THE TRINING Book Three : Euthanasia Factor (PT 1) by Jay Squires |
FROM THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER: After about ten minutes of this, Garvin suggested we hold off for a while. “His temperature seems to be adjusting down. Let’s let his stomach rest a while and we can begin with the broth.” I glanced down at Jed. His eye was closed. The other was like a dark crater. The light sheet covering him was rising and falling with gentle regularity. “I think he’s asleep.” Garvin nodded, but I recognized from his expression something was troubling him. “Sir,” he said, under his breath, “if we may talk ...” He gave a slight movement of his head toward the wall to his left that was roughly equidistant from Jed and the door, “over there?” I agreed, not wanting to hear what he had to tell me. BOOK III (Chapter 20 (Part 1) “What is it, Garvin?” He held my gaze a long moment before it flitted away. “I added a small amount of a fast-acting narcotic to the unguent I applied to his back, sir,” he addressed a target over my shoulder. “Look at me, Garvin.” “Yes, sir. You need to know, Doctrex, the infection has already begun, and I’m afraid it’s—it’s irreversible.” “No, Garvin.” I shook my head vehemently. “No, he’s a—he’s a fighter. You don’t know Jed. I do.” I tried to punctuate my declaration with a short laugh, but I felt the hard edge of it as it left my mouth. He dropped his chin to his chest, clamping his eyes shut, but just for a moment, and then raised his head and stared straight in my eyes. “Doctrex ... sir, we must try to make his last hours—” “Garvin, I told you no!” I voiced this much too loudly, and shot an anxious glance to Jed, whose eyes remained closed, and whose chest rose and fell easily beneath his blanket. “Doctor,” I added, with modulated control, and lifted my hand like I was conducting an orchestra, “We will not—speak in that manner again. You understand? He will survive. Any words to the contrary serve no purpose. No purpose at all.” He swallowed, and for a moment was silent. Then, “We don’t have time, sir.” He must have seen the ire rising in me, because he stepped back, colliding with the wall. But I could see the strength of conviction in him as he advanced his foot and leg back toward me. He took a breath and squared his shoulders. “I would beg to be wrong,” he said, “and you to be right. I know he’s like a son to you, and he’s responded to your love; that got him this far. He would have been dead by now if not for you.” All I could do was shake my head. I blinked, fought hard to keep my eyes from filling. “Listen, Garvin, I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of patients whose infections got the better of them and they died. But let me tell you about this one—” I wagged a finger toward Jed and listened in a kind of wonder as my voice raised an octave. “This one’s got a heart like you wo—like you wouldn’t—” I stopped. I tried to control my fragile emotions—but my eyes filled. “Doctrex,” he said, gently. “Sir ...” I brought a gulp of air into my lungs, ran my finger across my eyes and blinked him back. “You must listen to me, sir. We don’t have time. Jed will open his eyes soon and you won’t want to hear the pain he will be in.” “Why? What?” “I told you it was a small amount of a narcotic I added to his unguent. It is from the root of the Zuquanda tree. The most powerful narcotic there is. A small dose will relieve enough pain to allow sleep. That’s why he’s sleeping now. A tiny bit more will prolong and deepen the sleep.” “It brings on sleep?” “It relieves the pain so his body naturally seeks sleep.” “Well, that’s good. As long as there’s a flicker of his mind working, we’re okay.” I felt fresh enthusiasm surge through me. “You need to give him enough to block the pain so we can start getting the nourishment in him. I’ll keep him awake and full of broth, Garvin. You just chase away the pain until we get him stronger.” All the time I talked his head was slowly moving side-to-side. When he was finally able to break through my almost giddy hope, he spoke. “I wish it were that easy, sir.” His jaw was rippling, now. “The narcotic doesn’t leave the body. The initial effects of it wear off, but the narcotic itself accumulates in the body and—and we don’t know exactly how it works, Doctrex, but the second dose of it doesn’t just add to the first, but seems to multiply its effect.” "So he goes deeper the second time?” He shrugged, then held up his hands with a gesture of submissiveness. “It reacts—differently with different people. What we do know from shared experience is no one lives past the third dose.” “No one lives? You mean they die? That—” “They go into a coma first. It lasts, I don’t know, two or three days, a week more, perhaps, without water or nourishment.” “I see ...” I closed my eyes. I knew from my experience with Braims, there was no concept of an IV, dripping life directly into his veins. The narcotic was producing an induced coma from which the patient would quietly slip away, having no water or food. Garvin sighed. There was the hint of hopelessness in it. “So,” I said, “that’s what you meant by making his last hours ... I don’t think you finished your thought, Garvin. How were you suggesting we make his last hours?” “Leaving him without pain, sir.” I was being unfair, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “By giving him a jumbo dose the second time?” “Jumbo? I don’t—” “A double dose, a