Dark Road (16 page)

“I can’t remember if it opens or closes the arteries and veins.” Dan said. “I think it opens them up but I’m not sure, and the last thing I want is to give him something that is going to make him bleed to death during surgery.”

Dan stopped as he was walking back towards the Doctor’s office. “Which brings up something else altogether, anyone know what Jay’s blood-type is?”

“Geez, let me go find out.” Craig said.

Marissa came up behind Dan and gave him a hug while he was looking up the information in the Physician’s Desk Reference. “You’re really doing a good thing here, Dan. I’m sure you’re going to do fine.”

“I’m glad someone is, because I’m scared out of my mind.” Dan said.

“As you should be,” Marissa said. “This is like the final exam to end all finals, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to do a great job. Do you think anyone here has the same blood-type as Jay?”

“I hope so, because if not we’re going to have to call this whole thing off.” Dan said. “We simply can’t do it without at least some blood. He’s
going
to bleed, and without putting it back he
will
die. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.”

“You did think of it before. Before you started the operation, and that’s what counts.” Marissa said.

Dan sighed. “Ok, you win. I’ll be more positive about this.”

…

“Jay is B-Negative, and we have two other people in town who are as well.” Craig said. “Both swear up and down that they have clean bills of health, and Jay and his wife have both agreed to accept whole blood from both of them.”

“Ok,” Dan said. “I’m going to go ahead and take a pint from each and we’re going to need a place that we can keep it cool. We have all the sterile equipment here. If we don’t need it I can give it back to each of them, but I doubt that will be happening.”

“The doctor left saline and lactated ringers here so we’re good to go for that, and I’ll start with saline to keep his blood pressure up.” Dan said. “Speaking of which, I’m going to need some assistants in the operating room. At least five, who aren’t squeamish, and can follow directions without questions.”

…

“Jay, I’m Dan Clark. I’m going to be performing your appendectomy in a few minutes.” Dan said after he walked into the room.

They’d decided to introduce Dan after Jay had taken the Valium and was feeling ‘good’. It had turned out that the Valium would work fine, and Dan would be ok as long as he waited about a half hour to forty-five minutes after things kicked in to begin the surgery. He would be using liberal amounts of Novocain to keep things numb locally.

“Hey, good to see ya Doc,” Jay said with a bit of a slur to his speech. “I’m afraid I might sleep through the whole thing, though, whatever you gave me,” Jay interrupted himself with a jaw-cracking yawn, “wow, really good stuff. First time I’ve been out of pain in a couple days.”

“That’s just fine with me, Jay.” Dan said. “I understand that your wife has already talked to you about this, but for your safety…”

“Oh yeah, I know, you gotta tie the wrists and the ankles down.” Jay said, and yawned again. “Totally understand.”

“Alright then,” Dan said. “One last thing, I’m going to start your IV and then we’ll move you into the other room.”

…

Dan was soaked when he walked out of the makeshift operating room almost three hours later.

“Is he going to make it?” Denise asked as soon as the door opened.

Dan was glad he’d taken the smock off before he came out. “I don’t see any reason for him not to.” Dan said. “The appendix hadn’t ruptured yet, almost definitely due to the antibiotics, but I don’t think they were going to fix it either.”

Dan looked around for Craig, but he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. “Could I get a glass of water? We ran out in there about twenty minutes ago and I’m parched.”

Denise went to get him a glass of water from the jug they had in the next room and a few seconds later Craig came in with Marissa and the girls.

“So, what do you think?” Craig asked.

“I think I’m going to get asked that question a lot over the next half an hour.” Dan said. “But I think he’ll be ok.” Dan held up his hand to wait until Denise came back in and Craig nodded. When Denise came back with the water, Dan went on.

“Like I was saying before, I think the antibiotics were what kept his appendix from rupturing this long, but they weren’t going to cure him long term.” Dan said. “Everything is in a number of red biohazard bags, and I would suggest it all get burned away from anything important, in a metal garbage can.”

Craig nodded in understanding. In addition to being a farmer he’d had to dispose of dead animals before, and it made sense to keep any type of infection away from the town.

