“No!” Del exclaimed, “Please. Please. Please. Please, Mom. Please? I’ve never seen the Show.”
Alecia just rolled her eyes and smiled.
Del grinned. “Thanks, Mom. I’ll be more careful, I promise.”
“You better. Now, where was that room?”
It took some time for them to make it up two floors to the room. Del was more limber than either of his parents and could climb between the floors more easily. By the time they reached it, the sun had nearly set. He threw open the door with a flourish.
Sherman went straight for the box on the table and opened it. “Full! Nice.”
Alecia saw the broken glass and the rope hanging down from above. “You rappelled down the outside? Nicely done.”
Del grinned. “I did just like you taught me, Mom.”
Sherman sniffed at some of the medicines and frowned. “I don’t smell anything. Should smell something, right?”
Alecia checked the same tubes. “Yeah, must have dried out. Worth trading, at least.”
She looked over at Del and said, “Why didn’t you use one of the band-aids from this emergency kit?”
He scratched his neck. “I didn’t want to open the packet. Thought they might not want to trade for it if it was open.”
“Oh, honey, come here,” she said, taking Del in her arms. “You’re more important than whatever we can get for it.”
The sun set behind the mountains and the last light faded from the room. The three of them found comfortable places to curl up and went to sleep.
Break Room, Tenth Floor, Early Morning
Del tossed and turned in his sleep, and sweat ran down his neck. He rolled away from his parents, who were huddling together for warmth. He scratched his leg as he woke up. The sun wasn’t up yet, but the moon was out, so he could see enough of the room to move around without running into anything.
He put a chunk of rubble in the doorway as he left the room so it wouldn’t lock him out and started up to the next floor. His hair was soaked with sweat, and he couldn’t stop scratching at his leg.
Climbing up to the next floor was harder than he remembered, but he made it. He bundled up the rope and tied it around his waist, then sat down against the wall. His breathing was fast for such a minor effort.
The wind blowing across his skin felt nice, so he closed his eyes to rest.
The next thing he was aware of was his mom shaking him awake. The sun still wasn’t up, and she had a blanket wrapped around her. “It’s freezing up here, Del! What are you doing? Come back down to the room.”
He smiled. “I’m fine, Mom.” Still covered in sweat, he shivered.
“You’re not. Come down, now. I’m not playing around.”
“Okay.” He got to his feet to follow her downstairs.
She climbed down first, lowering herself through a hole and onto the first stair that was still present. He followed a few moments later, but as he let go of the ledge he wobbled. His vision blurred, and it felt like the building was swaying. He grabbed the railing for support.
His mom turned back from the doorway. “Del?”
“I’m fine, Mom. Just gotta pee.”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, hurry up. I don’t want you getting sick. It’s really cold.”
She went back to the break room. Del held the rail until the world stopped spinning and went to find an out-of-the-way corner. In the moonlight it was harder to see any holes in the floor, so he walked slowly, keeping a hand on the wall as much for balance as to guide him.
He found a small closet. It had long ago been ransacked, but it still had a drain in the floor. He dropped to all fours and threw up on the drain. Kneeling over it, sweat running down his face, he swayed and threw up again.
He lost track of how long he was there, or how many times he threw up. His dad pushed the door open and helped him sit. Sherman said, “You’re burning up!” when he touched Del’s arm.
He helped Del out of the closet and over into the light. The sun was rising as he leaned Del against the wall and made him sit back down. “Honey! There’s something wrong with Del.”
Alecia came out of the room and eyed Del. Kneeling in front of him, she pulled the leg of his pants up. Del reflexively scratched the skin around the bandage.
When she removed the bandage, his leg had red spots radiating out from the wound. His skin was sweaty, but he was shivering, and when Alecia touched his leg to clean the blood off, she gasped, “We need to get help. Your leg should not be that hot. Sherman, get that medical kit.”
He grabbed the kit from the break room and handed it to her. Del was happy for the breeze through the open window.
