A Father for Philip (20 page)

Before Philip had finished talking
Eleanor was dragging on a pair of jeans, ripping her nightgown off and pulling
a T-shirt on over her head. On her way through the door she said, “Did you
touch him? Is he hot?”

“The door was shut and I couldn’t open
it so I climbed up and looked in the window and he’s lying there all funny
looking. I banged on the side window and called him but he didn’t move.”

Eleanor dragged her son by the hand as
they pelted across the creek, up the meadow and into the woods, following the
beam of her flashlight. By the time they reached the camper she had a terrible
stitch in her side, her head was swimming, and her breath came coming in
labored gasps. She wrenched open the door and knelt beside David., A sob
escaped her when she saw he was breathing. But he was lying too still. And he
was so hot!

Frantically she tried to recall the
incubation time for measles. If her estimate was right, this was about the day
he should be getting them, if he were going to. And it looked very much as if
he were.

“Wake up, David,” she said, shaking him
gently by the shoulder. “Darling, come on! I have to get you home to bed!” But
he failed to respond, just lay there, his breathing stertorous.

Eleanor turned to her son who stood
wide-eyes just outside the door of the camper. He still panted from his frantic
run. “Philip,” she asked, “where does Jeff keeps the keys to the truck?” She
conquered the tendency her voice had to quaver, telling herself to keep calm.

“In his pants pocket, Mom.” It was so
logical she wondered why she’d had to ask. She dug down into his pockets until
she found the key ring. “Honey,” she said to Philip, “I need you to come in
here and sit on the floor so you can hold Jeff’s head in your lap. I’m going to
drive the truck to town to get help. The forestry road is rough and it’ll be a
bumpy trip before we get to the highway. I don’t want him to hurt his head.
That’s the way… Just like that. Put both arms under his chin but don’t choke
him. I’m going to close the door, and go get in the cab. It will seem like a long
time, but you just be my big, brave boy and look after Jeff for me, okay?”

With trembling hands Eleanor checked out
the gears of the truck and started the engine. She let the clutch out too
quickly and jerked violently, stalling. Slowly, Eleanor, she told herself slow
and steady…

And then she looked at the gas gauge.

Oh, Lord! Not nearly enough for the
hour-long drive to town, and the nearest gas station was not only the wrong
direction, but wouldn’t be open at this time of day. Only one option.

Gently, inch by painful inch, she set
the truck in motion, drove carefully along the forestry track and, once onto
the highway, speeded up well in excess of the posted maximum. At this hour on a
Sunday morning, there was no traffic, and she made good time, turning into the
driveway of the farm less than fifteen minutes after Philip awakened her.

Eleanor put the truck in bull low and
drove it down the slope, pulling up just by the rose arbor. She swung the back
door open and found Philip exactly as she had left him, David’s head cradled in
his lap, his eyes still wide with fright. “All right, love?”

“That didn’t take a long time, Mom. I
didn’t get scared and—how come we’re home?”

“You and I can look after Jeff here,
honey., until help comes.”

“He’s talking funny, Mom!”

Eleanor held David’s head gently while
her son slithered out from under. “That’s nothing to worry about,” she said
evenly.

David thrashed around, his knees and
ankles smashing into the side of the stove and the cabinets under the settee
and table in this narrow little aisle. He flung his head from side to side,
moaning and muttering. He couldn’t stay here.

“Why’s he talkin’ like that, Mommy?”

“He has a fever like I had, and I got
better, didn’t I?” A reassured Philip would be a far more helpful Philip, and a
busy Philip would be a boon to her. “I want you to go get the wheelbarrow for
me and bring it here just as quickly as you can. Run!” Philip ran.

When he returned, the wheelbarrow
bumping along in front of him, Eleanor smiled at him, hoping her mouth looked
more cheerful than it felt. “Good boy, now go get that long board out of the
orchard—the one we use to slide on when it’s frosty, and lean it up the front
steps. It’s heavy, so if you can’t drag it, call me and I’ll help.”

