The Guardian by Diana Knightley
Fifty-seven - Hayley
“Quentin! Why isn’t he here? Did he not see the storms?”
“I don’t know, maybe he’s just waiting at the cave. Maybe he doesn’t want to leave it.”
James was already up looking through binoculars in the direction of the castle. Sweeping them along the hillside.
“I don’t know, that sucks, I thought he would be here, and it’s freaking me out that he isn’t. Let’s go!”
We had two ATVs, James hopped on one. “I’m headed to the castle. Got your walkie-talkie?”
Quentin and I hopped on the second ATV with a trailer hitched to the back for loading up the vessels and jumping them to the castle. We had landed north of the castle instead of the clearing to the south, so we would be closer to the caves.
This whole time, whenever I was nervous about Fraoch, Quentin would say, “He’s fine, we’re going to go get him.”
Now he looked nervous. It was not at all a good sign that Fraoch hadn’t come to meet us. Quentin raced us up the hill following a lightly traveled foot path until we came to the cave.
Fraoch was on the ground on his side.
Quentin slammed the ATV to a stop and I leapt off the side. “Fraoch! Fraoch!”
He moaned.
“Fraoch!” I crouched beside him. “Honey, what’s going on?” I looked down in his face. “What’s happening?”
He muttered something but it sounded more like a groan.
I patted all around him, he was wrapped in a wool blanket, his roll of yarn sitting on a rock, his knitting lay in the dirt. He had been walking to the woods and had fallen down and hadn’t gotten back up.
I pulled his shirt away and saw the wound on his abdomen.
“Quentin!”
He said, “Crap, that looks bad. Let me grab the medic kit.”
I said, “We should dress it, right? What should we do?”
“We gotta get him to a hospital, antibiotics, he needs them fast.” He pulled out his two way radio. “James, we have a situation... Fraoch is not good... we gotta get him back.” Quentin looked over his shoulder at me beside Fraoch. “We gotta do it now.”
James’s voice through the radio, “Fuck!”
“I know, just come back, we’ll figure the rest of it out.”
Quentin gave a weak try pushing the boulder, of course it didn’t budge.
We could hear James’s ATV coming closer. Finally he pulled up in the clearing and said, “Fraoch, what’s up man? You do not look good.”
Fraoch groaned.
“He doesn’t sound good either. We moving this boulder?”
I jumped up to help and the three of us heaved it aside.
Quentin said, “Okay, look, I’m going into the cave, I’ll pass out the vessels to you.”
He passed me a gun. “Hold this weapon, you’re standing guard while we get the chests from the cave.”
I stood over Fraoch with my gun drawn. “Hold on, hold on, sweetie, it’s an infection, just hold on,” while Quentin crawled through the tunnel.
A few moments later James was quickly pulling out the safe boxes, then the metal chest, then another safe box, and then a small stack of books.
Quentin climbed out of the cave and brushed off his pants. It was clear Quentin had parked the trailer too far away.
James ran with a chest jostling to the trailer. “Dude, crappy parking job.”
“I see that. What am I going to do, take the time to move it? You’re almost done.” Quentin picked up the books and ran them to the trailer.
James rushed past, lugging another crate.
I grabbed a chest and yelled, “Less talking, go faster!”
As James lugged one more crate, Quentin padlocked a strap over it all. Then, James, full of angst driven energy, grabbed Fraoch under the arms, Quentin grabbed his legs, and they lugged him to the trailer. I gathered up all of Fraoch’s knitting.
Quentin talked to him, “You cool man? You cool, right? You should have told us you were injured — we didn’t know. Why ya gotta go being a hero?”
They placed Fraoch right beside the trailer.
James said, “I don’t have time to look for Sophie, right? What am I going to do?”
“You can stay here. It’ll give you a chance to take all these supplies to the castle. Find out what they need. I’ll come back for you tomorrow. Then we’ll do some supply runs for them.”
James said, “Okay, that sounds good. Come tomorrow.” He climbed on his ATV.
Quentin said, “Shit, I do not like leaving any man behind.”
