“I swear his heart and lungs sealed up even as I was stitching,” the cardiac surgeon named Allan Arbury whispered as he stayed to seal the boy’s chest; a job usually done by the assistant surgeon. No one wanted to leave the OR until they had answers for what was a medical miracle.
The boy had been lifeless for nearly ten minutes as the ER doctor, Ken Ross had performed heart massage on him. No one wanted to declare the boy gone, not while there was the slimmest chance of resuscitating him.
Allan Arbury was equally determined to keep the boy viable. They pushed 6 units of blood, adrenaline, and cardiac drugs into the kid while nurses monitored his BP, pulse and SAT levels.
Slowly, as the team of surgeons repaired the holes in his thoracic cavity, the boy’s pressure came up. Enough so that Arbury risked closing the chest with staples and three layers of sutures. When he was done, the boy looked almost like a crudely made voodoo doll. He was cleaned of blood, bandaged and slid gently onto a clean bed in Recovery just outside the ICU.
There were IVs in both arms and a tube down his throat that breathed for him, relieving the pressure on his collapsed lungs. Shadows under his eyes looked like bruised plums, his skin was a dusky hue, almost ashen, the strange hair---a red so dark that it appeared the color of oxblood was hidden under a surgical cap. He wore on his right index finger the pulse ox showing a dismal reading of 84%.
The only noise in the room was the hiss and thump of the respirator and the pinging of the blood pressure machine. His pressure was hovering at 75/50, his heart in the hundreds as it struggled to maintain its volume. Fluids and blood were entering his system at a steady rate along with a drip of high-powered antibiotics. Arbury had picked out pieces of the boy’s jacket and shirt from inside the lesions. The wound was contaminated with cloth scraps, dirt, and leaves.
Both surgeons stood at the foot of the bed and watched the child to see if he would wake from the anesthesia.
“What was that, Kenny?” Arbury asked. “That light? Some kind of reaction? A new bulb in the overheads? A chemical response to something in the air?”
“You saw it, too. It came from his heart.” Ross shook his head. No one wanted to leave the recovery room, all of them were anxious to know more about the boy’s story. The little that they had heard was he had stopped a kidnapping and saved the life of a U.S. Marshal. Arbury volunteered to speak to the family waiting in the ICU lounge. The people waiting there surprised him; he had no idea who the young woman and the two men were in relation to the teenager. One was clearly Native American and the pair brother and sister. Both had extraordinary eyes and she had almost white blonde hair. They looked Irish with clear pale skin and fey eyes.
“I’m Dr. Arbury,” he said standing in the room unsure to whom he was delivering his report. “You are?”
“Lake’s cousins,” the older man extended his hand. “I’m Leon DeCarlos. How is Lake?”
“Lake?”
“Lake Kitwillie,” the girl said. Arbury realized she was no more than sixteen.
“Well, he’s stable but in critical condition. He was shot in the back and the bullet tore through his lung, producing a pneumothorax. He lost almost half his blood volume. The bullet tore a hole in his pericardium before exiting his chest breaking more ribs. He coded twice but the paramedics got his heart started enough to get him here. He coded again on the table but Dr. Ross here was able to do open heart massage and kept him going until surgery. I repaired the lining around his heart, re-inflated his lung, replaced his blood volume. His blood pressure has come up and his heart is responding to the medication.” He hesitated. “He may come out of the anesthesia in a few hours or he may not due to the blood loss if he went too long without oxygen when his blood pressure plummeted. He has several broken bones, some in partial re-growth. Oddly, they were not set.”
“Did you see the blue light?” the girl asked and the doctors stared at her.
“What do you know about that?”
“Was it bright, blinding or fading?” Her tone was demanding and yet filled with terror. Arbury answered her quickly, sensing the importance of her query.
“Faint. Barely visible and coming from his heart.”
“I need to see him!” she cried out. “He gave too much and if he doesn’t renew his source, he’s going to die!”
“Give what? What source? What are you talking about?” Ross asked confused, looking at the surgeon and back to the girl. “Who are you people?”
“Maiara Kitwillie and Robin Kitwillie,” the younger man said. “We’re Lake’s family. He has no one left and he’s engaged to my sister. You’d best listen to her, she’s got the sight and knows how to treat Lake.”
“Please,” she begged. “Let me see him, I can help.”
So that was why the three of them were escorted into the ICU recovery area dressed in gowns and masks to prevent any infection from entering the sterile suite.
Lakan lay at a slight incline on his back, wearing nothing but bandages on his upper body and heated sheets and blankets on his lower half. Tubes were in his mouth, coming out his side and running down to a collection bag under the bed. There were IVs in both arms; one with fluids and antibiotics, the other transfusing blood. A machine breathed for him, the lift and fall of his ribcage his only movement.
The girl, Maiara moved to his side and picked up his hand, careful not to dislodge or pull on his IVs. Arbury and Ross watched to make sure that she did nothing to harm the teenager. Her brother stood back until she opened her eyes and spoke.
