The room was large; large enough to contain all the hi-tech machines needed in the PICU, called the Pick-U which stood for Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. It was the floor reserved for those cases of children too seriously ill or injured for the ICU. Children had smaller lungs, smaller veins, and greater chances of crashing. The equipment needed had to be the right size and volume for kids and adult supplies could not be scaled down to fit when seconds mattered.
At present, there were twenty-five patients in the unit, the youngest a 6-month preemie and the oldest a 14-year-old recovering from surgery after a major multi-car pile-up.
The unknown boy called John Doe was the first of two children brought in from the fatal bus crash, the only known survivor from the bus. The other boy had been one of those that the bus had impacted as it slid across the Interstate lanes.
The 14-year-old was luckier that John Doe, he had suffered broken bones and a lacerated spleen, but both of his parents and sister had come out of the accident with only minor injuries. Their air-bags had made the accident relatively minor.
The total number of fatalities had come to 41, twenty-nine of them from the bus and the rest out of the peripheral vehicles that had run into the tractor trailer or been side-swiped by the bus. The driver of the tractor trailer had died, crushed between the cab and trailer as it jack-knifed across all three lanes of northbound I-70. Several cars had caught on fire, but all the burn victims had died at the scene. It was determined that the bus driver had fallen asleep at the wheel from eye-witness reports of other drivers who’d seen the accident. Twelve cars were involved in the wreckage plus the bus and trailer making it one of the state’s worst vehicular cases.
John Doe had been air-lifted to Washington General, one of the premier trauma units on the East Coast. Upon arrival, the boy was immediately whisked into surgery. His injuries were severe and life threatening, from the ruptured spleen and liver to the broken bones. But it was the lacerated jugular that had the boy coding three times before he even reached the OR. He had a BP of 20/0, nearly ¾ of his blood gone. The only reason that the child had survived the flight was that three of the Paramedics and state cops had given on-the-site transfusions.
The MRI revealed massive brain swelling. The boy had slammed his skull back and forth in an injury called a contra-coup where the brain hit the front of the skull and then bounced into the rear of the skull.
John Doe was in a coma and it was unlikely that the boy would wake and if he did, it would be with severe brain damage. The nurses were with him every minute of the day and night, taking 15-minute turns, registering his vitals, and talking to him. It was well known that coma victims were aware of their surroundings, could hear what went on around them even if they could not respond.
No one knew what the child looked like; his face was severely swollen, cut and stitched like a Raggedy Andy doll. There were tubes in his nose, mouth, lungs, and ribs, others carrying blood and fluids in, urine and lymph fluids out. He was so small that his age had been misdiagnosed and he hardly made a dent in the bed. He was so pale that the sheets had more color than his skin where it showed beneath the bruising.
The doctors came in four times a shift, checking on the child’s condition, far more than was normal for any trauma case. It was as if the little boy drew out a personal connection far beyond the norm, making the staff almost personally affected by his state.
The media had been on the scene almost immediately, covering the multiple fatalities and the story of the small unknown boy struck a chord with the reporters who launched a campaign to find out John Doe’s real name. They were pushing the ‘Do you know John Doe?’ segment on the air and the radio, on Twitter and Facebook attempting to identify the boy.
Only two people on the bus had not been identified. Many of the body parts had to be done by DNA as there were so mixed together. One of the pairs the authorities had guessed at was a young woman named Violet Smith and the other, an older man named Peter Smith. Both were aliases with fake addresses, and they were not related. Violet Smith had bought a one-way ticket to Oneonta New York and Peter Smith had one for NYC.
John Doe lay in the bed and there was no movement under his eyelids, no dreaming where the electrodes of the EEG recorded any activity at all. Yet, the doctors would not make a ruling on whether John Doe was brain-dead. There had been talk of taking him off life-support, but it was pointed out that he had not been placed on life-support, his lungs worked without mechanical help, his heart pumped blood and he voided as fluids entered his system.
*****
I did hear what was going on around me, but my head ached so that I couldn’t decipher the meanings of what I heard. I ached for my mother and tried to call for her but where I was, she was not. I knew instinctively that something bad had happened, something so awful that I did not want to face it.
