tanker up here to water them.”
He looked up in time to see an older woman walking toward him gingerly, picking her way through the scrub and stickers to get there. Sandra, one of the vacationers, approached and smiled. “Hi! I’m a retired nurse, can I do anything?”
“Be my guest, ma’am. It’s pretty obvious his collarbone’s broken, but it’s his head I’m worried about. He’s got the trademark Carson hard head, but this might have been too much for even his skull to take,” Dwayne said lightly, trying to keep from upsetting the older woman.
“Oh, it’s not his collarbone I’m worried about,” Sandra said lightly, opening Joseph’s shirt with her wrinkled, knobby fingers. “It’s this right here.” She pointed to an angry red patch on his side where a nasty bruise was already forming. “You might have yourself some broken ribs, young man.”
Sandra leaned her ear down directly to Joseph’s chest and listened. “Sorry for getting in your personal space here a bit, but I didn’t bring a stethoscope! Just bear with me.” She listened for a time, trying not to smoosh Joseph any more than absolutely necessary. “It’s just as I thought. I hear a really ‘wet’ sound in there, it’s possible one of his ribs has punctured his lung.”
“Oh my God!” Dwayne shouted, crouching back down next to Joseph protectively. “What do we do?”
“Well, we’re already doing it. We wait for the ambulance,” she said with a kind smile. “We’ll just need to let them know that when they arrive.”
After what seemed like well over an hour, an ambulance finally pulled around the bend in the highway and slowed down as it rolled to the edge of the shoulder. It slowly bounced along the rough dirt until it came to a stop nearby, sending even more dust up in the air. The paramedics jumped out and got to work, assessing Joseph’s injuries and taking his information.
Finally, they thought they could move him, and proceeded to pack Joseph up on a gurney and put him in the back of the vehicle. The crew drove away slowly until they hit the pavement, Bernard promising to intercept them and follow them to the hospital when he called through the radio.
“Dwayne, I need you to take charge of the drive. You know the route, and you can radio me if there are any questions, anything at all. Understood?” Bernard squeaked through the radio. Dwayne closed his eyes and thought for a moment, taking deep breaths.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t just call it off, sir? We can find a local farm to let the cattle graze until we can get some trucks in here. With you, Casey, Carey, and now Joseph off the drive, there’s no one from Carson Hill except the two younger twins. Wouldn’t you feel better waiting until someone else can join us?”
It was quiet for a moment, so long that Dwayne thought maybe Bernard had cut off his radio, ready to fly after the ambulance carrying his son. Finally, his voice came through the speaker. “Just keep moving, keep a slow pace. I’ll try to contact someone from the ranch and see if I can get them to join you. And, Dwayne,…please be careful.”
Chapter Eleven
“NO!” The younger girl screamed, throwing a wooden chair in the direction of the older woman holding out the spoon. “I don’t want that crap! I want FOOD! Real food! I’m outta here!” Emma bolted for the door, enraged when she figured out for the hundredth time that she was locked in. “Let! Me! OUT!”
The kind woman simply watched Emma’s antics, her expression remaining completely impassive. She didn’t reinforce the girls’ outbursts by trying to talk to them in this state, but she didn’t react to them either. Years of training and experience had taught her how to handle someone coming off a meth addiction, but every single addict was different and suffered in her own way.
“Emma, I promise you’ll feel better if you get some food in you,” the farm’s teacher, Ms. Crane, began in a calm, level voice, still holding out the spoon and bowl. She flinched only slightly when Emma stomped toward her and knocked the bowl out of her hands, sending cream of wheat splattering across the floor and up the wall of the cabin. “That isn’t necessary. Remember to speak to me with words if you need to tell me something.”
Ms. Crane picked up a chair that had been kicked over and righted it at the table before sitting in it. She reached for the deck of cards from the middle of the rough wooden table and began shuffling them idly, doing her best to ignore Emma’s screams. The girl was so skinny even when she first showed up, and a week and a half of trying to fight the effects of the drug that had invaded practically every cell in her body had left her emaciated and scabbed.
“I don’t have to use my words!” Emma screamed in the woman’s ear, slapping at the teacher’s hands and scattering the cards in every direction. Ms. Crane sighed, then wordlessly stood up and crossed the large single room to sit on the overstuffed sofa, picking up a magazine and flipping through the pages without looking at Emma.
“Emma, I understand you’re suffering and I know you will be very sad when you find out that you’ve slapped me. For now, remember to keep your hands to yourself. If you need to hit something, remember what I’ve told you: you may hit the couch cushions.” Ms. Crane pointed to the end of the sofa, which had already been pummeled to the point of lumpiness.
Ms. Crane couldn’t help but notice that Dee was still curled up in a ball on the floor, her face resting against the cool surface of the hardwood floor. She’d stayed there most of yesterday and all through the night, not even letting the older woman cover her with a blanket or wipe at her damp forehead, screaming in actual pain at the slightest touch on her skin. She had been so eerily quiet through her ordeal, Ms. Crane had to keep fighting the urge to check her pulse, mostly because she was afraid of what she might find.
Both girls had been as wretched looking as drowned kittens when she took them from the Carson Hill main house to this cabin some miles away. Mr. Carson had only just bought this smaller ranch at auction, intending to give it to his new daughter-in-law as a wedding present, and it was lucky he did. When Dee and Emma had shown up on the Carson’s ranch one day, there was no way they could go back to town, not after what they’d suffered at the hands of Crazy Mack. When the drugs left their system and they finally began the healing process, they both would face years of therapy to help them overcome the horrors he’d put them through, first getting them addicted and then using that very drug to make them complacent as he prostituted them.
Now, they both alternated between screaming and writhing, with periods of unnerving silence in between. Luckily, at least so far, they had stuck to an impromptu schedule of alternating for Ms. Crane so that they weren’t both screaming at the same time. Thank goodness for small favors, Ms. Crane thought to herself sourly. I don’t know if I could handle both of them freaking out at once. This is why I left teen rehab behind.
“He’s coming for us,” a small voice said during a lull in Emma’s screaming. Ms. Crane immediately jumped up and ran to crouch beside Dee on the floor.
“What? What did you say, dear?” The woman asked, smoothing the sweaty hair back from where it was plastered to the girl’s clammy forehead.
“He’s coming for us. He’ll find us and he’ll kill us.”
“No, sweetie, Mack isn’t going to hurt you. I promise. I won't let him hurt you.”
“He’ll kill us,” Dee repeated quietly, her eyes not moving from the spot on the wall where they’d stared for hours. “He said so. He said he’d kill us if we ever left.”
Ms. Crane sighed, closing her eyes and willing God to give her the words to say that would comfort this poor girl. Even she was surprised at what came out of her mouth.
“No, sweetie. He won’t hurt you, and that is my promise. I swear to you, I’ll kill him first myself.” Ms. Crane gave Dee a determined, confident smile and patted the girl’s hand firmly. She pushed herself up off the floor and was relieved to see that Emma had pretty much burned herself out and was now lying on the floor across the room from her friend. The two girls reminded the teacher of paper dolls, thrown