Hyllis Family Story 1: Telekinetic (13 page)

After five minutes or so Tarc looked up and saw that the bottle of fluid was about three quarters empty. To his astonishment Daussie was climbing onto a stool beside the man holding the bottle. She had another bottle in her left hand. She uncapped her bottle and began pouring fluid into the hole where the stopper had been on the first one. Soon the bottle draining into Jacob’s arm was nearly full again.

When
the first bottle had drained towards empty again, Daussie was there with another one to fill it back up.

Tarc
wondered just how much of this fluid could actually
go
into Jacob’s arm. He also wondered where all these glass bottles had been kept and what was in them. And why Daussie knew about them when he didn’t? He didn’t ask those questions though, instead he said, “Mom, Jacob is getting cold. Should we do something to warm him?”

Eva’s eyes flashed to
Tarc from where she sat holding the needle in Jacob’s vein. She looked at Jacob for a moment; then said, “You’re right.” She turned and called out, “Daum, get some blankets.” She turned to one of the onlookers who was a regular at the tavern, “Gary, get a bunch of the warming stones from the big fireplace, we’ll stack them around Jacob under the blankets.” She looked around at the rest of the men, “Do any of you know if the deputies told the Calders that their son has been injured?”

The men looked at one another h
esitantly; then one said, “Uh, I don’t know. The deputies have been pretty busy. The man that did this… he took off running for the gate as soon as he done it. I uh, heard that he killed Deputy Miller getting out of the gate. There was men chasin’ him and all, and Deputy Miller tried to stop him.”

Eva closed her eyes a moment
, a sadly grim look on her face. When she opened them she focused on the man who’d given her the news. “That’s a terrible thing, but someone needs to tell the boy’s folks.” She gave him a little nod, “You go do that.”

The man’s eyes widened, “Me! Why me? I don’t know them folk. I wouldn’t know what to say!”

Tarc didn’t know the man, but thought he was poorly spoken and would make an unsuitable carrier of distressing news to Jacob’s parents. Apparently Eva felt the same, because she didn’t try to badger the man into going. Instead she turned to Mr. Morris, “James, will you go? I believe you know the Calders.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, “though it’s surely a job I’d rather not have to do.”

“None of us want that job James,” she said gravely, “but we will all thank you for doing it.”

Time passed.

Tarc
had developed quite a headache. It felt more like his head was really tired than the stabbing kind of pain he’d had from headaches in the past. But it did hurt, so he guessed that it qualified as a “headache.”

Tarc
estimated that Eva and Daussie poured 4 or 5 liters of fluid into Jacob’s arm. Jacob continued to lie unconscious, pale as snow. His heartbeat had slowed a little and something lumpy and thick had formed in the laceration of his spleen. Tarc hoped it was something like a scab or clot. He was beginning to wonder whether he might be able to stop holding the blood back, but worried that if he stopped holding pressure and blood started to flow out, it might wash away any clot that had formed. He didn’t want to have to start all over. At present, he was resting his head on the table next to Jacob, one hand on the towel covering Jacob’s wound, the other rubbing his skull.

A woman’s shriek announced the arrival of
Jacob’s parents. Tarc lifted his head and used the hand that had been rubbing his skull to rub at his eyes. Tarc hadn’t seen Jacob’s mother for many years, but she looked enough like Jacob that there was no doubt who she was. She rushed to the head of the table where Jacob’s face was visible. The rest of Jacob was covered in blankets; even his head had a towel around it.

Before Mrs. Calder could bend to embrace her son, her eye caught on the needle Eva
still held in his elbow. “
What
are you
doing
?!”

“We’ve been giving him fluids in his vein. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Fluids in his vein? What kind of fluid?”

“Saltwater. We’ve cooked it in our pressure cooker so it won’t have any germs.”

Tarc had been wondering whether there might be germs in the fluid. His mother was a real stickler about germs, so he should have known she would have done something to keep them out of her patient.

A panicked look on her face, Jacob’s mother said, “Is that why he’s so white? Because you’ve replaced his blood with saltwater?” Her eyes darted back and forth, “Who said you could do that?!”

Jacob’s father had come in just behind her. Now he placed his hands on his wife’s shoulders, “Linda, everyone says Eva Hyllis is the best healer. Not just in this town, but for many towns around. If
she
thinks Jacob needs saltwater in his vein, he probably does.”

“Nooooo!” Jacob’s mother moaned piteously. “I don’t think it’s right. Take it out, now!”

Eva narrowed her eyes, but pulled the needle out of Jacob’s vein without protest, putting her wet cotton ball over it and holding it with a thumb. Even across the table Tarc had gotten a whiff and thought the cloth was soaked in some of the moonshine his father distilled from beer runs that didn’t turn out so well. Tarc noticed that almost all of the saline in the bottle had run in anyway. Daussie gingerly took the bottle from the man who’d been holding it and carried it into the kitchen.

Linda Calder looked down at her pale, pale son, then back up at Eva. “You need to take the saltwater back out of him too! He’s
too
white. I don’t know if saltwater might be good for some people, but you’ve given Jacob too much!”

Calmly, Eva said, “He needed every bit of what we’ve given him and perhaps more. He’s white because he lost so much blood, not because we gave him saline. His heart needs
something
to pump around his veins. In the old days they would have given him blood from someone else, but we can’t do that.”

“Give him my blood! Take out the saltwater, and give him my blood.” Linda said in a tone somewhere between a piteous moan and a frenzied fury.

Eva studied her a moment, then said, “Linda, we can’t take the saltwater out without taking his blood out too, which would be a horrible mistake. We also can’t give him someone else’s blood without being able to test it to see if they have the same type of blood that he does. If we give him the wrong type blood it will
kill
him.”

