All the blood drained from Elizabeth's face, and she felt as if her legs were moving of their own accord as she jumped up from her seat and raced to her brother's side. "What happened?" she demanded.
"The slicer went into his abdomen," Ben told her. "He's lost a lot of blood. The ambulance just rushed him to the hospital."
"Take me to him!" Elizabeth cried. She followed Ben out to his car, and he drove her to the hospital as quickly as he could. They entered the emergency room to find it nearly deserted. "Can you please tell me where Paul Brimmer is?" she asked the receptionist.
The woman quickly checked her records. "He's in surgery right now," she told Elizabeth.
"I'm sorry, but I need to get back to Cindy and Ginny," Ben told his sister. "Do you want me to run you by the house first?"
"I'm not leaving until I see Paul," Elizabeth replied.
"All right," said Ben. "I'll tell Mom and Dad where you are."
About a half hour later, John and Olivia arrived at the hospital to wait with their daughter. "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry!" Olivia exclaimed as she hugged her youngest daughter.
They waited for what seemed like hours until at last a physician came to talk to them. "He survived the operation," the physician told the Waltons. "He's resting in recovery now. The damage was quite extensive, and it's too soon to tell whether he'll live. The risk of infection is great."
"When can I see him?" asked Elizabeth.
"You can go in and sit with him if you like," said the physician. She entered the room to see Paul lying perfectly still. He was very pale, his eyes were closed, and his abdomen was covered with bandages. Elizabeth watched as his chest gently rose and fell.
Sitting beside the bed, she took his hand into her own. It felt warm to the touch. "Oh, Paul," she said softly, feeling tears well up in her eyes.
After awhile, his eyelids fluttered and then blinked open. They looked all around, then fell on Elizabeth. "Elizabeth?" His voice sounded so tired and weak that it broke her heart. "What happened?"
"You were hurt at the saw mill, Paul," she told him. "You got cut by a slicer, but you've just had surgery and you're going to be all right."
"It hurts..." Paul moaned, clutching his abdomen.
"I'll see if I can find the nurse," said Elizabeth. She left the room and walked to the nurse's station. "Paul needs something for pain," she told the nurse on duty.
The nurse checked her chart. "He's already on the maximum dose," she told Elizabeth. "He can't have any more until tonight. I'm sorry."
Elizabeth returned to Paul's room to find that he'd drifted back to sleep.
For several days she rushed to the hospital to sit with Paul every day after school and stayed with him until visiting hours were over. He slept a good deal of the time, and when he was awake, Elizabeth regaled him with stories of what had happened at school that day or at home with her family. "I got a hundred percent on the quiz today," she told him one day. He smiled weakly. "Jim-Bob and Erin had an argument over the last piece of corn bread," she told him another time. "Mom had to cut it in half."
One day she was reading to him when he spoke to her. "I feel really strange..." She saw that his abdomen looked very swollen, and that he was sweating profusely. She touched him and then drew back her hand in shock. His skin felt as if it were on fire.
Panicked, she rushed out of the room in search of the physician. "You must come now!" she told him when she saw him. "Something's terribly wrong with Paul!"
The physician dashed to the room and quickly examined Paul, then turned to Elizabeth. "He's burning up with fever," he told her. "His wound has become infected. An infection this serious almost invariably proves to be fatal. I'm very sorry."
Elizabeth was crushed. She loved Paul very much, and to lose him would hurt more than anything had ever hurt before. Tears filled her eyes, and her heart was filled with despair until the physician continued.
"There is one shred of hope. It's a new medicine that's been in use for several years now. If I'm able to obtain a supply of it from the manufacturer, it might save Paul."
