The House

By Dawn Natelle

More on this arc. Some of the commenters to the last chapter were pretty close to what I planned: Dawn

Chapter 33 – The Chip Truck (part two)

John reacted first to the sight of the burning chip truck on the video, racing to the phone to call London Police for more information. The others watched as he spoke.

“Hello, I would like to get more information about the chip truck fire today at the carnival. Yes, I’ll hold.”

“This is John Jenson. I think I may have some information on the chip truck fire. I am the guardian of the son of the people who were in the fire. What is the condition of the couple?”

“One deceased, one at the London University Hospital burn unit?”

“The deceased will be Walter Johnson. The wife is Belle.”

“They were of no fixed address: they travelled around in their truck, occasionally staying in motels.”

“Thank you, you have been most helpful.”

“First call done,” John told the others. I will need to call the hospital to see about Belle’s condition. I assume we will go to her?”

“Definitely,” Grey said. “Who will go? I need to be able to heal her, if I can. I’d like Sun with me. Can you leave the babies?”

“Yes,” the tall woman said. “They are starting to wean: this will just rush things a bit. Dary can look after them, and Billy. I’ll probably dry up without either of them feeding, but this is more important. We need to gas up the new bus. It is perfect for taking so many to London and bringing back a patient.”

“Let’s go and fill up,” Willow said. “I can turn on the pumps for you if Frank is not still there.” The two left.

“I’ll go talk to Dary,” Grey said. “She can look after the babies. What about Billy? Do we take him?”

“No,” Daisy said. She seldom used her power as matriarch of the house, but his time she was insistent. She did not want the boy going to the hospital where his mother was. He would only be told that Belle had a ‘big booboo” and that Grey was gone to help her.

Grey returned to hear the last part of John’s next phone call.

“I am a lawyer, ma’am. I suspect I understand the Freedom of Information Laws better than you. As the guardian of the woman’s son, I am ipso facto the next of kin to your patient, and am entitled to information on her condition. Can you tell me this, or do I need to speak to your supervisor?”

“Thank you ma’am. If you could let them know that we are coming, and should be there in five hours or less. Her doctor will travel with us.”

He hung up the phone. “Her condition is critical and she is in the ICU of the burn unit. Apparently they aren’t sure she will last the night. We need to leave right now.”

Grey, John, Nora and Hawk walked out towards the store, rather than waiting for the bus to return. It only had minimal fuel in it, so it took a fair time to fill the big gas tanks on it. Sun was just finishing up when they got there and everyone filed into the bus. Willow would return to the house after locking up the store. There was more than enough money on Grey’s account to pay for the gas.

Hawk drove, with Sun standing beside him at the front, listening to make sure the engine sounded right. The others sat in the back, although Grey first converted the seats into a bed on the left side, so that he could treat Belle as soon as she was released from the hospital.

“This is actually quite nice,” Nora said as she sat in one of the big seats at the front. John sat next to her and Grey took the window seat behind her. Sun returned once she was certain the engine was working perfectly, and sat next to him, with her long legs sprawled out into the aisle.

From then on it was a long, tiring drive. Luckily they crossed through the north of Toronto freeway/parking lot after rush hour, and were only slowed once, when some clown in an SUV thought he could push a transport driver around (he couldn’t, as his crumpled vehicle attested). Sun spelled off Hawk after 90 minutes, and John drove for an hour after that. Hawk got back in the driver’s seat as they neared London: he knew the city and was soon driving up to the front of the hospital. John had called ahead on his flip phone and informed the burn unit that they were on the way. He had told them that the House would pay for private accommodation for Belle.

Ontario has government health care, and Belle would be looked after at no cost to her. But that would be ward treatment, in rooms of four to eight people. Most big companies have supplemental care plans, which allow for semi-private treatment, which means a room with two patients. Rare was fully private accommodation, with a room to your self. Belle was still in ICU, which would be a treatment ward, but just telling them that she would get private coverage raised her profile in the hospital as a VIP with better treatment. The hospital charged additional fees for semi-private and private rooms, so it encouraged the best care possible for those patients.

Inside there was the normal run around until they found the burn unit hidden in the back of the huge hospital. Hawk stayed with the bus: John gave him his cell phone and said they would call him when and if he was needed. Hawk then took the bus to a nearby service station to fill up for the trip back.

In the ward they were initially repulsed by the ward nurse, until Nora noted that she was a doctor. They were eventually led to the ward, and Grey sat down next to the bandage-wrapped patient. He had felt a connection with her almost as soon as they entered the hospital, and started to hum his song as they searched for the burn unit. Sun realized he was singing softly, and took his arm to guide his steps: he couldn’t see the real world well while he was inside.

By the time they had reached the burn unit, Grey was inside the woman. He immediately started working on shock aversion: shock was as likely to cause he death as the massive burns she had received. In a few minutes he had lessened the shock and her heart was beating more regularly.