“I’m his
mother
! We
must
have the same type of blood!”

“Not necessarily. He might have… inherited a different blood type from his father.”

Tarc’s eyes darted back and forth from the one woman to the other. He wondered how his mother could possibly know all this stuff. Had her mother taught it to her? Or was it all in the books Tarc hadn’t read yet? For a moment he was struck by the fact that he would have thought that knowing something about giving one person’s blood to another person was useless information. But it would appear that he should at least know that it could be very dangerous so he wouldn’t be tempted to do it.

Linda Calder had been standing there looking desperate. She was practically panting, now she rubbed at her mouth. “No! I’m
sure
our blood’s the same!
Give
him some of mine!”

To
Tarc’s surprise, Eva got up and walked around the table to Jacob’s mother. Putting an arm around her, she said calmly, “Linda, take it easy. Breathe slower. You’re hyperventilating and you’re going to pass out.”

At that moment Linda’s eyes rolled back, she twitched a few times and started to drop to the floor. Since
Eva already had an arm around her, she was able to ease her gently to the floor. She looked up at Jacob’s father saying, “She’ll be okay, she just got too excited.” Eva turned and said, “Daussie, get a bag from the kitchen.”

Wide-eyed, Daussie said, “What kind of bag Mama?”

“It doesn’t matter much; one of the cloth bags we use for groceries will be fine.”

Eva stood and came around to
Tarc’s side of the table, leaning over Jacob and looking down at him. Tarc knew she would be sending her ghost through his friend to see what was happening. Gently, she took Tarc’s hand and lifted it with the towel off the wound on the left side of Jacob’s upper abdomen. Tarc could see that the blood in the wound had clotted. Eva leaned down next to his ear and whispered, “You look really tired?”

Tarc
nodded, “It’s hard, pushing for a long time.”

Eva sighed, “I’m sure it is,” she said right in his ear. “
It’s hard enough just feeling around with my ghost for a long time. It must be worse when you’re actually pushing something. I think the clot will probably hold now, why don’t you ease off the pressure while we’re both keeping an eye on it?”

Tarc
slowly and gently released the pressure, on tenterhooks through the whole process for fear that the blood would start pouring out again. However, when he’d completely relaxed the pressure, the clot held.

“You’ve let all the pressure off?”

Tarc nodded.

“Okay, go get yourself some beer and pork. Let your talent rest for a little bit. I’ll stay here and watch Jacob to make sure he doesn’t start bleeding again.”

“I can watch him. That isn’t hard. You’ve got to be really tired too, with all you’ve been doing.”

“I haven’t been using my talent much. I’d rather have you rested in case the bleeding does start. Go.” She made a shooing motion with the fingers of her left hand.

Daussie said, “What do I do with the bag Mama?”

Eva looked over at Jacob’s mother. She had awakened and was struggling back to a sitting position. Eva indicated
the woman with a jerk of the head, “Sit with Ms. Calder. If she starts breathing hard again, hold the bag loosely over her face. It’ll keep her from passing out.”

Tarc
looked back and forth from his mother to Ms. Calder a couple of times, wondering why a bag over the face would keep the woman from passing out. He got up and went into the kitchen, thinking there was far too much he needed to learn. He’d never even
heard
of hyperventilation before. To Tarc’s astonishment, he found Daum in there turning the meat on the grill. Loaves of bread sat on the counter behind him. The kitchen smelled great! “Dad! You can cook?” Tarc said in astonishment.

His father winked at him. “Your old
man can do a lot of things you’d be surprised to learn about.” He nodded at a big bowl of grilled chicken. “I’ll bet you’re hungry, have some chicken.”

“Mom said I can have a beer too,”
Tarc said loading a couple of drumsticks, a slice of bread and an apple onto a plate. He suddenly felt ravenous.

“Good idea,” his dad
’s eyes twinkled at him. “Sell some beers to the gawkers while you’re out there.”

Out front, Tarc ducked behind the bar and ate his lunch while pouring beers for the men. When he held his hand out for payment to the first man who took a beer, the man protested. “Don’t I get a
free
beer for carryin’ the boy in here?”

Controlling
his temper, Tarc said mildly, “An’ who do you think’s buyin’ you a beer? Do you think it’s us, who had our business disrupted trying to take care of the young man? We were thinking you brought him in out of the goodness of your heart and were buying a beer to help us make up for our lost expenses taking care of him.”

The man had the decency to look a little embarrassed and dug in his pocket for coin.
Tarc glanced over at his mother who still had a hand on Jacob’s stomach. She was talking to Jacob’s mother who appeared much calmer now. He put his drumstick in his mouth as he carried two more beers over to the line of waiting men.

Tarc was chewing his apple and collecting money from two more men when Daussie ducked behind the bar looking furious. With red spots on her cheeks she stepped up to Tarc and said, “Mom sent me over to run the bar because she says she needs
you,
though what you can do that
I
can’t do is
certainly
a mystery to me!”

Rather than getting angry at Daussie,
Tarc’s heart skipped a beat.
Is Jacob bleeding again?!
he wondered. He stepped past Daussie without saying anything to her.

When he arrived back at his mother’s side she indicated the seat beside her while still speaking, apparently calmly, to Jacob’s mother. When she finished her sentence, she turned to
Tarc and said quietly but apparently unexcitedly, “A small spot has started bleeding again. I’m hoping you can stop it?”

Tarc
had already sent his ghost into Jacob and found the spot oozing fresh blood by the time she spoke to him. He pressed gently on it with his ghost and it stopped. He was relieved to note that it didn’t seem to take nearly as much effort as it had taken to stop the bigger bleeding area before.
Maybe because it’s smaller? I hope less pressure means less headache!