Alecia opened one of the packages of antiseptic wipes. It was completely dry, she tossed it aside and tried another. It wasn’t until the last package that she found anything worth using. She wiped down his cut as best as she could. Del didn’t even wince when she cleaned the wound, just stared into the distance listlessly.
She put a pad on the wound in his leg and wrapped it with gauze. “Let’s go. Help me carry him.”
His parents each took one of Del’s arms, and they got him to his feet. The world spun around him as he stood, so he leaned on them heavily.
The three of them climbed down several flights of stairs before coming to a floor that didn’t have any stairs. Sherman hopped down to the lower floor, and Alecia used the rope to lower Del to him. They had to do that twice more to make it to the ground floor and out of the building.
In the Wasteland, The Medicine Show
The three of them worked their way out of the ruined section of the city and onto the plains. Even from the edge of the city, they could see there was a line of people waiting to get into the show. Above the booth at the entrance hung a large, colorful sign that read, Magnificent Maxwell’s Traveling Medicine Show.
A man stood on a stage near the entrance shouting, “Come see the most magnificent show of your life! Come one, come all! See sights that will amaze you! We have jugglers, horse tricks, a doctor to cure what ails you, and strange creatures not seen in these parts for years. Our traders have curiosities lost to time, and a wild man will demonstrate his control over vicious animals. Step right up and experience Magnificent Maxwell’s Travelling Medicine Show!”
Alecia was amazed at the speed of his patter. As they carried Del toward the line, she asked, “Did he even stop to breathe?”
Sherman chuckled, “Didn’t sound like it.”
They stumbled when Del got dizzy and said, “Can I sit down?”
Alecia said, “I’ll stay in line. Take him over there to sit down,” pointing to the side of a trailer out of the crowd.
Sherman did just that, and Del slumped down next to the trailer. His dad put a hand on Del’s head. “I can’t tell if you’re getting hotter.”
Del smiled up at his dad. “We just walked a mile, Dad.”
Nervously Sherman chuckled. “Yeah. Yeah, we did. I’m sure that’s it.”
Del leaned back. From here he could peek through a crack between the trailer and the metal sheet covering the gap between it and the next trailer. He scratched his arm.
Through the gap, he could barely make out two girls a little older than him standing on the backs of horses. Each straddled two horses as they ran in a large arc, then headed straight toward each other. One of the girls dropped into a split, pushing her horses farther apart, and the other jumped up over her. Her horses ran under the one doing splits, and she landed on them again.
The first girl drew her horses back in and stood, and the crowd cheered. Del smiled. The horses continued to run circles around the clearing, and both girls jumped onto one horse.
Arms locked together, they started flipping from the back of one horse to the next, each swinging the other in wide arcs, as the horses ran. One of the girls grabbed the other by both arms and spun, throwing her partner high in the air.
The entire crowd gasped as she flew. She landed on the back of a horse at a run, hopping to t
he next horse in line and diving into a flip that put her back on the same horse as her partner.
As he watched, Del’s vision blurred. The edges of his sight got dark and pulled in. Within a few moments, he could only see right in front of him. His head slumped to his chest.
Sherman, looking toward the line, didn’t notice anything until he heard Del slide down the metal sheeting to the ground. He knelt next to his son and lifted his head, whose eyes fluttered but didn’t open.
The red spots had spread up Del’s body to his neck. He picked Del up, grunting under the weight, and went to the entrance.
A guard held up a hand as he approached and said, “Tickets please.”
Sherman said, “I don’t have any.” He shifted Del’s weight, “Please, I just need to see the doctor. It’s my son. I don’t know what’s wrong.”
The guard looked at Del and glanced over his shoulder. At the edge of the crowd, the man who had been shouting about the show was watching them. The guard said, “Look, I’m sorry. I can’t. I’ll get fired, and this is the only job I’ve had in a couple months.”
