Chapter Sixty-Four
One minute we were in the deep woods, the next I’d looked up to see a broad stretch of open area where the feeble sun had managed to pierce the thick trees in a straight line. I knew that it wasn’t a clearing but a road or the broad swathe cleared for hi-tension wires. We continued and stepped onto a paved two lane road, following it north for a mile before we found the first state highway sign. Shaped like a broad shield, back on white; the sign was punctured by bullet holes but was readable. State highway 89 heading to the town of Red Lodge. Yellowstone was sixty miles behind us.
“Where are we?” Robin asked. Both of them were exhausted. The last seven days we had spent twelve hours a day hiking and it had taken its toll on them. Even after stopping and resting for two days in what Robin had called Taco Valley, (Hot springs and squeezed between two rock shells) they were still beaten.
“Cheer up. We’ll be in town in another hour,” I told them. “From there, we can ride for a few miles until we get over the glacier.”
“Glacier? We’re going through Glacier National Park?” Mairy yelped.
“Around it. It’s too open here. Luckily, it’s tourist season and there will be lots of hikers and day-packers in town. No one will notice three more.” I eyed Mairy’s blue hair which sweat, rain and sulfur spring water had faded to the palest baby blue and blonde.
“Best get rid of that but don’t go back to your blonde color. It’s too noticeable.”
“How about pink? I can be Goth, too,” she teased.
I shuddered. “No piercings. Those are just gross.”
“Pooh. You’re such an old fudge.”
“Fudge? That’s the best you could come up with?” Robin rolled his eyes and I ignored both of them.
“I don’t think anyone will be looking for me here but it’s best if we do some kind of disguise.” I set my pack down and fished in it for Mairy’s wig. Once on my head, I bought out the last pack of Mark Jacobi’s contacts and popped them in. My eyes were brown and I darkened my skin as well.
“What do you think?” I asked them. Changing my skin tone was no harder than healing an ingrown toenail.
“You look like an Injun,” they said. Mairy rubbed my skin. “Can you do that for me?”
“Maybe. I can give you an instant tan,” I said hesitantly.
“Try.”
I laid my hand on hers and we watched as the blue aura exploded out of me. Instantly, I had a woody so hard that it hurt. She melted into me and I was all set to do it right there when something wrenched me out of her arms.
The cold air made me shiver. I trembled as if I had met my worst fears and fallen to them.
“Holy shit! I guess it’s not such a good idea to touch you,” I said shakily.
Mairy recovered faster. “Does it do that if you touch my brother?”
I looked at her in horrified disgust. That was like imagining sex with him. Ewww. Gross.
“I guess not, Mairy,” he said. “He didn’t ‘Smurf’ out when I grabbed him.”
I tried again only this time, just a fleeting brush of my fingertips on her elbow and I thought only about increasing the melatonin in her skin. As long as I kept any emotion out of it, the aura didn’t do more than a tiny spark. Like static electricity.
She mouthed a quick ‘ouch’ and rubbed at her arms. Commenting that they burned, very much like a sunburn. We watched her pale skin turn red and then darken to a medium toast. While my nerve was still up, I grabbed her brother’s hand but there was no reaction other than a slow warming of my own. Both of us let go at the same time and stood around like two embarrassed dudes. I sneaked a glance at him and caught him doing the same. In minutes, the three of us were laughing so hard that tears ran down my face and I had a hard time breathing. And standing.
“Dude, don’t EVER do that again,” he snickered in between gurgles. He punched me and started laughing again. He finally managed to reach an upright position, adjusted his backpack and hoofed it down the road.
“How far do you think I should let him go before I tell him he’s heading the wrong way?” I snickered. I picked up Mairy’s hand and this time, only a faint tingle leaped between us. “Smurf?”
“Don’t ask.” We watched Robin for a hundred yards before he realized that we weren’t following him. I jerked my thumb in the opposite direction and he turned around running, cursing me as he pounded towards us.
I laughed and took off, tugging at Mairy’s arm before we galloped like idiots on the yellow line.
