“Come on, damn it, give me a hand.”
“All right, but I’m telling you, you’re better off just getting a blanket and letting him lie there.”
She grasped his arm as Ren had instructed and they tried in vain to bring the man to his feet.
“Like a dead horse, I told you.” Charlie grunted as she dropped the arm.
Ren pushed himself up. “Don’t leave him.”
“Where are you going?”
He bounded up the steps and ran inside Cabin 3. The bedding lay on the floor where the man had thrown it. Ren grabbed the blanket, then another from the closet, and raced back outside. Charlie was bent over, examining the man’s wounds.
“He’s been bleeding pretty bad,” she said.
Ren spread out one of the blankets on the ground next to the man.
“Could he, like, bleed to death?”
“Mom says it looks worse than it is.”
“She sewed him up?”
“Yeah. Help me here.”
Together they rolled him so that he was on the blanket. Ren stood up.
“I’ll be right back.”
He made for Thor’s Lodge, took the steps in a single bound, shoved open the door, and grabbed the telephone. He dialed the animal clinic where his mother worked. Dawn, the receptionist, told him she was out on a call. He tried her cell phone, got her after three rings. Her signal was breaking up, but not so badly she didn’t understand. She told him what to do and that she’d be there as soon as she could.
After he hung up, he went to the closet in his mother’s bedroom and took her medical bag from the shelf. He returned to where Charlie sat beside the man.
“You were gone a long time,” she said.
“I talked to my mom. She’ll get here as soon as she can.”
He checked the tube and bag taped to the man’s thigh.
“What is that?” Charlie asked.
“It’s called a Penrose drain. It helps the wound stay clean while it heals.” Ren dug into the medical bag, brought out a pair of latex gloves and Betadine scrub. He put on the gloves. “Hold his leg.”
Ren cleaned the area around the second wound where the stitches were broken. The fast flow of blood had subsided into a steady ooze. He reached into the medical bag again and pulled out a sterile pad, a roll of gauze, tape, and a pair of scissors. He pressed the pad to the wound, bound it in place by wrapping the gauze tightly several times around the man’s thigh, and secured it with the surgical tape.
Charlie watched in silent fascination. When Ren finished, she looked at him with admiration. “That was pretty sweet.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Who is he?”
“Family. My mom’s cousin.”
“Has he got a name?”
Charlie pulled off the gloves and began to put away the medical things. He considered a moment before answering her.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s Cork.”
3
A mile outside Bodine, Jewell DuBois turned off the main highway and bounced up the rutted road toward the old cabins. She was not happy. She’d been on an emergency call, a horse whose symptoms made her suspect tetanus. The last thing she wanted to hear that afternoon was that Cork O’Connor needed her.
She pulled her Blazer to a stop on the lane that ran between the guest cabins, grabbed her medical bag, and hopped out. Ren and Charlie were with him, sitting on the ground on either side. They didn’t seem upset. A good thing.
Cork was awake.
“Hope you don’t charge much for a cabin,” he said weakly. “The ground out here’s more comfortable than that bunk you had me in.”
Jewell addressed her son as she went down on her knees, asking sternly, “What happened?”
“He just opened the door and fell down the steps, Mom.”
“Where were you?”
“Out here,” Ren said.
“What were you doing out here? Why weren’t you with him like I told you?”
“Not his fault,” Cork broke in. “My own stupidity.”
Jewell drew the blanket back and examined the work her son had done. “Good job, Ren.” Then to Cork: “Why did you get up?”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time.” Cork smiled faintly. “The truth is I forgot where I was and panicked. Then I fainted.”
The sun was low in the sky, the afternoon going cool. Where the sun sliced between the trees that backed the cabins, the ground was still warm, but with sunset everything would chill quickly.
“Orthostatic shock, probably,” Jewell said.
Cork looked confused. “Orthostatic?”
“You got up too fast,” Ren said.
“Nothing to worry about. Your brain just needed more blood than it had at the moment,” Jewell explained. “Happens sometimes when people have been lying down for a while and stand up too quickly. We need to get you inside. Can you help us?”
“I’ll try.”
“Ren, Charlie, take that side. I’ll help over here.” To Cork she said, “Don’t put weight on that leg if you can help it.”
“Whatever you say, Doc.”
They positioned themselves and he sat up, then they helped him to his feet. Cork grunted as he came upright, and his pasty face went even whiter, but he didn’t buckle.
“Up the steps, one at a time,” Jewell instructed.
They mounted slowly. Cork struggled not to lean on his bum leg. By the time they got him inside and laid him on his bunk, they were all breathing hard and Cork was soaked with sweat.
A bag with a drip tube hung from the curtain rod on the window next to the bunk. “I see you pulled out your IV,” she said.
He shrugged. “Don’t remember.”
“Ren, get my bag.”
Her son scurried out and came back a moment later with the medical bag and the blankets. He handed her the bag and laid the cleaner of the two blankets over Cork.
Jewell pulled the blanket back enough to expose the wounded leg. She cracked open her medical bag, took out a pair of bandage scissors, and cut away the gauze binding Ren had put on. “I need to sew it closed again. I’ll be here awhile. You guys hungry?”
“Yeah,” Charlie said quickly.
“My purse is in the car. Get what you need for a couple of burgers in town or whatever you want. Charlie, you can’t talk about this, you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Not to your father, not to anybody.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.” She thought about Charlie and about something else. “It’s Saturday. You want to stay here
