Author's Note:
Thank you so much to everyone who has read, reviewed, favorited, or followed this story! I can't tell you how much that means to me! You are all simply the best!
Chapter 2: "Please"
"Oh good lord!"
Sarah stood frozen at the edge of the loft, electric lantern held high in one hand, staring at the sight in front of her. Four unmoving forms lay curled up on the far side, one little girl even younger than the boy who'd scampered up the ladder ahead of her. She was completely shocked. The blind boy's "lame" excuse had been absolutely true.
Then surprisingly gentle hands pushed her to the side so said blind boy could maneuver off the ladder that she was still blocking. It was the catalyst she needed to get moving again and she rushed across the loft.
"Gaz, stay over here," the tall boy ordered before following her quickly. She had a moment's worry that this might be a trap, an elaborate ruse to get her alone and off-guard, but one look at the four kids pillowed carefully in the remnants of last summer's hay crop and she knew no one was faking it.
"What happened?" she cried, dropping to her knees beside the youngest girl and placing the lantern in the hay before feeling her hot, sweaty forehead. The child's temperature was through the roof!
"I don't know," the kid answered. She watched as he flitted between his companions, brushing long fingers carefully across their skin and frowning as he heard their labored breathing. She couldn't imagine how scared and worried he must be, trying to take care of everyone when he couldn't see and had absolutely nothing to use. He didn't even have blankets or pillows, making due with rolled up jackets and musty hay. "Everyone was fine two days ago, and then one by one they just got violently sick!"
As if to prove his point, the only boy who was ill – another tall kid with dark hair and a complexion that was probably tan when he wasn't pale with illness – groaned and curled tighter, convulsing harshly with dry heaves. The other boy was at his side before she could even get there.
When Sarah touched his fevered forehead, the dark haired boy's eyes fluttered open, but he clenched them up tight again almost instantly.
"Iggy, what…what're you doing?" he ground out weakly to his "brother." Sarah didn't doubt they could be siblings through adoption or even choice, but it was obvious not everyone in this little group was related by blood.
"The only thing I had left to do," Iggy answered, his lips tight.
The sick boy didn't say anything else, the shuddering urge to retch even though there was nothing left inside his stomach overtaking him again. Sarah smoothed his long, scraggly hair back from his sweat-soaked forehead while Iggy gripped his shoulders tightly. When it was over, the boy's eyes stayed shut as he lay limp from exhaustion and pain.
Emotions and thoughts racing, Sarah sat back on her heels and looked around.
This was bad. Very, very bad. These kids were seriously ill, to the point where the girls hadn't even stirred when she arrived and the boy couldn't stay awake for longer than a few minutes. She suspected their fevers were well into the dangerous zone, their breathing was labored and pained, and they were all suffering from hunger on top of whatever else was going on. She had no idea where they'd come from, but it was obvious they were runaways – from their home, from foster care, from the law…she didn't know. But something had been bad enough to cause the older ones to take the little kids and flee.
A hand touched her shoulder and she looked up to find the blind boy standing beside her, holding out his backpack full of the contents of her medicine cabinet.
"Can you tell me what in here I can give them to help bring the fevers down?" he asked, no longer trying to pretend she hadn't noticed his blindness. "And what's good for headache and stomach pains?"
Sarah sighed, running a hand through her sleep-mussed hair. "All that's in there is over-the-counter pain and cold meds, and a really old bottle of Pepto. Nothing that's gonna be any good here," she said softly, still looking around in overwhelming worry as she pushed the bag back to him. "Besides, they're all out. They couldn't even swallow it."
The boy gritted his teeth, looking right at her with cloudy blue eyes in a very unnerving way. "Please?" he begged, holding the pack out once more. "I can't read the labels and I'm trying to keep Gazzy from getting sick, too. Trust me, I can get them to swallow it. We're all good at swallowing stuff when unconscious." The last part was said with a scarcely hidden bitterness that pricked at Sarah's suspicions.
Sighing again, she stood up and faced the teen. "Your name's Iggy, right?" she asked.
He nodded.
"Iggy, your brother and sisters are really sick! They need more than a little Tylenol! And they should not be here, in my drafty loft, with temperatures that are sky-high!"
"Well, this is all I got, so will you help me or not?" he snapped, anger flashing across his pale face.
"Yes, I'll help you," she answered firmly, trying to get him to calm down. "But I'm gonna go back in the house and call for real help! An ambulance! Paramedics!"
"NO!" he cried, dropping the bag and seizing her arm with an iron grip. "You can't!"
"Iggy, listen to me!" she shouted back, placing her free hand on top of the fist clenched around her arm. "They're really, really sick! I can tell you guys are in some kind of trouble, running or hiding from something, but is it really worth them dying? Because if they don't get help, I'm afraid that's what will happen! I can't sit around while four kids die in my barn! They need to be in a hospital!"
