The Slow Path Home
Chapter 2
The drive back from Tionesta had been awful. Despite rushing the kids through Christmas morning and skipping church entirely in order to get them up to their grandparents as quickly as possible, Emily Klapetzky had still been caught up in the leading edge of the snow storm on her return. The wind buffeted her minivan and the snow began to pile up on I-80 faster than she had ever seen before. While the trip up there to drop the two little ones off had taken barely an hour, the trip back had been nearly three times that long.
Back home, Emily lay on the floor in front of the woodstove in the living room trying to relax and get rid of the pounding headache that three hours of white-knuckle driving had produced. Not the most pleasant way to end a Christmas Day. She had been an idiot, she told herself. If she'd had any sense, she should have told Nae and Po, the children's grandparents, that they would not get the kids until tomorrow at the earliest, probably not until the day after that if the predictions for this storm were even halfway close to being accurate. But she knew that they would have whined and grumbled about her "keeping their grandbabies from us," and Emily did not want to run the risk of any complaints from them screwing up the final adoption hearing later in the spring.
A couple of cups of hot tea and several ibuprofen had gone a long way to making her feel better, but she was still tired and headachy. She sat up and retrieved one of the books she had received for Christmas from under the tree, and settled back down in front of the fire with a pillow, to read for awhile. Her fourteen year-old son, Jonathan, came into the room carrying a cookie tin and the iPod Touch he got that morning. He stretched out next to his mother and put the cookie tin on the floor in front of them. As soon as the tin hit the floor, a black and white lump of fur roused itself from where it was napping in the corner and padded over to join them.
"Don't even think about it, Pippin, you greedy dog," Emily warned him as he hopefully eyed the cookies. She glanced over at her son. "You've been playing with that all day. Why not get one of the books out I got you?"
"After I finish watching Get Smart."
"That's at least the second time you've watched that today," she pointed out.
"Third," he corrected her.
Emily gave her son the Evil Mother Stare of Death. Jonathan sighed and went over to pick out a book from his stack of gifts.
"Read for an hour," she told him. "Then you can do what you want."
"Okay."
Jonathan found a book he was willing to start in, but instead of returning to his mother, he paused and watched the Christmas tree for a bit.
"You all right?" she asked him.
"Yeah. It's just so quiet now compared to this morning."
"It sure is," she agreed.
It wasn't just the two younger children that he was missing, his mother knew. It had been a little over two years since her husband's death, and while they had both seemed to have adjusted to his absence, it was times like this, special family times, that they realized how much he was still missed. And while Jonathan would probably never admit it willingly, Emily knew that he missed having his older sister around this Christmas as well.
Jonathan came back over to the fire. The wind was blowing furiously through the trees around the house, and they could hear the occasional small branch break off and clatter against the outside walls.
"Do you think the electricity will go out, Mom?"
"Maybe. But if it does, no big deal. We've got plenty of firewood."
"Could we sleep down here if it does?"
"Sure! That would be fun. Would you like to do that even if the power doesn't go out?"
"Cool!"
Emily got up and went to the front door to look out at the storm. It was just beginning to grow dark. Between the fading light and the wind whipping the heavy snow around, she couldn't see out more than a few feet.
"How much snow do we have?"
"Can't really tell with this wind. Weather.com said we could get as much as eighteen inches out of this. We had nearly that much on the ground already. It's gonna be deep out there when it's all over."
They smiled at each other at the thought of that much snow. The two of them shared a love of snow. The more the better, as far as they were concerned, especially since it was the Christmas holidays. Jonathan was out of school and wouldn't rack up any more snow days from this storm, and Emily had scheduled this week off so she wouldn't have to drive out in all this either, at least until she had to pick up the little ones. Perfect.
They went back to their reading for awhile, and were happily occupied with that when there was a sudden increase in the wind. Pippin jumped to his feet and began to bark frantically. The sound of the wind increased in pitch and loudness and went on for nearly a minute before dying down. As it faded, there was an alarming banging and thumping from up above their heads.
