PERILS
Chapter Twenty
"We've got to get a wiggle on," said Henry. "I have people waiting for me in Virginia Beach."
The Doctor, glad Henry had picked up his cue, added, "And I have a long way to go, myself, in another direction. But thank you for your hospitality. I am sorry I hadn't the wherewithal to bring a bottle of wine at the very least."
"Oh! I got a little something for Woody. I forgot!" Henry excused himself to fetch his portmanteau from the portion of his van designed to hold a pony or two. Forest had stalked off by then, but came back at a trot when he heard his father-in-law scream "Doctor!"
The Doctor reached the back of the van first and stared, horrified, at the unconscious boy, perhaps 10 years old, lying in the dirt at Henry's feet. He dropped down immediately to lift the child's head out of the dust. "Where did you come from?" he wondered aloud, quite softly, unaware of the tears in his eyes. "Come on." He gathered the boy in his arms and carried him to the house, setting him down on the daybed. He felt his forehead. "Margaret," he said, without looking away from the boy, "can you please bring me two bowls of water, one room temperature with a pinch of salt and two pinches of sugar, and one as cold as you can find, and don't put anything in the cold water at all, just fresh water, and, please, a cloth and a sponge, also very clean." He sat the boy partway up against a cushion and tilted his head back.
Margaret brought what the Doctor requested and he immediately dropped the cloth into the cold water and the sponge into the salted, sugared water. He wrung out the cloth and gently wiped the boy's face, deposited the cloth back into its bowl and used the sponge to moisten the boy's lips, dripping into his mouth amounts too small to choke him. Then he wrung out the cloth again and set it across the child's forehead. He alternated these two activities through the evening and into the night. He could not be moved from this task; he spoke only to Margaret and then only to request a change of cold water. He asked for nothing for himself, not even a pillow to sit on, but Margaret brought him one anyway, an ordinary bed pillow in a flowery blue pillow case, before retiring to bed with her shocked and suspicious husband. Henry sat with them in the living room, silently watching the Doctor tend to the boy.
By three-thirty the boy was conscious enough to sip water from a spoon. By daylight he was sleeping quite normally on the daybed, the exhausted Doctor lying on the floor with his left hand clutching the skirt of the daybed, his right arm curled under his chest and his right cheek on the pillow Margaret had brought. Henry dozed in his chair.
At seven in the morning, the boy was sitting up and looking around, down at the sleeping Doctor, over at the snoring Henry, across the room to where Woody had stopped toddling sleepily into the room and was standing, staring at him. Woody turned back to his even sleepier mother, who was just entering the front room and, seeing the older boy sitting up, whisked her child away to the kitchen. The boy stood up and followed them.
When Henry awoke to the smell of bacon, eggs and coffee, he roused the Doctor and the two tracked the fragrance to where the children were eating breakfast and Margaret was busy making more. Forest was just hanging up the kitchen phone and glared at the two men but said nothing. Margaret served them their breakfasts in silence as well.
Fifteen minutes later, a social worker attached to the police whisked the boy away and two policemen took Henry and the Doctor into custody.