Hyllis Family Story 1: Telekinetic (12 page)

However, Denny stopped and, looking embarrassed, said, “
Tarc, I’m much better. Thank you for your help when I first came in to see your mother.”

“Um, you’re welcome. I didn’t do much though.”

Denny shrugged, “Your mother seems to think you were very helpful in making my diagnosis. I was surprised too, since she’s been doing this for such a long time. But, however much help you were, I owe you thanks. An infection like that could have killed me you know?”

Tarc
nodded uncomfortably, torn between embarrassment over her gratitude for something he didn’t feel he had actually accomplished, and pride that he might actually have had something to do with saving another person’s life.

Denny left,
Tarc looking wistfully after her and hoping to have that feeling again someday.

***

Tarc stood in a nook of the kitchen reading their general medical book. In the nook, anyone entering wouldn’t be able to immediately see what he was looking at. The family didn’t want anyone knowing about their books, so Tarc had a towel he could pull over the book should anyone come in. “Mom?” he said, “What’s this ‘pneumonia’ they’re talking about?”

Eva looked up from the dough she was kneading, “That’s an infection in your lungs. It’s a pretty bad thing.”

“Really? They don’t make it sound so bad here.”

“That’s because their antibiotics could cure most patients with pneumonia. Nowadays about half the people
who get pneumonia die.”

“Oh,”
Tarc said chewing his lip. “The book says to get a chest x-ray and a sputum culture for diagnosis…”

“X-rays were beams of something kind of like light that could shine right through people. Then they could see that part
of your lung was full of pus. You can tell that with your ghost so you don’t really need an x-ray.”

“What was the sputum culture?”

“Sputum is like spit that you cough up from all the way down in your lungs. People with pneumonia can cough up a lot of it and it has some of the pus in it. ‘Culture’ meant that they would grow the germs from the sputum to find out what kind of germs they were. Then they would know which of their antibiotics to use. Since we don’t have antibiotics, trying to culture the germs is pretty pointless.”

“Oh
, is pneumonia another of the… things we can’t treat at all?”

“
Pretty close,” Tarc’s mother sighed, sadly. “About all we can do is give the patient fluids and otherwise try to keep them healthy enough for their own body to fight off the infection.”

Tarc
closed the book and pulled the towel over it. He’d wanted to slam it shut, but a lifetime of respect for the fragile paper made that impossible. “Why do I have to study this stuff?! It’s not like we can do anything for
anybody
! It’s just a waste of my time!”

“That’s just not true
! It may not seem like we can do much because we are comparing what we can do with what the ancients could do in the books. But we do help and we do save lives. There are actually quite a few diseases that we can do at least something for.”

“Well,”
Tarc said disgustedly, “tell me which ones they are and where to read about them. I’m happy to learn about those, but I can’t see why I should waste my life learning things that are completely useless.”

“
Tarc!” his mother said, “
knowledge
is never useless! Besides, you’re really smart. If you learn everything you can from our books, maybe someday
you’ll
be able to figure out a way to treat some of those diseases. Especially with
your
talent.”

I’
m really smart?!
Tarc thought in amazement. A lifetime of being yelled at for screwing up one chore or another would never have led him to believe that his parents thought he was intelligent! After a long pause to digest this stunning statement he turned to look at his mother, thinking that she might be grinning at her own little joke.

She was staring at him with a very serious look on her face. “Really
Tarc, I think you could make a big…”

There was a loud bang that they both recognized to be
from the main door to the tavern slamming open. Excited voices were shouting and Tarc’s first panicked thought was that the strangers had come to rob them. But the voices were calling for Eva in panicked and pleading tones. She wiped her hands and cast the towel aside as she headed out to the big room. Tarc followed right behind her after checking to be sure the book was completely hidden.

A group of men were standing around Eva’s treatment table. They had put someone on the table
that Tarc could hear moaning despite the excited voices. The men parted to let Eva step in and, in the brief gap, Tarc saw that the fellow was holding his hands to his side, blood seeping out between his fingers.

Tarc
felt a little lightheaded. He picked out little snippets of the excited, practically shouted conversations of the men around the injured fellow. “Got in an argument…” and, “… one of those damned strangers that have been in town lately…” and, “pulled out a knife…” and, “just stuck it in him…” and, “quick as a snake, that son of a bitch was…” Tarc’s world went fuzzy and he felt himself falling.

Suddenly awake, Tarc realized he was drenched with cold water. Daussie’s face looked down at him looking worried or mad. Or maybe both? She held a dripping pitcher in one hand
What in all the Hells just happened to me?!
Tarc wondered.

“
Tarc!” Daussie practically shouted, “Get up! Mom says she needs you!”

Ah, Daussie’s not worried about me, she’s worried about something else.
He sat up. People were crowded around the treatment table. Now Tarc remembered the men coming in with someone who’d been stabbed. He stood, surprised to realize he didn’t feel unsteady. “Where’s Mom?”

Apparently his mother had heard him because suddenly she shouted, “Get back! Get back and let me have some room! I need
Tarc in here to help me!”

Tarc
realized that his mother was hidden behind all the men crowding around the table. Some of them shuffled back, creating a small space that he crept through to his mother’s side. The man on the table was pale as a sheet. His bloody hand dangled off the left side of the table, suggesting that he was now unconscious. Eva was pressing a towel to the man’s side and she made quick motions with one hand for Tarc to sit down beside her on the bench.

Tarc
stepped over the bench to sit down, glancing at the man’s face.
It’s Jacob!
he realized with dismay.

“Here, hold this towel,” Eva said loudly putting
Tarc’s hand on it. Then she leaned close to his ear and whispered, “The knife cut his spleen and he’s slowly bleeding to death! There’s nothing
I
can do, but maybe your ghost can put pressure on the bleeding area. You’ve got to try!”

