Cristo y Tú vivís en mi corazón.
Capítulo Dos.( second chapter.)
Warnings: mentions of blood, wounds, seizures, medical procedures, self indulgent use of an ABBA song, Catholicism, maybe a swear or two. If you are under 18…please go to sleep instead and do not read my works!!!!
Medikua; is Basque for Doctor. Espagnole is French for Spaniard. I realize he’s not a spaniard but hispanic however she doesn’t know that and espagnole can sorta mean someone who speaks spanish if you will.
And yeah, I used an ABBA song. Guilty pleasure of mine and -Fernando- just shouts romance with El Catorce for me, so voila! Enjoy!
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Medikua Hermenigilde Hortense, or Doc Hortense as he is more commonly known, is Isabeau's nearest neighbour from 6 and 3/4's of a mile away. A kind 88 year old man of Basque and French descent and the best medical man this side of the Atlantic, he came over to ask Isabeau if she could perhaps spare him an onion or two for his supper. Then promptly found her hunched over a strange, injured Hispanic man almost a km into her 'woods'. Luckily, he rode the donkey cart in. Making the delicate job of transporting said caballero back to the house much more stress free.
Isabeau sat on the floor of the cart, the ragged cotton quilt he keeps on his seat to fend off the cold now draped across her lap to cushion the patient's head. As his donkey walked the trail to her house, the doc turned his head towards the back. The stranger is still unconscious, and Isabeau gently brushes his hair from his forehead, with her right hand keeping steady pressure on his wounds.
That punctured lung is worrying him. Not because he doesn't have the equipment to treat such an injury. Of course he has the correct equipment, he is, after all, ex-military and he knows people, for God's sake. But because it's a punctured lung caused by a machine gunshot, something the good doctor can spot a mile away. Those are never pretty or easy to treat and almost always end fatally. How this young pup has stayed alive for this long is beyond him! Must be his guardian angel putting in much needed overtime...
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Isabeau has officially gone into shock. Or a panic attack. In this situation there can't be much difference, one is just as useless as the other. She vaguely wonders if it's a result of falling out of the cherry tree or of finding a badly wounded, Hispanic man in her woods. Both, in all honesty.
She still cradles his head in her lap and is monitoring his breathing almost constantly.
'"Doc, his breathing is getting to be quite laboured. Can I do something?"
Doc hears the heavy worry saturating her tone. And makes the donkey pick up his pace.
" Alright, try hanging his legs off the end of the cart, get his blood to rush to his feet instead of into his lungs. And settle his back fully on your lap to elevate his heart level even more. But do it slowly, girl. Slow and steady."
He turned back his head many times as he ordered her to ensure she didn't accidently jostle the boy wrong. He had noticed her complexion become paler. "Breathe, Isabeau, breathe! I don't need the both of you passed out in a donkey cart on me. I'm far too old to deal with this all by myself."
She wordlessly nodded. Her returning nausea didn't thank her for it. She subconsciously and minutely tightened her grip around the caballero's shoulders, consequentially pressing his scalp further against her stomach, mildly alleviating her need to lose her guts. She could feel his shallow breath in the crook of her left arm, quick, wheezing in and outs with a few of the inhales resulting in short choking fits. By now, both her arms and her naked thighs made her appear to be a human incarnation of a battlefield, stained scarlet with the lifeblood of young men, ( or of one young man, in this instance).
His heartbeat, Isabeau could faintly feel thrumming in a rhythm too slow and unsteady for her comfort.
She began to sing. Softly. For her comfort. For his comfort. In order to forget the pain in her head from the fall. In hopes to ground the wounded man in her arms. To gently guide him back to the land of the living through his sense of hearing. Isabeau knows from both her studies in university and her own brief dabblings in mild hypnosis and lucid subconsciousness that a person who has lost consciousness, either from sleep, or pain, or loss of blood, can still register, deep in the recesses of their mind, sounds and voices and even full conversations. But they especially hear singing.
So, Isabeau sings.
The melody is the first that pops up in her brain, a song from one of the numerous cd's she keeps in her 2001 Ford f-250 King Ranch. An ABBA Gold cd, if she recalls correctly. She can't remember all the words, so instead she hums when her mind is blank of lyrics.
Can you hear the drums, Fernando? I remember long ago another starry night like this.
