Future Tense
(July 2018)
9-Collateral Damage
Dr. la Fievre was just finishing up his consultation with Mrs. Whatling—"You're doing very well for seven months along, Moira. Continue the vitamins, don't over-exert yourself, and if you have any problem at all, call the twenty-four-hour line right away. How's Eugene?"
"He's fine," the young woman said with a smile. "I think he's more nervous about this baby than I am!"
"He'll be so casual about the next one that you—what in the world?"
The door crashed open, though the receptionist was yelling, "You can't barge in there—!"
"My heavens! They're hurt! Thank you, Doctor, I'll get out of the way." Moira Whatling squeezed out past the incoming tide of Gnomes. One of them—Steve, the doctor thought, though it was hard to tell with Gnomes—said, "You have to help us! We have wounded Gnomes here!"
"Bring them in," la Fievre said. He called to his receptionist, "Have Judy handle anything routine. This is an emergency."
It is a mark of how the years had changed attitudes in Gravity Falls that a crowd of Gnomes, some bleeding as they all burst into the clinic didn't cause panic. "How many hurt?" the young doctor asked.
"Five!" the spokesGnome said.
La Fievre spread a blanket on the floor. "Have them lie down here. Which one is the worst?"
"Springlily can't talk or see or move!"
The doctor picked up the indicated Gnome—a female, though dressed in the traditional Gnome costume of tiny overalls, shirt, heavy boots, and—no, she must have lost her red cap. She can't weigh more than twenty pounds! He lay her on the paper-covered examination table and said, "I'll have to strip her. What happened?"
"Somebody shot her with a human boom-gun!"
"You're Steve, right?"
"Yes, Jeff sent us—"
"Steve, you and your friends get the clothes off the others. Leave their underwear on if you're modest—"
"You heard him, guys—strip them down!"
The female Gnome was humanoid. And adult—she had well-developed breasts and hair where a human woman of twenty-five would have it. One wound in her arm was through-and-through and oozed the pumpkin-colored blood typical of a Gnome. Much more worrying was the wound in the back of her head.
On the other hand, her pulse was thin but steady—about 100 bpm, but who knew what was normal for a Gnome? The doctor wrapped her in a towel and said, "I'm going into the next room to x-ray this head wound. Steve, there are gauze pads on the counter there—you see the white squares in the round glass jar? Yes, those. Have the unhurt Gnomes put these over the wounds and apply pressure to them. I'll be back in a few minutes."
"Is Springlily dying?"
"No, but I have to look inside her body to see how bad it is."
"Shmebulock!"
"He means," said Steve, "we trust you!"
Five minutes later, the doctor brought Springlily back. "She's lucky," he said. "It was a glancing blow, a half-inch rip in her scalp, no bone splinters, no pellet inside her skull. I think it's a concussion. Let me tend to the wounds and I'll get to the next one."
Steve climbed onto a stool and watched anxiously as the doctor shaved a little patch of hair on the back of the unconscious Gnome girl's head. He cleaned the ugly gash in her scalp, then sewed it closed with eight neat stitches. Then he probed her arm wound, cleaned it, and bandaged it.
His nurse, Judith Clomart, came in silently. "What can I do?"
"The four on the blanket are wounded. Triage them and give me an order of examination. Then take Springlily here into the trauma room and put her to bed there. Is there another female Gnome here?"
"Here," said an older voice. "Daylily. I'm her mother."
"I think she's going to be all right," la Fievre told her. "Please go with the nurse and stay with your daughter. Hop up on the bed with her. When she regains consciousness, try to keep her from becoming agitated, and if she needs help, come and get me."
She bobbed her red cap and—curtsied. And then hurried out.
"Feldspar is hurt the worst of the rest," Steve said.
Indeed he was. He was conscious, glassy-eyed, teeth clenched on a hard pain. "Boom-gun," the doctor said. "Shotgun. Feldspar, do you understand me?"
The Gnome grunted and nodded.
"Is the pain bad?"
"Yah."