Emily and Jonathan looked at each other. "Holy Cow! I haven't heard anything like that since that tornado that came by the house when we lived in Alabama," she exclaimed.
"What was all that banging?" Jonathan asked, looking worried.
"Probably just some branches breaking off and hitting the roof. I didn't hear the sound of glass breaking so I don't think it did in any of the windows. If it did, there's nothing that can be done about it right now. I'll check in a bit." She stood up. "How about you go ahead and run up to the attic before it gets dark and bring down your sleeping bag? That is, if you still want to sleep down here tonight."
Jonathan jumped up eagerly at the suggestion and started toward the stairs.
"Leftovers okay for dinner?" Emily asked as he headed up.
"Sure."
Emily went into the kitchen and began to set out leftovers from last night's dinner. They'd had their Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve this year so that they could all eat together. She tried not to think about what the other two were eating for dinner tonight at their grandparents' place. Probably Mountain Dew and Twinkies.
Jonathan stood across from his room upstairs and opened the door to the attic stairway. A blast of cold air hit him as he checked around the doorframe for the bats that sometimes liked to hang from it in cold weather, hoping to get a little warmth. With no bats in sight, he flicked the light switch on and started up.
Their house was old, built over one hundred years ago. People used to live up here, Dad had told him, most likely the servants. The attic was still sectioned off into several rooms that held the accumulated flotsam and jetsam of eighteen years of marriage, four children and many moves.
Jonathan looked around in the first room at the top of the stairs but there was no sleeping bag to be found. That disappointed him. He had hoped to grab the sleeping bag and beat a fast retreat out of the cold attic. With a shiver, he headed down the short hallway that lead to a bigger room full of boxes. As he approached the room, Jonathan smiled. He could see his sleeping bag setting on top of a group of suitcases through the open door. The boy stepped in to get it, and froze in place, staring.
Emily went back to read by the fireplace once she finished putting the food into the oven to warm. She had just opened her book when she heard Jonathan's footsteps pounding down the attic stairs and across the floor above. She looked up in alarm as he came flying down the main staircase as if the devil himself was chasing him.
"You're going to break your leg coming downstairs like that," she began to scold him.
"Mom! Mom! Mom!" Jonathan threw down the sleeping bag that he was still clutching and grabbed her arm, trying to pull her to her feet. His eyes were wide with fear and he was breathing so hard that he could barely speak. "Mom, upstairs! In the attic!"
Emily stumbled to her feet as he pulled. "Up in the attic what? Did a branch come through?"
"No!" he kept pulling her towards the stairs. "Come on!"
His mother dug her feet in. "No, I'm not going anywhere. Catch your breath and tell me what's going on first."
Jonathan bent over and rested his hands on his knees, gasping. Finally he straightened up.
"It's a box, Mom. A great big, blue box up in the attic!"
"Jonathan, our attic is full of boxes. I don't understand why that's got you all excited."
"This box is new. I've never seen it in the attic before. It's huge!"
"How huge?"
"It's...it's....bigger than the Christmas tree!"
Emily shook her head in disbelief. "Jonathan, I can assure you that I have not put any box up in the attic that size. There's no way I could even fit a box that size up the stairs to the attic. What kind of joke are you trying to pull on me?"
"It's not a joke, Mom! Come and see!" He began pulling on her again.
"Okay! Okay! Calm down and quit yanking on me first." Her son nodded and let go of her arm. They started up the stairs together.
At the end of the hallway, the door to the attic stairway stood open. "So, where in the attic is this box?" Emily asked as they approached the door.
"All the way over on the other side. Above your's n' Dad's bedroom."
His mom put one foot on the stairs, then paused to turn to Jonathan. "Are you trying to pull a trick on me? Is there a bat up there someplace? Or a squirrel?"
"No, Mom. Honest."
The attic stairway was very narrow, with a sharp turn in it half way up, so they had to go single file. Emily went first. They paused at the top and Jonathan pointed to the hallway. "Down there. I didn't see it until I went inside the big room to get my sleeping bag."
