Chapter 31: A Taste for Blood — Part 2
Kia and Jenna work with the woman while Jon and Terri have taken the boy into their care, ready for the worst. If the boy is in anywhere near the state of the woman, Kia knows, his chances of survival are good, but only because the two of them have made it to the care center. Still, he had been professionally wrapped and treated somewhere on the way.
Kia looks into the eyes of the woman, flashlight darting first to one then to the other eye. The woman is calm, her breathing steady. Both pupils are working well enough. The woman keeps her mouth shut, until Kia asks her to open it. Teeth are well tended, no signs of decay, no injuries to tongue or jaw. Jenna already has her on an IV drip, is checking joint by joint for dislocation or injuries, and makes quick notes of wounds as she finds them: Blisters on hands and feet, gashes on the shoulder and the back of her head.
Kia is busy cutting the woman out of her clothes, careful to leave patches where they seem to be stuck to wounds. The woman smiles slightly. There are three distinct wounds, as if she has been caught by the edge of three pointy sticks, torn as deep as the shoulder blade, nearly exposing bone. The scar from an older wound, set lower and close to the spine, gives Kia a pause.
“What the fuck happened to you?” Kia asks.
“A bear tried to eat my son. Bear’s dead now.” The woman laughs, sounding a little crazy for a moment.
Her voice is hoarse from dehydration. She is encouraged to lie on her good shoulder, and as soon as her head is on a pillow, she starts to cry hoarsely. No tears come, but she is wracked with desperate sobs: Her body and mind are broken.
“You think any bones are cracked?” Jenna asks the woman, who does not answer.
“Assess her needs, prep her wounds. I’ll be back with what we need to stitch her up.” Kia says.
Kia steps out from a curtained enclosure, her mind racing. The woman shouts out. “Forget about me. My son is everything.”
“Two of best doctors in the hospital are working on your son.” Jenna says quietly, not wanting to mention that they are but two of three actual physicians. “If they need Kia’s hands, they will call for her.”
“Kia.” The woman shouts. “Kia, please, take care of my son. Coyote followed us for so long, until the Storm boiled the Brothers Grim, and cast away their scorn.” In a few more moments, she is unconscious; Jenna’s prompt use of anesthetic puts her body and mind to rest.
Kia checks in with Jon, who answers even as she starts to ask. “He’s been mauled, deep puncture wounds, a couple of broken ribs, we’re thinking a long recovery, two months maybe three. Quicker if the bear didn’t have rabies.”
“We don’t have what we need to treat rabies.” Kia says, her head racing.
Jon smiles coldly. “We can treat anything we find in his blood. We’ll just have to do it old school. The boy’s going to have to bleed a lot: We’ll pull a page from good old Louis Pasteur if we have to, even if it’s hopeless. Now go take care of his mom.”
Inside her head, Kia is still sitting on the curb of the hospital, still drinking lemonade. Her hands are washing wounds, treating them with iodine, all the while Jenna is running blood samples at the back of the hospital, looking for any signs that the mother and son might be infected. She’s typing the blood, assessing the type against the list of people with known clean resources. She’ll send a boy out to call to people with the type, see if anybody won’t mind a prick in exchange for some cookies. People like cookies, so Jenna knows she’ll have more than one volunteer.
Six hours later, Mother and son are reunited, though neither is conscious enough to enjoy it. The boy has his eyes, though it will be days before he opens them for any length of time. After four people study samples of their blood, none of them can find any sign of untreatable infection, though rabies is tricky, and they would normally already be treating for it, there is no immediate sign of any unexpected illness, and no guarantee Jon’s old school approach won’t have nasty side effects at any rate. Pending the absence of rabies, the two will exhaust two bottles of antibiotics, but will survive. Kia stares at the woman, her worn but powerful features nagging at Kia’s memory. Jenna gives her mother a glass of lemonade, freshly reconstituted.
“You seem to think you know her.” Jenna, not one for words, says this quietly.
“I hope I don’t.” Kia whispers, sipping her lemonade in tiny, nervous pulls.