“Heart rate up 20 percent,” a nurse monitoring the machines reported.

“What?” said the burn doctor, who had been speaking to Nora: as a doctor she was the only one in the group he deigned to speak with. “How is that possible? That man must have jostled a wire or something. I want him out of my ICU.”

“Are you certain of that?” John said. “I am the lawyer for both him and your patient. Both are First Nations’ people. Are you refusing to allow them to seek treatment in their natural traditions? You may want to talk to your lawyer and the hospital lawyer before you answer that. Lawsuits can be costly.”

The elderly doctor sputtered, then relented: “He can stay as long as he doesn’t impair her care, or disrupt other patients.”

“He is singing very softly,” John said. “And the nurse said the heart rate was improving, I believe.” The doctor merely turned back to Nora, not realizing that John was her husband.

“She was on critical three,” he told her, using the hospital code for patients not expected to live more than a few hours. “With an improved heart rate she might be up to critical 2 or 1. Her left ear and eye were destroyed in the explosion: fourth degree burns. The entire left side of her body has third degree burns, and the right side is first or second degree burns. If she lives the eye and ear will be totally gone. Her nose is also ruined on the left side. It could be repaired, except there will be no place to get graft skin from until her right side heals: several weeks at least.”

While this discussion was going on Grey was working on the eye. His medicine man mentor was telling him a different story. Everything was reparable, but it would take time: a long time.

What happened? Grey thought and immediately he accessed Belle’s memories. He saw the inside of the truck as the fryers heated up. When Walter grabbed her, Grey knew immediately that it was not a loving embrace. He was restraining her physically. It was no accident, but a murder-suicide.

Grey saw the cigarette arc towards the fryer. Everything exploded when it was several inches from the grease: the heat was far beyond the flash point. That fryer exploded into violent flame and the other two fryers went up within a second. The second one exploded and threw hot oil on both of them. This caused Walter to lose consciousness and crumple to the floor. Most of the grease ball had hit him, although some got Belle in the face, and caused her to stagger back out the door at the rear of the van, her clothing immediately ablaze. She fell down the steps, and lay burning on the ground until the fair worker smothered the flames with a blanket. From that point on all she felt was pain. Until now, as Grey gradually killed the pain nerves and allowed her to start on the long road to recovery.

«All these bandages are hindering the healing,» the mentor said. «Have them remove the bandages.»

“We need to have the bandages removed,” Grey said to Nora, coming out for a few moments, and drinking from the large water bottle Sun held. “They aren’t helping.”

Nora hesitated, knowing that burn bandages were key to keeping infections out of the wounds. She had been worried about this: as a pediatrician she didn’t have to skills to wrap new bandages every few hours, like the nurses here did. Nevertheless she suggested that the bandages be left off at the next change. The ICU nurse looked shocked, and turned to the doctor.

“Absolutely not,” the old man said. “The wounds must be covered to minimize infections. In a case this severe it will probably be infections that kill her, not the burns.”

Grey merely started to sing his song softly and went back to work. There were a few infections here and there, and he easily quelled them. Belle was now resting in less pain, and Grey started looking at the eye. The eyeball had fallen free of the socket in the accident, and was now held in place by bandages.

The optic nerve was intact, although damaged somewhat when the eyeball had been jarred loose. Grey worked on strengthening it. Within the eye various parts were damaged. The lens was off kilter, the iris was frozen at the wide-open state it had been in while in the dark van, and the retina was burned out in places.

While he was working, the doctor had left, and Nora was pretty much in charge as the nurses changed shifts. A nurse practitioner came in with a dose of Kadian to add to the IV bag. Nora stopped her, and asked Grey if the morphine drug was needed. He only paused for a second and said no, he was controlling the pain, which caused the eyes of the nurse to go wide. Nora called a halt to the Kadian. She had made the original doctor add her to the patient record as her physician, so the nurse reluctantly agreed.

It was eight hours later when Grey came up again. “I have been working on her eyes, he told Nora. The one is badly damaged but I think I can save it. There isn’t much left of her ear or nose, though. You know this was a murder-suicide, don’t you? He intended to kill them both, but was positioned in a way that he actually saved her from some of the danger.”

Soon after, a new doctor came in, He was younger, at about 40, but nearly as pompous as the older doctor. “I am told that someone stopped the Kadian treatment on the girl,” he said in an accusatory voice.

“That would be me,” Nora said. “The patient has no need for morphine.”

“Are you a doctor?” the man accused.

“Yes I am,” she said. “I have more than 30 years medical experience. I will admit that you probably have far more experience with burn victims, but you haven’t even examined this patient yet, have you?”

The doctor shook his head no, and then conducted a full examination as the nurse was replacing the bandages. When he was finished, he came back to Nora.

