Chapter 2

Jennifer kept saying it wasn’t that bad. But the people who came out and looked at her in the truck acted like she was about to die or something. They brought a gurney, and when she got out, six people grabbed her and lifted her, yelling at each other not to jostle her or let her bend her back. They laid her ever so gently on her stomach on the gurney. She looked for The Hermit, and saw him standing to one side, talking to someone who was taking notes. For the first time she realized that his lower right pants leg was dark with what had to be blood. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it before.

As they started moving the gurney, one of the people talked into a walkie talkie. He described her, and then said, “extensive tissue damage, with what might be exposed spinal bone. I think she’s going to need way more than we can do for her. We need to do a neurosurgery workup and alert the chopper to be ready to go stat.”

“Exposed spine!” yelled Jennifer. She twisted her head to look at The Hermit, despite the pain that caused. “You never said anything about an exposed spine!”

But he couldn’t answer, because they were whisking her away. Five people at once were trying to talk to her. One was asking for her name and address, and how to get in touch with her parents. Another was asking her if she had insurance. Still another was asking her what her pain level was on a scale of zero to ten, while a fourth was asking her if her vision was blurred. Finally she shouted “Shut up!” and was surprised when they all did.

“One at a time, please,” she said.

The next three hours would eventually be classified as the worst three hours of her life.

Bobby sat in a corner of the ER by design. Coping mechanisms sometimes look complicated, but they are almost always very simple at heart. Someone had decided that the helicopter wasn’t necessary after all, but had told him he had to stay there. Bobby Higginbotham tried his best to stay away from people. That was his coping mechanism for what ailed him. A high school science teacher would have said he was like a molecule of some gas, always trying to get as far away from other gas molecules as possible. It was that simple. In a room full of people, he found the place where there were the fewest of them. In a city, he found the place where people didn’t go. In a nation, he had found a place where he might only see another human being once or twice a year. True, he interacted with people more frequently. He talked to them on the phone, or sent them payments in the mail. He had to answer questions sometimes, in the process of doing commerce. But it had been over three months since he’d had a face to face encounter with another human being.

Another part of coping with his particular situation was that he was very introspective. He thought a lot, and he thought about things in extraordinary detail. That’s because he spent more time thinking about some things than most people did. I say some things because it wasn’t every thing. When he went to the kitchen to make a sandwich, he didn’t spend an hour deciding what kind to have, for example. But when he went for a walk - out on patrol, as he thought of it - he might take an hour thinking about what route to take, and what to take with him. If he was building something, he might think about the design for days, or even weeks, if the need wasn’t urgent. He planned things out in his mind in exquisite detail before actually doing anything. And while most people, when they determine a need for some object, spend most of their time looking for a good deal in buying it, he spent most of his time figuring out if he could make it or not.

So his current situation was difficult, and his coping mechanisms were being strained to the maximum.

He was in a room full of people. People were noisy anyway, and most of these people were in pain or unhappy, and those kinds of people were quite noisy. The only people noisier than that were bullshit artists ... people like scam artists, con men, politicians and those trying to lay blame elsewhere than where it belonged ... such as lawyers. Those people were professional noisemakers, who made so much noise that a person couldn’t think. And when you can’t think, you can’t identify bullshit when you hear it.

A number of people wanted things from him. That wasn’t unusual. Most people wanted something from you. It wasn’t like your unit. In your unit, all people wanted was for you to pay attention and do your job. The guys in a squad, or platoon all depended on each other, which meant that they wanted everybody in the unit to be at the top of their game. It was a matter of life and death, after all. So in a unit, you didn’t take from each other. You gave to each other, to ensure that every member was as on his game as possible. You cared about whether things were going good for him back home. You cared about whether that muscle he’d pulled was healing. You cared whether he had a good book to take his mind off the fact that his girlfriend had broken up with him because he was ten thousand miles away and she couldn’t take it that he might die any day without warning. You wanted him relaxed, and as happy as possible under the circumstances. So you did things for each other. You took care of each other. You loved each other.

But back in the world, people just wanted things from you. They didn’t give a shit how you were doing. They just wanted you to give up something they wanted.

Like now. Two people were yelling at him, demanding to know what happened to the girl. How did she get injured? Where did she get injured? What was she doing while she got injured? Who was she? Who was he? Where were her parents? Why didn’t he know what they wanted to know? Why wasn’t he cooperating? Did they need to call the police?

For him it was simple. “She’s hurt. You know how to fix her. So fix her! It doesn’t matter where or how she got hurt. Her skin is torn. Stitch it back together for Christ’s sake!” Finally he told them to leave him alone, and call whoever the fuck they wanted to call.

It was good that he didn’t have a weapon, because his gut instinct was that none of these people meant him well, and might even try to hurt him.

But he couldn’t leave. He had brought a buddy to the aid station, and he couldn’t leave until he knew how that buddy was doing.