A few moments later, Phillip, muddy and
panting, came back “Got it, Mom.”

“Okay, open the door to the house.”

While Philip was doing that, Eleanor was
busy herself. She dragged the inert weight of her husband to the door of the
camper and rolled him as gently as she could into the wheelbarrow. Philip, who
had just opened the front door, stood staring in amazement as his mother
trundled the laden wheelbarrow across the lawn and, grunting with effort, got
it up the board and right inside leaving a muddy wheel-track on the carpet. As
she disappeared into her bedroom, he followed right behind her and was in time
to see her lift the handles of the wheelbarrow high enough to roll his friend
Jeff unceremoniously onto the bed.

“Philip,” Eleanor said quietly, “Take
the key to the big house and go up and dial 9-1-1. Tell whoever answers where
you live, and that your mom needs help with a man who might have the measles.
Say he has a high temperature and isn’t conscious.”

Philip nodded uncertainly, and she said,
“Can you remember all that? Tell me what you’re going to tell the person who
answers.”

“My mom needs help for Jeff because he’s
got a bad fever and maybe measles and he’s not… con…”

“Conscious,” she prompted, “but if you
forget, that’s okay. Just tell the person where you live. At Barnes Dairy Farm
on the 96.”

“Not conscious.”

“That’s right. We need an ambulance. Off
you go and then come back right away
.”

 
While her son was away Eleanor wrestled
David’s clothing off him and tumbled him into the sheets she herself had so
recently left. He tossed and turned, moaned now and then, and began shaking as
if his bones were attached to a paint mixer. She held him when he tried to get
up, at one point sitting on him and gritting her teeth as his fingers bit into
her arms. All the while she talked, trying to get through to him.

“David, darling, don’t. Life still,
David. I want to help you. You must stay in the bed. No! You can’t go until the
ambulance comes.”

His eyes were wide open and staring
wildly at her, but she knew it was not she he was seeing. Whoever—whatever—he
saw in his nightmare world terrified as much as infuriated him and he fought to
evade it. “Go away… Go away… Let me be! Let me die!”

“I will not let you die!” she shouted,
sitting astride his heaving body.

He arched his neck and back, went still
for a long moment. She watched the frantic beating of his heart as it pushed at
the pulse-points in his throat, felt the fierce heat of his skin, and then he
began to shake again, rattling even the bedside table until the clock tumbled
to the floor.

Then he said, his tone almost
conversational, “Why don’t you just leave me be?. I plan to die. They’re both
dead, you see. So let me go. Let me go, let me go,
let me go!
” The last was an anguished, feral howl He convulsed
sharply, his spine arching, his legs flailing, feet thumping on the mattress.
He nearly tossed her off him, then his head lolled loosely on the pillow as he
fell horrifyingly quiet again, but this time without the rigor of his
convulsion.

“What was he saying, Mom?” Philip had
come back, and by the look of terror on his face, had seen David’s contortions,
heard the tortured words.

“It’s all right, Philip. He’s just
having a nightmare like you used to have, remember. Is the ambulance coming?”

“Yes. I told the man that Jeff was sick
and would they please come and help you make him better because he has measles
and is real hot and he asked me if Jeff was big like me or little, and I told
him Jeff was big like a daddy and he said they’d be there in a flash and the
driver knows right where the farm is. I forgot to say he was consh—not consh—”

“It’s okay, hon. But I really need you
to go back up there now and show them how to drive the ambulance down here to
our house.”

“If Jeff’s havin’ nightmares you could
sing to him like you did me. It made my bad dreams go away.”

“Yes, honey. I will. But now I want you
to run back up to the farmhouse so you can tell the ambulance people how to get
down here. They’ll need to drive where there’s no road, just our little path. Hurry,
Phil. They’ll help us look after Jeff. He will be fine. And after they come I
want you to go and feed Casey, then make yourself some toast or something. And
don’t forget that Si will need some breakfast, too.” Whatever had to be done,
she wanted Phillip out of the way, not frightened by medical procedures that to
him might look horrendous.