There were times I tried to swim toward the light but long before I reached that top layer, I was pulled back down into the bottom where gray and reddish things lapped at my feet, tugged me deep into the mire. I was a soup spoon, a bowl with a ladle dipping into the rivers of eternity and every time I thought that I had found a solid spot, it washed out from under me like the tide washed out the sand from the beach. I was a ship adrift, lost without my moorings, unable to fight my way back. Unable to understand what I was trying to come back to or what.
D
ays passed in fevered dreams that I barely remembered, and the red woman talked to me constantly. Through sheer repetition, I began to learn the strange language that she spoke for some of it was interspersed with French. I knew that language and when the fever finally broke in a swelter of cool sweat, she spoke to me in that language asking me my name.
Hers, she said, was Rain Falling on Rocks and she was one of the tribes of Indians called the Arapaho, stolen by the whites, and sold to the Ojibwa as a slave and second wife.
“Am I your son?” I asked, and she smiled, crow’s feet around her midnight black eyes.
“Yes, you are my son, Little Fox. You fell ill when the white men came by. Some say that they carry the spotted sickness, so we must not let them find you again. If you see white men, you must hide.”
She helped me sit up from under a thin, soft deer hide. I was naked underneath it, but she gave me a cloth that she wrapped around my waist, showed me how to wear it and called it a breech-clout. Then, she rubbed cracked walnut shells in my light hair, turning it mahogany brown.
“Your eyes are the color of the sky gods,” she said. “Do not let the whites see your eyes.”
“Are they not like yours, Falling Rain?” I asked, and she shook her head.
“The white men took me for their pleasure though it was no pleasure for me,” she retorted. “And that is how you came to be. You are half white but wholly mine. Come, we will leave this camp and find a safer place before the whites return.”
She dressed me in leggings that did not cover my front or back completely and a soft beautifully made tunic of deerskin lined with rabbit. I was toasty warm, and, on my feet, she laced moccasins telling me that they were made of wolverine. She claimed that they were warm and waterproof.
Swiftly and efficiently, she packed everything into a hide covered bundle and gave the small bark hut a look over.
Hides and furs covered the floor along with reed baskets and clay pots. She looked longingly at them but left those things behind, taking only a basket covered with grass, a glass bottle, and an iron pot. She stood me on my feet and watched anxiously as I wobbled.
“Do you think you can walk, Little Fox?”
I moved and though the earth rocked under me as if alive, I nodded my head in eagerness to get moving. My head ached at the back of my neck and when I touched it there, encountered a sore, swollen lump that was crusted over.
“You hit your head when the white men caught you in the forest, Little Fox. That brought on your fever. We must be quiet, some of the braves will not want us to leave and anger the white eyes.”
I nodded. “I will be quiet, mother.” Picking up the smallest basket, I followed her out of the hut, and we slipped out into a clearing in the woods. There were seven other such huts scattered in a loose circle but in no order. A central fire pit dominated the site and I could see other people moving around the camp performing chores. Mostly women, they were doing all the work that the men saw as beneath them. I did not see any horses, and this puzzled me.
I whispered to her. “Where are all the horses?”
She put her hand over my mouth and took my other hand, dragging me into the brush. I had trouble walking and she took larger steps than I could manage. In exasperation, she picked me up and carried me.
She was strong for my weight did not deter her as she slipped ghost-like through the woods. I looked over her shoulder and all I saw was the bobbing pack of furs that she had wrapped into a bundle. No one watched us go nor did they seem to care that we were leaving.
I fell asleep as she walked for hours, my head on her shoulder and as warm as if I were tucked under a down quilt. She woke me at dawn by grasping my ankle and her cold hands made me yelp in alarm. I woke, unable to understand where I was until she explained in broken French.
We were in a thicket, near the creek and hiding in a stand of young willows and thick hemlocks whose skirts made a close cover around us.
She’d laid a tiny fire and had warmed a tea made from leaves, cooking it in tiny bark cups. It smelled of raspberries. Offering me a cup, both of us drank and after I had finished the tea, she gave me a handful of dried meat pounded into flat cakes. White chunks of fat held it together with crushed berries and nuts. It was called pemmy-something and was a winter staple.
“Pemmican,” she said in her tongue. It tasted like salted beef but sweeter because of the berries. You had to chew it forever before it was soft enough to swallow.
I needed to make water, but she stopped me, explaining in broken terms that I needed to do it where the smell wouldn’t warn anyone that we were nearby. The best way I could think of was to pee in the stream and hope no one was drinking below us. That earned me a buffet to the head and stern warnings about polluting our drinking source.