“We ended up using both pints of blood but I was able to cauterize the small bleeders and everything went as well as it could have, though a little longer than I would have liked.” Dan said.

“Is he awake?” Denise asked. “Can I see him?”

“He’s awake.” Dan said. “In fact, although I made sure he didn’t feel
anything
, he woke up about an hour ago.”

Denise looked horrified and Marissa rolled her eyes. Dan could read her mind and just knew she was thinking “
great bedside manner there, Doc
”.

“Seriously,” Dan said, “I know he didn’t feel anything. I probably asked him a hundred times once he came around and the Valium wore off. If anything, I used too much of the local to keep him numb where we were working.”

“Ok, if you say so.” Denise said. The look of relief was skeptical, but honest nonetheless.

“Denise,” Craig said, “Why don’t you head on in and see Jay.” He turned to Dan. “He’s back in his room now?”

“Yes sir.” Dan answered. “A couple of the guys stayed behind and moved his bed back in while I was cleaning up, and I helped move him over to new sheets to make sure we didn’t open up the wound.”

“Great.” Craig said. “In the meantime, I believe we owe you all at least a few things in return.”

…

As warm as it was outside, at least there was a breeze, and Dan started cooling off immediately. He couldn’t believe how stressful the last few hours had been. He felt like he’d run a marathon while taking a physics exam…in a language he’d never studied…on Jupiter…while holding his breath. Yeah, that pretty much summed it up.

“Your wife drives a pretty hard bargain,” Craig said as they walked up the sidewalk. “I think I’m glad the prices at the market were pretty much set.”

“Just be glad she didn’t have coupons,” Dan said. “You’d end up owing her by the time it was over.”

Marissa smacked Dan in the stomach, “You two knock it off!”

Craig chuckled, “I’m used to it. My wife is the same way. For the first fifteen years of our marriage it was the only way we could really make ends meet.” He said. “My dad still owned the farm and I was working for him, so anything extra came from what we could do on our own.”

“Nothing wrong with being self-sufficient,” Marissa said.

“True,” Dan said. “I just wish we’d gotten a little earlier start on that,” as he looked over at the girls, who were looking around at the change of scenery the town had brought.

“Well, your wife has been busy negotiating on the family’s behalf.” Craig said.

“Yes I have.” She said. “And we’re going to have to leave some stuff behind.”

Dan looked at her sideways. “Such as?”

…

“I can’t believe we’re just leaving.” Dan said as they were getting back on the highway.

Marissa didn’t say anything at first, she just kept pedaling and then when it was obvious that Dan was going to stew, she had to break the silence.

“Dan,” she said, “you did your best, but what if something had gone wrong? You aren’t actually a doctor.”

“But,” Dan started.

“No, Dan,” Marissa interrupted without looking at him, and kept talking. “You aren’t a doctor. You did an amazing thing back there, and I can’t tell you how much it helped us. We got rid of the bulky blankets and got a couple of sleeping bags. We have two tarps, and rope—which is going to come in handy later today, most likely, when it starts to rain.”

Marissa glanced over at Dan, who was looking at the road but was obviously at least listening to her. “Craig took some of the silver for the food, but only a little, and that was only after you pushed it. I think saving Jay was,” Marissa paused, “not so much a big deal, but it meant a lot that you saved a life in their community, Dan, even if only for a while. The fact that you were willing to try meant a lot, but you really had done all you could do.”

“Ok,” Dan finally said. “I guess I can see that. People were starting to look at me, and I guess it could have gotten uncomfortable either way. If Jay got better then I could have become the town doctor without the necessary skills, and if he didn’t get better then the last place we wanted to be was back in the town.”

“Exactly,” Marissa said.

“I left them instructions on how to care for Jay for the next several weeks, and they have everything they need to take care of him back at the clinic.” Dan said, more to convince himself than to convince Marissa. “You’re right, as usual.”

Marissa didn’t tell Dan that it had been Craig’s suggestion to go ahead and leave as soon after the surgery as realistically possible, regardless of the outcome.

“Don’t be sore,” Marissa said. “We still need to try and make up some ground before it starts to rain, and by the looks of things we aren’t going to get very far today.”

