The Institute helicopter dropped them off on the pad about two hundred yards down a valley from the lodge and Parks and Connie started up the stone trail. It was that helicopter pad that allowed this lodge to be used year around. No road was passable into here except in the late spring through the early fall. And Carol had been up that road once before with Duster driving and decided riding a horse in was much, much better.
Or flying in. This was the first time she had gotten to do that and had been stunned at the fantastic beauty and ruggedness of central Idaho. Most of it had been designated a wilderness area so no new roads could be built.
It was very much like most of the West that Carol had been traveling in back in the late 1890s. But somehow, this massive part of an entire state had kept its wilderness feel and look.
Carol loved that.
The walk up the trail was wonderful, with the smell of hot pine filling the air. The air was dry and starting to cool down. Clearly it had been a perfect summer day here at the lodge.
As they reached the lodge, they could see that most of the few people lucky enough to book one of the ten rooms available to the public were sitting on the massive deck.
And the parking lot had about thirty cars in it that had managed to come up that twisted, winding road. More than likely many of them would just stay for dinner, sit and enjoy the view for a while, and then go back down into civilization, if you call Yellow Pine, Idaho, civilization.
As Carol and Director Parks stepped inside the lodge, Dawn looked up from behind the large, wooden front desk and smiled. “Wonderful to see you both.”
Dawn and her husband Madison had been the first two travelers into other timelines besides Bonnie and Duster. Both of them were major historical writers and Dawn specialized on the old mining town that was five miles below this lodge in the valley.
Carol loved them both and trusted both of them as much as she trusted Bonnie and Duster. They felt like family to Carol.
Dawn came around the desk and hugged Director Parks, then Carol. Dawn and her husband, Madison, were half-owners of the lodge with Bonnie and Duster and they worked it. In fact, in different timelines, they had raised many families here in the past.
Dawn looked at Carol. “Very sorry to hear about Megan. That was horrible.”
“Thank you,” Carol said, smiling.
Dawn hugged her again.
“It’s Megan that is why we are here to talk with Bonnie and Duster,” Director Parks said.
Dawn looked puzzled. “I thought what Megan had was inoperable in any time?”
“It was,” Carol said. “But it seems we have another wrinkle in the equation.”
“Okay…” Dawn said, looking puzzled. Then she shook her head and turned for the dining room area that was mostly empty.
Carol and Director Parks followed.
“Got the back room set up for all of us,” Dawn said. “Bonnie and Duster are already back there waiting for you when they heard you had arrived. And I have you both a fresh-caught trout reserved.”
“Where’s Madison?” Parks asked.
He took a run for supplies into McCall with the truck. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Sorry I’m going to miss him,” Carol said. “But dinner sounds wonderful. After a seven-day horse ride and a helicopter flight, I could eat an entire stream of trout.”
“We have that,” Dawn said, laughing.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
July 12th, 2019
Monumental Lodge, Idaho
BONNIE STOOD AND gave Carol a hug before they sat at the table.
The back dining room at the lodge could hold twenty people easily and like everything else here was made of log walls and log beams and polished wood floors. The large table was of light pine and the chairs were wood with padding on the seats.
A stone fireplace was dark in the back corner. The lighting was fake lanterns around the walls that looked antique and gave the place a feeling of age and a large wood and copper chandelier hung over the center of the table.
The room felt comfortable to Carol and she loved it every time she got to eat in here.
“How many years have you spent since we lost Megan?” Duster asked.
“Going on five,” Carol said, sitting down and taking a sip of the ice water in front of her plate. “I’m doing better.”
“I hate to be pushy,” Bonnie said, “but the two of you showing up here unexpectedly together has us all really puzzled.”
“We needed to ask you and Duster some questions about Megan,” Director Parks said. “And neither of us could wait until you got back, so here we are.”
Carol laughed at their surprised looks. It wasn’t often you could surprise Bonnie and Duster or even worry them.
Dawn sat beside Bonnie, smiling. “This I got to hear.”
Parks indicated Carol should tell her story and she did and why she had gone to see Megan’s mother.
Both Bonnie and Duster nodded to that.
“At one point I asked how Megan had done as a child with a bad heart,” Carol said. “Megan’s mother said she had done fine, especially after she got it fixed at eleven.”
Bonnie, Duster, and Dawn all three sat forward, clearly shocked.
Carol held up her hand so that she could keep going.
“Megan’s mother said a nice Marshal Kendal and a nurse named Bonnie came and picked Megan up and took her to Missoula to some fancy doctors. Seems Megan doesn’t remember any of it except a white room that smelled funny.”
Duster was just shaking his head.
Bonnie looked at Carol, then at her husband. “How the hell did we pull that off?”
“Or are you going to pull that off?” Dawn asked.
“That’s what Carol and I were wondering exactly,” Director Parks said.
