“Story of my life,” Caleb replied without a trace of a whine.
CHAPTER 28
STONE HUSTLED DOWN a clay-packed path, really no more than two truck tire tracks wide, as he followed the cries. From out of the darkness loomed a long shape. The double-wide trailer was no longer “mobile” since it had a cinderblock undercarriage. The hulks of old cars and trucks, like the skeletons from faded battlefields, flew past as Stone hurried to the trailer. It had long strips of vinyl siding dangling off and the front steps were blackened railroad ties nailed together. Stone went from the bottom to the top step in one leap as the screams picked up.
The door was locked. He pounded on it.
“Hello, what’s going on? Do you need help?” He suddenly wondered if the frantic calls were coming from a TV set turned up far too loud.
A moment later the door was thrown open and an old man stood there, his body trembling as though he was in the throes of a Parkinson’s meltdown.
“What’s going on?” Stone exclaimed.
The next moment Stone was knocked aside as a young man burst past his trailer mate and sprang into the air, landing hard on the ground. Stone recovered his balance and stared after him.
Aside from the fellow’s obvious agitation, he was remarkable for having no clothes on. He stopped next to one old wreck in the yard, moaned and fell to the ground, writhing in the dirt like he was being Tasered.
The old man grabbed Stone’s arm.
“Help him, please!”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s got the DTs. Coming off the pills or something. Went crazy. Ripped off his clothes. Tearing up the place.”
Stone raced to the fallen man’s side. His breathing was shallow, his eyes unfocused. His skin was cold and clammy.
Stone yelled over his shoulder, “Call the ambulance.”
“Ain’t none up here.”
“Where’s the hospital?”
“Hour drive.”
“Is there a doctor around?” Stone was holding on to the stricken man, trying to calm him.
“Doc Warner’s place is on the other side of town.”
“You have a car?”
“Truck right there.” The old man pointed to a battered old Dodge. “Is he going to be okay?”
“I don’t know. Who are you?”
“His grandpa. Come to check on him. Then this happened.”
“Can you help me get him in the truck?”
Together they lifted the young man into the cab and Stone covered him with a blanket. The old man was still shaking so badly he couldn’t drive. Stone took the wheel and followed his directions to the doctor’s place.
“What’s your grandson’s name?”
“Willie Coombs. I’m Bob Coombs.”
“Where are his parents?”
“My son—his daddy—is dead. His momma ain’t much good.”
Stone glanced at Willie. He’d stopped thrashing and screaming and was now lying quite still. Stone again checked his pulse, slammed on the brakes and grabbed a flashlight off the dash to look at his pupils. They were pinpoints.
“Shit!”
“What is it?”
“He’s not in withdrawal. He overdosed. And his heart’s stopped.”
Stone pulled Willie out of the cab, set him on the ground and started doing CPR. He checked his pulse and then looked desperately around while he continued to push down on the man’s chest. There was nothing but woods here, not even the wink of a house light in the distance.
“Come on, Willie. Come on! Don’t die on me. Breathe.”
Stone checked his pulse.
Bob Coombs looked at him. “Is he okay?”
“No, he’s not. He’s technically dead. And we’ve got maybe sixty seconds before there’s brain damage.”
Stone ran to the truck and threw open the hood. The battery didn’t throw off the juice he would need, but something else in the engine did. He ran to the cargo bed and started tossing items around there. His hands seized around a set of battery cables, masking tape and a nail.
He turned to see Bob staring at him anxiously. “Whatcha gonna do with that stuff?”
“I’m trying to get his heart restarted.”
Stone ripped out a spark plug wire leading from the distributor cap and jammed the nail in the end of it, securing it there with the tape. He attached the positive end of the battery cables to the nail while he grounded the negative clamp onto a metal part of the engine. He knelt next to Willie and placed the other ends of the battery cables onto his right and left fingers respectively.
He called out, “Bob, fire the truck up!”
Bob looked at the cables leading from the truck to his grandson. “You gonna fry him!”
“We’re out of time, Bob. This is our only shot. Just do it! Now! Or he’s dead.”
Bob jumped in the truck.
Stone looked down at Willie, reached over and made sure the connections were solid. The young man was already turning blue. They only had seconds left.
Stone had done this once in Nam with a fellow soldier who’d gone into cardiac arrest when a massive round had sheared a chunk of his torso off. Stone had gotten his heart going again, but the man had bled to death on the way to the field hospital.
The truck started.
“Rev the engine,” Stone screamed out.
Bob smashed the gas to the floor and the engine roared.
Even though he wasn’t touching Willie, Stone could feel the surge of current. The effect on the young man was far more intense.
His legs and arms came off the ground and Willie sucked in an enormous breath. He sat up and then fell back, choking and coughing.
“Cut the engine,” Stone yelled and Bob instantly did so. The only sound now was a miraculous one. A dead man was breathing.
Stone ripped the cables off and checked the pulse. Pretty strong and steady.
Bob and he lifted Willie into the truck. Stone put the spark plug wire minus the nail back in place, threw the battery cables in the back, and drove off. They made it to the doctor’s home office five minutes later and carried him inside. Warner worked on Willie after Stone told him what he’d done. Warner was not Stone’s image of a rustic country doctor. He was barely forty, trim, with a clean-shaven face and wide, intelligent-looking eyes behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. He gave Willie an injection and made a phone call.
He said, “That injection should stabilize him for now. But can you get him to the hospital quick as you can? I called ahead and I’ll follow in my car.”
Stone nodded. “But if his heart stops again on the way? I don’t want to rely on the truck’s juice again.”
Warner opened a cabinet and pulled out a portable defibrillator. “If it happens again, pull off the road and we’ll use this.”
As they were loading Willie back in the truck the doctor said, “You saved his life, you know.”
Bob placed a hand on Stone’s shoulder. “I can’t thank you enough, Mr. . . . ?”
“Just call me Ben. And he’s not out of the woods yet. Let’s go.”
They arrived at the hospital less than an hour later. Stone went in with them, but after Willie was checked in, he came back outside and leaned against the truck, sucking in the crisp, cool mountain air.
The hospital was big. It probably had to be since it was probably the only one for a few hundred square miles.
He walked around the parking lot trying to push back the adrenaline rush. He spotted the squat one-story cinderblock building next to the hospital and walked in that direction.
When he saw the sign on the building Stone realized this was the methadone clinic, where the truck parade came every morning. As he watched he noted the armed security guard patrolling in front of the building. When the man saw Stone standing there, Stone smiled and waved. The man neither smiled nor waved back. Instead he put a hand on his holstered gun. Stone turned and walked back to the hospital. He assumed the presence of the guard meant that the clinic w
as a target for either drug dealers or druggies. Stone knew that liquid methadone on its own couldn’t deliver a high, that’s why it was used to wean addicts off drugs. But when combined with other drugs, like anti-anxiety pills, it could produce an often deadly cocktail.
About an hour later Bob came back out and explained that Willie was out of danger and was being admitted.
“So what did they find out?” Stone asked.
“They said he overdosed on something.”