“That’s just mean. It’s been at least an hour since I did that,” he said indignantly.
“Let’s go tame this bronco, cowboy.”
When they got up on deck, Mac tied herself off on one of the many cleats. She assumed they were there for the sails, and served an important function, but she had no idea what that might be. Nor did she have a clue what sort of knot she should be tying. She’d never been a Boy Scout. So she created something like a noose, tightening it once the loop was around the cleat. If it was good enough for hanging people, she figured it would keep her on the damn boat, or at least she wouldn’t float away from it if she fell over.
She helped Neil tie off the sails, and retie the cover on the dinghy so their stuff wouldn’t go flying everywhere. There was no rain yet, but she didn’t think they’d have long to wait for that. The sky was lighting up, with the thunder rumbling almost ten seconds after. If the lightning and thunder got too close together, they were going to have to try to head closer to shore. She didn’t relish the idea of being hit by it, and had no idea if there was any sort of system on the boat for protection from lightning, or if that were even possible on a boat. She hadn’t seen anything about grounding or lightning rods in the books she’d read.
They were heading back toward the cabin entry door on opposite sides of the deck, when a large wave hit the side of the boat, knocking them both off their feet and half on top of the area in front of the cabin that only jutted partway out of the deck they had been walking on. Mac felt her forehead crack against the mast, and then she was rolling helplessly toward the cable-like railing. Her hip ground into a support, and she continued to roll until her stomach was pressed against the same support, her head and arms thrust, flailing, over the water between different cables, while the cables dug into her collarbone on both sides.
All the breath had been knocked out of her. She tried to inhale, but couldn’t. Her diaphragm had been sent into a spasm, and there was nothing she could do but wait for it to stop. To keep herself from rolling anymore, and accumulating further damage to her various body parts, she brought her hands back to grab the cables. Then she waited. There was nothing she could do until she was able to breathe again.
“Mac! Honey! Please tell me you’re okay. I can’t see you,” Neil called out, and even though she knew he was terrified there was no way for her to allay his fear. Speaking required air. Her vision was starting to darken at the edges, too, and she wondered vaguely just how much damage had been done by the mast when she’d slammed into it. Her grip slackened without her realizing it, and the next roll of the boat had her tumbling toward the back of the boat.
It wasn’t until her hair caught on something that her momentum was abruptly halted. It kept her from falling down to the lower level, and possibly off the back of the boat, but the pain as her scalp tore made her wish she’d just gone over. She couldn’t even scream from it, because she still couldn’t breathe. The hot blood on the back of her neck had her very worried.
Mac reached back to try to free her hair from whatever had caught it, but she wasn’t able to release it by the time the boat pitched once again. She nearly blacked out from the agony from the additional tearing of her scalp. Her hand floundered at her hip for a moment before she was able to bring her knife up to slice her hair off at the back of her neck. Still gripping her knife, Mac plunged it into the fibreglass of the deck and held on.
“Honey, please! Will you answer me?” Neil sounded frantic, and despite the pain her breath was starting to come back to her, so she let out a sound that was a cross between a moan and whimper. It wasn’t until she felt his hand on her shoulder that she was even sure it had come out loud enough for him to hear.
“Oh, fuck, there’s blood everywhere! What happened? Can you tell me?”
Mac wished she could have shaken her head to let him know she really didn’t have it in her to explain anything at the moment, but there was no way she was moving her head if she didn’t have to.
“Hit my head. Got scalped.” It was all she could get out, since she was still gasping for air. His understanding, or lack thereof, was no longer of any concern to her, however. Reddish-black flooded in from the edges of her vision once again, but this time it continued its trek across her eyes until not even a pinprick of light could be seen.
“Open your eyes, honey. Come on now. You have to look at me. I need to know you’re alright.”
The voice was familiar, but it annoyed her. She didn’t want to be in this place right now. It hurt too much. She wanted to let go for a while, maybe catch her breath, before she went to the trouble of opening her eyes. Even hearing the voice was painful.
“If you don’t come around soon, I’m turning the boat around and heading back to the farm. I don’t know how else to help you,” the voice said, and it was telling her something she didn’t want to hear, but she had no idea why that should be the case. Why wouldn’t she want to go to a farm? Still, it felt important enough that she forced herself to speak.
“Can’t,” she rasped.
“What do you mean? Do you mean you can’t open your eyes, or we can’t go back to the farm?”
“Both. Don’t know why. Just can’t.” Those few words cost her all her strength, and she began to fade again.
“Oh, Jesus,” said the voice, as she let herself slip away again.
“Tell me what the hell to do, Annette! I have no experience with this kind of thing,” she heard the voice say. A man, she realized. Someone she knew, but for some reason she couldn’t remember his name, or how she knew him. And it hurt so much to try to remember.
“There’s not much I can tell you from here, other than make suggestions, because I can’t even look at her wounds to see what kind of injuries she might have. Where, exactly, is the bruise, Neil?” A female voice this time, and crackly, which had her picturing someone talking into a microphone. A radio? Sure hope they don’t put on any music, she thought. She was pretty sure music would hurt her. A lot.
