Chapter 66: Time Enough

The first two rescuers appeared at the cavern mouth, bent under an improvised stretcher made from sailcloth and two oars. A third rescuer followed close behind, soaked to the waist and breathing hard. Elspeth Rowe came in behind them.

"Here," Carrick said. "Straight onto the board."

Ruth had already cleared Jonah’s board and spread clean blankets over it. The men lowered their burden. The injured boatman tried to curl toward his left side and made a thin sound through clenched teeth.

Severin had seen enough injured men to know that kind of pallor was bad. The boatman’s lips had gone pale. Sweat stood on his forehead despite the cold cavern, and each quick breath barely moved his chest.

Carrick put two fingers to the man’s neck, then his wrist. "What happened?"

Elspeth answered while Ruth cut through the wet shirt. "Outer recovery boat. They were pulling a damaged skiff off the rocks when a swell rolled them sideways. He hit the gunwale hard on his left side."

"Hit his head?"

"No."

"Underwater?"

"Only long enough to come back up swearing."

The boatman opened his mouth as if to object, then shut it again. Carrick pressed carefully beneath the left ribs. The man jerked and grabbed at his sleeve.

"Pain here?"

A nod.

"Anywhere else?"

"My shoulder."

"Which one?"

"Left."

Carrick looked at Ruth. "Pulse?"

"Fast. Weak." She kept one hand on the man’s wrist while reaching for the thermometer with the other.

Carrick pulled the wet shirt farther aside. Bruising had spread along the lower ribs, with a shallow cut near the hip, but nothing outside explained how quickly the man had gone gray.

Rafael already had the notebook open.

"Jonah’s board," Ruth said.

Armin checked his watch. Rafael wrote the time, then added the exact position beside it: Jonah’s board, inner shelf.

"Time from impact?" Carrick asked.

Elspeth shook her head. "Twenty minutes, maybe a little more. We had to get the boat clear before we could bring him in."

Carrick looked toward the path out of the refuge, measuring a journey Severin had already walked several times. "How long to the clinic with four men carrying him?"

"Best case?" Elspeth asked. "Half an hour."

Ruth felt for the pulse again. "He doesn’t have half an hour."

"No," Carrick said. "He doesn’t." He glanced at Rafael. "Record what she gives you. Don’t slow her down."

Ruth read the temperature, and Rafael wrote it down with her quick note on the pulse and breathing. Armin moved the medical case out of her way and brought the basin closer without being asked.

The injured man shivered once as Carrick pressed lower on the abdomen. The muscles had gone hard beneath his palm.

"We need him at the clinic," Elspeth said.

"He won’t make the climb."

Leo stepped closer. "Better facilities there?"

"Yes."

"Better chance if we move him?"

"No."

"Then we don’t move him."

Carrick turned to Ruth. "Surgical roll. Anesthetic. More cloth."

Ruth was already unrolling the surgical kit.

Severin stared at Carrick. "You’re opening him here?"

"Unless you know how to stop bleeding I can’t see."

He did not. His gift could take heat from flesh, and the boatman already had too little warmth to spare.

Carrick pointed toward the lamp beside the board. "Can you keep that steady?"

"Yes."

"Then do that."

Elspeth sent the rescuers back toward the cove before Carrick had to ask. One protested that he should stay. She told him there were already too many hands near the patient and put him to work fetching more boiled water.

The same shelf Severin had spent the last hour measuring became a working table. Ruth rolled her sleeves above the elbow, washed, laid instruments onto clean cloth, and passed Carrick a bottle before he asked for it. He washed his hands and forearms while she prepared the patient.

"Keep it light," Carrick said as Ruth settled the mask. "No more than I tell you."

"I know."

"Ruth."

"I know."

Carrick almost smiled. "Good."

Severin took the lamp and planted his feet beside the board, aiming the light where Carrick wanted it. He had held weapons with a steadier hand than this. That irritated him enough to steady it.

The first incision made the boatman tense beneath the blankets. Ruth adjusted the mask and spoke to him in a low voice Severin could not make out while Carrick worked deeper.

Blood welled up faster than Severin expected. Blackhaven had shown him stab wounds and men opened by bad steel. Carrick was doing the cutting now, but every movement was aimed at keeping the man alive.

