“Reagan?” Herb calls to his granddaughter.
“I’m ok, Grandpa. Is Derek ok? Did the IV pop?” she asks. John can hear the strain in her voice from the pain she must be enduring. She’s gritting her teeth and swearing every swear word he’s ever heard and a few new ones under her breath.
“No, I pulled it. He’s lost a lot, though. Just about got him patched. Here, John, clean his arm with this pad. There’s sterilizing fluid on it,” Doc orders. John immediately snaps to attention.
Doc rushes to Reagan’s side. He curses lewdly under his breath like his granddaughter. There’s blood everywhere, and the room looks like someone’s been murdered in it. Blood is on the floor at John’s feet. It looks like a gallon as it spreads under the bed, making a nightmarish mess.
“What was that, Doc? What happened?” John asks as he finishes with his brother’s arm. John comes to stand near the doc, who is inspecting Reagan’s arm.
“If I’m right, I think he had a mild seizure. Sometimes happens from blood loss. He’ll be ok. Best not to hold him down too tightly if it happens again. Just don’t let him hurt himself,” the doc rapidly spits out. He’s obviously more concerned right now about his granddaughter. John stands at his shoulder, peering over it.
“Oh my God. Is she gonna be ok, Doc?” John gasps. Her arm is clearly slit open. The IV needle must’ve torn her skin clean open when it came out, and it looks deep. The blood continues to pool out and over the slit and hits her lap, the floor, everywhere. Her frail-looking fingers are trying to pinch the skin closed and are covered in her blood, as well. The doc isn’t getting the bleeding to stop.
“Honey, there’s just no way. I can’t even glue this. You’re going to need stitches,” he tells her gravely. A look passes between them that John can’t comprehend.
“Big deal, right? What’s one more scar?” she scoffs on a ragged laugh. She inhales sharply.
“Go and get help, John. This is going to need cleaned up in here. This isn’t sanitary for her or him.”
John sprints from the room to find help, making his way quickly through the huge, unfamiliar house. He finds Hannah and the grandmother in the kitchen and explains what’s happened. They both jump into action, pouring hot water into buckets and gathering rags for mopping up the blood. Sue, hearing the commotion, comes waddling in from the back porch swing and is insistent on coming back to the room with the grandmother to help. Doc sighs heavily when he sees her enter the room.
“No, not you, Susan!” he scolds before she can even get in the room. “Everything’s under control. Just go and get that Kelly gent to help out.”
She tries to protest, but John takes her arm and shuffles her gently from the room. Sue doesn’t resist all that much since she’s turned pale. He suspects she’s holding down a good vomit. When she’s gone, John and their grandmother get to work mopping up the blood. It’s started to seep between the cracks in the hardwood floor and making difficult work of it. Their grandmother doesn’t even flinch at the grisly work.
“John, see on the table over there? I need that small tray with the needle,” Doc commands.
“Yes, sir,” he answers and quickly jumps to his feet to retrieve the silver dish. As he hands it to Doc, he takes a second to look at Reagan’s face. She’s pale, very pale. He swallows hard.
She is whispering, “...shit, shit, shit.”
“Here, son, I’m gonna need your help with this one. You’re gonna have to help hold her still. I’ve got just a mill or so of local anesthesia in this shot here. But it’s not going to be enough. She’s going to feel a lot of this.”
“No, Grandpa. I don’t want him touching me!” she screeches hysterically and holds her hand out.
John scowls. Does she think he’s filthy, unworthy of touching her? Does she still want to shoot him? He just wants to help. It’s an impotent feeling watching your brother die and not being able to help with anything. And he doesn’t like this. For some reason he doesn’t want to see her suffer. She’d been trying to save his brother’s life and now she is badly hurt.
“Yes, sir,” he tells the doc.
“No!” she argues again.
“Reagan, just let him help, damn it! You aren’t going to be able to hold yourself still enough for this. Your body is going to react automatically. Let him help me,” he ends more softly.
“Fine! Just do it, Grandpa. I can take it,” Reagan informs them stubbornly. She raises her chin an inch, but her head bobs and her green eyes are worried.
