Marik’s voice spoke from above her. “We need fresh water. We need to clean that wound as best we can and give her the medication that would help her heal.”
She looked up at him. Tears sparkled on her eyelashes. This was so much worse than anything she ever could have imagined, and she was not sure she had the courage to go on. Her head nodded up and down.
Melinda stood, obviously wanting to help the woman who must be her mother. “There’s no water.”
Marik said, “I have a refresher bottle here.” His eyes searched the little girl’s face and figure. His voice dropped even lower. “Tell me, Melinda, how long has it been since you had something to eat or drink?”
Melinda’s little shoulders lifted and dropped. Her eyes went back to her mother. “I don’t know. Can you please just help my mom? I am not hungry anyway. I don’t need anything to drink. Please just help her. She’s probably really hungry and thirsty.”
Jenny knew that the woman was neither hungry nor thirsty. She was deeply unconscious and beyond that. She said, “Give me a refresher bottle, Marik.”
He nodded, stood, walked away. He came back holding two bottles and several protein bars. He said to Melinda, “Listen, I need you to be a very big help to me now. I need you to sit down and drink at least half of this bottle. Then I need you to eat at least half of this bar. I need you to be strong because in a little while I’m going to require you to help me with your mother. If you have no strength, you can’t help me. Do you understand?”
Jenny knew what he was doing. She was hungry, and she was thirsty, but she was far too worried about her mother to take the food or the water at the moment. He was giving her a reason to take it. He was giving her purpose.
Melinda nodded and reached out her grubby hands. Marik opened the bottle for her, and she gasped in wonder as it expanded and filled.
Jenny asked her to step away, to go to another corner of the wall, and she went. When Jenny looked over again, she was already halfway through the bottle and more than halfway through the protein bar.
Her gaze went around the room. Many of the crew members were distributing food and other refresher bottles. The refresher bottles refilled themselves. It was a neat little trick of technology, and one that was far more advanced than anything she had ever seen on Old Earth. Talon made it very clear to each person that he gave the bottle to that he must have the bottles back if they were going to have water again and every single person drank deeply then handed the bottles back.
Marik said, “Jenny. I need you to focus.”
She took a deep breath. She had been paying attention to everything else because the sight of that wound; missing flesh and encrusted blood, infection and violent streaks of a purple-red that had spread away from the wound, told her that there was very little that they could do. She did not want to fail here and now.
Marik said, “We must do all we can with what we have. Hand me the cutter.”
Jenny took a deep breath. Marik began cutting, and he had no sooner laid the cutter against the swollen and red flesh than the infection began to pour out. She blotted it as quickly as she could on cloths to keep it from spreading into the room. Marik poured water over the wound to help try to flush it out. The woman began to toss and turn, her stupor being broken by the pain that was lancing through her body now.
Marik said, “I taught you to stitch. Can you do it now?”
She stared down at the abraded glistening flesh before her. It was one thing to stitch a small and not very deep cut that only required one or two stitches and entirely another to stitch that huge and gaping wound. She quailed. Her courage failed her. Her lips trembled. Her head shook back and forth.
Marik’s hands reached across the woman’s body. His fingers took hers.
His voice made her lift her head and her eyes locked on his. He said, “Jenny, here are the tools. They are in your hand. Stitch her well.” She had just told him that she could not do it! Why was he pushing her to do what she could not do?
She looked back down at the wound. “I don’t know where to stitch. I don’t know how much harm I might cause her.”
Marik said, “Yes, you do. Take a deep breath. Close your eyes and just see it in your mind. When you have, when you’ve seen the path that you must take to stitch her well, then you take that path. Open your eyes and stitch her.”
What was he talking about? Jenny drew a deep breath. Her eyes closed. There was nothing there but darkness. A slow ache started between her temples and then, all of a sudden, something, something very much like a memory, flared into life.
She could see the wound even though her eyes were closed. She could see her hand stitching, folding skin together and muscle as well. She watched, fascinated for she didn’t know how long until the stitching was done.
Her eyes flew open and went down to where the woman lay. She was actually surprised to see that the wound was still open, still shedding water and bits of infection and dead skin away from it as Marik continued to wash the wound with not just water now, but a healing solution that he had mixed from powder and the refresher bottle’s water.
Marik said, “You can do this. Do it, Jenny.”
She held up the tools. She took a deep breath. Her brain insisted that she could do this; that she knew exactly how to do it because she had seen it done already. She bent low and began stitch.
