She didn’t see the dead elk lying in the narrow two-lane road until it was too late.
She’d rounded the curve on Colorado Highway 12 under the shadow of Boyd Mountain, West Spanish Peak’s snowy top jutting upward to the east above the tree line. Everything happened within seconds that seemed to stretch out into eternities in slow motion. A flurry and storm of black feathers, the thud, pop and crackle of an impact, screeching metal, the sound of tin thudding against roof slats in a strong wind, a vision of her childhood home in Kansas as nor’easters pelleted the glass with hailstones, a half-filled thermos cup of coffee floating end over end through the air, brown hot liquid stinging her arms, flashes of light as the illumined screen of a silver-white laptop tumbled end over end, flashing a white ghost of the Apple Logo winking like some photonegative sinister pupil under a silvered brow, as the screen flexed and splintered glass erupted and spidered outward from its LED portal. An arm, tanned and well-toned, strong and yet gentle flailed at the air through a haze of long dark ribbons of hair, as bright stars sparkled and burst into the cabin in a nova of light. Digital numbers in amber, red and pale blue light glared like an accountant’s nightmare from a dash instrument panel as blades of dark limbs slashed through the fractured windshield with a high-pitched note that seemed to linger like the sustain piano pedal had been held on its strike of a far-left ivory key. A loud boom signified a sudden drop in tire pressure as the rubber on the left front radial folded under the chassis and the edge of the metal wheel rim converted itself into a roadway plow. The world rolled and tumbled, the ceiling caved, hot amber liquid mixed with a spattering of warm dark wetness. Hard flat lines of some sort of strapping, dug into her pelvis, and a hard, cruel unrelenting tightness cinched around her abdomen with such force she coughed blood. Boom, screech, thud, blended into an awful cacophony of terror. The world spun, fur and blood, hooves and claws, black feathers raked her face and arms. Thousands of tiny star cubes danced and careened before her eyes, abrading the air like the hailstones back on their Kansas farm.
Nory? She called out but wasn’t sure if she spoke his name out loud or just thought she did. The crash and smash of the vehicle echoed in her ears, as the black Mercedes SUV ground away its polished and waxed paint-job, fenders open to the sky like the small wings of a flightless bird, as pavement, gravel, and stones ground away at the exterior of the vehicle in sliding rumble, spinning and slinging a mountainous tan, black, and white fur body wrenched and twisted within the frame of the bent window posts, abrading away its skin, baring blood, bone, and muscle, flooding the interior of the vehicle with stench and rot, causing her to wrench away, catching only the dark silhouette of “Nory” as he was flung limply, upside down, tumbling and then swiftly ejected through the starry fractured windshield into the night. And then suddenly and mercifully all went black.
***
Maeven awoke in the bed from the nightmare, choking and flailing, wrapped in some sort of tubing and in a strange room with pitted tiled ceilings and an overhead spigot of metal with a spinner jutted from the ceiling beside an unlit recessed light panel. It was dark in the room, quiet except for an incessant beeping noise to the right of her as something that looked like a tall skinny robot with two gelled bladders for ears stood over her, humming with its heart monitor…she realized where she was. A muffled shushing noise came from something behind her and to her left that she could not see, yet somehow it’s dry steady coughing filled her throat with dry cool air. She clamped down on a plastic breathing tube and fought the nagging urge to vomit. She felt a cool dry cotton fabric in her fists, and the top of her knuckles stung with the clenching and unclenching of her fists. Salty tears stung the corners of her eyes and ran down the corners of her face and into her ears. She hated that. Could not stand water getting into her ears. Her breathing came in short gasps as the ventilator attempted to keep up with the pounding of her heart rate. Her temples throbbed, and she felt unpleasantly wet. Crimson embarrassment flushed her sweating brow as she thought in horror, “Oh no, I hope I didn’t wet the…”
A door in the room pushed open, and sudden light flared from the boxed recessed panel overhead. Maeven attempted to shield her eyes from the stabbing glare but found that her wrists were bound with a short tether.
“Oh, my God!” A female voice shrilled off to her right, just beyond the angle of the track curtain.
“Serita, get in here. Room 203. Stat! I need some orderlies and new linens. The patient is bleeding out. Notify Dr. Corsi. Quickly!”
Maeven winced and squinted. Feeling disoriented to be suddenly in a sterile white hospital room, blank lid-less TV monitor bolted on a pivoting arm from the corner, the ubiquitous faux wood-grain wardrobe cabinet, and single uncomfortable guest chair, with broad dove grey material matching the window drawn curtains. The nurse, a woman in her early to mid-twenties, appeared over her, her brow furrowed, but heroically attempted to smooth the worry lines out into a comforting smile.
“Welcome back, sleepyhead,” she brushed Maeven’s brow with soft cool fingers, slightly pushing an aberrant dark curl away from her field of vision. “We’ll get you cleaned up in a jiffy.”
She turned her head and her worry lines returned as she shouted over her shoulder, “Sereta! Dangit!”
Eyes turned again back down to Maeven as she continues to stroke her forehead and temples.
