Tarc stepped over the bench to sit down, glancing at the man’s face. It’s Jacob! he realized with dismay.
“Here, hold this towel,” Eva said loudly putting Tarc’s hand on it. Then she leaned close to his ear and whispered, “The knife cut his spleen and he’s slowly bleeding to death! There’s nothing I can do, but maybe your ghost can put pressure on the bleeding area. You’ve got to try!”
A new wave of dizziness swept over Tarc, but fortunately it passed without his passing out again. Tentatively, he reached out with his ghost, moving into Jacob’s side and feeling the now familiar shape of a spleen. Blood puddled around it and Tarc felt the laceration from the knife where the blood was coming out. He could feel blood around Jacob’s intestines. In fact everywhere he explored in Jacob’s abdomen blood pooled on the downside. So much blood! Can Jacob still be alive?
Tarc’s ghost darted up to Jacob’s heart which still pumped; though with smaller, more rapid motions than most of the hearts Tarq had felt. It also seemed smaller than most hearts Tarc had felt with his ghost. It doesn’t have enough blood to fill it, he realized. It only took Tarc a few seconds to feel around inside his friend. He moved his ghost back down to Jacob’s spleen where he used his ghost to press back against the bleeding. To his surprise it only took a gentle push from his ghost to immediately stop the flow of blood out of the wound.
His mother hadn’t moved her head away from his after she’d first urgently whispered. When the bleeding ceased, he felt her sag with relief. “Oh, thank God,” she muttered, then put an arm around Tarc and hugged his shoulders.
Careful to maintain his gentle pressure on the bleeding area in the spleen, Tarc turned his mouth towards Eva’s ear. “But he’s already lost so much blood! Won’t that kill him anyway?”
Eva stood, taking Jacob’s wrist in her hand to feel his pulse and peering down at his face. She stepped across the bench, but then leaned back down to Tarc’s ear. “You may be right about how much blood he’s lost, but we’ve got to try. You stay here and hold back the bleeding, I’m gonna get my stuff for an IV.”
Ayevee? Tarc wondered what she meant by that, but she was gone. He turned his concentration back to his ghost. He kept worrying that he might let the bleeding start up again if he thought about something else, but so far that didn’t seem to have happened. How long will I have to hold this pressure for the bleeding to stop for good? he wondered, looking up at the men crowded around the table.
One of the gawkers turned to the man next to him and said, “No way this Calder kid’s gonna make it. ‘Stabbed in the gut’ is a death sentence.”
For a moment Tarc felt confusion. He hadn’t felt any injuries to Jacob’s stomach or intestines and wondered what the man meant. Then he realized the man simply meant a wound anywhere in the abdomen. There was no way the man would know whether it had injured the actual “gut” or not.
“Where’s Eva gone off to?” another of the men asked of no one in particular.
To Tarc’s dismay another of the men answered him, “Probably gone back to her cooking. She knows she would be wasting her time trying to take care of this kid after a gut wound. She’s only left her boy here with him to make a pretense…”
Tarc had been about to respond hotly in his mother’s defense, but she had just bustled back up to the table on the other side. Shoving men out of the way she said, “Let me get to his arm! You men back up and give us room to work.” She pointed to the man at the foot of the table and said imperiously, “You there, lift Jacob’s legs up in the air; he needs the blood from his legs up at his heart.”
Startled, the man grabbed Jacob’s ankles and lifted them as he’d been told.
Eva handed another of the men a large glass bottle full of clear liquid that had a coiled glass tube coming off the bottom of it. She admonished the man, “Hold this bottle like your life depends on it. Glasswork like this is more precious than gold. It would be horrible if it fell and broke.”
The bottle hung from a wire shaped like the handle on a bucket. The coil of glass tubing had some cotton wrapped around its tip. Jacob stared, the glass jar was absolutely clear and perfectly symmetrical. It had to be from the old days, no wonder Eva said it was precious. The tubing also had that smooth perfection that no one could create anymore.