Sherman grunted. Del started to slip from his hands, and he shifted him back up against his shoulder. He said, “You’re going to let my son die over a job?”
The guard looked at the barker again. At that moment the person in the front of the line approached Alecia and held out three tickets, saying, “Go.”
She thanked him and grabbed the tickets, running up to the entrance. She told the guard, “I’ve got the tickets!”
The guard said, “Oh, thank god. Please, go right in. The doctor’s trailer is in the back on the left.” He took the tickets and opened the gate.
Sherman lowered Del’s legs to the ground, Alecia put his other arm around her neck, and they headed into the show.
Inside the gate, everything was much louder. A booth just inside offered a chance to throw a knife at a target on a spinning wooden board for “just one ticket.” Several people gathered around a table where they were throwing dice at squares, and at another table, someone was moving overturned cups around and asking a local to guess which one had a marble under it.
The three of them ignored all that and headed toward the back of the show. Everywhere they looked someone was trying to get attention. The crowds of locals made it difficult to move, but they were finally able to find the trailer they were looking for.
Tucked away at the back of the show grounds was a trailer with a large metal arm sticking out of the top. The end of the arm had a metal pole sticking into the ground and an ox tied to the pole. On the side of the trailer were painted the words, Dr. Ivo’s Tinctures, Treatments, and Cures.
Alecia pulled on the handle to the trailer, but it was locked. She banged on it and called out, “Doctor Ivo! We need your help.”
There was no answer. Sherman leaned Del against the trailer while Alecia checked around the side. That side was closed too. She banged on it and called some more.
A young man in a chair near the ox said, “Doc went to get some food. Said he’d be back in an hour.”
“Where?” she demanded.
He pointed toward the busiest part of the show.
To Sherman, she said, “Stay here. I’ll find him.” She jogged off.
Although she wanted to run, there were too many people. She pushed her way through the crowds and eventually found a somewhat clear spot with rows of tables. Fifty or sixty people sat at the tables eating all manner of food, which was being sold at the edge of the area. She stood on the bench at one of the tables and looked around, but she didn’t see anyone who looked like her idea of a doctor.
A dozen feet away, a person eating the fried leg of some animal lifted his head and sniffed. His head snapped toward her, and he dropped his food and came over to her. He asked, “Are you okay?”
She said, “No. My son is dying, and I can’t find the doctor.”
“I’m Doctor Ivo Wahner,” he said, sniffing again. “Where is your son?”
“He’s back at your trailer. We carried him from the city. Please, I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
He held out a hand, which she took as she hopped down from the bench. They pushed their way through the crowd to get back to the doctor’s trailer.
Just before they got there, the wind shifted and blew toward them from that direction. Dr. Ivo jerked his head back and ran to the trailer, leaving Alecia behind.
When he got there, he skidded to a stop next to Del and checked him. Hand to the neck, he counted to himself as he looked the boy’s body over, pulling aside the sticky and still bloody pant leg. The red spots on Del’s leg had merged into one giant red blotch and most of the rest of his body, including his face, was covered in spots.
He said, “His pulse is fast, and he has a fever. Bring him inside.” Alecia caught up just in time to hear that. Dr. Ivo unlocked the trailer, and his parents carried Del inside.
Before joining them, Ivo called out to the boy near the ox, “I’m going to need the fan running. Get that ox moving.”
The boy stood and whacked the ox, and it started walking in a circle around the pole in the ground. As the pole turned, a wheel at the top moved, which connected to a band that led to another wheel on the top of the trailer. A series of gears operated to a large fan set in the roof of the trailer. As the ox turned the pole, the fan spun up.
Inside the trailer the doctor had them put Del on a reclined chair covered by cracked plastic that crinkled under his weight. He motioned them back and took a jar and a pair of scissors off the counter.
He looked at the parents. “This is a small trailer, and it’s already hot in here. Please step outside. I’ll do what I can.”
Sherman stepped toward the door, but Alecia said, “Can at least one of us stay here?”