“It’s right in the middle of her forehead, and I didn’t see any others on her scalp. Hard to tell with all the blood still matted in her hair, though. What’s left of it,” he muttered.
“Did you have to cut it off when you used the Superglue to close her scalp?”
“No. She’d already cut it off to free herself when I got to her, and by that point she was out of it. Doesn’t matter anyway. I just need to know how to take care of her. It’s been hours, and she’s only said a handful of words. Words that told me she had no idea what the hell was going on. Please, just tell me what I have to do to keep her alive,” he begged.
“You’re already doing it, Neil. There’s nothing else to be done. Her pupils are reactive, so if she has cerebral edema it hasn’t reached a critical stage yet. Hopefully it’s only the frontal lobe that sustained the injury, and her brain didn’t hit the back of the cranium as well. And hopefully there’s no internal shearing of the vessels. That’s all I can give you at the moment. Hope. It may be a severe concussion, and it may be a subdural hematoma. Without doing an MRI, I have no way of knowing, much less diagnosing an injury I haven’t actually seen.
“I would tell you to come straight back, but she shouldn’t be moved. And there isn’t much I could do for her anyway. Not without resorting to semi-medieval surgical procedures, because I don’t have the equipment I’d need to do things right. I don’t have any of the drugs that might help. There are a lot of differences between species, and the drugs that work for a goat aren’t necessarily compatible with human anatomy.”
“Just tell me she’s going to be okay, Annette. Give me something,” he pleaded.
“Mac is a fighter, and that’s about all I can really say. If I said anything else you wouldn’t believe me anyway. Keep checking for pupillary response with your flashlight. So long as her pupils continue to contract in the light, her odds are good. I’ll stay here at the house in case anything changes.”
“Mom?” At the sound of the new voice, she smiled. She did know her. She could picture her face even, though she didn’t remember any details.
“That’s it, Cam. Keep talking. She just smiled,” he said, and she could hear happiness in his voice, but by then she was too tired again. She just needed to rest for a bit.
A bright light was shining in her eye. Just one eye, and it was really pissing her off. She raised her hand to bat at it.
“Would you stop that? Christ! I’m trying to sleep here,” she snarled.
“Mac? Honey? Is that you?”
“Who the fuck do you think it is?”
“I wasn’t sure for a while there. Then again, you didn’t seem to know either. I couldn’t even get you to tell me your name,” he said. “You didn’t know mine either, but I figured not knowing your own was a little worse, so I tried not to be too insulted.”
“Look, cowboy, my head is pounding, and I feel like I’m going to throw up. At the same time I feel like my stomach is gnawing a hole in my backbone. I’m not in the mood for lame jokes.” She cracked open her eyelid again to take in the bright light shining through the curtains over the small windows.
“What time is it? It looks like it’s afternoon out there. Why the hell isn’t the boat moving?” Her demanding, bossy tone had him chuckling.
“Honey, this boat hasn’t moved in three days, aside from being thrown around by that storm for a few hours. I figured I should make sure you were going to live before we got back on our way. I’m glad to see you’re back to your usual self, though.”
“Very funny. If you’re not planning on doing anything useful, like getting this boat moving, could you get out of my way so I can get some fucking coffee? I’m in desperate need of caffeine right now.”
“I’m not sure if you should be having coffee, honey,” he began, but she interrupted him.
“Caffeine works on migraines for scientific reasons I’m not inclined to explain at the moment, so I’m going to have some coffee, even if I have to go through you in the most violent manner possible in order to get it! Capisce?”
“Stay there,” Neil said with a sigh. “I’ll get it. You’re definitely not supposed to be walking around a rocking boat, chancing another head injury.”
Mac pondered his words. She didn’t like the sound of that, and began to wonder how many brain cells she might have killed. After just a few seconds, though, thinking became an exercise in agony, so she allowed herself to drift for a while. It wasn’t long before she began to smell the brewing coffee, and a sudden flood of gratitude welled up in her. Along with a helping of shame for being so mean. Granted, he was well aware she hated being woken up, and he didn’t seem to be taking offence, so she wasn’t going to worry about it too much.
The additional smell of toast had her mouth watering. She smiled wryly. It didn’t smell like it was burning, so she assumed there was no seizure coming on. Not that she had ever had one, but she’d known people who were epileptic. Of course, her one friend from years ago, who had grand mal seizures, never remember smelling a damn thing, so apparently it wasn’t an exact science.
“Drink this first, honey,” he ordered, as he walked through the curtain that gave the bedroom area some privacy.
“Wait a minute. What happened to the toast? I know you made some,” she whined.
“I did, yes. That was for me. This is some broth I found in the cupboard. You haven’t eaten in a few days, and at the very least you have a severe concussion. You’re not getting anything but clear liquids for a little bit. I have to make sure you can keep it down before you try solids.”
“I baked that bread myself, damn it. I should at least be allowed to eat it,” she grumped at him. Still, she took the broth and drank it. By the time she was finished, she felt full enough that she no longer cared about toast. Coffee was a different story. As she handed back the empty mug from the broth, she opened her mouth to ask for her coffee, but he held up a hand.