Emily looked suspiciously at Jonathan. "You sure about this? It's Christmas Day, ya know, not April Fool's Day." She immediately regretted her remark. Looking at his eyes, she could see that whatever he saw up here had really spooked him good. She smiled at him, "We'll figure this out, sweetheart. Don't worry." She picked up an old tennis racket leaning against a wall
Just a few steps and Emily stood at the door with Jonathan behind her. She gave her son another reassuring smile, brandished the tennis racket like a sword and dramatically jumped through the open door. Emily stood there for several seconds with her mouth hanging open. Finally, she swallowed and spoke. "Jonathan, forgive me for ever doubting you."
At the far end of the attic was a box. A big, blue wooden box. It was bigger than their Christmas tree, and that was saying a lot; Emily always got the tallest, fullest tree she could find every Christmas. The two of them stood there and stared and stared and stared. Motioning to Jonathan to stay where he was, Emily began to walk slowly towards it.
"What is it, Mom?"
"I don't know."
It looked almost like an old phone booth, but it was much too big for that. There were windows around the top of it and Emily could see a soft light glowing through them. There was lettering around the top as well. "POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX" it said.
"What's a police public call box?" Jonathan asked.
"I have no idea, sweetie."
Emily moved closer. She was close enough now that she could stretch out her arms and touch the thing. She heard Jonathan coming up behind her. "Be careful," she cautioned him. "If anything happens, you run. Got it?"
"Yes, Mom."
Emily leaned forward and carefully brushed her hand across the surface of the box. It looked like wood but didn't quite feel like wood. She got braver and pressed her hand flat against the wood-like stuff. She felt a faint vibration against her palm at the same time she became aware of low humming noise that she hadn't noticed before. She pulled her hand back and pondered the situation.
"Can I touch it?" Jonathan asked.
"Yep."
He put his hand on it the way his mother had put hers. "Something's running in it."
"Yep." She looked over at Jonathan and gave a little laugh. "Jonathan, I have absolutely no idea in heck what this thing is but, by God, you were right. There is a huge, blue box bigger than our Christmas tree sitting in our attic."
Jonathan smiled and gave his mother a hug, then touched the box with both of his hands. "I'm not scared of it now, though."
"No, I'm not either," Emily agreed. "And, really, we ought to be scared to death at this point and running down the stairs."
"Like I did the first time," Jonathan was a little embarrassed now at his initial reaction.
"Coming across this by myself in the attic would have scared the living daylights out of me. I don't think I would have reacted any differently," she assured him.
Jonathan began to move around the box, running his hands over the outside. "Do you think this is some kind of government experiment thing?"
"No idea. You be careful," she told him as he went around the corner to another side. "Wait for me."
Emily followed Jonathan around. Except for a different collection of scrapes and scuffs, this side appeared identical to the first. Jonathan pressed his ear up against the side and listened.
"Hear anything?"
He shook his head. "Just that humming noise."
Emily put her ear against it as well. She, too, heard nothing but a soft, rhythmic hum. It didn't sound particularly threatening.
"I bet this is what made all that thumping and bumping earlier," she told Jonathan. "Maybe even all that noise we thought was the wind as well."
"How do you get in this thing?" he wondered.
His mom shrugged. "Maybe there's a door on one of the other sides."
They looked at each other and grinned. Jonathan started to dart around the next corner to check out that side, but at the moment he started to move, they both heard a noise.
The fear rapidly came back to the both of them. Emily grabbed Jonathan by the collar of his shirt and dragged him back several feet away from the box. They looked at each other wildly for a few seconds before starting to laugh. The noise had been the sound of some branches blowing off of the trees out front and onto the roof of the house.
"Scardey-cats." Jonathan said.
"Oh, yeah," Mom agreed. "Meow!"
They walked back over to the box. "Let's investigate the rest of this," Emily said.
They rounded the corner of the box and found the man lying on the floor.
"Jesus," Emily breathed. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph."
"Who is that, Mom?"
Emily could only shake her head and stare at the man in the brown pinstriped suit huddled with his back to them on the floor of her attic. Finally, she found her voice.
