Nick rubbed his hand across the bald dome of his head, surrounded by curly gingerish hair. He glanced at his wife again and said awkwardly, "I guess I'd better tell you. Apparently--though we didn't know this till recently--Cheryl's been sick for several months. We didn't find out till about two weeks ago and there was no doctor to carry out a proper examination."
"There's no doctor?"
"Not anymore. There was one, a guy called Middleton, but there was some trouble between him and Tom Brannigan over Brannigan's son. Middleton accused Baz of stealing drugs from the dispensary and Brannigan wouldn't have it, refused to believe it. There was an argument. Brannigan's a mean-tempered bastard and he pulled a gun and shot Middleton and killed him. That was four months ago. After that, Brannigan really went haywire. We don't know how true this is, but the story going around is that Brannigan's been hooked on all kinds of stuff for ages and he was afraid that Middleton would find out that Baz was stealing the drugs for him, so he had to shut him up."
"Which is why we don't have a doctor anymore," Jen added.
"Does that mean Cheryl hasn't been treated at all?" Ruth said. She was struggling to keep her drooping eyelids open.
"The old man in charge of the dispensary gave her some medication," Nick said. "And Jen and our daughter have been looking after her."
"Who's with her now?" Chase asked.
Nick told him that Jo was.
"Where's Dan? Isn't he with her?"
His words were like pebbles plopping into a placid pool, sending ripples of silence into the corners of the room. "Where is Dan?" Chase said, feeling so utterly weary that it needed a supreme effort to drag his brain into a semblance of coherent thought. "What's happened to him?"
"Tom Brannigan had him locked up," Nick said quietly. "Last July he attacked Jo while they were out riding together--"
"Don't mince words," Jen said coldly. "He raped her."
Nick held up his hand. "Yes, all right, but he was stoned at the time. He was taking stuff that Baz had given him, LSD-twenty-five."
"That doesn't excuse him."
"I never said it did." Nick turned to Chase. "I'm sorry, Gav, but it's true, it did really happen. Anyway, Brannigan's had him locked up since then and ..." His voice trailed off.
Chase's nostrils were white and flared in his taut face.
"They keep him drugged to the eyeballs and won't let anyone near him."
After the nightmare journey it seemed to Chase that he had entered the world of the insane. It was all a mad dream. His head felt tight and hot, as if it were about to burst.
He looked at Ruth lying stretched out in the chair, deeply asleep. She had removed the grubby strip of bandage and the wound on her forehead had congealed into an ugly, livid scar. It would be there for always, Chase knew. A permanent disfigurement.
Ruth carried out her examination at ten the next morning. As she sat at the bedside Chase was struck by the miraculous change that fifteen hours sleep had brought about. Though pale, her movements were calm and steady, her eyes alert below the fresh dressing that Jen had applied to her forehead.
As for Cheryl, he had prepared himself for the worst and was therefore relieved to find her conscious and able to recognize him. She had lost a lot of weight. Her cheeks were gray and sunken, her eyes dull and lethargic.
"We're going to take care of you," he said, smiling down at her. Emotion welled up within him as he took her frail hand and felt the gentle pressure of her fingers, responding to his own. Her lips moved as she tried to speak, but all that came out was a dry rasp, like dead leaves blowing in the gutter.
"It's going to be fine. We've brought some special drugs to treat you, and Ruth has a lot of experience in dealing with this. You're going to get well, I promise you."
Cheryl's lips formed a word--a name. She stared up at him beseechingly and her face suddenly convulsed. Her chest heaved and bile-colored fluid dribbled down her chin.
Chase wiped it away with absorbent cotton. "It's all right. I know, Nick told me everything. We'll get Dan out of there. Don't worry about it." He continued to smile reassuringly and hold her hand, but afterward in the living room, waiting with the others for the verdict, the smiling mask fell away.
"It's anoxia at a fairly advanced stage," Ruth told them bluntly. "The alveoli in the lungs, where the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide takes place, are impaired, and consequently other cells in the body are not being replenished with oxygen. This leads to a gradual debilitation of the system and eventually to death. I've treated patients at this stage of anoxia before and some of them have recovered, but it depends on them being in a sealed respiratory enclosure--in other words a pressurized oxygen tent--and on an intensive program of medication."
"What about the drugs we brought with us?"
"They'll relieve the symptoms, the nausea and so on, but only for a few days. A week at the outside."
"Can we risk moving her?"