Eva pushed the bench back and sat down by Jacob’s right arm where it dangled off the table. She put a soft cotton cord around Jacob’s arm, threw a single knot in it, and drafted another of the onlookers. “Mr. Morris, hold this knot snug. Just as tight as I have it now, not more and not less.” When Morris had done so, she bent over Jacob’s elbow and wiped at it with a wet cotton ball. She slapped the front of Jacob’s elbow a few times and then wiped it again. She reached up and pulled the cotton off the tip of the glass tubing, exposing a wicked looking needle. Eva looked up at the man next to the one holding the bottle and said, “Uncork the bottle.
The man stared at Eva for a moment, but then his eyes went to a very large stopper which he pulled out of the top of the bottle. Fluid immediately began moving down the coil of glass tubing and a few seconds later began dripping out the tip of the needle. Eva told the man to put the cork back in the bottle, then told him to move with her as she worked with the needle. The coiled glass tubing had some flexibility to it, allowing her to move the needle somewhat independently of the bottle. She brought the needle up to the front of Jacob’s elbow, then used her left hand to wipe one more time with the wet cotton ball.”
To Tarc’s astonishment, Eva stabbed the big needle into the front of Jacob’s elbow. Blood ran out of Jacob’s elbow and a tiny ways into the glass tubing. Once again Tarc felt his head go fuzzy, but a spike of panic over the possibility that Jacob would start bleeding again kept him from passing out.
Eva said, “Mr. Morris loosen that tie.” Then she looked up at the man with the bottle and said, “Pull the cork out again.” As soon as he did, the blood in the glass tubing immediately disappeared back into Jacob’s arm. A minute or so later it was obvious that the level of fluid in the bottle was dropping.
The fluid must be running into Jacob’s vein, Tarc thought. For a moment, he wondered how she had known where to find the vein. Then he remembered that, of course, she could use her ghost to sense exactly where the vein was and tell when the needle had entered it. He brought his thoughts back to Jacob’s spleen; relieved to see that, despite his distraction, he had kept enough pressure on to hold back the bleeding.
After five minutes or so Tarc looked up and saw that the bottle of fluid was about three quarters empty. To his astonishment Daussie was climbing onto a stool beside the man holding the bottle. She had another bottle in her left hand. She uncapped her bottle and began pouring fluid into the hole where the stopper had been on the first one. Soon the bottle draining into Jacob’s arm was nearly full again.
When the first bottle had drained towards empty again, Daussie was there with another one to fill it back up.
Tarc wondered just how much of this fluid could actually go into Jacob’s arm. He also wondered where all these glass bottles had been kept and what was in them. And why Daussie knew about them when he didn’t? He didn’t ask those questions though, instead he said, “Mom, Jacob is getting cold. Should we do something to warm him?”
Eva’s eyes flashed to Tarc from where she sat holding the needle in Jacob’s vein. She looked at Jacob for a moment; then said, “You’re right.” She turned and called out, “Daum, get some blankets.” She turned to one of the onlookers who was a regular at the tavern, “Gary, get a bunch of the warming stones from the big fireplace, we’ll stack them around Jacob under the blankets.” She looked around at the rest of the men, “Do any of you know if the deputies told the Calders that their son has been injured?”
The men looked at one another hesitantly; then one said, “Uh, I don’t know. The deputies have been pretty busy. The man that did this… he took off running for the gate as soon as he done it. I uh, heard that he killed Deputy Miller getting out of
the gate. There was men chasin’ him and all, and Deputy Miller tried to stop him.”
Eva closed her eyes a moment, a sadly grim look on her face. When she opened them she focused on the man who’d given her the news. “That’s a terrible thing, but someone needs to tell the boy’s folks.” She gave him a little nod, “You go do that.”
The man’s eyes widened, “Me! Why me? I don’t know them folk. I wouldn’t know what to say!”
Tarc didn’t know the man, but thought he was poorly spoken and would make an unsuitable carrier of distressing news to Jacob’s parents. Apparently Eva felt the same, because she didn’t try to badger the man into going. Instead she turned to Mr. Morris, “James, will you go? I believe you know the Calders.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said, “though it’s surely a job I’d rather not have to do.”