“Don’t worry, I’m getting it. It’ll be finished brewing by now. I’ll get us both a cup.”
She felt well enough by then that she started to think about what she remembered from the last few days. When she realized Cam knew about her injury, it got her dander back up.
“Did I hear Cam on that radio over the last few days?” Raising her voice so he could hear her turned out to be a pretty stupid move on her part. She groaned at the instant punishment she received for her actions, and pressed both her hands into the sides of her head to try and relieve the pain. It pulled on her scalp at the back of her head, though, and her breath hissed through her teeth. Mac dropped her hands back on the bed.
“Yes, you did,” he replied, though he’d waited to answer her until he was handing her a fresh mug. Probably thought she’d be less pissed off at him if she had her coffee, she decided cynically, but then he’d be right.
“Why did you have to worry her like that?”
“Are you kidding me? I needed to talk to Annette. I thought you were dying. I couldn’t ask for Annette without explaining the situation. You raised her. You tell me what she’s like for that.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Fuck. But I’m going to radio her now so she knows you’re okay. Alright? It wouldn’t surprise me if this eases her mind about the rest of the trip, though. Once something bad happens, people tend to think the worst is over and they relax a bit. It’s not logical, but it’s human nature.”
“I sure hope so, because she’s already going to be pissed at me for this.”
“Oh yeah,” he said with a smirk.
“Gee, thanks for the reassurance. Before you get Cam on the radio, though, I need to go to the bathroom. I’m not even going to ask what happened with respect to that sort of thing for the last few days. I don’t want to know the gory details,” she said, with an embarrassed hunch of her shoulders. Neil just laughed.
“You might want to avoid looking in the mirror for a couple of days, honey. I set your nose to the best of my ability while you were out, but there’s a lot of bruising and still some swelling just from that. Never mind the giant knot on your forehead, or the tear in your scalp at the back of your head.”
“If my looks were the least bit important to me, cowboy, I’d have spent my life in total misery,” she replied in a snarky tone. “Guess I’ll just have to muddle along without what little I normally have for the time being. Seeing as it’s so vital out here in the middle of nowhere with most of the world already dead.”
“I’m just trying to prepare you for the stranger you’re going to see looking back at you,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “Sheesh.”
“I guess it’s a good thing I lopped off most of my hair,” she said with a groan, as she dragged herself out of the bed.
“Why’s that?”
“Because my head already feels like it weighs a hundred pounds without it. God. We really should have gone with a motorboat instead. I could have done without an intimate acquaintance with the mast. ‘Nobody wins with a head butt,’” she quoted.
“Is that what cracked your hard head? I was wondering. Figured it would take a large chunk of diamond to do that to you.”
“Nice to see your sense of humour hasn’t suffered from my head injury,” Mac said grouchily. “Course, it’s hard to take away something from nothing.” Then she stuck her tongue out at him.
“You’ve aged a bit, I see,” he teased.
“At least a whole year. I might actually act like a twelve-year-old at some point. Miracles do happen,” she returned as she stepped through the bathroom door.
Her bladder was speaking rather urgently to her, so she decided to satisfy her curiosity about her wounds after she was done. The shock that dropped her jaw when she finally looked, however, in no way lessened the horror of her face.
“Well, fuck me sideways with a
tuna fish!” A muffled chuckle told her Neil had been listening for her reaction. She washed her hands, but didn’t even attempt to set her hair and face to rights. She needed a proper shower for the blood in her hair, and she wasn’t up for that just yet. A quick sniff at her armpits suggested it was certainly time for one otherwise, but she was already exhausted just from the quick trip to the bathroom.
“I heard Annette saying you used Superglue on my head,” she said as she sidled past him in the very short hallway.
“Yeah. I wasn’t into sports in a big way or anything, though I did a short football stint in high school just for the hell of it. We used Superglue for injuries a fair bit, just to keep ourselves in the game. It was either that or do the stitching myself, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
“No, that’s fine. I was just surprised you’d think of it. Not saying you’re dumb. Most people wouldn’t. Well, if I had to tear my scalp, at least it’s in a place where the scar won’t be visible to scare small children. I have better ways of doing that,” she said.
“Scaring small children?”
“Yeah. Much more fun ways. Sadly there are so few children left to terrorize anymore, and Chuck won’t let me at his,” she said, pretending disappointment.
“Well, you can always hope Lisa will be more cooperative,” he said with a bit of a laugh.
“Doubt it. For some reason parents are protective of their young. And speaking of parents and their young, I guess I’d better get this conversation over with. Besides, I’d like to know what’s been going on at the farm.”
“I would, too,” Neil replied.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’ve been a little panicked about other things for the last three days, so as long as Billy and Cam were talking to me, and nobody had died, I wasn’t going to worry about it. Now we can find out together.”
“Oh, okay. I thought maybe you thought something was wrong, and that they weren’t telling you about it.”
Tipping Point (Book 2): Ground Zero Page 13