They hit a tiny bump in the road, not even enough to bother the steed pulling the cart, but more than enough to send a jolt of pain coursing through the caballero.
In the firelight, Fernando
The pain noticeable in the wince upon his face, causing the girl to expect him to awaken soon. However much she dreads to see the pain etched on his brow, at least he would show more sign of life than now. She continues to hum.
You were singing to yourself and softly strumming your guitar!
A thought briefly flitters across her mind. She wonders if he plays guitar? Or perhaps he sings? Maybe his voice is strong, loud and boisterous. Or is it smooth and deep? Or he dances? Perhaps none of these and he prefers to sits in the sidelines and enjoy the talents of others instead...
And I'm not afraid to say the roar of guns and cannons almost made me cry!
" Almost there cerisette, which door?" "Uh...the back garden door has no stairs and is the closest to my bedroom." "Oh, your bedroom huh!" "My bed's on the floor. Easier to care for him that way."
There was something in the air that night. The stars were bright, Fernando!
Her chorus much slower and more weary than the original.
They were shining down for you and me, for liberty, Fernando!
The doctor steers the cart off the driveway and towards the house.
Though we never thought that we could lose, there's no regret.
They round the last corner of the house, stopping a few feet away from the door, back end turned to the door.
If I had to do the same again, I would, my friend, Fernando!
******************************************************************************************* Three Hours Later....
Isabeau was exhausted.
They'd been barely successful in carrying the still unknown man into her bed before he slightly awoke, only for him to begin having seizures while she went away in her pickup to Doc's house, grabbing the direly needed equipment for the procedure. Mercifully, he'd only had two minor fits before Doc stabilized him enough to treat the wounds.
Which had taken nearly three hours.
She'd held his hand through most of it. But no one, including herself, could genuinely tell you if she'd done that for his comfort or her own...
She honestly can't recall much else.
She stood in the bathroom down the hall from her bedroom, furiously but tiredly scrubbing at the blood stubbornly caught beneath her fingernails, staining her hands, sticking to the plush hairs on her arms, seeped deep into the fabric of the old yellow plaid shirt she'd swapped her lacy 70's top for...
Her thoughts were disrupted by the good old doc gently placing his freshly washed hands upon her shoulder.
" Get some rest cerisette. The sun may still be awake but you shouldn't be. The caballero is safe now...and so are you. " He sighs. " I am going home for a few hours. Call me if you need me. But get some rest."
With that, Doc Hortense leaves the room. And yes, he did grab a proffered onion on the way.
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She carefully pads across her own bedroom, silent as a Trappist monk, to not disturb her espagnole, as she's begun to call him in her mind. She decides against simply grabbing her sleep clothes and changing somewhere else. Instead she stays standing before her dresser, in full view of son espagnole if he were to awaken. Which he doesn't. She swaps her soiled plaid shirt and jeans shorts for a comfortable pair of well-worn navy flannel pants and a soft long sleeved beige cotton undershirt. No underpinnings either. Girl likes her freedom too much to subject herself to that.
Still a tad too wired up to fully rest, what with the time only being around 8:30 or so, Isabeau cautiously rummages through his minor belongings. Carelessly thrown to the side whilst his life was in danger, now she takes everything in her hands as if it's a precious object. She gingerly folds the white linen jacket, the torn beige button-up, the filthy knit cotton undershirt and the striped wool pants, putting them to the side to be washed later.
Next come the gun holsters and the bullet belts, made of beautifully well crafted leather, the stitching somehow immaculate. Without a doubt handmade. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Isabeau gets the barest nudge that there is no way in hell this was made within the last 50 years. They seem worn: however, they can't be older than a three or four years.
What intrigues her the most about the belts and the holsters, besides being nearly completely full, is the embroidered cross upon the pistol holster. No outlaw trusts that much in God, but no soldier dresses like this. Perhaps a revolutionary from Southern America way back...in...the...
She quickly makes the connection between the guns and the age of the leather and the medallion of La Virgen, the fact that he was shot by a machine gun, mass manufactured and distributed to many governments by Americans in the time she's thinking of.. She may be wrong, but an inkling tells her that she probably isn't. She walks hurriedly back to the bed, sits gently cross-legged on the side where she will rest and softly stares at her sleeping espagnole. Several minutes, or maybe hours, pass and then, she whispers, to the unconscious man, to the dark, to the angels, to God, to herself.
"There's a Cristero in my bed!"
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