The next twenty minutes are some of the longest of his life. John presses her shoulder back against the chair which effectively holds her arm more still for the doc. He also holds her small, free wrist in his grasp so that she can’t grab at the needle or her grandfather. She’s harder to hold back than he would’ve thought. But, then again, someone is poking a needle into her skin pretty deep. It’s as stressful as when he’d seen his brother get shot. She grits her teeth; tears form in her eyes but never drop. A few times she curses, some of them are pretty crude, but no one corrects her because her pain must be unendurable. Eventually she just closes her eyes tightly. A bead of sweat breaks out on her forehead. But for what looks like the most painful thing he’s ever seen, John is impressed with her courage. She is just as formidable as when she’d been wielding that rifle at him, and his respect for her soars.
Her grandfather is an accomplished doctor. He is quick, efficient and kind. His hands may be weathered, the fingers a little crooked from age, but he never once falters. His hands are steady, and from what little John knows of him, so is his character. Herb McClane is a good man who cares deeply for his family. Reagan now sports a new four inch scar which her grandfather covers with a bandage.
He’d been so engrossed with being part of his first medical procedure that John had forgotten about the room cleaning. And when he turns, he sees that Kelly and Hannah have also joined the cleaning crew and are finishing. The curtain is down, probably to be laundered, the floor cleaned. His brother lay quiet again under a fresh sheet and a light blanket.
“Ok, we have to go again,” Reagan states and starts to stand but falters. John is quick to grab her by the upper arm. She yanks her arm back and places her hand on the back of the chair instead for support.
“No!” is the resounding reply from himself, Hannah and their grandmother, who plunks her hands on her round hips.
“You three don’t have a say. You don’t know what the hell... I mean heck you’re talking about. We weren’t done. And now we’re not sure what was wasted. We have to start over,” Reagan argues. John wonders about her swear-word correction. What had brought that about? She hadn’t seemed overly concerned about her language ten minutes ago.
“Reagan, I’m not sure...” Doc intercedes.
“Don’t start, Grandpa. You know if we don’t keep going, he’s gonna die. You know it,” she argues, her eyes narrow. Her grandfather lowers his gaze from John’s and rubs the space on the bridge of his nose between his eyes. This is the universal sign of absolute, heightened anxiety that John has learned to recognize so many times from men in battle. He hopes it doesn’t also signify defeat.
“There’s a chance that we transfused enough,” Doc says quietly. He doesn’t sound convinced.
“Come on, Grandpa. You
know
,” she insists. “Let me just clean up in the bathroom and change again.”
She stands again quickly, always in a rush, and nearly falls. Everyone in the room gasps as John snatches his arm around her waist. She frowns up at him but begrudgingly takes his proffered help anyway.
“I’m fine,” she grinds out through her teeth.
“I know. Maybe I just need the support. You know, the blood and all is making me woozy,” he teases her. It earns him a bony elbow to his rib. “Come on let’s get you to the bathroom.”
Once in the bathroom, which is very spacious, he shuts the door and sits her on a stool near the sink. There’s a fresh stack of rags on the counter, and he swiftly goes about wetting a few with warm water. How the heck do they have warm water and lighting anyway? The whole rest of the country is suffering from a blackout situation, but this family seems completely unaffected by the entire worldwide dilemma. When he turns back, Reagan has her head bent forward resting on her arm on the counter. She’s clearly beat.
She miraculously sits docilely while he wipes gently at the arm that is splattered very liberally with blood. When he gets closer to the fresh stitches, she winces.
“Sorry,” he whispers on a frown. Reagan simply sighs and nods. She’s the toughest person he’s ever seen. And John has seen plenty of injuries in battle and grown men cry when having medics dig out shrapnel or administer stitches without morphine.
“How’s the boy?” Reagan asks quietly.
“Cory? He’s doing fine. Kelly told me that he’s barely limping now. We’re indebted to you and your grandfather for that, too,” John tells her with a grimace. He had spoken earlier that morning with Kelly and found out from him that Reagan and the doc had repaired Cory’s leg without the use of stitching. Some new technique that their grandfather had come up with years earlier, Hannah had informed them. Unfortunately, he must not have been able to utilize the technique with Reagan’s cut. It surprises him that she would think to ask about someone else at a time like this. However, she is a doctor even if it is unbelievable because she seems so young.
