, his hands shaking. He backed away, then tenderly moped up the blood. He couldn’t tear his eyes from hers, his own reflecting her pain. Her leg throbbed and her right foot wouldn’t stop trembling. After an indeterminate time, she snipped the thread and tied off both ends with surgeon’s knots, of sorts.
The stitching was crude. She had Jay clean everything off and stick butterfly tape sutures over and between each stitch to reinforce them. He folded gauze squares and taped them over the wound after carefully applying antiseptic. The whole time Tía told him to be careful, Karena had suffered enough.
She wouldn’t be able to move for a day, and then she needed to be careful. This would cost them more time, and she wouldn’t be able to do much of anything. No one could do much either, except Jay. Things did not look good.
After resting and drinking hot tea, Jay and Lomara helped her into her hammock. Other than her hands and knee, she was still mud-covered. That’s when she saw the scruffy gray-brown body nearby, a mud-slavered javelina, its glazed eyes open and its yellow tusks bared as if ready to leap up and attack.
She looked around and Jay was brandishing the screwdriver-tipped spear and looking very proud.
“¡Bravo! ¡Muy bien, Jadon!”
Tía said he had stood his ground like a man. Karena needed to rest. When she awakened they would feast on carne de cerdo.
Greasy pork didn’t seem appealing at the moment. She savagely hoped the little porker which had nailed her was the one laying skewered in the grass.
Karen sipped more tea, her leg throbbing, her mind alternately racing and drifting away. She then remembered. Terror flashed through her mind—a lunging man, savage dogs, a ferocious pig-creature.
“Jay.”
“Yeah.”
“You did good, real good.”
“Thanks, Supergirl.”
Lomara cleaned her face off as best she could with handy-wipes, her eyes filled with painful sympathy.
She tried to smile at the girl, her sister. “Soy buena, Chiquita. No te preocupes. Gracias por estar conmigo,” —I’m good, girl. Do not worry. Thank you for being with me, she said sincerely. She couldn’t even think about how close she’d—they’d come to losing Lomara.
Jay gently cleaned her up with warm water and changed her forehead dressing. She couldn’t look him in the eyes, keeping hers closed, but they fluttered open once and she saw the concern in his. Such a sweet kid after all. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“I wasn’t of much help. I just about couldn’t…”
She cut him off. “But you did. Muchas gracias mi amigo.”
“I’ve got to clean all this up and help with the pig thing.”
It is so dark for the hour, she thought. She glanced up at the high, speeding clouds.
She looked at Tía who was studying the prostrate javelina. Tía looked up, distress in her eyes, “Una tormenta se acerca.”—A storm is coming.
So began the seventh day.
Chapter Thirty-One
Karen didn’t get any rest as was planned. “How about giving us a break for once,” she muttered to no one.
They had a lot to do and Jay had to do just about every bit of it. A tropical storm or depression must be blowing in. It couldn’t be another hurricane, not this soon. A trop’s winds weren’t as bad, but could reach over forty miles per hour. They dumped a lot of water in a short time.
They needed shelter. They’d build it back in the trees, away from this open glen to protect them from the wind. Karen’s main concern was that they were only four feet above the river. There was no time to find a better, higher site, if there was any nearby. The river simmered with whitecaps.
A good site to weather a storm required two things. The trees had to be firmly rooted with no dead limbs. It needed to be higher than the surrounding ground, even if only a few inches or they’d be sitting in water.
Building a stout shelter was not a big deal, Karen reflected, but it had to be large enough for four people and worn out Jay had to do ninety percent of the work. Karen could do some work if they sat her beside the job and Lomara could do things, but her main job was to butcher the boar. Jay and herself would have to help Lomara with the hard parts with Karen translating Tía’s directions. That on top of everything else they had to do.
They’d not be able to keep a fire going long. They had to butcher it and get it on the spit. Fortunately that was already set up from the night before, but they’d have to collect firewood as it roasted. At least they’d have a lot of charcoal left over. She’d been thinking about replacing the charcoal in the filter as they’d run so much funky water through it.
So much to do and think through. Karen’s head was hurting along with everything else.
Butchering the javelina took time, but they finally had it roasting. Lomara collected more firewood. There wasn’t much about and when the rains came there’d be none.
Karen had Jay cut two twelve-foot poles and lash one five feet off the ground between a pair of trees ten feet apart. She hated cutting pieces off the rope for lashings, but there were no options. The vines found here were too stiff.
Nearby was a stand of six to twelve-foot tall saplings ideal for the roof support poles, no more than three inches in diameter. Jay cut a couple of dozen seven-foot poles while harassed by ants. He trimmed the poles and rested twelve to a side with a foot angling above the ridgepole making a “V.” The second twelve-foot pole he laid in the “V” and lashed it with the first lashing ropes’ ends to hold it in-place. This gave them a ten-foot long shelter eight feet across.
Karen feared his machete whacking might result in self-inflicted damage and then they’d be in a fix.
This completely roofed over shelter was much better than a lean-to with one side open. With the blowing rains, Karen expected a lean-to’s open side would soak them. To boost the sense of urgency, a smattering of raindrops rattled the leaves and the wind picked up.
Jay next cut reeds and stiff vines and wove them horizontally through both sides’ roof poles. Then he went to work cutting fan-shaped palm fronds similar to palmetto with their spray of sword blade-shaped leaves, and big caladium leaves too. He wove layers of these through the vines. Karen told him to cut and place all he could. She knew there would still be leaks.
Lomara broke off limbs and ferns layering them on the floor; also the twigs and leaves Jay trimmed off the roof poles. The more material the better to raise them out of flowing ground water. She laid caladium leaves over this. With the coming rains Karen had no concern for creepy-crawlies. Tired little Lomara was giving it her best.
Karen hung two hammocks like curtains to keep out rain. Painfully scooting herself to the other end, she hung the other two. The fifth one she kept to cover Tía for her fever-chills. She dragged everything inside. A band of rain swept through pushed by high winds. The leashed chickens scratched through the grass, scrawny looking in their wet feathers.
After denuding the area of roofing materials, Jay started heap
ing the larger limbs cut from saplings onto the roof. He cut some big leafy bushes and pulled them up to the hammock-curtained ends as blown rain-blockers. Jay was dragging butt. A heavy band of rain came through and doused the fire. They kept embers burning in the hubcap safely stowed in the shelter. There was little dry fuel to keep it going though.
Jay carried the spitted boar into the shelter placing it on some big elephant ears. They had food for the entire day, more than enough. Karen decided any leftovers would be tossed. Pork didn’t keep well and they couldn’t smoke it. They had the water bottles filled and their canned reserve food. She hoped the shelter would hold up, that it didn’t flood, that Tía’s infection didn’t worsen…There were just too many things she hoped would go well.
Jay couldn’t drag the boat up to where they needed the shelter so it was still near the river. They could have incorporated it into the shelter. He levered the boat onto its side against a pair of trees to keep it from filling with rainwater and secured it with the towing strap.
With the rain falling in waves, he laid the three oars, the lever pole, spear, and more long leafy limbs crisscrossed on the roof. He lashed them with the remaining rope to hold the roof secure against the wind. He crawled in wet and took his place beside Karen. Lomara sat beside Tía cradling Paloma and telling the doll she’d be safe. Then she looked up at Karen with those dark anxious eyes.
Tears of the River Page 18