triple dose, Garvin! Enough for the narcotic to separate his consciousness, his awareness from his body, right? Enough to untuck it and yank it away like a blanket from a bed and then whisk it off, soaring blissfully to that land where—where there’s no weather and no pain ...” Seeing the effect of my words on him, I clamped my mouth shut. He deserved better than this. Reaching out, I put my hand on his shoulder. “Garvin ...” “Sir, we must do something. It has to be now.” “A small dose, doctor. As soon as he comes to, you administer just a little of it, so I can tell him about the broth—and why he needs to stay awake.” “It doesn’t work that way.” He struggled, as though wanting to say more. I didn’t help him. I had said enough. “It will—” He brought his forefinger across his compressed lips and cleared his throat. “Sir, if we wait until Jed comes out of his sleep—it will be the pain waking him. That will happen very soon now. The pain will be sudden and it will be bad, Doctrex. You won’t be able to reason with him then.” “So you’re saying we wake him?” “It has to be, sir.” As we moved toward the bed he fished for something in his breast pocket. He retrieved it and held out what appeared to be a tiny piece of bark, half the size of a thumbnail, to me. “The root?” I asked. “It’s been baked. It will easily crumble to a powder between your fingers. You can crumble it in his mouth before his first sip of water.” “He must be told.” “I understand.” As we rounded the foot of his bed, Jed whimpered. I shot a glance to Garvin. He nodded, somberly. Alongside Jed, I whispered, “Jed ... Buddy.” His closed eye fluttered and he moaned. “Jed, can you open your eye? Can you let us know you hear me?” Again, his eye fluttered, and then that whole side of his face tightened into a grimace. I was about to say his name again when his eye snapped open. His lips peeled back over his teeth so tightly the flesh beneath his cheekbones trembled. The tendons in his neck knotted like ropes. But still the only sound that left his throat was a whimper. “Because he knows you’re here, sir,” Garvin whispered in my ear. “Let it go, Jed!” I said, in my best general voice. I rested my palm against his cheek. The flesh was hot and clammy. “Don’t hold it in, soldier; just let it rip!” A tear trailed down the side of his nose to his mouth. The blanket was now rising and falling erratically. “Jed, I’ve got to believe you hear me. I have something to stop the pain, but listen to me Jed, you can’t go to sleep. Even if you feel like drifting to sleep, you can’t. As if in answer, his throat erupted with a prolonged groan. He finished with several gasps of air and the walls of the room reverberated with his roar that sounded like a wounded animal. Two soldiers came to the door, but Garvin waved them away. “It’s time, Doctrex,” Garvin said. He maneuvered behind me and cradled Jed’s head tightly between his two palms. “The narcotic, sir.” I held the piece of bark between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand, and with my left hand squeezed the sides of Jed’s lips together, forming an open pouch of tongue and teeth. Jed fought it and Garvin had to hold the head more firmly. I held the bark over the opening and rubbed my fingers together briskly. Powder sifted down into his mouth. “Water,” I said, brushing with my free finger errant flecks of powder that had adhered to his lips. Garvin uncapped the canteen and handed it to me, and then returned his vice-like grip to Jed’s head. I unpuckered Jed’s lips and moistened them with a little of the water. I was relieved to see him respond to it. His eye focused on mine briefly before wandering off. I tried a little more water. Could the powder already be having an effect on him? I gave him some more. To my surprise his tongue flicked out this time and caught a drop of water on it. “It’s time to talk, Doctrex.” Garvin mouthed the words, a little less than a whisper. “Jed ... Son ... Try to listen to me. Try to focus, okay? Soon the pain will start to go away and you may feel like going back to sleep. Don’t do it, Jed. Not yet. There’ll be plenty of time for that later.” I poured a little more water into his mouth. His Adam’s apple shot up, then returned. “Good, you swallowed some water, Jed. Let me tell you why you need to stay awake, Jed. In just a little while we’re going to start giving you broth. You need that to keep your strength up. You understand? I think you do, son. You don’t mind if I call you son, do you, Jed? I never had a son of my own. You’ve always been the one I’d like to have. Is that okay with you?” His eye floated down and kept my gaze. I waited for it to go back, but it didn’t. I tested it by moving to my right. His eye followed. I glanced at Garvin. He nodded. “Jed, I want you to do something for me. I’m going to ask you a question. If you understand it, briefly close your eye, and then open it. Here goes. Son, do you remember why you must stay awake?” His eye closed, then opened. “Wonderful! This time, son, if the answer is yes, do the same again with your eye.” He watched me. “Is there less pain now?” Again, his eye closed, and opened. “Okay, last question ... Do you want me to shut up and give you more water?” This time, accompanying the eye closing and opening, the corners of his mouth twitched. “Very funny,” I said.
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Jay Squires
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