Two things happened that made things much better.

The first was that somebody in the ER recognized that this man probably had PTSD. That person was a paramedic, who was a vet, and who had spent time in the same places as Bobby. He recognized a brother and what that brother’s problem was. He told the administrative types what he thought. He didn’t have the authority to do anything else, but they listened to him and backed off.

The second was that Jennifer, used to answering questions from adults, did so, rather than resist them as superfluous, like Bobby did. She had been given a shot, and it had quenched the fire in her back. There was still pain, but now, at least, she could reflect on how amazing it was that she had done so much after being badly hurt, and wasn’t even aware she was hurt at all. She mentioned that to the nurse who was putting an IV into her, and the nurse told her all about shock, and how that worked.

Her mother arrived forty-five minutes later, in full panic mode. That was made worse when no one wanted to allow her to see her daughter, but wanted her to sign all manner of forms allowing them to operate on the patient. When Mindy went into a full blown screaming rage, they finally took her to the little alcove where Jennifer had been lying for over an hour. They took her there more in an effort to get her to stop screaming, rather than because of any compassion on their part. The doctors and nurses all wanted to “protect” Mindy from seeing her daughter’s injuries. Obviously, no “civilian” was capable of dealing with emotional trauma that would surely result from seeing those types of wounds. So they put a sheet over Jennifer’s back. Nobody thought about the fact that this particular sheet wasn’t sterile, or that they might be doing harm to the patient. They were too wrapped up in being insulted that the mother of their patient didn’t say, “Of course you’re right. You know best. Where do I sign?”

I won’t quote what was said. Suffice it to say Mindy expressed love and concern for Jennifer, and was relieved when her daughter was able to speak back to her.

Then, after leaving the patient lying there until parental consent could be obtained (for legal, liability purposes) it was suddenly of emergency importance that the patient be whisked off to the operating room, where a full crew of surgeons stood by to save the day. Mindy was pulled back gently and forms were once again thrust in her face.

“I don’t know my insurance number!” she wailed, at one point.

“No problem,” said the administrative assistant with the forms. “You can go get it while they operate on her.”

Bobby sensed someone standing in front of him, and opened his eyes. He had been thinking. Some people might have called what he was doing ‘meditation’ but to him it was just thinking. Plus people didn’t usually speak to you if your eyes were closed. But this might be someone with news of the girl, so he opened his eyes.

It was the girl’s mother. He recognized her from seeing her back when he had their place under surveillance.

“Are you Mr. Higginbotham?” she asked. Her voice was in the lower registers, what singers would call an alto voice. Her brow was frowning, but her lips were in a half smile, as if she were hopeful.

“Yes,” he said.

“I’m Mindy Franks,” she said.

Things in his memory often seemed to pop up, like a rocket at a fireworks show on the 4th of July, bursting full blown onto a dark background. Something the girl had said did that now. “Jennifer Franks,” she had said.

“Jennifer’s mother,” he said.

He saw her eyes widen as her face went through several iterations of emotion, none of which were clear to him. He wasn’t good at reading people.

“May I sit down?” she asked.

He looked at the empty chair next to him. Of course she could sit down. There was an empty chair right there. If she wanted to sit, why didn’t she just sit? Then he realized she was asking his permission. He wasn’t used to that.

“Yes,” he said, somewhat stiffly.

“They said you brought Jennifer here,” said Mindy.

He nodded.

“Where did you find her? How do you know her?” The woman looked scared. Bobby knew that look. He’d seen it on the faces of all his buddies. “Who are you?” she finished.

The first two questions didn’t seem very valuable to Bobby. He could tell the woman where the accident had happened, probably to within fifty yards, but it would involve language that he knew she probably wasn’t familiar with. Civilians didn’t understand azimuths and grid coordinates. The answer to the second question was “I don’t know her,” and he was pretty sure that wouldn’t be helpful, either. But the answer to the third question was one of the things he’d been thinking about. Jennifer had called him The Hermit of Scarecrow Valley. It sounded like an official name, though he’d never heard it before. His uncle’s land was in Scarecrow Valley, and he did live what some people might call a hermit’s life, he supposed. He looked at the woman.

“Apparently, I’m The Hermit of Scarecrow Valley.”

The woman’s face went blank and then showed what had to be surprise. “What?”

“That’s what Jennifer called me.”

“I don’t understand!” moaned Mindy. “I don’t understand any of this!” She started crying.

PTSD is a difficult malady to understand. Nobody knows much about it. More accurately, it should be said that a lot of things are known about the affliction that is, today, called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but which has been called dozens of other things in the past: shell shock ... Battle fatigue ... cowardice ... exhaustion ... and on and on. But while much was suspected or known about each of these things, none of it was assembled and put together, because nobody understood that they were all really the same thing. Add in that different people react in different ways to the problem, and even today, the medical field doesn’t quite know what to do about it.

