Chapter 17 – The Boy III

Pointing up the length of the ruined man engine, I asked Frank, "You think you can climb back up there using only one arm?"

Frank replied shakily. "If you help me."

Our torches seemed to be adequate, and I resolved to use the tow strap in some fashion, but as I turned my attention to it, Frank swayed and sat down abruptly.

"What's wrong?"

"Dizzy, is all." He shook his head. "And I'm seein' funny lights again," he muttered as his head slumped down to his chest.

I bent down, swept off his cap and immediately saw a bump on the right side of his cranium. I gently probed the lump and the boy winced. "Feel that, do you?"

"Musta, musta… bumped it… I supposss…" he mumbled.

I peered at his face and his expression looked vague. "Frank, follow my finger." He tried to track my moving finger, but one eye went off. Bugger. A concussion.

I looked up to the top of the man engine where it disappeared in the dark. Scale that eighty feet or twenty-five meters, at least it wasn't vertical, while trying to shepherd an injured ten-year-old? I sighed. "I'll have to carry you."

"How you gonna do that?" he replied. "Might not be a great idea, Doc." He looked at me quizzically. "You don't seem like a mountain climber," he stated.

The boy was concussed with a damaged arm and hand, which was still seeping blood through the bandage. He needed care and I had not the tools or the time to treat him down in this god-forsaken mine. I heard the drip of water somewhere and a faint creak of rock, as a damp breeze blew on my face.

I touched his free hand and the fingers were cold, and the boy was now starting to shiver. Hypothermia perhaps, or a result of his concussion.

"You'll be fine," I told him. "Trust me to get you out of here."

The boy grinned goofily. "Sure, sure. Old Doc Martin comes through. You know what they say, doncha?"

I grabbed the tow strap and ran it though my hands. It was 2 centimeters wide, six meters long or so, and yellow in color with metal hooks on either end. It would do. The pack I'd carried down was a heavy cotton denim, and in fairly good condition, so I turned it inside out.

I opened the suture kit, took out the scissors and with moderate difficulty began to snip away at the seams at the juncture of bottom and sides. I noticed Frank had gone quiet. "No Frank, what do they say? About me?" I also used the Spencer-Wells to rip out stitches that were too thick for my scissors.

"Oh…" he shrugged. "A rude tosser."

I was rude, that much was true. I glanced at Frank and he was no staring down the side tunnel where I'd found him. "There's them lights again, Doc. But you always come through in the end…"

I looked where he was staring but saw only gray rock walls and darkness at the far end. "Nothing there."

"Oh, no. When I was waitin… uhm, they was back there." Her shook his head. "Man, my head hurts."

"That'll be the concussion.," I told him. "Frank, I think when you fell and hurt your arm you also suffered an impact to your head. That has slightly injured your brain. That would explain seeing lights and any confusion."

He squinted up at me. "They was down here before I fell – them lights."

I shook my head. "Likely a reflection from your torch." I pointed to the far wall. "Look, there's metallic inclusion in the rock. Remnants of the copper they dug out ages ago." I moved my light and could see sparkles in the rock.

I went back to work on the fabric of the pack. I had opened one seam a few inches then went to the work on the other side. "Perfectly explainable."

Frank was quiet for a minute or so. "Oh. I thought… maybe if it might be… somethin… else."

Now I had turned the backpack into a bag with two openings at the bottom. Better than nothing. "Frank, let's slip this over your legs." I slipped the bag over his feet and lower legs and his small-boned body fit into it like he was wearing a perfect set of dungarees.

"What's this for?" he asked.

"I'll carry you… on my back."

"Okay," he replied. "If you sway so."

"Sway so?'

"No, no, I mean say so." He shook his head. "I'm awful tired, Doc."

I put the stocking cap back on his head, tugged my borrowed gloves back onto my hands and turned to the tow strap. I made two loops, one around each leg; clockwise and contrariwise in turn, wrapped the surplus twice around my waist and knotted it with a square knot. This left me with free ends a meter long or so, with the hooks readily at hand.

I turned to Frank who was again looking back into the side passage.

"Doc, there them lights are again," he said, pointing. "Told you."

Yes, there was a dim glow back there, which seemed to grow brighter and finally resolved into seven distinct lights: each a pale yellow-white light. They seemed to flicker and as I focused on them the hair on my neck stood up. "Erm, time to go Frank," I told him as an even colder breeze seemed to come from nowhere.

