To Vincent Cascella, a man of inspirational intellect, wit, strength, and courage and a friend who is always there for me.
"How much of this blood is his?" a woman asked.
"Most of it, I'm afraid," a second woman said as they both rushed along beside him.
As Richard fought to focus his mind on his need to remain conscious, the breathless voices sounded to him as if they were coming from some great dim distance. He wasn't sure who they were. He knew that he knew them, but right then it just didn't seem to matter.
The crushing pain in the left side of his chest and his need for air had him at the ragged edge of panic. It was all he could do to try to draw each crucial breath.
Even so, he had a bigger worry.
Richard struggled to put voice to his burning concern, but he couldn't form the words, couldn't get out any more than a gasping moan. He clutched the arm of the woman beside him, desperate to get them to stop, to get them to listen. She misunderstood and instead urged the men carrying him to hurry, even though they were already panting with the effort of bearing him over the rocky ground in the deep shade among the towering pines. They tried to be as gentle as possible, but they never dared to slow.
Not far off, a rooster crowed into the still air, as if this were an ordinary morning like any other.
Richard observed the storm of activity swirling around him with an odd sense of detachment. Only the pain seemed real. He remembered hearing it once said that when you died, no matter how many people were there with you, you died all alone. That's how he felt now-alone.
As they broke from the timber into a thinly wooded, rough field of clumped grass, Richard saw above the leafy limbs a leaden sky threatening to unleash torrents of rain. Rain was the last thing he needed. If only it would hold off.
As they raced along, the unpainted wooden walls of a small building came into view, followed by a twisting livestock fence weathered to a silver gray. Startled chickens squawked in fright as they scattered out of the way. Men shouted orders. Richard hardly noticed the ashen faces watching him being carried past as he stiffened himself against the dizzying pain of the rough journey. It felt as if he were being ripped apart.
The whole mob around him funneled through a narrow doorway and shuffled into the darkness beyond.
"Here," the first woman said. Richard was surprised to realize, then, that it was Nicci's voice. "Put him here, on the table. Hurry."
Richard heard tin cups clatter as someone swept them aside. Small items thunked to the ground and bounced across a dirt floor. The shutters banged back as they were flung open to let some of the flat light into the musty room.
It appeared to be a deserted farmhouse. The walls tilted at an odd angle as if the place were having difficulty standing, as if it might collapse at any moment. Without the people who had once made it home, given it life, it had the aura of a place waiting for death to settle in.
Men holding his legs and arms lifted him and then carefully set him down on the crudely hewn plank table. Richard wanted to hold his breath against the crushing agony radiating from the left side of his chest, but he desperately needed the breath that he couldn't seem to get.
He needed the breath in order to speak.
Lightning flashed. A moment later thunder rumbled heavily.
"Lucky we made it into shelter before the rain," one of the men said.
Nicci nodded absently as she leaned close, groping purposefully across Richard's chest. He cried out, arching his back against the heavy wooden tabletop, trying to twist away from her probing fingers. The other woman immediately pressed his shoulders down to keep him in place.
He tried to speak. He almost got the words out, but then he coughed up a mouthful of thick blood. He started choking as he tried to breathe.
The woman holding his shoulders turned his head aside. "Spit," she told him as she bent close.
The feeling of not being able to get any air brought a flash of hot fear. Richard did as she said. She swept her fingers through his mouth, working to clear an airway. With her help he finally managed to cough and spit out enough blood to be able to pull in some of the air he so desperately needed.
As Nicci's fingers probed the area around the arrow jutting from the left side of his chest, she cursed under her breath.
"Dear spirits," she murmured in soft prayer as she tore open his blood-soaked shirt, "let me be in time."
"I was afraid to pull out the arrow," the other woman said. "I didn't know what would happen-didn't know if I should-so I decided I'd better leave it and hope I could find you."