The pneumatic piston on the hospital room door wheezed as another two persons entered the tiny room, pushing a gurney. Maeven struggled to look downward, but the breathing tube made it painful to do so.
“We’re gonna get you patched up, girl. Don’t you worry.”
Two male orderlies, a black man, and a Caucasian man looking to be in their late twenties to early thirties came up to the bedside and the nurse pivoted out of their way. Maeven rolled her eyes, her embarrassment spiking, and her heart monitors signifying it with an increase in her pulse as the orderlies peeled back her cover blanket.
Blood soaked and saturated the sheets, soaking her thighs and hips and buttocks.
“Untimely, time of the month?” one of the orderlies smirked, to which the nurse barked a curt but firm “Shut up, you idiot!” in reply.
The black orderly gave his compatriot a hard glare and growled, “That mouth of yours is gonna feel pretty bad, if you don’t shut it, right now.”
“Where is she bleeding? This is a lot of blood,” the voice of another female woman asked, as the two orderlies put on their latex gloves, preparing to remove the bloodied sheets and thin cotton and plastic absorbent pad under her buttocks.
“We don’t know yet,” the first nurse, most likely the night charge nurse, answered quickly, “Guys, she’s gonna need some privacy. Take those sheets to the laundry. Sereta and I will roll her onto the gurney and get her checked out. Wheel that trauma cabinet over here. Sereta, gloves, please. I need the blue nitrile ones. Tell the desk to see if they can reach Dr. Corsi, tell him his patient is awake.”
The two men peeled the sheet carefully back and away, doing there level best not to spill blood on the mattress and floor, catching the wet sheet with a further unwrapped cotton and plastic bed liner. Which they unceremoniously dumped into a hazardous dirty linens hamper with a foot pedal that lifted off its plastic cover. The half-cover thin gown barely covered Maeven’s pelvis and upper thighs, but was soaked along the edges and would have to be removed as well. Sereta shooed the orderlies back and grabbed the privacy curtain drawing it around the bedside just shy of the open linens hamper.
“We’ll buzz you when we’re ready, guys. Now do as Judy told you.”
The two orderlies left the room, and Maeven’s eyes roved the ceiling, finding Judy-the-charge-nurse’s face, doing her best to express her gratitude for the last vestige of privacy. Sereta appeared over her as well, as she tried to mouth a ‘thank you’ but the tubing prevented it. Sereta smiled sweetly at her, “Hush, dear. We’ll take care of you,” and she looked over at the side monitor screen checking her patient’s vital readings.
“BP’s 95 over 61, not good but better than it was a few minutes ago when the alarms went off.”
They carefully lifted her gown peering underneath, for a minute or so and then looked back at her.
“Was she moved up in the bed at all?”
“No. Absolutely not. No one’s been in here since I came on my shift at seven.”
Judy-the-charge-nurse slid her gloved hand behind Maeven’s shoulder and lifted her slightly upward, unfastening the top snap of the hospital gown, freeing her shoulder from a sleeve, and then freeing the other. Sereta and Judy carefully peeled away the gown and wrapped it in another cotton plastic pad, and tossed it into the hamper and closed the lid.
With cotton gauze and moist antiseptic towelettes, they cleared away the blood and used disposable sponges and warm water to gently bathe the top of her body.
“This does not appear to be her monthly visitor. But I cannot tell where this is coming from.”
“Ready to roll her over?”
“I think we should,”
And they turned to Maeven, who felt like a guppy in a fishbowl between two cats, as they talked over her.
“Sweetie, we’re gonna have to turn you over on your side to see where you’re wounded, okay?”
Maeven tried to answer, forgetting the intubation, but only managed to squeak.
Nurse Judy extended the flexible tubing over the top back head of the bed, allow them enough slack to make the reposition feasible. Sereta came around on the other side and untied her wrist from the bed railing and unwrapped another bed liner napkin and unfolded it, tucking the edge of it under the blood-saturated one. She helped Maeven pull her arm across her body and grasp the railing on the right side of the bed. Together she and Nurse Judy pivoted and shifted Maeven into a side turn and steadying her, looked down the back of her, searching for the source of the wound flow. Pink welts striated the back of her right thigh, which they wiped at with sterilized gauze and moist towelettes, clearing the blood away, but strangely locating no wound capable of producing as much blood as had been present. Together they thoroughly cleaned the back of her thighs and buttocks area and lower back where the blood had pooled into the bed napkin. They cleared her, with cool sterile liquid, that slightly stung and dried quickly, but smelled of astringent. A light lotion and powder were applied which felt good and emollient, to the soreness in her back.
“BP’s climbing. 110 over 70. This makes absolutely no sense. I cannot find a wound on her. There is redness when her pressure points have pressed into the mattress, but that is normal for a person in a coma as long as she’s been down. Bedsore prevention maintenance, though. Wouldn’t want these to get any worse.”
The pneumatic huff of the hospital room sounded again and another nurse beeped from the bedside intercom speaker.