I settled Frank on a handy boulder, turned my back, crouched low, and slid the backpack straps over my arms, pulling the boy against my back. I cinched the straps tight hoping they would hold his four stone.

He patted my shoulder. "But a good doctor."

Leaning forward I staggered to my feet. His weight was considerable, trying to tip me backwards, so I maintained my forward tilt. "Can you take the other torch?" I gave it to him. "And don't shine it in my eyes."

"This gonna work?" Frank grunted. "My dad would play this me with me when I was little."

I glanced towards the lights in the tunnel and they had stopped getting brighter. If it were a person walking with candles, I could almost swear that they stopped coming forward. Yet the seven lights were spread across the passage wider than a man could span. So not a single source. I counted again. Seven, yes there were seven lights. I chose to ignore the phenomena.

"Frank for God's sake don't wiggle or pull to one side or other. Got it?"

"Yep." He rested his head against mine. "Good old Doc Martin. You know you oughter marry Miss Glasson. I'd think she'd want to. The baby and all."

Now I was getting personal advice in a derelict copper mine? "Not now, Frank," I told him. "Let me concentrate!"

"Sorry, Doc," he said. "Just think about it."

I took two steps to the metal construction, got my feet on a metal bar, reached up and hooked one hook as high as I could with the other attached near my chest. "Here goes," I whispered.

I climbed up to the next bar, then gripping the metal tightly, moved the lower hook as high as I could reach, and then went took another step. Repeating this process, we went up a few feet in fits and starts.

"Hey, Doc! Sure you're not a mountain climber? You musta done this before! Brilliant!" Frank said in my ear.

"No," I grunted. He was heavy and my legs were shaking, more from tension then anything else. I pressed my chest against the rusted metal feeling it grab at my suit, or what was left of it. Another fine suit coat and trousers turned to rubbish. I clambered higher. In my minds eye that awful dark abyss on my right went down and down; hundreds of feet likely.

Don't think about it, I told myself. Its only like flying at night. Just don't imagine what would happen if you fell. But I knew. Jolting pain on the way down and if lucky a quick oblivion. I'd pulled a trauma victim in London back from the brink once. The fool had fallen from a construction crane while repairing it. I was walking from the Tube station to King's Hospital when he landed practically at my feet. He had compound fractures os right leg and arm which I rapidly tied off with belt and tie. Fortunately, the man was unconscious, or he'd have been screaming in agony.

I rode with him in the ambulance in the few blocks to hospital, my hospital. There I took over the Trauma team and we pumped two units of whole blood into him while I and the orthopedic man patched his shattered limbs.

That afternoon in Recovery he had roused when I checked on his status. By now his family had arrived and they were a weepy crowd gathered at bedside. I had to work very hard to piece together the crushed blood vessels in his foot to save it. He was in for along recovery, but he was alive, and he would keep that foot.

The patient's eyes opened as I examined his foot. It was now a mass of titanium screws and fixators, well wrapped in bandages, but his toes were warm and pink I was glad to see.

"Hey!" he spoke to me as I held his toes.

"I am Mr. Ellingham," I informed him. "You have been injured in a fall. I have performed surgery on your foot to save it."

"I fell," he grunted. "Floated all the way down."

"From a crane. Fortunately, you did not land on your head or we'd not be having this conversation."

"Damn."

"How do you feel?" I asked, hoping for a report on his bodily state.

"You were there," he muttered.

"What?"

He screwed up his face. "It was dark, but I saw you."

The pain meds were making him hallucinate, I thought. "I was there when you struck the pavement."

He stared at me down the length of his battered body. "No. I mean it was all dark. Scary like. The darkest dark I ever seen – or couldn't see – you know. It was all blackness. But you were there, telling me what happened. Then I wasn't scared anymore."

I mumbled something to him, spoke to his wife and children; told them of his injuries, what I had done for him, etc. I escaped before they showered me with thanks. Just doing my job.

So, was that what the final smash would feel like? Blackness? My mind shied away from that idea. But Louisa and our child would be provided for in my will. I'd made sure of that.

I had climbed around thirty feet when I felt Frank squirm. "Stop that!" I told him. I could tell he was looking down. "You'll make us fall!" I hissed.

"Sorry, Doc. Them lights… they're still... down there," he whispered.

I stole a look down and the boy was right. My throat had been parched before but now it gone very dry. Seven lights down in the dark.

"Oh… rubbish," I said and then climbed some more.