Hungry, tired, and stressed, she paused to gather her wits. Taking deep, meditative breaths, she slowly turned a full circle. Bart’s retreat was amazing. The ambiance was a mystical hideout deep in the wilderness. The cabin was tucked into the furthest corner of the valley up against steep rock walls that rose dramatically above and in a clump of magnificent old trees. It was dark, cozy, and cool. The forest floor was moss and soft pine needles. All was quiet, very quiet.
A huge mound of recently split firewood was piled next to a couple dozen uncut rounds waiting to be split. An axe was driven into the chopping block. An outhouse was visible a short distance away. She guessed a nearby pile of rocks was the Chinese oven where he baked bread. Next to the woodpile was a fire pit with two wood chairs, one weathered, one new. Hadhe made a chair in anticipation of her visit? That felt good. She was pretty sure he hadn’t had other visitors. She trusted Bart. He’d told her no one knew about the place except her. She liked that. He’d trusted her with this information, and it was why she declined bringing others for the rescue.
Behind the cabin was the large woodshed Bart had described and a natural spring. The spring was the likely reason he’d built the cabin here. She studied the spring, fresh water bubbling out of the ground. It appeared to be an underground stream that surfaced here to become an above ground creek. Bart had created a pool where water collected before moving into the creek. Several buckets sat on the edge of the pool. Looking at the cabin, she understood the water system. Four outdoor steps against the cabin led to a holding tank. She walked up the stairs and looked down, seeing two bins, one supporting a gravity feed water flow to the kitchen sink, the other for an outdoor shower.
Both tanks were almost empty, so she filled them using the buckets. She went under the tank and turned on the cold water shower. She decided to warm up some water, add it to the tank, and take a lukewarm shower before bed.
She walked into the woodshed and admired the firewood supply, the smell of fresh cut pine and fir permeating the space. In the back of the woodshed was his workshop. Under construction was a double bed. Okay, then, Bartwaspreparing for her visit.
A door led from the woodshed into the cabin. A swinging flap was cut into the bottom of the door for Bear. Molly entered the cabin. She guessed it was twenty feet long by half that distance wide, a rectangular single room. The logs served as walls inside and out. A high roof was peaked down the middle, the steep pitch designed to shed snow outside and create the effect of a larger space inside. Everything was efficiently laid out, clean, tidy, and well-organized, like everything about Bart.
The kitchen had a small table with two chairs, one weathered, one new. The sink was wood. A single spigot produced the water she’d dumped in the bin. A round cylinder top loading wood stove with a flat surface doubled for heating and cooking. Against one wall was his office, a laptop sitting on a rustic wood table. Facing the stove was a wood arm chair with cushions, his reading and relaxing place.
Several small windows let in natural light, but it was dark and cozy inside. Two lamps, one oil, one battery, sat on handmade wooden tables. A bearskin was on the floor in front of the stove and another hung on the wall next to several racks of antlers, a pair of snowshoes, and a gun rack holding half a dozen rifles.
A mountain man’s rustic cabin in a deep dark forest.
Molly settled next to Bart with Bear and Shadow lying on the floor. She didn’t know how long it would take for the IV to kick in. She took a third set of vitals and was disappointed to see no change. She tried to prepare herself for a long wait, but her sickness was returning. She’d been relieved to find him alive, and had congratulated herself on getting the IV set up. But now what? Wait? What if he took a turn for the worse? What was she to do? A sense of helplessness was settling in.
She turned her attention to the medical manual. It would really help if she knew what the problem was. Why was he unconscious, unresponsive, feverish, dehydrated? Something was going on in his body to make him sick. But what?
The manual had a diagnostic program using a question answer format. Questions in the first section focused on Bart: age, height, weight, gender, ethnicity, socio economic status,preexisting conditions, diet, nutrition, and general health. She entered what she knew, noting that he lived in a wilderness setting far removed from civilization. The second section focused on symptoms. She downloaded the vitals, the results of the body inspection, dehydration observations, and vague guesstimates about duration. The third section asked about specific medical conditions like diabetes, epilepsy, depression, strokes, tumors, and alcohol and drug use. Molly answered the questions the best she could.
The fourth section sought follow up on responses she’d entered. The wilderness setting raised issues about water quality, possible contact with poisonous plants, snakes, or insect bites. Molly had tasted the water and found it clear, crisp, and delicious. She doubted it was a water quality issue and downloaded her observation. She searched the kitchen for plants that could be poisonous and didn’t find anything. She entered more specific data about the bite and rash on Bart’s neck.
Her data about the insect bite produced eight photos of various bites and rashes. She studied Bart’s neck with a magnifying glass provided in Reed’s kit and compared it with the photos in the manual. What she was seeing was a perfect match with the fifth photo. She entered that data and the manual toggled to tick bites. Oh my God. She actually knew something about tick bites from her veterinary tech training. They commonly attacked animals and humans and were frightfully deadly. Who’d think a tiny insect could be so powerful? Then she remembered the plagues inflicted by malaria mosquitoes.
The manual was now providing diagnosis and treatment for tick bites. Molly leaned forward, intense on her phone. Most tick bites were relatively harmless, producing a mild bite mark and a light rash, not unlike a mosquito. But, some ticks cause serious illness, including Lyme disease and Rocky Mountainspotted fever. In particular, the Deer Tick, sometimes referred to as the Bear Tick, is common to forested regions in the west, and can infect animals and humans with a bacteria that causes Lyme Disease. Lyme Disease is transmitted to humans through the bite of infected blacklegged ticks. Symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, and a skin rash. If left untreated, it can spread to joints, the heart, and the nervous system. Treatment is typically antibiotics administered as early as possible.