At their feet, the dark haired boy stirred slightly, groaning and holding his head, cringing at the loud voices. The other three never even moved, which scared Sarah even more. Stubbornly, she yanked her arm out of the blind boy's grip and moved past him, headed for the ladder, barely noticing the smaller boy cowering in fear against the far wall.
"If they go to the hospital they will die!" Iggy yelled behind her, stopping her in her tracks. She whirled around to find him standing there, shaking with his fists clenched at his sides. "You'll be killing them!" he finished, blind eyes glaring daggers at her.
"How? By getting them help? Putting their care in the hands of doctors and nurses that can actually do something for them?" Sarah shot back, worry and concern making her lose her patience. "What could you have possibly done that's so bad? Give me one good reason that a hospital could be a death sentence!"
Iggy didn't answer, fury and terror still radiating from him, and Sarah was just about to turn and race back down the ladder in pursuit of her phone, when he suddenly gave a little shake of his arms and shoulders and then…then…things began to appear at his sides. Things covered in…in…feathers…that…that…kept going and going…
Sarah's jaw dropped and her knees went wobbly. She took a step backwards without even realizing it, almost off the edge of the loft, and tried not to quit breathing.
"Iggy no…" the dark haired boy muttered weakly, but she barely heard it.
The boy had…had…wings! Huge wings that stretched out on either side of him, filling the small loft space. Backlit from the glow of the lantern she'd left sitting on the floor, he appeared in silhouette like some avenging angel, or something straight off the Sci-fi Channel.
"You…you have…" she whispered, her powers of speech suddenly gone.
"Wings," he finished for her, moving them forward and back for effect as he continued to stare her down, fists still clenched. "Wings. All of us. And the people that put them there didn't exactly ask us if we wanted them, or give us permission to leave their cozy little prison of a lab. Sending us off to the hospital is as good as knocking on their door and asking them to come take us back, and I can tell you that I will die before I let them take me or any of the others back to that place again! Lady, I'm risking everything here and I'm begging you, please help me help them!"
Sarah's brain felt mushy, like she'd just pulled an all-nighter with a ewe in labor and then still tried to go in and teach all day. This couldn't be real; people didn't have wings! She thought for just a moment she might be dreaming, but the chilly tendrils of a cool, spring breeze pulling at her arms and the rough wood of her loft floor pressing into her bare feet assured her she was wide awake.
She turned away slightly, gazing out over the edge of her loft to the yawning space of the open barn door that was black with the darkest hours of night, trying to clear her head. So many questions were hurtling through her brain. Wings! On children! Who did that? Where had these six come from? And…and…wings!
But they were sick – horribly sick. And she didn't know what to do! She taught music and raised cows, put violins in the messy hands of nine year olds and hoped to high heaven that in four years or so they might not sound like air-raid sirens any longer. She knew when to plant corn and how to drive a tractor. She did not know how to deal with this!
She glanced back slightly, looking at the blind boy. He'd pulled his…his…wings!...back into wherever they went to stay hidden, and now he just stood there, shoulders slumped and a look of desperate pleading etched across his pale face.
Sarah's breath caught, memories swirling. She didn't know anything about children with…with wings. And she didn't know much about medicine and treating serious illnesses. But she knew about secrets, about pain and loss, about fear and loneliness. She certainly knew about that look – the one that spoke of complete hopelessness and despair, of throwing all your cards on the table in one last ditched gamble because there was honestly nowhere left to go. She'd seen that expression stare back at her out of the mirror right before a scarred and damaged twelve year old had agreed to walk out of the doors of the Children's Home with the two people who were probably her last chance on earth.
And thanks to those two wonderful, patient people, she also knew about love. Which was something else she saw plastered across the pleading boy's face. Love, for his family, strong enough to shove pride and fear aside and beg for them, strong enough to die for them!
Sucking in a deep gulp of air, she turned back around.
"All right," she said softly. "I'll try. But we need to get them out of this loft somehow, down the ladder without falling, up into the house…" She trailed off, forcing the unanswered and insane questions to the side for later, trying to focus on what needed to be done now. She purposefully put herself into crisis teacher mode and pushed forward. "Between the two of us maybe we can –"
"I can get them down," Iggy interrupted, slipping the impossible wings back out into sight before unerringly making his way to the smallest girl's side and pulling her up into his arms. "Take Gazzy with you and I'll meet you there. I can find my way now I've done it once."
Which was impossible, her mind screamed at her, for a blind boy to be able to navigate his way to her back door while carrying a sick, ragdoll of a little girl, after only walking the path once. But then, so were wings!
At least when reality decided to implode around her it was consistent by doing it with everything.
"Okay," she answered simply, then kicked herself into motion and rushed down the ladder, thoughts of sleep forgotten as she headed for her house and what she knew would be a long and desperate night. Even so, knowing dying children took so much precedence over burning curiosity, it took all her will-power not to stop and turn and watch a blind boy fly!