"Hello?" It came out as whisper. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Hello?" she managed in a near normal voice. The man didn't budge.
"Is he alive?" Jonathan asked.
"Yeah. I guess. I don't know."
Jonathan started to bend down towards the man to get a better look. His mother snatched him back. "Stay back," she snapped. "Hey," she said loudly to the man. "Hey. Hello?" There was still no response.
Emily turned toward her boy. "Stay back. And like I said before, if anything happens, run." The boy nodded.
Emily stepped closer to the man and bent down. She touched him on the shoulder. "Hello?" Nothing. She patted his shoulder firmly "Hey! Hello!" She started shaking him by the shoulder. "Hey! Buddy! Wake up!"
The man finally responded with a groan. He shifted and moved further away from Emily and Jonathan. "Go away," he said.
"Go away?" The statement baffled her. "Go away? It's my house!" She grabbed him by the shoulder again and shook harder. "Hey! Roll over here and talk to me."
"Leave me alone. I'll be gone soon," He was curled into such a tight ball she could hardly hear his voice. She couldn't even see his face. He was just a ball of brown hair and brown cloth and what she could see of that was dirty and wrinkled. Emily began to wonder if some crazy, homeless drunk had managed to take up residence in her attic without her notice. But she had been up here just the night before to bring down Christmas presents she had hidden right by this spot, and there had been no clue that anyone was up here, much less a huge blue wooden box. Her fear was rapidly giving way to anger. Who the hell was this guy in her house?
"HEY!" She did more than shake him this time. This time she grabbed the cloth of his jacket and pulled him over towards her. It didn't take a lot to move him. He unfolded as she pulled and rolled onto his back. Both Emily and Jonathan were shocked at what they saw.
The man looked as if he had been through a meat grinder. His face was bloody and bruised. One eye was swollen shut. The white shirt he wore under his jacket was ripped and caked with dirt and blood. The worst part was his leg, which had been hidden when he was curled up on his side. The pants leg was soaked in blood, and there was a pool of blood on the floor by his leg.
"Oh my God, buddy. Who did this to you?" Emily heard gagging noises behind her and she looked up to see her son starting to turn pale. She jumped up and took him back a few steps away from the man and made him sit down on a box. Jonathan did not have the strongest stomach in the world.
Emily turned her attention to the man that appeared to be bleeding to death in her attic. "What happened to you? Can you tell me?"
He shook his head and started to roll back over. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he mumbled. "Let me rest a bit and then I'll leave."
"No," she said. "You're not going anywhere. I'm going to get you to the hospital," she dug in her pocket and pulled out her cell phone and tossed it to Jonathan. "Dial 911."
"No! No! No! No! No!" the man rolled back over and grabbed her arm in a panic. "Don't call anyone. I can't go to hospital! I won't!"
"You've got to go," she told him gently. "You're hurt bad. You need a doctor."
"No!" he insisted. "You don't understand. I can't go to one of your hospitals." He gasped in pain. "I'm an alien."
"They'll take you anyway. It doesn't matter if you're in this country legally or not. They still have to take care of you," she patted his shoulder. "I'm going to call an ambulance for you."
"No!" He wailed. "Not that kind of alien. I'm from another planet!"
"No, you're not. You're out of your head. Jonathan, call..."
"NO!" the man tightened his hold on her arm and pulled her towards him. Frightened, Emily yanked back away from him but couldn't break his grip. He looked up at her pleadingly. "I'm not human. I've got two hearts," he pulled again on her arm. "Here, feel," he said as he tried to bring her arm over to his chest. Using all her strength, Emily pulled her arm free and moved out of his reach.
"You're crazy," she told him. "I'm gonna call the police as well as the ambulance. Give me the phone, Jonathan."
Jonathan handed her the cell phone and she immediately flipped it open to dial. The man fixed his eyes on her. "Please. Please don't. Please believe me."