Molly studied every word in the manual. Lyme Disease was first discovered and diagnosed in Lyme, Connecticut and had become a serious illness inflicting over 300,000 people a year in the U.S. She didn’t know that she had the correct diagnosis, but the manual had led her directly to it. A remote mountain setting. Bart had an insect bite on his neck with a rash that matched the photo for tick bites. Some ticks carry bacteria that attacks the heart and nervous system. She knew tick bites to be very dangerous and sometimes lethal.
She turned her attention to the antibiotics recommended for Lyme Disease and the medicines Reed had included in the kit. There wasn’t a perfect match, but she decided to switch to an antibiotic recommended for bacterial-based infections. Reed had included four bags of IV fluid and the first was still half full, but she wanted to make the switch. She replaced the existing bag with a fresh one and injected the new antibiotic into it, saving the partial bag for later.
She checked vitals once more and was disappointed to find no improvement.
It was early evening, and the cool night air was setting in. She started a fire in the stove, unpacked her personal supplies,transferred food to the kitchen, and started moving into Bart’s cabin. She decided to lay her sleeping bag and pad next to Bart’s cot. She wanted to sleep with him and hold him, but the cot was too narrow.
She put a pot of water on the wood stove to heat for her shower. She lit the oil lamp, not wanting to use battery power. She wondered where Bart’s solar station was. She’d worry about that tomorrow. Her phone still had power, and she hadn’t used her chargers yet. For dinner, she decided to heat up a mushroom and barley soup that Evelyn had packed.
She stepped out on the front porch to watch the remaining light fall on Dark Hollow. Standing still and surveying the area, her eyes fell upon a family of lynx. Back in the woods, Bella and her partner were watching her on Bart’s porch, three kittens playing at their feet. Molly settled in a chair on the porch and studied Bart’s family. They were healthy, beautiful, and very focused on her. Of course, they were worried about Bart too. They hadn’t seen him for days. Beryl was still here. And now a stranger with a new mule and a new dog had invaded their private valley.
Seeing Bella and her family caused her to think about Blitz. She surveyed the surrounding trees until she saw a handsome Peregrine Falcon roosting in a tree about seventy five feet away. Blitz was facing the cabin and studying her on the porch. Molly looked around for a feeding station where Bart might put food for his hunting falcon, and found a platform not far from where Blitz was sitting. Molly studied Blitz to see if she could determine gender. She knew generally that female birds of prey were typically taller and heavier than the slender sleeker males. She was looking at a magnificent, large, proud falcon. She decided Blitz was female and that she’d treat her as such until she learned otherwise.
She got up very slowly, moved into the cabin, and sorted through the food supplies Evelyn and Betsy had packed for her. She found a generous stash of beef sticks and a can of hash. She cut up some beef and added it to a bowl of hash, and took several beef sticks out to the porch. She stood quietly, showing the meat to Blitz and the bowl of hash to Bella and her family. All eyes were on her.
Leaving the hash on the porch, she walked very slowly to the platform and laid two pieces of beef on it. She backed slowly away and retrieved the bowl of hash. She walked as slowly as she could toward Bella, stopping when she saw Bella and her partner stand up. Molly set the bowl on the ground, slowly retreating to the cabin. She settled in her seat. After a few minutes, Blitz swooped down, retrieved both meat sticks, and took them back to the limb, holding them in her talons where she started pecking away at them.
Molly watched Bella for a few minutes and saw no movement. She went inside the cabin, retrieved the pot of hot water from the stove top and replaced it with the mushroom soup. She retrieved her toiletries and a towel and went outside to shower. After pouring hot water in the shower tank, she stripped and stood under the shower until she was entirely wet. She turned off the water and thoroughly soaped her body and shampooed her hair. After two days and fifty miles on the trail, she needed this. Completely soaped, she turned on the shower and let the warmish water rinse away the suds, running the shower until the water was gone.
She toweled off, walked inside, and put on clean clothes. That felt good. She’d do laundry tomorrow. She stepped out on the porch and saw the bowl for Bella was now empty and no lynx were in sight. Blitz was still watching from her limb. Molly took two more pieces of meat to the platform. This time, Blitz retrieved them before Molly was back to the porch.
The stove heated the cabin nicely. The small window in the stove put out a warm glow. She ate the hearty soup in Bart’s chair in front of the stove, her feet on the bearskin rug, Shadow at her feet, Bear at Bart’s side. The stove was warm. She felt clean and refreshed. The light from the stove and oil lamp created a cozy warm space. She liked Bart’s cabin.
She’d made some progress on Bart’s condition but he was showing no signs of improvement. She had no idea if his body could fight the infection on its own. But she was confident his chances were improved with the IV and antibiotic. She just hoped she was using the right medicine.
At 8:00 p.m., she nervously took his fourth set of vitals and was crushed to see no improvement. He was on the second bag of IV fluids and his second antibiotic. The disappointment hit her harder than expected. She just felt so helpless. Was she experimenting in a way that was not helpful? Was her treatment having a negative effect? She had no idea. How long was he going to be unresponsive? Or was she going to sit down to take routine vitals and find a cold body? The thought ripped her apart like a jagged knife. The sickness was returning. She desperately felt like she had to do something. But sheneededto see improvement, and nothing was happening. Bart was lying still with a weak pulse. Was he just hanging on? It felt like he could slip away at any moment.
Molly took Bart’s hand and spoke softly. She didn’t do this very often, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