A new wave of dizziness swept over
Tarc, but fortunately it passed without his passing out again. Tentatively, he reached out with his ghost, moving into Jacob’s side and feeling the now familiar shape of a spleen. Blood puddled around it and Tarc felt the laceration from the knife where the blood was coming out. He could feel blood around Jacob’s intestines. In fact everywhere he explored in Jacob’s abdomen blood pooled on the downside.
So much blood! Can Jacob still be alive?

Tarc
’s ghost darted up to Jacob’s heart which still pumped; though with smaller, more rapid motions than most of the hearts Tarq had felt. It also seemed smaller than most hearts Tarc had felt with his ghost.
It doesn’t have enough blood to fill it,
he realized. It only took Tarc a few seconds to feel around inside his friend. He moved his ghost back down to Jacob’s spleen where he used his ghost to press back against the bleeding. To his surprise it only took a gentle push from his ghost to immediately stop the flow of blood out of the wound.

His mother hadn’t
moved her head away from his after she’d first urgently whispered. When the bleeding ceased, he felt her sag with relief. “Oh, thank God,” she muttered, then put an arm around Tarc and hugged his shoulders.

Careful to maintain his gentle pressure on the bleeding area in the spleen,
Tarc turned his mouth towards Eva’s ear. “But he’s already lost so much blood!
Won’t that
kill him anyway?”

Eva stood, taking Jacob’s wrist in her hand to feel his pulse and peering down at his face. She stepped across the bench, but then leaned back down to
Tarc’s ear. “You may be right about how much blood he’s lost, but we’ve got to try. You stay here and hold back the bleeding, I’m gonna get my stuff for an IV.”

Ayevee?
Tarc wondered what she meant by that, but she was gone. He turned his concentration back to his ghost. He kept worrying that he might let the bleeding start up again if he thought about something else, but so far that didn’t seem to have happened.
How long will I have to hold this pressure for the bleeding to stop for good?
he wondered, looking up at the men crowded around the table.

One of the gawkers
turned to the man next to him and said, “No way this Calder kid’s gonna make it. ‘Stabbed in the gut’ is a death sentence.”

For a moment
Tarc felt confusion. He hadn’t felt any injuries to Jacob’s stomach or intestines and wondered what the man meant. Then he realized the man simply meant a wound anywhere in the abdomen. There was no way the man would know whether it had injured the actual “gut” or not.

“Where’s Eva gone off to?” another of the men asked of no one in particular.

To Tarc’s dismay another of the men answered him, “Probably gone back to her cooking. She knows she would be wasting her time trying to take care of this kid after a gut wound. She’s only left her boy here with him to make a pretense…”

Tarc
had been about to respond hotly in his mother’s defense, but she had just bustled back up to the table on the other side. Shoving men out of the way she said, “Let me get to his arm! You men back up and give us room to work.” She pointed to the man at the foot of the table and said imperiously, “You there, lift Jacob’s legs up in the air; he needs the blood from his legs up at his heart.”

Startled
, the man grabbed Jacob’s ankles and lifted them as he’d been told.

Eva
handed another of the men a large glass bottle full of clear liquid that had a coiled glass tube coming off the bottom of it. She admonished the man, “Hold this bottle like your life depends on it. Glasswork like this is more precious than gold. It would be
horrible
if it fell and broke.”

The bottle
hung from a wire shaped like the handle on a bucket. The coil of glass tubing had some cotton wrapped around its tip. Jacob stared, the glass jar was absolutely clear and perfectly symmetrical. It
had
to be from the old days, no wonder Eva said it was precious. The tubing also had that smooth perfection that no one could create anymore.

Eva pushed the bench back and sat down by Jacob’s right arm where it dangled off the table. She
put a soft cotton cord around Jacob’s arm, threw a single knot in it, and drafted another of the onlookers. “Mr. Morris, hold this knot snug. Just as tight as I have it now, not more and not less.” When Morris had done so, she bent over Jacob’s elbow and wiped at it with a wet cotton ball. She slapped the front of Jacob’s elbow a few times and then wiped it again. She reached up and pulled the cotton off the tip of the glass tubing, exposing a wicked looking needle. Eva looked up at the man next to the one holding the bottle and said, “Uncork the bottle.

The man stared at Eva for a moment, but then his eyes went to a
very large stopper which he pulled out of the top of the bottle. Fluid immediately began moving down the coil of glass tubing and a few seconds later began dripping out the tip of the needle. Eva told the man to put the cork back in the bottle, then told him to move with her as she worked with the needle. The coiled glass tubing had some flexibility to it, allowing her to move the needle somewhat independently of the bottle. She brought the needle up to the front of Jacob’s elbow, then used her left hand to wipe one more time with the wet cotton ball.”

To
Tarc’s astonishment, Eva stabbed the big needle into the front of Jacob’s elbow. Blood ran out of Jacob’s elbow and a tiny ways into the glass tubing. Once again Tarc felt his head go fuzzy, but a spike of panic over the possibility that Jacob would start bleeding again kept him from passing out.

Eva
said, “Mr. Morris loosen that tie.” Then she looked up at the man with the bottle and said, “Pull the cork out again.” As soon as he did, the blood in the glass tubing immediately disappeared back into Jacob’s arm. A minute or so later it was obvious that the level of fluid in the bottle was dropping.

The fluid
must be running into Jacob’s vein,
Tarc thought. For a moment, he wondered how she had known where to find the vein. Then he remembered that, of course, she could use her ghost to sense exactly where the vein was and tell when the needle had entered it. He brought his thoughts back to Jacob’s spleen; relieved to see that, despite his distraction, he had kept enough pressure on to hold back the bleeding.