His feet slammed furiously but it’s really hard to run with a 40 lb. pack, sleeping bag and bow on your back. With lungs heaving, he still managed to spit out purulent curses as he caught up to us. He was almost at arms’ length when I heard the sound of an approaching vehicle, something large and powerful by the engine’s whining. Yelling, we darted to the side of the road on a small embankment and he was close enough for me to grab his pack frame, jerk him off his feet and onto the ditch by the shoulder. A huge log truck screeched its brakes as it saw us in the center of the road and tried to stop. Its load shifted and the butt grapple swung free, hitting the side rails. The supports gave way with a loud crack and dozens of 24-28 in. round fifteen-foot chunks of raw lumber started rolling off the sides and back of the truck.
I heaved Mairy up the slope away from any falling timber and dragged Robin out of the way just as two of the timbers passed over my head. One more came at me as I turned to run. Gathering Robin to my chest, I jumped that log - a 24 in. spruce and landed on another that tipped on end. From that position, ten foot in the air, I did a swan dive, rolling my body and Robin’s before landing on a hemlock with bent knees. From there, we did a flip and a somersault, landing on four at once before I had to spin, catching another as if I were surfing a big one. I walked it rolling over and over like a lumberjack at the county fair but minus the water that floated them.
The last log shuddered and flipped end over end, knocking four on top of me. I was unable to find a position where I could safely jump, duck, roll or miss all of them without killing Robin in the process. In despair, I did the only thing I could think of - I froze time and because Robin was with me, I was able to move him. I was able to move him but only because I was holding him. Still, he was in shock.
The truck was frozen in a roll-over halfway between the road and the pavement, the driver rigid behind his seatbelt. The logs hung in mid-air, mid-rollover and Mairy’s mouth opened in mid-scream.
I slid between the logs still carrying her brother and set him down next to her, out of the way of re-bouncing logs and crushing danger. The minute I turned him loose, he froze like everything else; if I tried to move either of them, I could literally tear off a limb because of the forces needed to move an object in stasis. I wanted to let go of time myself but I had no control over when it resumed so I was unprepared when the truck landed sideways with a huge crash that shook the road under my feet. It hit the pile of logs, shifting the whole load in my direction.
I managed to jump three but the fourth hit me in the chest. I felt my ribs go and blood filled my mouth. I hugged the rough bark of the tree as it swept me away to roll up the hill crushing my legs and pelvis, smashing the pack and my back at an angle that was beyond my spine’s ability to flex and then bounced over me, completely missing everything but the tip of my finger. Oddly, that pain hurt the worst. A splinter dug into the skin and it burned.
I heard screaming, the rumbling stutter of an engine, the scraping sound of wood on concrete, shaking voices on a radio calling Dispatch and reporting an accident with injuries.
Robin and Mairy were kneeling at my side touching me, calling my name. I was so cold, and shivering, their voices seemed to be so far away.
“Don’t move him,” a man’s voice said. “I called the sheriff’s department and the Park Rangers. They have an SAR chopper only minutes away at the Ranger Station. You hang in there, boy. What’s your name? That was some fancy footwork you did there, almost like watching the fairies dance in the woods. You saved these folks’ lives. Talk to him,” he said urgently as my eyelids started to lower. “Talk to him. Keep him conscious.”
Hands rolled me carefully onto my side and did something to the pack so that it slid off me. My back didn’t feel right. “Can’t breathe,” I whispered and spat aspirated blood. Bubbles formed and popped on my lips. It tasted gross and filled my lungs. “Mairy?”
“I’m here, Lakan,” she said and there were tears in her voice.
“Did he see me Smurf, Mair?” I managed to try to move but nothing worked, nothing obeyed my brain’s command to move. I could feel the magic trying to heal me but it would take too long before I could get up and go with them.
“Have to leave, Mair. You. Robin. Tickets not wait. Lose connections.” I thought I said that but all I could hear were my desperate gurgles and bubbles bursting.
She wiped off my lips and kissed me. It was cold and lacked the fizzle. Not even a spark of electricity.
“They’re coming, Lake,” the man said. He stood up as we heard both the approach of the helicopter and the intolerable whine of sirens.
They parked down the road because there was no road, only a mass of broken and splintered wood. They ran between the logs and up the hillside, past the logging truck and next to the log grapple that had come to a rest only a foot from my head. It bled red hydraulic fluid that glistened and spread like my own blood but it smelled sharp and spicy like cinnabar.