Emily held the phone open but didn't dial. The scary thing was that she realized that this was exactly what she had been thinking in the back of her mind all this time but didn't want to acknowledge. The man couldn't have brought that box up here by the stairs. It was much too big and he was in no condition to have even tried it. It didn't come through a window or the roof. So the only possible explanation....... She shook her head, not wanting to accept it.
"Believe me," he pleaded.
There was a long silence. "Okay," Emily said and she snapped the phone shut. "Okay. I believe you. For now. Only because there is no other possible explanation for all this." She scooted back beside him. "But we need to get you downstairs. I can't help you up here."
"I don't need your help," he said. "Just leave me up here. I'll get back in my ship and go. I just need a bit of rest."
"We're taking you downstairs."
"No," he rolled over away from her again. "Leave me alone."
"I don't care where you're from. You are crazy if you think I'm going to leave you up here in this freezing cold attic, bleeding the heck all over my floor. C'mon. Jonathan and I will get you down from here."
"I said NO! I don't need your help!" he rolled back over toward the two of them, gasping. "I'll leave now. I'm going." He began to sit up but got no more than halfway before his face lost expression and his eyes rolled back in his head. He fell back hard onto the floor.
Emily leaned over him. "Hey! Alien guy?" She patted him on the shoulder and on the cheek. "Hey, buddy?" He was out cold. Loss of blood, she figured. Under the dried dirt and blood, his face was as pale as a ghost's and the dark spot by his leg was distressingly bigger.
"What are we going to do, Mom?" Jonathan asked. Emily looked over. His face was nearly as pale as the man's.
"What the hell am I going to do?" she wondered to herself. She looked at Jonathan and smiled with a confidence she did not feel. "We're going to get him downstairs, that's what we're going to do."
"How?"
"Carry 'em."
It was no easy task. Emily began by giving Jonathan orders on what they needed to get ready. She stayed with the man and sent Jonathan to gather up the things they would need and to prepare the way downstairs. The more she kept Jonathan away from the blood, the better, she decided. While she waited for her son, Emily looked back over at the man on the floor.
An alien. Part of her kept arguing that it was not possible; an alien would not suddenly land in her attic in the middle of a snow storm like a scene out of a bad science fiction movie. Just not possible. But.....how else to explain this? Emily sat by the man staring. He was still unconscious. She hoped he stayed that way until they got him downstairs. If they got him downstairs, that is. Despite her confident words to Jonathan, she knew it was going to be incredibly hard carrying him down those narrow stairs and around that one-hundred and eighty degree turn in the middle. The guy was tall and God only knew how heavy he was. She hoped to take him down to the master bedroom directly below them. That would mean carrying him the length of the house twice.
He said he had two hearts. Was that even possible? Maybe it was a trick to make her believe he really was an alien. She reached out cautiously and placed her hand on the left side of his chest where his heart would be if he was human, and then on the same spot on the right side of his chest. She didn't feel anything on either side except for an unpleasant grinding when she pressed her hand down. Broken ribs, she assumed. Emily really, really hoped he stayed unconscious while they transported him because he was going to be in a lot of pain if he woke up.
Jonathan came pounding up the stairs and across the attic. "Got everything ready?" Emily asked him.
"Yeah," he answered breathlessly. "Here's the sheet you asked for."
"Good job, sweetie," she took the old sheet from him. "I'm going to wrap to this around his leg so we don't get the blood all over the place and so you won't have to look at it. Once I get that done, we're carrying him down."
It seemed to take forever, but they finally got him across the attic, down the stairs and into the bedroom. During the whole painful trip he never woke up or uttered a sound, even when they had to kind of fold him up like an accordion to get him around the corner of the stairs. They lifted him up as gently as they could and put him down on a couple of old blankets Jonathan had laid across the bed as his mother had instructed him to do.
"Thank you, sweetheart." Emily said and gave Jonathan a hug. "You're one tough kid."
"Now what, Mom?"
"Got to stop that bleeding if I can. Bandage him up and just wait and see what happens, I guess."
"Is he going to die?"
"He'd better not. I don't know what the heck we'd do with the body if he does, not to mention that box thingy he'd leave behind." She grinned at Jonathan, but she was only half joking.