“No. I’m sorry, but you will just make it hotter.”
Sherman took Alecia’s hand, and she reluctantly left the trailer. Dr. Ivo locked the door behind them and set the jar and scissors back on the counter. He opened a cabinet and grabbed a book titled, Field Guide to Wilderness Medicine. He sat down and flipped through it.
As he looked through the book, he checked Del over. He leaned close and sniffed his neck, his hand, and then his leg. When he got to the leg, he pulled his pants out of the way and removed the bandage. The wound was festering, almost rotten at the edges and with lines of red radiating across his leg. Nearly the entire leg was red.
He scooped a handful of ground material out of the jar labeled Aspirin Powder, mixed it with water from the Penicillin Tea jar to make a paste, and applied it to the wound. The fan overhead sucked the strong smells of both the wound and the paste out of the small space.
The doctor washed his hands and looked through the book further. When he came across a section labeled Septicemia, with a subtitle of Blood Poisoning, he found Del’s symptoms.
He checked the paste on the leg. Sniffing at it, he could tell that the worst of the bacteria in the wound was being cleared up. Del didn’t look any better, though. He checked the boy’s temperature and found it dangerously high. He was still sweating and shivering, and the red spots had merged into blotches across most of his body.
Del’s breathing was getting more shallow by the minute. Worse still, his heart rate was increasing, and then dropping so low that Doctor Ivo almost thought he was dead.
He read more of that section of the book and found Sepsis, which was the next stage. The words, Possibly fatal jumped out at him, and he growled and put the book away. He got out a scalpel, cut open part of Del’s leg near the injury, and then cut his own palm.
The wound on his palm started closing almost immediately, but it was slow enough that he could press it to Del’s cut. He let his blood mix with the boy’s, cutting his hand a few more times to make sure enough of his blood reached the wound, then sat down to wait.
It wasn’t enough. The cut he’d made in Del’s leg healed and a small patch of his skin cleared up, but most of his symptoms remained. He stepped
to the door of the trailer and leaned out. Spotting both parents a few feet away, he said, “This is going to take all night. I will do everything I can, but you should go find somewhere to rest.”
Alecia scrambled to her feet and said, “Can we see him?”
Dr. Ivo hesitated, glancing over his shoulder at Del, then opened the door and motioned them in. “Be quick. He’s getting worse, and I don’t want to waste any time.”
Both parents went to Del’s side and took his unresponsive hands. Sherman teared up when he saw how pale his son’s face had become between the patches of red. Alecia kissed Del’s forehead and whispered, “Don’t you dare die. You do not have permission to die, young man.”
She rushed out of the trailer, Sherman trying to catch up with her.
Doctor Ivo locked the trailer when Del’s parents left and pulled a chair over from a corner next to Del. He dug through a drawer and found a pair of needles, a length of clear tubing, and a roll of medical tape, and sat down in the chair.
He attached the needles to each end of the tube and inserted it into a vein on Del’s leg near the wound, taping it in place. Then he did the same in his own arm. Once both needles were in place, he unclipped the tube and let his blood start flowing into the boy.
Every few seconds he clenched his fist to make sure the blood was still flowing. His heart was pumping much more strongly than Del’s, and his blood had special characteristics that he knew would help Del heal. He just hoped it would be enough.
He leaned back in the chair and rested his head. “I am not letting you die.”
The night passed slowly for Doctor Ivo. He couldn’t let himself fall asleep, because he had to make sure to keep his blood flowing. Every thirty seconds for hours on end, he pumped his fist. The blood kept flowing between them.
As the hours passed, Del’s wounds closed. The cut on his palm? Gone. The gash in his leg? A faint scar, and then even the scar faded away. As their blood mixed, he stopped sweating so badly. His breathing returned to normal and his body temperature dropped, though not all the way to what was normal for a human.
Tales from the Kurtherian Universe: Fans Write For The Fans: Book 3 Page 15