I was surrounded by uniforms. Men and women in the forest green of Park Rangers, dull gray-green of the Troopers with their Smokey the Bear hats, the black cargo pants and long-sleeved shirts of Paramedics and EMTs. Next came the dove-gray flight suits of Life Flight nurses.
They moved me as if I was a glass vial of nitroglycerine, rolling me carefully onto a backboard and stabilizing my neck with towels and a strap on my forehead.
“Fractures at L5, 6, 7,” I said in a wheeze. “Right upper lobe pneumothorax. Bleeding into my stomach. Left ulna fracture mid-point. Pelvis crushed with internal injuries. Both femurs compound fractures mid-thigh and right hip subluxated.” I paused and said with a faint touch of humor. “No head trauma.”
They sat back in shock as the woman inserting my IVs stared at me. “Are you a med student? Your mom or dad a doctor?”
“No.” She finished the IV and pushed fluids and morphine which I did not feel as shock was creating a domino of effects in my body. They loaded me onto a stretcher as the other paramedic splinted my arms and legs in air casts. Carefully, they carried me to the nearest cleared area where the chopper had set down.
I was floating but still coherent enough to watch the faces running with me as they blocked out the trees and the road. Just around the corner from the wreck, we would have seen a small valley that opened up to vast plains and the sun reflecting off the glacier of the Park.
Mairy and Robin’s pale faces were with them as they were loaded into ambulances themselves. The truck driver was sporting Band-Aids on his face, and he went into another unit. I couldn’t see anything after that as the troopers shut the hatch. All I saw then was the nurse’s face as the chopper took off.
She had a blood pressure cuff on my arm and pumped it as the other one placed an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth. Smiling, she asked me questions all the time.
“It’s not his fault,” I said as she lowered it on my face. “The truck driver, not his fault.”
“BP is 60/40, pulse 150 and thready. Georgie, hit it,” she called over her shoulder.
“What’s your name, son? How old are you? Where’s your family? Who are those people with you?” She cut my clothes off and found my ID in my pants.
I tried to remember the names on our IDs. Blake Ravensfoot. Oh, the wig had fallen off, I couldn’t feel the stricture on my head anymore. It must have come off during my dance on the logs. They would find and remove the brown contacts in the ER but that could be explained as vanity not disguise.
“Ravensfoot,” I sighed and she lifted the mask but I could still feel the pulse of O2 in my face.
“You from the Reservation? Who are your parents? Blake, stay with me.”
I opened my eyes. I was so tired. I groaned as the pain escalated. “Are you hurting? I can give you another 1ml morphine. Sarai.”
I shuddered and she popped more drugs into me as she slid several round pads on my chest, leg and side. A rapid beating matched the pounding in my chest as the narrow tunnel of my vision darkened. It disappeared before her voice. Calling me.
“Blake. Ravensfoot - Shit! We’re losing him. De-fib!!”
Rescue One set down on top of St. Anne’s Trauma Center where a Trauma team was already waiting. The flight nurses jumped out pulling the stretcher with the patient and two of the team transferred him over to their gurney smoothly without jarring. She rattled off his vitals, holding the IV overhead and informed the doctor that the child had coded twice but had a pulse albeit thready and tachycardic. The hospital ER team rushed the boy into the elevator and descended to the triage room.
She handed over his ID that she had found in his pants pocket. “His name is Blake Ravensfoot, that’s all I know. He was one of three hikers coming down 89. A logging truck tipped over, lost its load and one of the logs rolled over him.” She recited the list of injuries the boy had diagnosed and was met with those same shocked looks.
“No, he said he’s not a med student or dependent of a doctor. I think his ID says he’s 16.”
They did X-rays, ultrasounds, and an MRI before sending the boy to surgery. The films and occult tests confirmed every one of the boy’s predictions, down to the splinter in his fingertip.
The surgeon called in a neurosurgeon who reviewed the films of the boy’s thoracic fractures. He nodded slowly before he went into the OR to clean up the bone fragments that had crushed and cut the spinal cord. Even without the spinal injuries, the crushed and fractured pelvis, macerated hip joint all pointed to a grim prognosis. If he survived the pneumothorax, shock, blood loss and possible bone marrow blood clots from breaking both femurs, the mangled pelvic girdle would preclude him from ever bearing weight again. With his spinal injuries, it was 100% certain that he would be a paraplegic until he died.