La Fievre chose and loaded a syringe. "I'm going to give you a shot. It'll feel like a pinch, but I'm putting a . . . call it a sleeping potion in your blood. It'll make you go to sleep for a little while, and while you're sleeping, I can treat your wounds without your feeling it. Is that all right?"
"Yah."
Lord, I hope their metabolism is close enough to human.
He found a vein and injected Feldspar with a sedative that would have been appropriate for a human toddler. It was fast-acting; Feldspar's eyelids fluttered and closed. To Judy, la Fievre said, "Intubate him. I'm going to have to probe for pellets."
The third Gnome, Gnewman, had two pellets in his left leg, plus a through-and-through wound in his left butt cheek. X-rays showed a pellet in his thigh bone. He got sedation, too.
Luckily, the fourth and fifth Gnomes—both males, too—had less serious injuries. When he had probed one of Feldspar's wounds and had with difficulty retrieved a shotgun pellet, la Fievre said, "I wonder."
He broke out the set of rare-earth magnetic probes and tested. The small sphere of metal leaped to the magnet with a sudden click! Yes, the pellet was steel.
That made removing the other pellets much easier—no trying to ease tiny, long-jawed forceps in without damaging tissue, no fumbling attempts, just let the magnet grab the intruding pellet, out with a smooth quick pull, then disinfect and bandage the wounds.
Unfortunately, he had to operate on Gnewman's thigh. The doctor extracted a few small bone fragments and then did some internal repair of muscles and blood vessels, finally stitching the incision.
Just as he finished, the receptionist opened the door and Daylily and her daughter Springlily came in under their own power, though the daughter leaned on her mother. Someone, or someGnome, had taken Springlily's clothes to her.
"I think you'll all do well," la Fievre said. "I'm going to give Gnewman and Feldspar something for pain. They'll need to rest, and you'll need to change their bandages. Which of you can read?"
"Human? Uh—about half of us," Steve said. "I can."
"I'll give you some information on wound care. Plus some antibiotic ointments. The notes will tell you what to look out for—signs that the patients might be suffering from an infection or complication. Get them back here quick if you think anything's wrong. I'll want to check on Springlily, Feldspar, and Gnewman on Friday, anyway."
"Doctor?" It was a small voice, a hesitant one.
He smiled. "Yes, Miss Springlily?"
"Thank you."
"The Gnomes will not forget this," Steve said. "How much Human money should we pay you?"
"This is a free clinic," la Fievre told him with a smile. "Any citizen of Gravity Falls Valley is entitled to free treatment. No charge."
"Even Gnomes?" Steve asked, returning the smile.
"Of course. As far as this clinic is returned, a Gnome is just the same as a human."
Steve bowed.
"One thing, though," Dr. la Fievre said. "How did these Gnomes come to be shot with a boom-gun?"
A harsh voice said, "I can answer that."
Everyone glanced around startled.
Stanley Pines stood in the open doorway.
And he did not look happy.
At about the same time, but some miles away, in the bright light of a hot July day Blubs and Durland tilted back their Mountie hats. They stood about a hundred yards off one of the narrow, winding country roads. All around them a mixed forest of hardwoods and evergreens stood.
Except for a swath of shattered trunks and boughs. A twenty-yard gap in the trees might smashed like a divot from a hundred-foot-tall golfer's faulty drive. It all smelled of pine sap and fresh-broken wood—except for the undertones of gasoline and engine oil.
The wad of compacted, battered, twisted metal had once been a four-door Jeep Wrangler. Now it was a wad, so crushed that the passenger-side front wheel touched the driver's said rear wheel. None of the windows retained any glass at all. Near as the two policemen could tell, though, nobody had died in the crash—no bodies, no blood.
"Well," Blubs said, "one thing's sure. We ain't got no bodies."
"Yeah," agreed Durland. "And nobody cares for me."
Blubs put his hand on the deputy's shoulder. "I always care, my friend."
"Thanks," Durland said. "Reckon I should write down the license number?"