"You take off and hang out in your room for awhile. You won't want to see this mess, but I want you somewhere you can hear me if I need to holler for help, okay?"
"Yeah, Mom." He hugged her tightly. "You're a very brave mother."
"You're the brave one," she told him. "I'm just plain nuts. Go on and get out of here for now."
Once Jonathan left, she turned her attention back to the man on the bed. "God, what am I going to do?" she mumbled to herself. On the dresser behind her, Jonathan had laid out the things she had told him to bring up: clean towels and washcloths, a couple of her metal mixing bowls and a pair of scissors.. She went into the master bathroom at the back of the bedroom and grabbed up other items she would need: gauze pads and medical tape left over from her gall bladder surgery, cotton balls, antibiotic ointment and rubbing alcohol. She filled one of the bowls with hot water and hurried back out to the man.
He hadn't budged since they'd laid him down. For a second, Emily thought that maybe he had died, but she could see the slow rise and fall of his chest once she looked carefully enough.
"Buddy, are you awake? Can you hear me?" Emily called to him as she reached out and patted his cheek. There was no sign that he heard her. Emily was surprised at how cool his cheek felt. Well, he had been up there in that attic, so that was no surprise, really. She hoped he didn't have hypothermia, but maybe the cold had been a good thing in a way: slow down his heart (hearts?) and make him bleed less.
First things first, she told herself, and that meant tackling that leg. Emily grabbed the scissors and started cutting apart his pants leg right above the knee. She peeled away the matted cloth and saw what it had been hiding. There was a long, deep gash going all the way down his leg, starting at the knee. It was so deep in parts that she could see the bone. Emily's stomach began to feel very unpleasant and she had to close her eyes for a few seconds. "Wimpy-ness will accomplish nothing," she said severely to herself and opened her eyes back up. The cut looked worse than it was; at least it didn't seem to be bleeding much at this point. Up by the knee was the worrisome part. The wound up there appeared to be the main source of the blood. A blood-soaked rag held on by what looked like a necktie had been turned into a makeshift bandage but it was doing little to staunch the flow of blood.
Apply pressure until the bleeding stops. That was what her Army basic first aid had taught her for wounds like this. Emily gathered up a good supply of the gauze pads and washcloths to have at the ready. Then with much trepidation, she cut the tie away and gently pulled the rag from the leg.
Blood started welling up almost immediately at a frightening rate. Emily slapped a stack of gauze onto the gaping wound and pressed down. They soaked through within a few seconds so she added more. Then more and more until she ran out of the gauze and she turned to the washcloths. It still kept coming. Emily began to panic. If she couldn't get the bleeding stopped, there was nothing else she could do. She reached over and grabbed two more washcloths, put them on the stack that was already there and pressed down even harder. In an effort to apply more pressure, she climbed up onto the bed and put all her weight to bear down on her hands.
She had no idea how long she stayed that way. It seemed like forever. First, she said all the multiplications tables to herself, the zeros through the twelves, and the blood was still coming through the washcloths. She added another cloth. Now she went on to recite the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It seemed to be slowing down but she added still another cloth and kept going. Long poems from her childhood came to her mind next: "The Owl and the Pussy Cat," "Jabberwocky," "Wynken, Blynken and Nod." Yeah, definitely slowing down. Heartened, she went through the lyrics of a dozen songs and as much as she could remember of the Periodic Table of Elements from her college days. The blood finally stopped.
Her arms felt like jelly as she slid down off the bed. Forcing herself to her feet, Emily walked back to the bathroom and scrubbed her hands and arms clean of the dirt and blood. She looked down at her shirt; it was definitely heading into the trash. With the worst of the blood off of her, Emily went to the door of the bedroom and called to Jonathan. He came running to her. "How is he? Is he still bleeding?" he asked.
"No. Stopped it for now at least. Keep your fingers crossed." She leaned against the doorframe. "I'm dying of thirst. Can you run and get me a Coke while I go change my clothes?" Jonathan nodded and took off down the hall. "Hey!" she called after him. "Make it two, would you?' Emily went down to her room to change into a fresh shirt, then came back to sit on the couch by the window to rest while she waited for her drinks. Jonathan came back quickly and his mother immediately popped open one of the soda cans and took a good long drink.