He’d just run out to Casey when the
convulsions started again, and Eleanor began to have serious doubts as to
whether this was measles or something much, much worse. Again, David began to
rant, to rage, and fight her in his attempts to leave the bed. Twice more,
Philip came in, looking white and strained. Twice more she found chores for him
to do and sent him back up to lead the way. It seemed like hours before she heard
the siren, then saw the big cubical vehicle sway as the ambulance rolled down
the hill.

To Eleanor’s surprise, not only the
paramedics arrived with the ambulance but Dr. Grimes came, too. “I happened to
be in the neighborhood of the ambulance bay when the call came in,” he said.
“And this was something I had to see—two adults in such a short time, at the
same address, with a bad case of measles. But don’t you go getting into the
habit of expecting house-calls. You know they don’t happen just for everyone.”

By the time Dr. Grimes had finished
examining him David was shaking again, and muttering incoherently. The
paramedics strapped him to a gurney to hold him still while they set up a drip,
and tried to wheel him out.

“No, no,” he moaned. “Eleanor…” He clung
to her hands, nearly cutting off her circulation and flailed around. objecting
to being taken from her. “Don’t leave me.”

“David, darling, you have to let them
help you. I’ll go with you. I will not leave you.” She spoke quietly but firmly
and he seemed to calm. To Dr. Grimes, she said, “I can’t leave my son alone,
but I need to be in the ambulance. Can you bring Philip with you in your car
please? I’ll call the Exleys as soon as I think they’ll be awake.”

“Yes, of course,” the elderly doctor
said. “The nurses will look after him until you can get someone to come. But
when we get there I intend to get some of the answers I didn’t get when you
were sick. Where in the world has your young man been all this time?”

“You remember him?” she asked, running
along beside the gurney.

“Of course I do. I was at your wedding,
wasn’t? I delivered your son, didn’t I? And with no sign of this fella, then, I
might add.”

She had no chance to comment. He took
charge of Philip and she was shoved onto a small seat too far away from David
in the back of the ambulance, then they were on their way. She slid off the
seat and sat on the floor beside him, holding his hand. He quieted then, and
the paramedics let her stay there.

At the hospital, with Philip
entertaining the nurses by repeating some of ‘Jeff’s’ more lurid tales of
adventure, Eleanor hovered by the bed David had been transferred to.

“Is he going to be all right?” she
asked.

“Of course he will,” said Dr. Grimes.
“We’ll get some fluids into him, bring down that fever and see what’s wrong. At
least I know it’s not measles. When you were sick he told me he’d had measles
when he was a kid. Do you know if he’s on any medication?”

“Oh! Yes. My son was spending the night
with him in his log house and he went to his camper for this.” She pulled from
her jeans pocket the bottle of prescription meds she’d picked up off the floor,
afraid it would roll out of sight when she moved the vehicle.

“Ah!” Dr. Grimes looked at the label.
“Atabrine. He’s been living in the tropics has he?”

Eleanor nodded. “Ecuador, I think.”

Her lifted his shaggy white brows. “You
think?”

She met his gaze, keeping her own
steady. “Yes. I think.” She paused a beat. “Does he have malaria?”

Dr. Grimes nodded. “I’m pretty sure
that’s all it is, given this particular medication, but the lab will have to
confirm it.”

“
All
?”
she echoed. “Isn’t it enough?”

“It could be worse. Given the high temp
and the extreme shaking, dengue fever—also known as ‘bone-break fever’ would
have been my guess, if not for the Atabrine. While we wait for the lab work,
I’ll order I.V. Atabrine and a few other things that’ll help. We’ll keep him
overnight, and you can take him home in the morning, barring complications.
We’re pretty much full up at the moment because a car and tour-bus collided
just the other side of town last night, leaving a few patients with mild
concussion and four with broken legs. .We even have two of those in maternity
beds—the three that aren’t filled with new moms, that is,” he added with a
chuckle.