Page 15 of Unwanted Vows

As I near the medical tent, I can see a kid out in front of the tent, David, I think his name is. A line is starting to build up — people who ate the questionable vendor food and have gotten sick from the grease, unfamiliar spices, and cold lemonade gulped down under a glaring sun, children with skinned knees, workers with splinters or smashed thumbs.

A memory pops up of sharing a single serving of rice with Leland in Africa. Both of us were hungry as wolves, but there wasn’t a lot of food in Mountain Hold those last days when we were essentially under siege from the neighbors, and Leland had given his serving to a little girl and her mother. Say what you might about Leland, he did his best to take care of people.

“Where is everyone?” I ask.

David gently pats the shoulder of a frail older gentleman, and says, “Take your granddaughter back there to the cool room and rest. Sip your water slowly. I’ll come check on you in a little while.”

David then turns to me and whispers urgently, “Ms. Northernfield needs you. She and Ramey are in the emergency area with a guy who got stabbed and a bunch of security people.”

“Here,” I say, thrusting the packages of food at him. “Do something with this.” I turn from him, and walk briskly to the flap marked, “ER/Surgery”. I had learned the hard way in the past: never, never run toward an emergency. Walk quickly, with purpose, but do not run. Running frightens people, and frightened people can turn into a mob.

I slip through the door flap and see that Ramey and Ms. Northernfield have the coat and shirt off a large black man who has a knife handle sticking up from his stomach.

I go immediately to the sink and start to scrub up. Rolling my sleeves up reveals my flaming crown tattoo, a reminder of youthful trust in the adults around me, and my eventual rebellion against them. I suppress the slight shudder that accompanies revealing it.

The surgery set up is primitive by modern standards, but all we need to do is stabilize him so that he can be sent to a hospital. “Is he conscious?” I ask over my shoulder.

“Yes,” the man gasps out. “And it fuckin’ hurts. Can you do something about it? They won’t give me anything. They just make there-there noises and then they cut up my good shirt.”

“They did exactly the right thing,” I say firmly.

“Just fix it,” the man nearly wails. “It hurts.”

He sounds like an injured child. Pain reduces all of us to our most basic selves. I don’t blame the man for whimpering with pain, or for being afraid. To be attacked by another human is a shock to most people living in a first-world country. They aren’t prepared for the kind of violence that humans are capable of. I sometimes wish that I wasn’t so prepared for it.

“I’m here now, and we’ll work together to take care of you,” I soothe him. “All right team, let’s see what we can do.”

Forty-five minutes later, we pack the poor fellow into an ambulance and send him off to the hospital in the city. He is accompanied by two security guards and a deputy sheriff.

“So,” I say, “Do we have any idea why he was attacked?”

“He said something about he wasn’t going to do something, and that they, whoever they were, couldn’t make him do it,” Ramey replies.

I knew from earlier conversations that both Ramey and David are interns. Ms. Northernfield is an anomaly here. She’s an excellent nurse, completely flawless in her patient care. She prepped the victim perfectly and had assisted me with a competence that suggested she could easily have done the necessary work to stabilize the man for his ambulance ride without my help. So why didn’t she have an MD after her name?

As for the man…he had been well-dressed in slacks, a button-down shirt, and a blazer. His clothing was not expensive. It looked like something that might be worn by a church minister or a schoolteacher. He’d only dropped a curse once, despite his pain, as if he didn’t use bad language casually. You had to wonder why a man like that has been attacked by anyone.

Ms. Northernfield goes out to the front while Ramey cleans up the ER so it will be ready if we have another emergency. I follow her, and we resume helping patients, quickly reducing the line of people outside.

Ms. Northernfield works with an assurance that shows she has plenty of experience with soothing small injuries and illnesses. With her bedside manner, she could have instructed some of my colleagues in calming people and getting them to cooperate.

Her tan skin flushes when she catches me looking at her. I quickly refocus my attention on the patient in front of me. Why does she seem so familiar? I should remember, I am certain of it.

I catch a scrap of memory. Something about lions in the zoo. I almost have it, but my victim – er, patient – gives a squeak of pain as I extract gravel from a skinned knee. The memory is gone again.

With the youngster dismissed, I look up to see Richard entering the tent with a stack of boxes. “How busy are you?” he asks.

I look around. Ms. Northernfield is working with the last person in her line, and there is no one remaining in mine.

“Not too, I guess,” I say. “Why?”

“Catriona wants everyone to do a DNA test. Some idiot with a briefcase approached Rylie, Catriona, Kate, and Julia about some kind of fancy private boarding school while they were walking with the kids over to the park. Rylie went off on him, because she’s got no love for boarding schools. Then he said that Leland can’t be a real Lane, and therefore can’t be the legitimate heir for the arranged marriage, and it should be annulled.”

“Why would he say something like that?” I ask, trying to muddle my way through family relationships and figure out what Richard wants.

Richard sighs. “It seems weird to me, too. But the girls are all upset. Kandis is pretty level-headed about most things, and Rylie can usually laugh stuff off. But Catriona is in a full-on, red-headed rage over it. Can’t say that I blame her. The girls have her in the childcare cottage, trying to get her calmed down.”

“So this is why you have the kids?” I ask, surveying the crowd of youngsters trailing after Richard.

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