She rolled her eyes, dug a hole, and squatted over it. When she was done, she buried it and berated me again.
“Sorry,” I shrugged. “Next time, I’ll do better.” I waded out into the stream, looking for signs of fish. The water was bitter cold and made my legs ache. In seconds, I was shivering.
She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me toward the branches just as a party of men and braves came splashing through the creek water. There were six of them, all armed with rifles and bows. Tomahawks and war clubs. The men wore faded homespun and leather, the Indians dressed in stolen clothing from ambushed settlers and decorated deer skins. Decorated with floral bead-work and leaf designs. Different than Rain’s own dress and their moccasins were tall, all the way to the knee with toes that curved up and were stiff.
“Shawnee and Cherokee,” she said to me.
We were caught out in the open with nowhere to run so we stood our ground as the men approached at a trot. They spoke among themselves, laughing at the sight of both of us, circling until I grew dizzy trying to keep them in view. Falling Rain kept her hand on her knife, demanding to know what they wanted.
The lead man was dark-skinned, his hair peppered with gray, bearded and he smelled of bear grease and sweat. He looked white, not native and when he spoke, it was in a language that I understood. French. After a few words, I answered him.
He asked her what her tribe was called and why she was heading in the opposite direction from the last camp that they had just left.
“My son and I are heading for the spring pastures,” she said.
“Spring pastures are South, not east,” he said. He leaned on the cantle of his saddle, an old Officer’s model that had seen better days. “Your papoose, squaw? Didn’t I see you at the Fort Williams Rendezvous last fall with an Ojibwa brave?”
“No.”
“This is your boy?” His bored into my face with an intensity that I could feel on my skin, but I kept my eyes lowered.
“Boy look at me,” he commanded. One of the others kneed his mount forward to reach down and grab my hair. Jerking my head up, he forced me to stand on my tiptoes and I screeched in pain as I hung off the ground. Kicking and struggling only made my scalp burn and he slapped me with a quirt made of horsehair hanging from his wrist.
My eyes watered. “Blue eyes. And his skin color is rubbing off – walnut stain? Well, Little Squaw, I reckon we’ve found ourselves a white boy stolen from back east. What’s your name, boy?”
I stopped squirming and tried to bite the man holding me as Rain leaped forward to attack. He kicked his horse and the paint spun around on its haunches knocking Rain into the creek.
“Don’t kill her.” The first trapper ordered as the third man in heavy wool capote dragged her out onto the bank and proceeded to bend her over as he worked his trousers free. I screamed as she cried out. I knew what he was doing to her, not of her choice and not in any way pleasurable. I was forced to watch as all but two of them took a turn and they mocked me as tears ran down my face.
“Votre nom, un garçon? »
“Comment t'appelles-tu?” I spat in their tongue and he laughed.
“You speak French!”
“Do I?” I retorted, and the second man shook me, flipped me onto the front of his saddle as both rode up on the bank and along a narrow trail atop the creek. The others remained occupied with Rain and remained behind.
The one holding me reeked. Even worse than the braves who’d captured me. They smelled of bear grease, rotten hides and unwashed body, a miasma that surrounded and followed them. I was surprised that we hadn’t smelled them before we’d seen them.
All of them had heavy beards and sallow skin. Most had deep brown eyes except the two with me. Those were blue, and I saw enough of a likeness between them suggesting that they were brothers.
“I am Pierre LaSalle, and this is Jean-Claude, my brother,” the elder said. “We’re fur trappers and traders heading back north for Fort Dearborn.”
“Fort Dearborn? What’s there?”
“A place to rest up before winter sets in, safety from Injuns and a trading post,” He explained.
I craned my neck over Jean-Claude’s shoulder looking for Rain but did not see her.
“My…maman?”
“She ain’t your maman,” he snorted. “Them fellas will use her and take her South. Sell her to some farmer for slave labor. Best forget about her,” he said callously.
“Let me go! I want my maman!” I shouted, and Jean-Claude solved the problem of my yelling in his ear by wrapping his big hand around my mouth and squeezing it shut. So, I bit him. Next thing that happened was that he swung me by the arm into a tree trunk face first.
My nose and cheek exploded in a shower of white sparks that narrowed to a pinprick of gray bark, moss, and blackness.