Bobby Higginbotham behaved in ways similar to someone who has autism. Eschewing too much stimulation was something he had in common with an autistic person. But he wasn’t autistic. Physical contact wasn’t painful or distasteful to him. And he was perfectly capable of empathy, especially when someone was in pain and misery. He understood pain and misery only too well. So while his reaction to Mindy’s frustration and tears was the exact opposite of what his parents (and many other people) might have expected, it wasn’t actually unusual at all. Not for Bobby.

He got to his knees and hugged the crying woman.

It was an interesting hug, on several levels.

Mindy felt the empathy in this stranger’s embrace. It was the first good, strong, caring hug she’d received in ... she couldn’t remember how long. He smelled good ... clean, yet like leaves ... a hint of musk. His beard felt soft against her cheek and neck. It was a very comforting and genuine hug. She’d have sworn to that in court. And as a result, she hugged him back with equal passion.

And yet, she was hugging The Hermit of Scarecrow Valley! She had also heard the stories about this man. She, like many others, had assumed he was some antisocial, surly curmudgeon. Now she was rattled by the obvious error in her assumptions. She also felt badly that she had dismissed him so easily, without ever having met him at all!

As for Bobby, this was the first hug he’d gotten from a female not in his own family in ... he couldn’t remember how long. She felt soft under his hands, and the scent of her hair made him almost dizzy. Her pain seeped into him and he welcomed it, imagining his life force was cleansing hers, lightening her burden.

In this position, with him slightly lower than she was, Mindy could look down his back, to his lower legs, stretched out on the floor. She saw the bright red of fresh blood on his right pants leg. Confused, she looked over to where he had been seated, and saw a pool of blood that made the outline of his boot on the floor.

“You’re bleeding!” she gasped, pushing him back. His eyes stared into hers. They were hazel, almost golden looking in this light.

“A tree fell on me,” he said. “Your daughter used my chain saw and cut it off of me. She probably saved my life.”

While this was information that would make any mother proud, Mindy wasn’t prepared to hear it. It did not fit any possible scenario she had tried to imagine. All she knew was that Jennifer had gone out, like she always did, and that the next thing she knew the hospital was calling, wanting to do surgery on her back. Then there was The Hermit, who wasn’t anything like she would have expected him to be, and now his babble about trees falling and her daughter saving his life! It just didn’t make any sense.

But as she stared into those hazel eyes, something clicked inside her. She could almost hear her daddy saying, “It will be all right, Mindy. Stop crying. Everything will be all right.” His voice had been magic, back then, when she was a little girl. Her ultimate faith in him was never dashed. He always had made everything all right.

It wasn’t that she saw her father in this man’s eyes, or heard him in her ears. He just had the feel of competency about him.

“Please ... tell me what happened,” she said, her voice suddenly calm.

By the time he finished, Mindy felt much better. Jennifer couldn’t be too badly hurt if she’d been able do to all that after it happened. That her daughter had risen to the challenge did not surprise her. Mindy had always had difficulty being independent, and having the confidence to solve problems. It wasn’t until Mark had abandoned them, taking all their savings with him, that she’d been desperate enough to do whatever it took to survive. She’d surprised herself. But she’d never been surprised at Jennifer’s capabilities. The girl was incredible.

She wasn’t happy with Bobby’s characterization of Jennifer’s actions as “spying.” Like most people who live in the forest, they think of all of it as being one big place, and not as plots, like city folk do. She had taught her daughter to leave the forest as she found it, and never waste or destroy any of God’s creation.

At the same time, she was quite sure Bobby wasn’t mad about Jennifer’s trespassing. After all, she had saved his life. He hadn’t been quite so glib in telling Mindy what he’d have had to do if it had happened while he was by himself. It all would have come down to whether or not he could clear out the leaves and mulch under his chest with his hands, giving him some breathing room, before he passed out from the pressure. She couldn’t imagine trying to dig like that, scraping leaves out from under one’s self just to get a little more air into one’s lungs. And it would take days to dig out completely.

But she was somehow absolutely sure he’d have tried to do that. She was also pretty sure, somehow, that he would have eventually succeeded.

But he hadn’t had to.

Then she asked him to describe Jennifer’s injuries.

“They told me her spine was exposed,” she said. “How could that be? It should have knocked her out!”

“What I saw was the white of bone down inside one really bad gouge,” he said. “But it was only a little bit, and I think it was to the left of the spine. I’m not a doctor, though.”

“Well thank you for bringing her here,” said Mindy.

“I had to,” he said.

“No you didn’t. You could have called an ambulance. Most people would have done that instead of going to the effort to bring her themselves.”

“She was hurt. She needed help. I had to help her.” His logic was as simple as his morals. You helped each other. That was the way it was supposed to be.

