THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART THIRTY-SIX:

3 AM: hospital

Marshall awoke in the middle of the night, lying there, taking a moment to make sense of where he was and why. His body didn't take long to remind him. Ah, yes, he'd been flogged for an hour with a cat 'o nine tails with pieces of metal tied into each end of the whips, then dragged by a Jeep over a gravel road for some miles before being delivered to the native populace who'd cooked him for dinner. Or something like that. At least his body felt like that. Then there was that marathon he'd run twice, the route lined with angry Apaches determined to stop him
with their hatchets and clubs. He mustn't forget about that.

Actually, he found he'd forgotten about a great deal of it. The doing of it, not the repercussions. He lay there aching and stinging and throbbing from head to toe. But he hadn't died strung up to a tree. He hadn't done that. And he hadn't lain down in the snow and died, either. One of the clearest things he remembered was that sheer determined will not to do that. The details were a bit fuzzy, especially those after he'd made that little nest under the evergreen. He figured that's when his fever had taken over...during that time there. He remembered everything about the long walk up the icy streambed to wait for Calvin. And he remembered the slog up the steep slope to the place where they'd hooked him over the limb.

After he'd come out from under the evergreen, that's where he began to lose the clearness.

Most of it had become this nightmarish mishmash of tree branches striking his face, of rocks

that loomed up out of nowhere to trip him, of cold that penetrated to his bones and wouldn't stop.

Eden said he'd made it to Harold's dock. He had absolutely no memory of being anywhere even close to the dock. There was a vague bit about a stream that went on forever. All he could imagine was that primal instinct had taken over and gotten him there.

He lifted his right hand, examining it with his left. One finger broken. Not bad for all the falling he'd done on his hands, all the wild clutching at branches. He tried to lift up enough to reach

his legs, but the moment his head left the pillow, shock waves of pain shot through him, sending his pulse up enough to set off an alarm on his monitor.

A night nurse was there in two seconds. "I...I'm...all right," he gasped. "I just tried to sit up."

"Well, Dr. Sinclair, I guess you found out just what a good idea that wasn't, now didn't you?"

"Maria?"

"Nope, Marcy. You just lie still like you're supposed to for now. Won't be all that long before someone will be around beating on you."

"Be...beating on me?"  Not all nurses had great bedside manners just because they were nurses.

"Yep. You'll be pounded a bit. Helps you cough. Got to get all that yukky stuff up out of your lungs."

"Oh, God," he moaned. There wasn't a square inch on him that wasn't bruised or scraped. Where could they pound?

She checked his chest tube. He'd moved his left hand so it was lying across it. She picked up his hand, plopping it onto the bed. "You touch that tube, you get your hand tied to the bedframe. You don't touch the tube. You got me?"

"I got you," he said weakly. Would they really do that or was that just her way of getting him

to leave it alone? He wouldn't put it past her to tie him completely to the bed and start methodically hammering in three inch nails. Maybe she'd done some of that already. He sort

of felt like maybe she had.

He lay there thinking about what Marcy had said. Were they actually going to...pound...him? He thought probably they might. Well, he'd been left hung on a tree and made it to the dock. Maybe he could get out of the hospital and make it to the dock...again?  He seriously
considered his options. If Marcy turned out to be the one who was going to do the pounding,

he knew he'd have to try. He wouldn't survive a Marcy-pounding. No one would. Not even people who hadn't had a ton of coal dropped on them and then set afire.

His fingers crept up over his hip, continuing on upwards, finally running lightly down several inches of the tube. It was his tube, dammit, and he'd touch it if he wanted. Then he grinned, feeling like a little boy. Problem was, being blind, he didn't know if Marcy were standing
in the doorway with her sawed-off shotgun. She might be. He waited for the impact of pellets.

3 AM: Morning Glory Inn

Eden woke, not knowing why exactly. She'd been having a dream where she was lying on her back in a field of daffodils with Marshall, propped on his elbow, leaning over her, tickling her chin with a single flower stalk. She didn't like waking up and losing the dream. Getting out of bed, she padded to the window, sitting on the built-in seat and pushing the curtains open. Wadsworth joined her, laying his head on her thigh. She rubbed her finger up and down between his large, serious eyes. "Soon, sweet boy, soon. I promise."

Turning, she leaned her elbows on the windowsill. The view of the lake was better from here.

At the cafe there had been the lights of other businesses and homes, several street lights, some passing traffic. Here there was just the lake...the lake and the moon, which had moved
a great distance but still silvered the surface. She liked the quiet of it. Up on the ridge, even though the only sounds had been the ones she and Mike and Wadsworth made as they struggled along, there had been this drumbeat in her ears. "Find him!" it had beaten, over and over. "Hurry, hurry, hurry!"

Her gaze moved to the dock, to the landward end where they'd found him lying. All that way.

All the way to the dock. It seemed impossible that he had managed that. How? How had he done it? But even in his delirium he'd told her. He'd done it for her. He'd done it because he wouldn't die in the snow. She shook her head just a bit. How had she found someone who would love her that well, love her that much?

3 AM: Johnson cabin

He hadn't slept, not a wink. He was still amazed, even angry, at himself.  He'd asked her out to eat. Bumbling idiot of a man that he was. Thank goodness she was totally unaware. And she'd kept using the words "we" and "our", as in "our friend." He sighed, tossing back his blankets and sitting on the side of his small bed. It wasn't much more than a cot. A one-person bed for

a man who always slept alone, who would always sleep alone. Resting his elbows on his knees,

he held his head in his hands, his fingers lacing through his hair. He was the "good friend." 

Of course he was. Why was he trying to steal little moments, taking her to the cafe just so he could be in her presence, look at her for a few minutes longer?

Barefoot, he went to the cabin door, the chill night air immediately making him shiver. Still

he stood there, looking at the lake. His rowboat was tied up to the bit of a pier. Yeah. He couldn't sleep. Slipping on his boots without socks, he grabbed the old flight jacket, not putting it on till he was half way to the pier. He undid the rope, stepped into the boat, standing there

a moment as it rocked a bit under his weight. Then he sat and began to row. He rowed out into the moonlight where there was nothing but the night and the moon and the dark water. Pulling in the oars, he let the small boat drift, and leaned back against the side, his face tipped up to the soft light.

ON TO PART 37

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