I said, “Me neither. But we don’t have time, we need to go.”
Quentin sat on the lockbox on the trailer and we held hands while he twisted the vessel. “Next stop the landing pad in Riaghlabane,” and time-jumped us back to the future future.
* * *
Quentin was on top of me, climbing up, groaning from the pain.
“Get off me.” It was hard to tell where I ended and all the other bodies began and the problem was Fraoch was heavy, hard, and still. “Shit shit, get up!”
Hammond’s voice, “What is going on with Fraoch MacLeod?” He put his fingers on Fraoch’s neck, then freaked me out by saying loudly, “We need a stretcher and life support, now!”
Paramedics descended on Fraoch, while I pushed myself away so I wouldn’t interfere, curled up around my knees, my eyes pressed against my kneecaps, so I wouldn’t have to see.
He was taken away, up on a stretcher, and rushed down the hallway toward the infirmary with men around him trying to save his life.
I stood wringing my hands.
Quentin said, “How you doing Hayley?”
“Not good, kind of...” My voice trailed off without knowing how to finish the sentence.
He said, “You can follow them. Me and Hammond need to get these crates down to the safe.”
I stared at the door. “Yeah.”
He and Hammond pulled the heavy trailer away from the ATV and rolled it toward the doors to the castle.
Quentin called back, “Come on Hayley, come inside, you need to go to the infirmary.”
I asked, “What if I went back earlier?”
“You can’t, we left yesterday — we came back today. It was just too late in the day, but there’s no way to fix it. You’d be looping on yourself, and don’t worry, we’re in the year 2387, there are royal physicians here. You’ll be fine, this is good.”
“I think I need to try. Katie said he was talking to her, just the evening before, he was lucid. She should have made him come with her.”
“He was guarding the vessels, Hayley, we were attacked. He was trying to keep them safe. He was doing it for Magnus, his brother. It was what he had to do. How was Katie going to talk him out of that?”
“I might need to try though, what if I could get just a few hours earlier?”
“How though? You know we don’t know how to do that, we land on the day, our timing is unplanned, you know this—”
I rushed up to the trailer and yanked on the lock.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m taking a vessel!”
He put his hand over the lock. “No you’re not, because guess what? I’m not giving you a vessel. You don’t get to try.”
“You are not the boss of me.” I tried to grab the lock.
He pushed my hands away. “Hell yeah I am, I’m Colonel Quentin Peters, I’m in charge of all of you. I get my orders direct from the king and if I tell you you aren’t allowed to time jump I mean it, now you need to be a good soldier and get in that infirmary and let Hammond and I get our work done. What would Fraoch do if your situations were reversed?”
“He’d pray.”
“Well you better get going then.”
I brushed off my clothes. “Fine. Okay.”
And I walked through the doors to the castle hallways.
* * *
This was the worst moment of my life. I was different from Katie in that I couldn’t handle this. She was always crying or carrying on, but that was her way of dealing with trouble. Though she seemed weak she also managed to keep us all together, around her, and she drew strength from it. When I thought about all the things she had been through, and how she managed to build this family and keep all these people safe, I was floored by what she could do.
But then there was me — different. I wasn’t strong. I had always been kind of alone. I couldn’t count on other people, so I had to do things on my own. Some thought that made me the stronger of the two, but as I walked that lonely hallway I thought they would be wrong to think it.
Katie had an extended family, I just had Fraoch. He was all of it.
My mother was a drunk, living in Sarasota. My dad was a drunk, living in Charlotte now. Neither cared much about what I was up to. It was only Fraoch.
Katie was, of course, my best friend, the only family I ever had, which was why I kept in touch, pushed my presence on her, even when she had gone away. I kept on being her friend despite her absence, until she finally came back. But when it came down to it, Fraoch was all I had that was all for me.
He loved me exactly as I needed to be loved, completely and selflessly.
I came to the infirmary door.
Please Lord, in your infinite care, protect and hold Fraoch as he undergoes this treatment...Then I opened the door.