“Good, we’ll be able to put him to use around here,” she says stubbornly. “We’ll need all the hands we can get come harvest time. Grandpa always over-plants. And this time he’s really outdone himself.”
“We’ll all be more than glad to help with whatever needs done,” he says quickly still wiping gently around her wound.
“It hasn’t been determined yet. So don’t get cocky,” she says snidely. Then she levels John with a direct stare, not something she does often to anyone, he’s noticed. She’s usually looking down or avoiding eye contact with everyone.
Her gaze almost knocks him on his hind end. Eyes the color of the greenest waters he’s ever seen are staring directly into his, flashing with fire. He can’t help himself, John grins at her and she instantly looks back down at her knees. This only makes him grin wider. He wipes at her hair, a stray curl, trying to get blood out of it as she sits patiently. Well, almost patiently because she does tap her toe a hundred beats a minute on the tile floor.
It’s also the first time he has a chance to really
look
at her. She’s usually a flurry of motion, she never sits completely still. Reagan is a rather stunning woman, small but stunning. And she has a scar that runs almost the entire length of her right cheek that looks like it happened recently. Is it from some sort of farming accident? It’s very thin, but he’d still seen it. The side part of her hair kept long, frizzy curls concealing it most of the time. He figures that this is no accident. John would like to ask her about it, but somehow he knows that she’ll close up on him.
He also doesn’t know what she meant by “hasn’t been decided yet.” Do they mean to throw him and Kelly off their farm? He wouldn’t blame them if they did. Additional mouths to feed and house in a time like this is not something most folks are going to be too excited about.
“Should I get you something else to wear?” he asks patiently. She looks up and momentarily her eyes soften as if she’s touched by the offer, or perhaps from the shot of anesthesia.
“Yes please, top drawer of Hannah’s tall dresser. Can’t miss it. Her whole wardrobe’s white so she doesn’t go around looking like the mismatched village idiot.” And she’s back, John thinks with a gentle smile.
He leaves her and returns quickly with a white dress and her grandmother. John knows that this is one thing for which she isn’t going to take help from him. He wastes no time getting out of there.
“Grandpa, I just think she’s still too weak,” Sue is back and arguing with the doc.
“What do you mean she’s still too weak? Too weak for what? Another transfusion?” John asks in desperation. He doesn’t want her to be put in further danger. The thought stabs at his chest for some reason. She seems too small and fragile to be put in danger again. The girl was trying to save his brother, he reasons out. Or it could be sleep deprivation causing his anxiety.
“I’ll explain later, Johnny. But, for now, I think we need another donor,” Sue says as she rubs her bloated stomach and stands directly in front of the doc.
“It’s not that simple, Susan. We don’t know if anyone un-typed in this house would be a match, and I don’t have the time or ability to do it here. Your grandmother and you are both B negatives. Just show Kelly and John where the cellar is and have them fetch a gallon of juice. She’ll need the sugar from it. Even some good old-fashioned Kool-Aid or a can of soda will work. Anything with sugar. Oh, and get her something to eat. I’m not sure if she’s eaten since yesterday, either. I ate the food your grandmother sent in last night, but I can’t be sure if she did the same. We were both busy.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll go right now,” Kelly jumps in quickly and leads Sue from the room. John follows as she goes to the end of the long hall that he’s figured out belongs to just the suite of bedrooms for Hannah and the grandparents. They must’ve added this part of the house on after Hannah was born, knowing that stairs would be difficult for a blind kid. The architecture is different than the older, southern revival style of the rest of the home. The lines are modern, clean and aesthetic.
“It’s this way,” Sue explains as they turn left down another hall, passing a large family room off to the right. There’s another room attached to the family room where a baby grand piano sits, along with other musical instruments. The room is surrounded with floor to ceiling windows. John spies a guitar, something he’s missed playing for years. It’s just a glimpse, though, as Sue waddles through a small laundry room where clothing, his fatigues included, hang on cotton lines. She opens the door to a basement. Kelly stops her before she heads down.
“Why don’t you just tell us where to look, Sue? You don’t need to be going up and down stairs all day. I remember when my stepmom was preggers with Em. Stairs are the devil,” Kelly tells her.