"That is an excellent idea," the sheriff told him. "We can run the plates and find out whose Jeep this tag belongs to."
Durland copied the number down, pausing once to ask, "Sheriff, does a 9 face thisaway or thataway?"
"Second one."
With his tongue sticking out, Durland finished the number with 991. "You know something? I think this was one of Mr. Gleeful's rental cars."
"Really?" Blubs gave the wreck a doubtful look. "Yeah, he did have a couple yellow-painted Wranglers for rent, didn't he? I got no bars right now, so get on the radio and tell Jack to phone this in to Mr. Gleeful from a land line and give us a holler on the horn if he can I.D. the vehicle."
"Roger that," Durland said. They had to walk through the woods to return to the patrol car. Durland slid into the seat and made the call. After a minute, he came out again, to a place where Blubs stood, a cup of coffee in his hand—he was one of those guys who would nurse a grande cup from too hot to sip to below tepid—and studied the curve in the road. "Sheriff, Bud says that was one of his, all right. Three fellas rented it early this morning to go sightseeing."
"You tell him to save their registration information?"
"Yeah, said he'd copy it for us."
"Good work, Deputy."
Durland fairly glowed in the light of the praise. "What are we a-looking for here?"
"Well Deputy, I can't help but notice something suspicious. The mud on the shoulder has tire marks in it, like the Jeep parked right here. But how could that be? From the way the woods was all tore up, it had to've left the road about here at a high rate of speed. But if it was parked, how could it have been moving?"
"It's a puzzle," Durland agreed. "Maybe it got picked up by a great big giant that crumpled it all up and throwed it like a baseball off into the woods."
Blubs chuckled. "Durland, you have the imagination of a bright five-year-old!"
"Why, thank you!"
The sheriff shrugged and finished off his cold coffee. "Let's drive back to town. I don't know how we're gonna get that wreck out of back in there. Might have to bulldoze a trail. I wonder where those three guys are. Bud's gonna want 'em to pay for his Jeep."
"Well, they sure weren't in the car."
"Nope. Another mystery. And we have no clues."
"Hey," Durland said. "Hey, you, Mr. Gnome!"
"Yes?" asked the small humanoid figure.
"You been there long?"
"No. Some squirrels saw you and told me your car was here. I just came to warn you."
"Warn us?" asked Blubs. "Warn us about what?"
"Lots of spiders around here."
The sheriff chuckled. "We're too big to worry about some little old spiders. Listen, Mr, uh—"
"Bruce. Bruce Digger."
"Mr. Bruce. Have you seen any other human men around here? Any other cars?"
"No. Not many people come this way. Not even hunters. Not much game here, except spiders."
"Didn't hear any crash or anything like that? No sound of a car running fast and flying off the road?"
"No, sorry."
Durland asked, "Did you hear a great big old giant grabbing ahold of a car and throwing it way off the road like it was a ball?"
"Not lately," Bruce said.
Frowning, Blubs asked, "What's that mean, not lately?"
Shrugging, Bruce said, "Well, Gorath used to do that sometimes, about sixty of your human years ago, maybe more. But he's up in the mountains, sleeping. He sleeps for two hundred years at a time, now that he's old."
"Who's Gorath?" Blubs asked.
"He's a rock giant. Not evil, but real grouchy. But like I say, he's been asleep for years now. Won't wake up again for more than a century."
Blubs chuckled. "Oh, you little guys and your superstitions. So it definitely wasn't the work of a giant, then. Sure you didn't see or hear anything suspicious?"
"No. Just wondered what the squirrels were chattering about, came to see."
"Well, thank you anyway. Let's go, Durland. Like I said, no clues here." The two lawmen got into their prowl car and drove away.
They hadn't even glanced up in the trees and had missed a few clues.
Although, since Oregon monkey spiders completely wrapped their prey in tough layers of sticky, mummifying greenish silk cocoon that blended in with the forest canopy, they might -not even have noticed the three still sluggishly-struggling bags of mook hanging fifty feet up.