"Is he going to be okay now?" Jonathan asked, looking over at the man.
"I hope so. I have to tend to those other wounds. He's still in pretty bad shape."
"Do you need me to stay and help you?"
"Just a little, if you think you're up to it. Help me get his jacket off."
Once that was accomplished, Jonathan went downstairs to feed Pippin. Emily found more gauze pads, put fresh hot water in the metal bowl and started on the rest of him. With the jacket gone, the shirt was easy enough to get rid of. It was pretty shredded already, and it only took a few snips with the scissors to get it out of the way. She balled up the ragged bits of shirt and tossed them in the trash. The cuts across his chest were deep but not life-threatening. Clean them up, put some ointment on them and then some bandages and they should be okay.
Emily dipped a washcloth into the warm water, squeezed it out and then hovered uncertainly over the man for a second. Now that the urgency of stopping the bleeding on his leg had passed, she felt awkward tending to the rest of his injuries. How could she even know that she was doing the right thing with him? He could be allergic to soap and water, for all she knew. The antibiotic ointment she planned to put on the wounds, was it poison to him? She shook her head. She was thinking as if she really believed his alien claim. Hell, it sounded to her as if he had an English accent! Last time she looked on a map, England was on the same planet as the US. Still......
"I wish you were awake," Emily said suddenly to him. "I want to get the straight story out of you." She started carefully wiping at one of the cuts. "This is probably gonna sting a little. Well, actually a lot."
He didn't flinch or show any sign that he heard her.
"Sure wish I knew how you got in this shape," she continued. "Hope you left the other guy looking worse than you."
She rinsed the washcloth out and kept on going. Unconsciously, she fell into the one-sided conversation mode that she used with so many of the children she worked with.
"So buddy, where are you from? Don't think I'm buying that 'alien with two hearts' bit." Wash. Rinse. Repeat. "My theory is that you're some crazy English scientist who had an experiment go awry. Am I right?"
Good grief, he was a string bean. No wonder he had broken ribs. There was nothing there to cushion them.
"I think if you're from any planet it must be.....The Planet of the Tall and Anorexic. Don't they feed you anything wherever you're from?
"Okay. Band-Aid time." Emily did her best to avoid placing the medical tape over hairy spots but it couldn't be avoided. "You are really gonna hate my guts the when it comes time to take these off.
"I'm gonna clean up your face next. Okay?" She got fresh warm water and cloths. "Getting this crap off your face will feel pretty good, I bet." Emily wiped as gently as she could but some of it just didn't want to come off. "Oops. Freckles. Sorry, my buddy."
With his face cleaned up, she looked back down at his leg. The last thing she wanted to do right now was to touch any of that. She was terrified of starting the bleeding up again but she couldn't just leave it as is. Slowly and carefully, she peeled away the collection of gauze and washcloths. It started bleeding again but not very much. As quickly as she could, she finished cleaning up the leg and wrapped it up in clean gauze pads held tightly on by an old Ace bandage she found. Once that was accomplished, Emily breathed a sigh of relief. For the first time, she noticed that he still had his shoes on his feet: a pair of dingy white Converse high tops. She started to laugh to herself. "Freckles and Chucks. You're an alien. Yeah, right. And I'm Whoopi Goldberg."
Emily untied the shoes and gently pulled them off. At this point, she wasn't a bit surprised to find him wearing a pair of well-worn, mismatched socks. She took them off, tucked them into the shoes and set them under the bed.
"Okay, buddy. Done for now. You rest for a bit. I'm going to go clean myself up and get a bite to eat. Then I'll be back up here to check on you."
She put his leg on an old pillow she had found to give it some cushioning and started to pull a sheet up over him when she noticed that one of the bandages on his chest had come loose. She was smoothing it down with her hand when she felt it: a heartbeat on the right side of his chest.