“I have never seen a patient with burns like that still alive,” he said. “But you are right, she doesn’t seem to be in severe pain. I would think she had been with us for two weeks, with such a strong pulse and good blood pressure. The burns need a lot of time to heal, and we will have to remove the ear, and possibly the nose. We can graft a new nose for her once the minor burns on her right side heal.”

“We are thinking of removing her to eastern Ontario,” Nora said. “That is where her friends and family are.”

“Oh, that is too bad,” the doctor said. “We are the best burn unit in the province, although Kingston General and Ottawa General are both good. Which would you take her to?”

“Kingston is closer,” Nora said.

“Well, it will take four hours to book an ambulance to go that far,” the doctor said. “You will need a nurse to accompany her.”

“We have transport arranged,” Nora said. “And I will travel with her.”

“In that case it will take a little over an hour,” the doctor said. “The patient needs to be wrapped again, and there is paper work to be filled out.”

“John here will look after the paper work,” Nora said. “He is the patient’s lawyer.”

Grey had moved back into position when the doctor had finished his examination, and was again singing. He continued to do so until the paperwork was finished and Hawk had the bus at the hospital entrance. Belle was wheeled on a gurney to the bus, and then gently lifted into the bed in the rear of the bus. The hospital staff left, a bit uneasy about allowing a patient who seemed to be improving leave on such a make-shift transport.

The trip back to Actinolite was relatively uneventful. Grey spent the entire trip singing to Belle. Nora did cut free all the bandages once they were out of London.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked.

“As sure as I can be. I trust my mentor and he says she will heal faster this way,” Grey said. “There are not a lot of swear words in Ojibwe, but I heard all of them, and some new ones, from the mentor each time they re-bandaged her. I just have to keep a lookout for infections, and kill them off.”

He took another long drink of water from Sun, and looked up at the woman he considered his sister. “It is funny,” he told her. “I should be exhausted after all this healing, yet I feel remarkably good. It is like I am getting a recharge out of her body.”

It was past supper when they got Home, and they managed to get Belle into Grey’s room while the others were kept in the Great Room to minimize commotion. It was felt that with Grey treating her, his room was the best place for her. There was already a cot for Billy in there, and Grey was comfortable sleeping on the floor as she was treated.

Belle regained some consciousness early the next morning, but not to the outside world. Grey was singing treatment on her eyes when he was suddenly aware of her.

«Who are you? What are you doing?» she thought.

«You were badly burned in a fire,» Grey told her. «I am trying to heal you. I healed your son last week.»

«Billy? Where is he? And what are you doing inside of me?»

«Billy is right here in this very room, sleeping,» Grey said, as he fought to relive the panic that was rising in the girl. «When he wakes up he will want to see you.»

«What happened? I remember a fire, and then a great pain. It is better now.»

«Thank you. You were burned badly, but we will try to fix you up,” Grey said. «Now I would like you to go back to sleep. I will wake you when Billy is up,» Grey then sedated the woman and continued to work on her eye.

An hour later Billy woke, and went right over to Grey, who was on his knees next to the bed, and gave him a hug. “This is your mother,” Grey told the boy, and held him up to see. The boy recoiled at the sight.”

“That is not Mommy,” he said forcefully. “My Mommy is pretty. This lady is all red and stuff.”

“But it is your Mommy,” Grey said. “She was in a fire, and got all these booboos. I am trying to fix them. Will you hold her hand while sing to her? The one on this side is not so sore, but don’t squeeze too hard.”

He set the boy up to hold Belle’s right hand, which Grey had healed a bit earlier, expecting this. Billy’s eye went wide when he put his hand into his mother’s. “This is my Mommy. Get better Mommy,” he said.

“Grey was back inside, singing and he felt a surge of support from the woman. «Let me talk to him,» she said.

«Okay. Open your eye. Only the left one will work, and it might be very blurry. You can try to speak him,» Grey said.

He watched from inside as she tried to open her eye, and then move her lips. Her voice was barely a whisper when she spoke: “ ‘illy. I ‘uv ew.’

“I love you too, Mommy. Please get better. Grey is my friend and he says he will help make your booboos go ‘way. I love you so much.”

It was then that Dary entered the room to get Billy for breakfast. She gasped in horror when she saw the woman lying naked on the bed.

«Do I look that bad?» Belle asked when she heard the reaction through her remaining ear.

«It is pretty bad,» Grey said. «That is Dary. She is the one who looks after Billy. She came to get him his breakfast.»

«Then she can see me, I guess,» Belle said. «But I don’t want anyone else to see me looking like this.»

“Dary, can you take Billy to breakfast? And tell the others that Belle doesn’t wish to see any other visitors,” Grey told the girl, who took the boy away.

«Is she a good girl?» Belle asked.

«One of the best,» Grey said. «Now lets’ get back to making you well. It is going to take a long time: months, not weeks. But eventually we will have you up and about.