Peter wasn’t sure how far to take the whole miracle thing. Even if we had the strongest antibiotics, nothing can guarantee success, Peter thought. He grimaced, thinking that such was always the case. There were never any guarantees. Perfectly healthy people were dying by the thousands and tens of thousands every day.
He recalled the story of a group of people who had rescued a young, injured seal. They worked hard and nursed the seal back to health, and on a glorious day under a bright, blue sky they released the seal back into the wild with great fanfare, only to have the seal eaten by a huge shark within seconds of being set free. Life is tenuous. Peter knew that. Even when everything goes right, it is tenuous. He wasn’t deceived about the probabilities of any of them living through the next year. My dear uncle, he thought…
Peter recalled his uncle Volkhov, and smiled when he considered what Lev would have thought of this young man who was being so brave. He wondered, grimly, whether his uncle would turn out to be right — if he’d been correct when he’d predicted that more than 90% of the population would die within a year.
Locating the sugar changed everything. Sugar, indeed, was one of the most effective natural treatments for infection known to man. This was no tall tale or attempt at alchemic voodoo. The problem is that, in order to apply the sugar remedy properly, the wound had to be opened, debrided and prepared. That meant that, due to the pain and sensitivity caused by the infection, Peter had been forced to subject Lang to a torturous several hours of the most excruciating pain that either one of them could have ever imagined.
Using the knife from Lang’s pack, sterilized and wielded somewhat clumsily by a man who was knowledgeable and wise, if not practiced and efficient, Peter had removed all of the dead and infected flesh, some of it already turning gangrenous and rotting into the wound. The process was slow and exceedingly painful.
The debridement, which entailed the physical removal of all dead and infected material from the wound, was difficult, and Lang had to suffer through it without any anesthesia. They didn’t even have the vodka. That had been in Peter’s backpack when it was stolen. All they had now was the leather sheath, and Lang had endured the torture admirably.
After cleaning and debriding the bullet hole (on both sides), a waiting period ensued while the wound bled a bit, and then they waited until that blood seepage stopped and coagulation had begun. Peter then packed the wound with the processed white sugar, which would act much as it does when it is used as a preservative on meat, blending with the blood and juices to create a thick “syrup” that then caused osmotic shock to the cells in the wound.
Peter explained this all to Natasha as he performed the treatment.
Elsie also sat and listened, taking notes in case she ever needed to remember how to do this. Taking notes also helped Elsie keep her mind off of the pain that Lang was evidently suffering.
Peter spoke on. “Osmotic shock means that the cells will give up their moisture and basically become dehydrated. This will rob the infection and bacteria of oxygen and water needed to spread and grow.” He raised his hands, as if making a choking motion.
“Sugar has been used to treat serious battle wounds for centuries, and, even in the 21st century, some doctors and experts had come to believe that it should be the primary means of treating bullet wounds and subsequent infections.”
Peter and his lectures, Natasha thought for a split second. She looked at Lang but he did not meet her gaze. He seemed to be too weak to show her any interest.
Hours later, Lang rested comfortably, and the women were off talking in one of the other rooms of the cabin.
Peter ruminated on one of those odd little coincidences in life. Really, and truly, they have no real reason to exist. And yet they do, those moments of perfect harmony and beauty.
At that very moment, Peter was standing guard over his flock like a mother goose, or a father goose. He was thinking about the usefulness of the sugar. And he was thinking how that such knowledge—so much of it—is lost on the new generations. Then again, he also realized that he did not know as much as his Uncle Lev. So many people, Peter thought, do not know or value what they have right there in front of them. If only they had eyes to see.
Now, he was packing and repacking the backpack, while mentally sorting through the small little disturbances in his system. He needed to maintain a tightly catalogued system to know what they had and what they lacked.
And he came across a small blue box.
The box was in the backpack that had belonged to the man named Clay.
He looked at the box, held it up and wondered what was in it. He’d said he would open it if ever there was a moment when the contents might be used to help them survive or to save a life. He’d not thought of the box when he’d almost given up on treating Lang with anything other than a parlor trick.
Peter did wonder if anything in the box could speak to the issue, but, just in the nick of too late, the sugar had come to the rescue, and now he felt like the sanctity of the box must remain intact. He could not have explained why, if you’d asked him to, but he trusted his gut. He placed the box back in the bag, sat, and thought.
Altogether, for Peter, it was a moment of perfect beauty, the placing of the sugar in the wound, and then the box in the bag. Like in some, perhaps even many, of our best moments, there was a connection, something tangible but also spiritual. He felt that there was direction in the confluence of events that was unknown because unknowable. There was something in not looking in the blue box, because that box had a purpose, and that purpose was not yet. If Natasha had not found the sugar, and then Peter had been searching the backpack, he’d surely have opened the box. But Natasha had found the sugar, and it was perfect. It was what was needful at the moment.
Sure. He’d be disappointed if, upon opening the box someday, it turned out that the box was full of childhood teeth, or Chiclet gum, or beads from some bracelet or necklace from long ago. That would be a downer, for certain, because Peter believed that whatever was in that box was important. It was for saving lives. It had to be, and it was for the sustenance of that crucial belief that he once again refused to open the blue box. This once… this one shining moment… Peter trusted his gut.
As the darkness gave way to gray, and then the gray in its turn succumbed to the brightness of the new morning, three of the travelers slept a little longer than they should have, and the fourth, Peter, hadn’t slept at all. He’d tried to maintain watch but had drifted in and out of deeper and deeper thought. Anything to keep his mind off of Lang.
For this reason, none of them were ready when the attack came.
It all started peacefully enough. Peter, eyes open, was slipping in and out of brain sleep as he leaned against a tree. He’d been looking down at the cabin from a small ridge to the southwest of the structure when some men rode up on horseback and said hello.
He never saw them or heard them coming.
CHAPTER 30
Life often goes along in a stream. The details float by like a leaf on a river. The current is pushing and pulling the leaf, but we do not see it because we are standing on the banks of the river, attending to our lives. There are moments when the leaf is caught up in little eddies. Events pile up. They gather like twigs—like flotsam and jetsam—caught up in the stream of life. Time blocks and unblocks in little bursts at such places. Information pours through like water. The details crystallize. Various pressures and turbulences in the river, pouring into the sea of life, push and pull, but we do not see it. We do not see the leaf or the pushing and pulling.