Dan wasn’t sure if it was the clouds, the cooling breeze they were riding into, or her joints, but he was pretty sure she was right on the money when it came to the weather.

“Bekah,” he called over his shoulder. “Are you doing ok? Do you think you would be ok to push a little harder for a while?”

Bekah nodded, but realized her parents weren’t looking at her, and then yelled over a gust of wind that had kicked up. “I’m fine to go faster for now.”

“We’ll let you set the pace then, sweetheart.” Marissa said, and Bekah pulled in front of the other two.

…

“This is miserable!” Dan yelled.

“I’m not going to argue with you about that!” Marissa yelled back.

They had made just over five miles when it had started to rain. Just a drizzle at first, but only for a few minutes, and then out of nowhere it just started to pour. Everyone was absolutely soaked. The supplies were most likely still dry, because they’d been wrapped in one of the tarps, but Jessie wasn’t just getting wet—she was getting sprayed by the bike tires as well. Dan was cursing the fact that they hadn’t brought the cover for the bike trailer.

Up ahead, he saw the overpass just before Marissa did, but he waited for her to say something.

“Ok, you win,” Marissa yelled. “Unless it’s packed with bloodthirsty, murdering, rapist zombies we’re staying there tonight!”

“Fine with me.” Dan said without a hint of triumph in his voice.

To be honest, he didn’t feel like he’d won anything. The more he thought about it, the more he realized she was right and the underpass was a bad place to stay, but it was immediate shelter from the elements.

The relief everyone felt from getting out of the rain was immediate but short lived. Now they were cold.

Dan and Marissa broke out the two towels they had packed for cleaning up and immediately started drying off the girls, as they were both shivering—Jessie more so than Bekah, who had at least been exercising. Even though it was actually warm outside, in general, the wind was cooling everyone off since they were wet. Dan got out the sleeping bags for the girls and made them strip down into their underwear and dry off again, and get into the sleeping bags.

“I have no idea how I’m going to start a fire in this.” He said, looking out from under the bridge.

“You won’t be able to out there, that’s for sure.” Marissa said, as she wrung out the towels as best as she could away from their makeshift camp. “Here, dry off a little and give it a few minutes.”

“Not yet.” Dan said. “I’m going back out to get some bigger pieces of deadfall from the underbrush that haven’t gotten soaked yet. It’ll take a while for the rain to really get through the trees further back into the woods and we’re going to need wood for a fire tonight.”

Marissa looked dubious but didn’t argue.

“We ran into the same thing in the so-called woods behind the house a couple of times before we started keeping wood in the garage.” Dan said as he grabbed a pair of leather gloves from the fire station. “I’ll be as quick as I can. Start breaking up tongue depressors from my EMT kit.”

“Don’t be too long.” Marissa said. “The last thing we need is for you to get sick.”

“I won’t, but we need the fire, and we need to get
everyone
warm.” Dan said as he headed back out into the downpour.

After forty-five grueling minutes, they finally had what Dan felt was a decent fire going. It was giving off enough heat that the girls could come out of their sleeping bags. They had also propped up one of the tarps to block the breeze and reflect the heat to help dry their clothes.

Dan had brought back a half dozen fairly large logs and branches, and a couple of them were drying out next to the fire so they could be added later on. Marissa got the girls to drink what they could, and then set about refilling their bottles and the kettle with fresh rainwater that wouldn’t have to be boiled.

Jessie was still shivering occasionally, but Marissa and Dan both checked and she didn’t have a fever. Dan didn’t want to waste any of their new provisions right away but felt that something substantial was probably in order, so he and Marissa decided to open one of the quart jars of soup that they had traded for back in town. They added some water to stretch it a little, and everyone had half a can of Ensure for some extra calories.

“Bekah,” Marissa said as she was getting out some fresh, if not truly clean, clothes for the girls, “I want you and Jessie to share a sleeping bag tonight. Unless it warms up, the breeze and the rain are going to make it cool, and sleeping on the concrete is going to make it hard. If we put one sleeping bag under the other you can use it as padding, and you two can share body heat.”