"Cloth."

Ruth had it ready. Carrick pressed it into the wound and cleared enough blood to see before searching again.

"More."

Armin passed fresh cloth into Ruth’s free hand. Rafael stayed near the foot of the board with the notebook open, taking numbers whenever she gave them.

"Pulse one twenty-eight."

A few minutes later Ruth checked again. "One thirty-two. Still weak."

The boatman’s temperature remained low. The next reading fell only a little.

Carrick kept working. "Still responding?"

"Barely, but he’s answering when I speak."

The man groaned beneath the mask.

"Stay with us," Ruth told him. "You can complain later."

His mouth moved.

"What?"

"Cold."

"I know." She pulled another blanket higher over his chest without reaching across Carrick’s hands.

Severin looked at the stone beneath the board. Less than an hour earlier he had pulled heat from that section and watched it creep back faster than ordinary rock should allow.

The man above it was cold and bleeding. By every ordinary sign Severin understood, he should have been failing faster than this.

Ten minutes passed, then another, and Ruth’s readings stayed dreadful without falling away beneath them.

The refuge had done something similar to the stone when Severin forced its temperature down. It had returned toward its own narrow band. The boatman was no stone, and Severin had no idea what part of him the place was holding steady.

He shifted the lamp as Carrick leaned farther over the wound.

"There," Carrick said.

Ruth looked down. "Spleen?"

"Torn through."

"Can you save it?"

Carrick studied what he could see. "No."

Ruth reached for the next instrument. Severin did not know what Carrick cut or tied after that. He understood fragments: blood where it should not be, and clamps and thread passing between practiced hands as Carrick dealt with an organ he could not leave in place.

The smell of blood and antiseptic thickened in the cavern. Ruth worked without waiting for Carrick to explain what he wanted, putting an instrument into his open hand and moving the basin clear before his elbow reached it.

Once she said, "Wait," caught a blood-soaked cloth that had slipped under Carrick’s wrist, and replaced it. Carrick paused for the correction and went on.

Severin kept the light steady. His shoulder began to ache before Carrick’s hands slowed, and he changed his grip without moving the lamp head.

Ruth checked the pulse again. Her fingers stayed at the wrist longer this time.

"Carrick."

He did not stop. "What?"

"I can barely find it."

Carrick’s hands moved faster while Ruth shifted her fingers to the man’s neck.

"There. Barely."

"Breathing?"

"Shallow."

"Keep it light. Tell me if he starts fighting it."

"I don’t think he can."

Severin started counting the shallow breaths without meaning to. The man might die before Carrick finished. He could break a body with his gift or drain warmth until frost climbed wood and skin. None of that could put blood back where it belonged. He kept the lamp where Carrick needed it.

Minutes passed. Rafael wrote only when Ruth gave him something new. Armin stayed ready with fresh water and cloth without crowding the board, while Leo held the cavern mouth and turned away anyone who tried to come farther in.

Carrick finally exhaled through his nose. "I’ve stopped the worst of the bleeding."

Ruth kept her fingers at the man’s neck. "Pulse is still terrible."

"I know."

Carrick checked the work once more and began closing. The boatman remained gray beneath the lantern light. His breathing stayed too fast, and the blankets did little for the tremor in his hands. Carrick had stopped the worst of the bleeding, but nothing had replaced what the man had already lost.

When the wound was dressed, Ruth checked the pulse again. "Still there."

Carrick removed his spectacles with the back of one wrist and wiped the lenses on a clean corner of cloth. His hands were red past the knuckles.

Leo came closer. "Could you have done that at the clinic?"

"With better light and more equipment."

"Would he have made it there?"

Carrick put his spectacles back on and looked toward the passage leading up from the refuge. "I don’t think so."

Carrick turned to Rafael. "How long has he been on this board?"

Rafael checked the first line in the notebook. "One hour and fourteen minutes."

Ruth checked the pulse again while Carrick pulled another blanket over the man’s legs.

"No climb tonight," Carrick said.

Elspeth waited at the edge of the working area. "How long?"

"Until morning." Carrick looked at Ruth. "We watch him here. If his pulse worsens, tell me at once."

"I will."

Carrick faced Elspeth again. "If he still has a pulse at dawn, we decide whether he can travel."