“None of us want that job James,” she said gravely, “but we will all thank you for doing it.”
Time passed.
Tarc had developed quite a headache. It felt more like his head was really tired than the stabbing kind of pain he’d had from headaches in the past. But it did hurt, so he guessed that it qualified as a “headache.”
Tarc estimated that Eva and Daussie poured 4 or 5 liters of fluid into Jacob’s arm. Jacob continued to lie unconscious, pale as snow. His heartbeat had slowed a little and something lumpy and thick had formed in the laceration of his spleen. Tarc hoped it was something like a scab or clot. He was beginning to wonder whether he might be able to stop holding the blood back, but worried that if he stopped holding pressure and blood started to flow out, it might wash away any clot that had formed. He didn’t want to have to start all over. At present, he was resting his head on the table next to Jacob, one hand on the towel covering Jacob’s wound, the other rubbing his skull.
A woman’s shriek announced the arrival of Jacob’s parents. Tarc lifted his head and used the hand that had been rubbing his skull to rub at his eyes. Tarc hadn’t seen Jacob’s mother for many years, but she looked enough like Jacob that there was no doubt who she was. She rushed to the head of the table where Jacob’s face was visible. The rest of Jacob was covered in blankets; even his head had a towel around it.
Before Mrs. Calder could bend to embrace her son, her eye caught on the needle Eva still held in his elbow. “What are you doing?!”
“We’ve been giving him fluids in his vein. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Fluids in his vein? What kind of fluid?”
“Saltwater. We’ve cooked it in our pressure cooker so it won’t have any germs.”
Tarc had been wondering whether there might be germs in the fluid. His mother was a real stickler about germs, so he should have known she would have done something to keep them out of her patient.
A panicked look on her face, Jacob’s mother said, “Is that why he’s so white? Because you’ve replaced his blood with saltwater?” Her eyes darted back and forth, “Who said you could do that?!”
Jacob’s father had come in just behind her. Now he placed his hands on his wife’s shoulders, “Linda, everyone says Eva Hyllis is the best healer. Not just in this town, but for many towns around. If she thinks Jacob needs saltwater in his vein, he probably does.”
“Nooooo!” Jacob’s mother moaned piteously. “I don’t think it’s right. Take it out, now!”
Eva narrowed her eyes, but pulled the needle out of Jacob’s vein without protest, putting her wet cotton ball over it and holding it with a thumb. Even across the table Tarc had gotten a whiff and thought the cloth was soaked in some of the moonshine his father distilled from beer runs that didn’t turn out so well. Tarc noticed that almost all of the saline in the bottle had run in anyway. Daussie gingerly took the bottle from the man who’d been holding it and carried it into the kitchen.
Linda Calder looked down at her pale, pale son, then back up at Eva. “You need to take the saltwater back out of him too! He’s too white. I don’t know if saltwater might be good for some people, but you’ve given Jacob too much!”
Calmly, Eva said, “He needed every bit of what we’ve given him and perhaps more. He’s white because he lost so much blood, not because we gave him saline. His heart needs something to pump around his veins. In the old days they would have given him blood from someone else, but we can’t do that.”
“Give him my blood! Take out the saltwater, and give him my blood.” Linda said in a tone somewhere between a piteous moan and a frenzied fury.
Eva studied her a moment, then said, “Linda, we can’t take the saltwater out without taking his blood out too, which would be a horrible mistake. We also can’t give him someone else’s blood without being able to test it to see if they have the same type of blood that he does. If we give him the wrong type blood it will kill him.”
“I’m his mother! We must have the same type of blood!”
“Not necessarily. He might have… inherited a different blood type from his father.”
Tarc’s eyes darted back and forth from the one woman to the other. He wondered how his mother could possibly know all this stuff. Had her mother taught it to her? Or was it all in the books Tarc hadn’t read yet? For a moment he was struck by the fact that he would have thought that knowing something about giving one person’s blood to another person was useless information. But it would appear that he should at least know that it could be very dangerous so he wouldn’t be tempted to do it.