“Robin, Mr. DeCarlos, I need your golau ar y galon, his is nearly gone!” As she said that, the monitor flickered and his heart rate and blood pressure began to drop.
“He’s crashing!” the doctors said and moved in but the fierce look in her eyes and her words stopped them.
“He’ll die if you don’t let me do this.”
“Do what?” Ross demanded.
She opened her free hand which was clenched in a fist and Robin laid his right hand on it, extending his left to DeCarlos. Once the contact was made, the blue light they’d seen before made the entire suite glow with an unearthly resonance, almost as if the moon had suddenly risen inside the room but the aura was not as cold as the winter glow of moonlight nor was it warm. It exuded power and age but not a sense of heat or cold nor was it alien.
“It’s not enough,” she cried. “He needs all of us. Dr. Arbury, Dr. Ross, will you give your golau ar y galon?”
“What does that mean?” Ross asked.
“Heartlight,” Arbury answered. “It’s Welsh for Heartlight.” He gripped DeCarlos’ hand with his left and picked up Ross’.
The aura encompassed them all and formed wavering lines that bathed Lakan where he lay on the hospital bed. For five minutes, they stared at him and the monitors, watching carefully as the readout slowly climbed back up until Robin began to stagger on his feet. Quickly, Maiara shifted his hand to DeCarlos as her brother barely made it to a chair and collapsed.
Ross was the next to go, then Leon so it was Arbury and Maiara left. When he felt the beginnings of faintness, he ignored it until the girl pushed him away just as she let go herself to slump against the side of the bed and wall.
Lakan looked…better. His color was back, his vitals respectable and he was moving his eyes under the lids, taking deep breaths as he fought the tube.
“What did we do?” Ross asked fear and puzzlement on his open face. Conflicting emotions twisted his comprehension, disbelief, amazement, and fear.
It was Arbury that answered him. “She spoke Welsh. She called it ‘Heartlight’. The Wiccans in the Old Country believe that every creature born on this earth possesses a…essence that is powerful, connected and magical. When you die, it goes back to the spirit realm to be re-born in a new soul. Some people have the ability to tap into this ‘Heartlight’ to heal, to read the future and to work magic. She used it to pull ours out to heal him.”
“Not heal him,” Maiara smiled. “I can’t heal him, I just channeled your energy into him to replenish what he used. He will have to heal himself once he wakes up.”
“He’s going to wake up?” Ross was skeptical.
“You’re Welsh?” Maiara asked instead.
Arbury smiled. “My grandmother was. Her father was an iron jack on the railroad. He blasted mines all through the West. I remember her talking about the Fae and magic. I only remember a few words, though. ‘Heartlight’ was one of them. People said she had the ‘sight’.”
Lakan moaned and both doctors were at his side instantly. He had opened his eyes and Arbury was struck by the intense blue of his irises, an exact match to the color of the aura he had seen bathing all of them. His eyes went to the pulse ox readings, now up to 95%.
“Cough gently, Lake and I’ll pull out the tube,” he suggested and Lake’s first attempt was a feeble wheeze but Arbury smoothly removed the endotracheal tube. “Don’t try to talk, your throat will be too sore. How do you feel? In pain? Just nod your head if it’s yes.”
He nodded fractionally, his eyes roaming the room seeking out the others as they came to the foot of the bed.
“Do you want something for the pain?”
He hesitated and then nodded. Arbury called for the nurse and ordered 1 ml of Fentanyl IV. It was obvious that Lake had questions and Maiara answered them before he could attempt to ask.
“The girl is safe, no injuries and she’s back home with her parents. The marshal is recovering and still insists that he was dead. And that you brought him back. He’s here in the hospital near you, with broken bones, muscle tears, and a slight concussion. His name is Teagan Calderon Muir. His friends call him TG.”
He tried to say something and his face scrunched up in pain as his abused throat protested just as a nurse came in with a pre-loaded syringe and a cup of ice chips. She was smiling.
“Hello, young man,” she greeted. “We all heard what you did for that fine US Marshal and the little girl, Sami. Anything you need, you just call us. Dr. Ross, Dr. Arbury.” She injected the needle into the port and the lines of pain around Lake’s mouth smoothed out. His eyelids grew heavy but he fought to stay awake as the nurse spooned chips of ice into his throat.
The relief was immediate, his eyes brightened yet the hold of the drugs was more than his shocked system could fight. He slipped away into a restful nap. Curious, Arbury peeked under the bandages and could not believe his eyes. The huge wound where Ross had split the boy’s chest looked days old not just hours.
Ross couldn’t believe it either and when they checked the drain in his side, they found it was nearly healed with nothing draining so Ross snipped the three stitches remaining and removed it. Under his fingertips, he found only a bare fraction of an incision and hematomas that looked weeks old.
“You did this,” Maiara smiled. “You saved him with your heartlight.” She turned serious. “Now, there is more for you to do. The government knows about Lakan, the government created him and they will take him, put him in a cage and make him perform for the rest of his life. Which will be short. Will you help us save him again?”
Ross asked, “what do you want us to do?” She told them and they agreed.