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The scene when we arrived was bustling. The enhanced surrounded the house, talking in low voices. As Crew pushed through the crowd to get me to the patient, I immediately saw the problem. A little girl on the ground struggled to breathe. She lay flat on her back and a blue, foaming liquid pooled out of her mouth.
I pushed out of Crew’s arms and landed on the floor next to the little girl. She was five and small for her age. Her parents—neither enhanced, I noticed—cried and screamed. I caught my breath. So much power pulsed around me, yet no one there knew the first thing about helping a child? No matter, I could handle it…I hoped.
“Get her on her side.” I began to roll her over and her father, seemingly coming out of his stupor, took over and helped me get her to her side. I quickly inspected the child, trying to figure out what caused her distress.
“Who are you?” the dad asked, but I didn’t have time to introduce myself. I needed to focus on his kid.
“This is Raven. She can help, maybe. She’s staying with us.” Mace spoke succinctly, but his words flowed over me as I continued to examine the child. I needed information.
Crew knelt, and I grabbed his arm. “Med machine?” Surely if they had one, she’d already be in it, but it was worth asking just in case.
He shook his head. “None on the planet. We’ve tried to procure some several times, but they’re the rarest of the rare finds. I can’t get one anywhere.”
He should come visit my planet. Clarke had twenty or more lined up in a back room. I never used one when I was sick, only to make it so I never had kids, but they were there and in perfect working order. It didn’t matter in the moment, though, as I would have to improvise.
“What’s her name?” I asked her dad directly.
He blinked rapidly, emotion clogging his voice when he said, “This is JoHanna.”
“Okay, JoHanna. You’re going to be okay. The adults are going to make this better.” Maybe me saying it aloud would make it true, would make the universe stand up and listen for once. “This is poison. She has ingested something that is making her sick.” I’d seen it, unfortunately, many times before. “It would help to know what she ingested. Is there any chance she got into cleaning products or found a plant that she might have eaten?”
Her mother finally spoke. “N-no. Nothing. We were all here. We ate breakfast. She went outside to play, but she never eats plants. She knows better.”
All kids knew better until they didn’t, but I didn’t say it aloud. With our death rate so high, it became a communal effort to raise the young.
I whirled around. With no obvious answer, we’d have to treat for general toxic substances and work out the specific poison later. Too many people crowded around, their voices and anxiety making it even harder for me to concentrate. I reached out a hand and placed it on Gunnar’s arm. “Gunnar, could you organize the bystanders to look to try to find the substance? Where I’m from, most of the time, poisonous plants have similar qualities. We can hope that’s true on your planet, too, since they were formed by the original settlers, who supposedly modeled the planets after Earth.” Or so I’d heard. Earth might as well have been a legend for as much as it mattered in my life. Of course, every planet was different, and their location in relation to their sun and more could change things like weather patterns—as seen with their six-week yearly electrical storm. “Let’s see if that holds true here. Try to figure out how far she strayed this morning. Could she have made it into a nearby wooded area? Use your judgment. She’s not enhanced; she’s normal, like me. Small legs and big hearts, these kids can go further than we think.” I took a breath. “Milky sap. Shiny leaves. Yellow or white berries. Umbrella shaped. Anything like that, or anything brightly colored. Okay? It could be anything, but make sure you’re looking for things a kid would find interesting enough to stuff in their mouth. Get everyone looking. It would help to know what is causing this.”
I jumped to my feet, since I knew what I’d do at home. We had very little, but what we accumulated was purposeful, and I’d been trained in using it. Behind me, I heard thundering footsteps of Super Soldiers and humans all searching for the cause of the child’s distress as I’d asked.
Without knowing about the specific toxin, I had to hope I would find what I needed and not something that might make the situation worse. I missed the old women who trained me in medicine. They always seemed to know the right thing to do, but maybe they were still directing my hands in a way. Their teachings followed me wherever I went, after all.
First things first, we need water. “Get her some water. Not too hot, not too cold, about two ounces. Start with that, and we’re going to try to flush this out. Once we get some fluids into her, I’m sorry to say, we’re going to make her puke. This could be the worst thing to do, and I need you to understand that. I could be absolutely wrong, or it could save her.”
The dad nodded, gripping my hand with desperation. “We have no idea what to do. At least you have an idea of something to try.”
I did, and I had to hope it wasn’t going to kill her. Grabbing a toothbrush—some things looked pretty similar everywhere, apparently—I pushed it toward the back of her tongue. Once. Twice. Three times. Finally, four times.
She puked. And puked. I grabbed the water from her dad. We were going to have to repeat the process, and the child wasn’t going to like it.
Crew, who remained inside, met my gaze over her heaving body. I knew it likely looked pretty awful, and I didn’t have any idea if it would even work, but at least I wasn’t alone. We were in this together.
* * *
JoHanna sat on the couch sipping water. After a very long few hours, I would guess the last of the poison should be out of her system. Her mother held her, and her father sat next to them, his head in his hands. “I just don’t know how this could have happened.”
I shook my head. She was alive, and that was key, but we didn’t know what poisoned her. How could her parents prevent it from happening again, if they didn’t know what caused it the first time? She remained quiet, and so far, she wasn’t sharing any information.
Ransom burst through the door. “Nothing. I’m sorry. We haven’t found any poisonous plants within a ten-mile radius. I can’t believe she’d be able to have gone further than that.” He stared at JoHanna for a moment. “So glad she’s doing okay.”
“Thank you so much for helping her.” Her mother’s voice shook. “I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank you. Do you live here now?”
I blinked. Almost no one ever thanked me, so I had no idea what to do with her gratitude. “Um, for the next six weeks? Because of the storm.”
Her father’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, that’s right. I never think about it, because we would never want to leave. But, yes, I guess you’re stuck, aren’t you?”
Crew shook his head. “We’re all clearly lucky she arrived when she did. In the meantime, she’s staying with us. Speaking of which, it’s time to get her back. I’m glad the child is improved.”
I was, too, but it still ate at me that we didn’t know what she’d ingested. We got lucky this time, but that didn’t mean we would be if another child sickened. We had one real healer back home, a woman about ten years older than me. She was amazing at what she did, and Clarke almost never let her out of his palace, keeping her just about locked inside. We could beg, and sometimes he’d let her come help people, but the times he agreed were few and far between. The rest of us made do with what little knowledge we could pass between us, since the old women who knew the most about healing were gone as well.