Linda Calder had been standing there looking desperate. She was practically panting, now she rubbed at her mouth. “No! I’m sure our blood’s the same! Give him some of mine!”
To Tarc’s surprise, Eva got up and walked around the table to Jacob’s mother. Putting an arm around her, she said calmly, “Linda, take it easy. Breathe slower. You’re hyperventilating and you’re going to pass out.”
At that moment Linda’s eyes rolled back, she twitched a few times and started to drop to the floor. Since Eva already had an arm around her, she was able to ease her gently to the floor. She looked up at Jacob’s father saying, “She’ll be okay, she just got too excited.” Eva turned and said, “Daussie, get a bag from the kitchen.”
Wide-eyed, Daussie said, “What kind of bag Mama?”
“It doesn’t matter much; one of the cloth bags we use for groceries will be fine.”
Eva stood and came around to Tarc’s side of the table, leaning over Jacob and looking down at him. Tarc knew she would be sending her ghost through his friend to see what was happening. Gently, she took Tarc’s hand and lifted it with the towel off the wound on the left side of Jacob’s upper abdomen. Tarc could see that the blood in the wound had clotted. Eva leaned down next to his ear and whispered, “You look really tired?”
Tarc nodded, “It’s hard, pushing for a long time.”
Eva sighed, “I’m sure it is,” she said right in his ear. “It’s hard enough just feeling around with my ghost for a long time. It must be worse when you’re actually pushing something. I think the clot will probably hold now, why don’t you ease off the pressure while we’re both keeping an eye on it?”
Tarc slowly and gently released the pressure, on tenterhooks through the whole process for fear that the blood would start pouring out again. However, when he’d completely relaxed the pressure, the clot held.
“You’ve let all the pressure off?”
Tarc nodded.
“Okay, go get yourself some beer and pork. Let your talent rest for a little bit. I’ll stay here and watch Jacob to make sure he doesn’t start bleeding again.”
“I can watch him. That isn’t hard. You’ve got to be really tired too, with all you’ve been doing.”
“I haven’t been using my talent much. I’d rather have you rested in case the bleeding does start. Go.” She made a shooing motion with the fingers of her left hand.
Daussie said, “What do I do with the bag Mama?”
Eva looked over at Jacob’s mother. She had awakened and was struggling back to a sitting position. Eva indicated the woman wit
h a jerk of the head, “Sit with Ms. Calder. If she starts breathing hard again, hold the bag loosely over her face. It’ll keep her from passing out.”
Tarc looked back and forth from his mother to Ms. Calder a couple of times, wondering why a bag over the face would keep the woman from passing out. He got up and went into the kitchen, thinking there was far too much he needed to learn. He’d never even heard of hyperventilation before. To Tarc’s astonishment, he found Daum in there turning the meat on the grill. Loaves of bread sat on the counter behind him. The kitchen smelled great! “Dad! You can cook?” Tarc said in astonishment.
His father winked at him. “Your old man can do a lot of things you’d be surprised to learn about.” He nodded at a big bowl of grilled chicken. “I’ll bet you’re hungry, have some chicken.”
“Mom said I can have a beer too,” Tarc said loading a couple of drumsticks, a slice of bread and an apple onto a plate. He suddenly felt ravenous.
“Good idea,” his dad’s eyes twinkled at him. “Sell some beers to the gawkers while you’re out there.”
Out front, Tarc ducked behind the bar and ate his lunch while pouring beers for the men. When he held his hand out for payment to the first man who took a beer, the man protested. “Don’t I get a free beer for carryin’ the boy in here?”
Controlling his temper, Tarc said mildly, “An’ who do you think’s buyin’ you a beer? Do you think it’s us, who had our business disrupted trying to take care of the young man? We were thinking you brought him in out of the goodness of your heart and were buying a beer to help us make up for our lost expenses taking care of him.”
The man had the decency to look a little embarrassed and dug in his pocket for coin. Tarc glanced over at his mother who still had a hand on Jacob’s stomach. She was talking to Jacob’s mother who appeared much calmer now. He put his drumstick in his mouth as he carried two more beers over to the line of waiting men.
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