“Judy, Dr. Corsi, asked about his patient. Said if she’s doing well and her vitals are good, he’d be by to see her first thing in the morning.”
“BP seems to be heading back to normal, but her pulse is getting stronger but… Is he still on the line, Colleen?”
“Yes, on line 4,” the reply came back.
“Better let me talk to him. I’ll be right there.”
“Got it.”
A young nurse approached the bedside from around the curtain.
“Can I help?”
She wore a pink patterned top, what hospital staff traditionally referred to as a candy striper, and Judy nodded.
“Perfect timing, Dora. Yes, help Serena get miss Maeven her into a new gown and change these linens, and I’ll send the boys back in to take her down to the examination lab. Doc may want a CT run and a hemostat analysis. He’s on four and I’ll let him know what we’ve got. Glove up, dearie. It’s gonna be another long night.”
With that she stepped around the bedside, pushing the IV pole and Medi-Stat monitor out of the way so that they could get the gurney aligned with the bed. Dora donned some disposable latex gloves and moved to the bedside, smiling down at Maeven.
“How we doin’, sweetheart? You hangin’ in there?”
Maeven nodded as best as she could, drawing in a deep breath, yet struggling with the tube and face mask covering her nose and chin.
Both Dora and Sereta glanced again at the monitor and watched the numbers and pinging heart rate monitor signifying its systolic and diastolic climb and fall. Her pulse was beginning to even out to a steady lub-dub, lub-dub rhythm as she relaxed as Maeven tried to calm her breathing. Her throat was parched, she could use some cool ice water. Ice.
Her eyes, widened with the memory and her pulse and breathing suddenly quickened and shot up. She remembered where she had been before…
***
Deep in the cave beneath the falls, we all stared in wonder at the images that had spun outward from James’s body as he and Maeven entered the central Ghost Pool. Hanokh had told Mason and me that these were Calling Waters, and I had not understood what he’d meant by that at the time, but I was beginning to.
I knew then that James must be projecting an experience he had, from a terrible ordeal in the Surface World. How much of this was experience and how much was fiction, I could not tell, having known James for only such a short time. My guess was that it was real enough to him, and I should take it at face value. We often give ourselves to the illusion that we have things under control, only to realize and be confronted with realities that are clearly beyond it. It is in these times when we feel the most helpless that we finally are made to recognize the Hand of Providence moving in and behind the scenes of our lives working all things to our betterment and our good. Even things we do without conscious effort as a matter of routine responsibility. He moves, we learn and we listen. All things, tragedy, triumph, loss, and gain, can be molded and shaped by our Father’s Hand to bring forth good into our lives. A greater good. Not sought after in the strength and by the will of man, but of one tied to the Heavenly Will, and according to His working out our own salvation from among the bared teeth of this life, cursed by our progenitors, but redeemed by a Savior committed to help us realize that we do not walk through those valleys and under that darkness alone.
Having been so stirred and moved by the experience of witnessing James’s story, we all at first failed to realize that something else had happened while our minds and focus were within the bounds of the story.
Maeven was no longer in the water of the pool with James being held within his arms. She was gone. Vanished. Missing.
***
Outside of the frozen mouth of the falls, standing guard along the broken columns of ice and the crushed spikes driven through the ice berm of snow where the base of the falls had flash-frozen, the young woman who had stood up for me when it seemed the others might lose confidence in my calling to lead the party, watched with the two men who had joined the procession across the lake to convey Maeven to base of the Trathorn Falls. They had taken sentry posts to ensure no more of the vermin Moon Sprite brood showed up to corner us in the caves. Three gaping holes had been broken through the ice curtain and the bodies of the dead Moon Sprites and their young had flowed through these breaks, drawn by some unimaginable pull back into the pits from which they had emerged. Like tendrils of smoke, these unseen powers had lingered and eventually dissipated into the cool wind, leaving only a sort of unidentifiable but sweet fragrance in the air next to the cliff base. It smelled like some sort of incense one might associate with heated essential oils or fragrant candles, but it was not cloying or overbearing, but evocative of a serene and clean environment one might associate with a spa setting, under a warm towel. As it was breathed in it seemed to clear the mind, and soothe the spirit.
A rarely referenced verse from the Ancient Text rose to my mind as we had parted from these three upon carrying Maeven into the caves, and perhaps it is worth adding into this chronicle of our quest at this point, since James’s story was so fresh and happening concurrently, to these three who experienced our company coming together to serve and save a life of one of our own.
“15 Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing. 16 To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume. And who is adequate for such a task as this?” [2 Corinthians 2:15-16 NLT]
We, they and the others who had gone back across the lake to fetch the large log, per Maeven’s wish, were putting our lives at risk to love and assist her in a desperate attempt to save her life, by a means, we did not understand. Another verse arises to my mind akin to this and reads thus:
“13 “No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.” [John 15:13 CSB]
We had no certain idea of what the fragrant smoke might signify in the Mid-World lands, but if these verses were any indication of the supreme authority behind our joined and shared cause, that fragrance might just signify that our quest received a blessing from above all that is or ever was.
Excavatia 