A man in green scrubs approached. He looked at the man on his knees in front of the woman the nurse had pointed out as his patient’s mother. Nothing had been said about a father. He also saw the bloody foot print, and the soaked pant leg of the man.

“Mrs. Franks?” he asked. “I’m sorry to intrude...”

She looked up and tried to stand. The front of her hips struck Bobby lightly in his face, and he leaned back. His injured right leg wouldn’t support the weight and he rolled to fall with a groan on his right shoulder.

“Oh!” yipped Mindy. “I’m so sorry.” She leaned down to help him, but he waved her away. He pointed at the doctor, and said “Talk to him.”

“Mrs. Franks?” the doctor asked again.

“Miz Franks,” she corrected automatically. “How is she?”

“I’m Doctor Zimmerman. It wasn’t nearly as bad as we were led to believe. She said a tree fell and part of it hit her. That matches the kind of damage we found. There was one pretty deep excision that bared a section of a rib. That was what took the longest to clean out and suture. She’s going to have a scar, I’m afraid. Everything else we were able to clean up and just bandage. Whoever did the first aid on her cleaned most of the wounds up pretty well before she got here.”

“Thank goodness,” sighed Mindy. “They said she might have spinal damage.”

“Nope.” He smiled, happy to give good news, for once. “She’s going to be sore for a couple of months, and the scar will need some TLC for a while. That will help minimize the damage. I’ll see that you get instructions, and order a special ointment for her from the pharmacy. I’m sure we got all the bark and chips and such out of the wound, but I still want to see her in my office in a week, to make sure things still look good.”

“Thank you so much!” said Mindy, obviously relieved.

The doctor turned to Bobby.

“Would you, by chance, be the man she called ... The Hermit?”

Bobby winced, but then made his face go calm.

“I suppose so,” he said. “I wasn’t aware people were calling me that.”

“She said you were hurt. I can see she was correct. Why hasn’t someone looked at your leg?”

“It’s nothing,” said Bobby.

“I spent a decade becoming a doctor,” said Zimmerman, his voice dry. “How about you let me be one, okay? There’s at least a pint of blood on your pants and the floor, not counting what you lost on the way here. And I can see something protruding from the material of your pants leg. It’s not bone. Based on what my patient told me, I’m going to take a wild guess and say you have a splinter that needs to be removed. Come with me and I’ll get you taken care of.”

Bobby resisted. He didn’t like hospitals. He’d spent way too much time in them. The only reason he’d stayed at all was because he needed to make sure the girl would be all right. Perhaps, if he hadn’t lost so much blood, he would have simply gotten up and walked out. But when Mindy took his arm and insisted they go with the doctor, somehow he couldn’t just refuse.

Doctor Zimmerman led them through the double doors that separated the ER from the waiting area. Curtained alcoves held patients with various problems. He took them to the last alcove. Bobby was limping visibly, now.

“Take off your pants. I need to get back to the OR, but I’ll get somebody in here to take a look at your leg. Don’t leave.” He looked at Mindy. “Don’t let him leave. Got it?”

She nodded. He was already gone by the time Mindy thought to remind him that The Hermit might not want to take his pants off in front of her.

She was right. He tried to pull his pants leg up, but then winced again.

“It’s stuck on something,” he said.

The curtain was whisked aside by a new doctor. He had a nurse with him.

“I’m Doctor Foster. I’ll be taking a look at your leg.” He stared down at the bloodied pants. “Let’s get you on the table,” he said.

The doctor may be forgiven for assuming that Mindy and Bobby were married. Bobby was five years younger than Mindy, but with his beard it was hard to tell that. And they were in the room together. The normal routine was for the ER admin folks and nurses to screen non-family members out of the process, having them wait in the waiting room. So he just assumed that had been done, and ignored her presence.

Bobby got on the table and lay on his stomach. The doctor approached the leg and bent over. He put the tip of one gloved finger on the thing sticking out of the cloth.

“Doctor Zimmerman said there was a tree involved, but that’s all he had time to tell me. How did this happen?”

“I was cutting a tree. It was hollow, and when the saw bit into it, it flexed and the trunk shattered. The whole thing came down on top of me. A girl was there and she rolled it off of me. While she was doing that I felt something stab me down there. But she was hurt too. When the tree fell, the crown fell on her. So I didn’t pay that much attention to it because she needed help worse than I did.”

While he had been talking, the doctor had taken scissors and cut the pants leg up the middle, from the cuff to the knee. When he laid it aside, Mindy saw two inches of bloody wood sticking out of his leg. The nurse held out her hands. In one was a small metal cup with clear liquid in it. In the other was a stack of four by four gauze pads. Doctor Foster picked up three or four pads at once, dipped them in the liquid, and started cleaning around the splinter.

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The Hermit of Scarecrow Valley

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