Carol looked at Bonnie and Duster. “So I’m guessing you have not done that?”
“Can’t imagine how it would be even possible,” Duster said, “to get an eleven-year-old girl from the middle of 1880s Montana to Boise and then a couple hundred years into the future.”
“And then back,” Bonnie said.
“Back is the problem,” Dawn said. “Wouldn’t this mean that Megan is set at some point in the future as an eleven-year-old girl? So when she dies, even of old age, she will end up back in the future and eleven years old?”
“And with the memories of all her years as an adult,” Bonnie said, softly.
“Oh, shit,” Director Parks said.
“Is there a way around that problem?” Carol asked.
She stared at Bonnie and Duster, the two greatest math minds on the planet, the two that had discovered how to step into other timelines, the two that had lived for hundreds of thousands of years.
Both just sat there shaking their heads.
And that scared Carol more than she wanted to admit. Not for her, but for Megan.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
August 22nd, 2019
Boise, Idaho
BONNIE AND DUSTER had spent over a month working on the problem, with help from other mathematicians who knew about the Institute and who worked for them in the past.
While they were doing that, with Director Parks help, Carol had gone forward two hundred years to study the transplant technique.
When they first got there, Director Parks had insisted that he take Carol yet another hundred years into the future. “That way, if you accidently get killed here in 2219, you will just go back to 2319.”
She thanked him for that. But what he had done was just make her even more immortal. The life she was living right now in 2019 was only two minutes of time in 2119 and only two minutes of time in 2219 and now would also be only two minutes of time in 2319.
She so wanted Bonnie and Duster to figure out a way to give Megan that same gift of being basically immortal.
Carol studied the technique of full heart transplant and the more she learned, the more she realized that it really would save Megan’s life. She even watched t
hree other eleven-year-olds go through the same surgery. They ended up being fine within a few days. And by all indications from research on them from the future, the three kids had perfectly healthy and long lives. In fact, a hundred years farther along, two of them were still alive.
Carol knew she shouldn’t, but as time went along she let a little hope creep back into her heart. She tried to stop it, but she just couldn’t seem to.
So for eight months, Carol worked two hundred years in the future, learning everything she could about complete heart transplants and the surgery it required.
And learning medical procedures she could have only dreamed about when she went through med school.
Then she went back to 2019 only four weeks after she had left.
She liked the future, but she liked the free spirit of 2019 more, and she loved even more the complete roughness of life in 1902. It seemed she was an Old West girl at heart.
Finally, on August 22nd, sitting in Director Parks’ office, Bonnie and Duster gave her what Carol had been fearing.
“It can’t be done,” Bonnie said.
The bluntness and finality of the statement shocked Carol.
“Even if Megan was knocked out and one of us was carrying her,” Duster said, “it would reset her at the age of eleven two hundred years from now.”
“And a hundred years from now as well,” Director Parks said.
“We would never allow that to happen for any reason,” Bonnie said. “I’m sorry, Carol.”
“I agree,” Carol said, her stomach twisting and feeling as if she might have just lost Megan one more time. “That can never happen. But thank you for doing the work.”
“This pushed us into an area of math and timelines that we had never looked at before,” Duster said. “So we need to thank you.”
“But that still begs the problem,” Director Parks said. “Why did the two of you pick up young Megan and return her with the surgery?”
Bonnie laughed. “Oh, we had that figured out in the first week.”
Carol sat forward and said simply “What?”
“I must admit I am not following you either,” Parks said.
Duster nodded. “We all assumed we had taken her for a full heart transplant into the future. But since that is not possible to do without setting a person in the new timeline when we bring them back, it is clear to me what we did.”
Carol just stared at Duster until finally Bonnie said.
“She was operated on in 1888,” Bonnie said.
Carol opened her mouth, then shut it.
“Of course,” Director Parks said. “Of course, of course, of course.”
All Carol could do was sit there and try to force the images of Megan dying in her arms from her mind.
There was no way she was going to risk an eleven-year-old Megan dying under her hands in an operation.
Carol knew, without a doubt, that if that happened, it would kill them both.
No matter what timeline they were in.
PART SIX
The Last Chance
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
August 25th, 2019
Boise, Idaho
CAROL TOOK THREE days back in her condo to think about what Bonnie and Duster had suggested.
And clearly, in one timeline, she had done this and been successful. But as Duster had said, just because it worked in that timeline doesn’t mean it actually worked in unlimited numbers of others.
Finally, Carol took out Megan’s quilt and wrapped it around her, even though it was still almost seventy outside. Carol knew that Megan would take the chance. She knew that without a doubt.
In fact, the women Carol had been studying in the Old West took far more chances than this every day, just by getting out of bed.
