Chapter 23: Triage

"Stop the water," I said into the phone. "Before anything else. Close the creek intake."

"The water's fine. The report..."

"Nobody tested anything, Jarrett. Mirabel's lying in my barn with silver in her blood. Close it."

He was quiet for one second.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. Come in the ambulance bay. I'll be there."

Lucille was standing in the barn door with the ledger down the front of her robe.

"Go," she said. "Somebody has to sit on the Gaskell girl. I'll sit hard."

The ranch hand went to stand with her, tire iron and all.

I took the four doses we had left, the pharmacy tech and every jug of windmill water we could fit in Stellan's truck.

We crossed the pack line at ten in the morning.

Nobody stopped us.

There was nobody left well enough to stop us.

The ambulance bay was full of cars parked crooked, doors open, engines running.

Jarrett stood under the bay lights in yesterday's shirt.

There was vomit on his sleeve that wasn't his.

Twenty people on the ramp turned and looked at me.

Pack wolves.

Mothers with kids in their arms, fathers holding buckets.

The same people who'd lifted their noses at me in the grange hall a month ago.

"She's exiled," somebody said.

Jarrett turned around.

"She's the doctor," he said. "Let her through."

His voice cracked on doctor.

They let me through.

Inside, the ER was a hallway of bodies.

Kids on blankets on the tile.

An old man asleep sitting up against the vending machine, gray to the lips.

A night nurse bent double over a trash can, still holding a chart.

The air smelled of old pennies.

I climbed onto the front desk so they could all see me.

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