Megan’s mother had raised four kids on her own in the late 1880s Montana wilderness. To Megan, to her mother, the decision Carol was facing just seemed obvious.
Did Carol love Megan?
The answer was yes.
Did Carol now have a real chance of saving Megan’s life?
The answer was yes.
Carol knew at that moment she had to try, no matter what.
She arrived the next morning in Director Parks’ office and he was smiling.
He said she should come with him and they went to the living room cavern and then off to one side, to an area that Carol had paid little attention to.
Director Parks reached a door and pushed it open.
The room was empty, carved out of stone, with a moderately high, flat ceiling.
The only light coming in was from the door they stood in.
From what Carol could tell looking into the shadows, it was large, very large. Maybe the size of a three-bedroom home. Hard to tell in the darkness.
“Three thousand square feet,” Director Parks said. “I’m going to take a crew from the future and we are going back to 1880 when we built this place and wire in electricity and water to this room and then build walls and insulate it completely.”
Carol looked up at Director Parks, who was beaming.
“This area closest to the door will be sort of a waiting room and serve as an airlock to keep the rest of the area completely sterile.”
“You are going to make this into a medical area?” Carol asked, now understanding why the director was excited about showing it to her.
“Exactly,” Parks said. “I’ve been thinking we needed this from the beginning, but it just never came to the top of my list. Now, no matter what you decide to do with Megan, this has spurred me to put in a state-of-the-art medical center.”
“Wow,” Carol said, staring at the big empty space.
“One area of the room will be set up for each time period,” Parks said. “In jumps of one hundred years, to accommodate medical knowledge of each time.”
Carol understood that. Even though she was a trained doctor, she had seen things nurses were doing two hundred years from now that made no sense at all to her.
“And it will be available to any researcher who knows about it in any timeline,” the director said. “And as we did with the Institute, we are going to install this far enough back that it will just ride with the Institute through all timelines and always be available.”
“How long will this take to build and install?” Carol asked.
“About one month in this time,” Director Parks said. “So before Thanksgiving at the latest. After that it will always be available.”
“Will I have to go to 2319 to train on the equipment to do the heart replacement on Megan?” Carol said.
“No,” Director Parks said, smiling at her. “If you decide to take a chance with Megan, which I hope you do, I’m bringing back one of our researchers from 2319 who is also a medical doctor and has done a lot of heart transplants. He will do the operation and you will assist him.”
Carol could feel the weight lifting from her shoulders.
“But I will still want you to go to 2219 for six months or more and assist on the surgeries there, since you are now established there in the hospital. Get used to the modern equipment and methods of that time. From what I have been told, if you do that, it won’t take you very long to get up to speed on the differences.”
“I would think the differences would be huge,” Carol said, surprised at that.
“On many things, yes,” Parks said. “But from what I have been told, on this kind of heart-replacement surgery, only the level of expertise went up and the number of fatalities, if done at the right age, went down. They just don’t have Star Trek ability to beam a heart into a body yet, even two hundred years from now.”
“Bummer,” Carol said, laughing.
“It is, isn’t it,” Parks said, closing the door on the big empty room with a thud that echoed through the cavern.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
September 30th, 2019
Boise, Idaho
CAROL DID AS Director Parks had told her to do and spent six months basically learning everything she
could learn about the medical practices of 2219.
It felt like she was in medical school all over again. Only without all the boring lectures.
She found it interesting that doctors and nurses and the support staff in hospitals hadn’t really changed in their basic structure over the two hundred years. Surgeons were still surgeons, hospital regulators were still just that, and the nurses pulled the bulk of the work.
What had changed was the level of protections for everyone involved. Every inch of every floor of the hospital was being swept of all unwanted bacteria and germs. Hospitals had gone from being a dangerous place to being the cleanest and safest places on the planet.
Body scanning and body regulating equipment wasn’t even recognizable to Carol, but thankfully a researcher from the Institute was also on staff at the hospital and stayed right with Carol every moment.
And drugs were seldom used for pain or to treat most anything, actually. The understanding of the human body had come a long ways and blocking pain and fixing most any problem quickly and without pain had become common.
In fact, a broken leg could be mended and a person back walking within a few hours because a way had been discovered to fuse bones back together, basically accelerating growth.
A logical advancement as far as Carol was concerned.
Cancers were mostly curable, but most people still got them at one point or another in their lives. And the disease of aging had been slowed so that people could remain healthy and active far past one hundred years of age.
All the advancements were wonderful to see for Carol and to learn about, but she was also disappointed that medicine hadn’t advanced farther. She wasn’t sure what she had expected.
But, of course, a complete heart transplant was just being talked about in her time. Having it be just a regular surgery was a major advancement, of that there was no doubt.
And being able to grow replacement hearts and other organs from stem cells also was a clear advancement. And both of those things just might be able to save a young Megan’s life.
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