Chapter Three #3
Creed looked at the child’s hands and saw no tell-tale stains or residue. When he released the boy’s hands, Jeb moved them straight back to his throat.
“Check his pockets,” Gator suggested.
Creed slid his fingers into each pocket to see if there was anything in there, then looked over his shoulder and shook his head.
Not knowing the cause of the distress meant they were unable to counteract it.
Gator pressed his sternal mic and called in a possible poisoning to Striker, who got an ambulance headed their way.
The problem was that the closest fire station with a paramedic on duty was a good thirty minutes up the road, even if they went heavy on the pedal, running lights and sirens.
A rescue squad was even farther away. Better to get them in motion, imagining the worst, and turn them back around if this were a false alarm.
“Are you allergic to anything, buddy?” Creed asked, lifting the light to find what clues he could in his assessment.
It couldn’t be a sting; the damaged tissue was all over Jeb’s mouth.
His throat was red, but at that moment, it looked angry, not swollen.
Jeb wasn’t wheezing. He didn’t have a high-pitched sound on the inhale.
Creed wasn’t immediately afraid of anaphylaxis. “Hey, Jeb, are you itchy anywhere?”
The boy shook his head.
That first piece of communication was a step forward. “What about your tummy? Do you feel sick to your stomach? Have a tummy ache?”
Jeb shook his head.
Creed rested his fingers on the boy’s wrist and checked his pulse. His heart rate was elevated; the kid was obviously in distress, so that was expected.
Gator pointed to scuffs in the pine needles that were heading toward their present position. At one point, Jeb had been farther down the trail.
Creed turned to Gator. “Take Rou and see if there isn’t something where he’s come from.”
Gator brought Rou over to the boy and tapped his leg. “Rou, scent. Scent.”
It didn’t take many chuffs for Rou to resurface the odor in her memory.
“Track back,” Gator commanded.
“Track back” was a useful skill that took a bit for the dogs to understand. If this was their scent they were asked to find, why would their handler ask them to go away from their scent source?
There were several reasons why that skill was helpful, not the least of which was that if someone sustained an injury in the woods and their friend left them to get help, the person coming out of the woods might not remember how to get back to the injured subject.
If a K9 could follow the trail back, it was golden.
Off they went, Rou, looking determined, leading Gator.
And Creed was left to search for clues and try to coax the boy into communicating. Finally, after long minutes of gentle questioning, Creed asked, “Did you feel okay when you went into the woods?”
Jeb nodded.
The kid had to be exhausted from his adventure and the sheer physicality of his distress.
Creed timed his next question to land as the child took a breath between screams. “Something happened to you in the woods?”
Jeb nodded.
“Can you point to where the bad thing happened?”
Jeb turned and pointed behind him as Gator rounded the tree with a piece of paper folded into a cup that he held gingerly in his hand. Gator crouched by Jeb, lowering the cup so the boy could see inside. “Jeb, did you eat some berries you found?” Gator asked.
Jeb pointed at the cup, and his screams turned to sobs.
Creed pressed his sternal comms, “Creed here. Possible Virginia creeper berry poisoning. Gator’s calling Logistics. Over.”
“Striker. Copy. Follow the medical instructions. The ambulance and paramedics are en route. Out.”
Gator waggled his phone. “Logistics is patching us through to Medical.”
“Dr. Jefferson, here. I have the picture of the berries and the plant. Our system confirms that the specimen is Virginia Creeper. Package the berries and send them with the boy to the hospital. You’re on the trail? How far are you out?”
Pressing the button that filtered out ambient noise so Dr. Jefferson would be able to hear Gator despite Jeb’s wails, Gator said, “Sprinting? Twenty minutes.”
“The berries have calcium oxalate, which are small, sharp crystals that can embed into the tissues in the mouth and throat and can be very painful. Any signs of anaphylaxis?” the doctor asked.
“I’m seeing redness and irritation,” Creed lifted his voice. “The boy is in obvious distress.”
“It’s not pleasant. Tiny cactus-like needle sensation is how I’ve interpreted the information.
Let’s see if we can’t get him more comfortable.
With a cloth, try to wipe his mouth out.
Then, rinse and spit out the water to remove as much of the plant material as possible.
See if he won’t drink some water to wash the crystals out of his throat and into his stomach. Ice chips would help.”
“They have ice back at the event site,” Creed said. “We can hook him up there.”
“You’ve put an ambulance en route?” Dr. Jefferson asked.
“Affirmative.”
“It’s up to the parents, of course, but I’d send him on to the hospital for an assessment, especially if you don’t know the quantity he’s eaten. We need him in medical care if he were to develop worsening symptoms. I’ll stand by while you implement the care plan.”
Creed wiped his hands with an alcohol cloth, then pulled on a pair of Neoprene gloves.
He opened a package of gauze and wrapped it around his index and middle fingers.
“Hey, Jeb, sounds like you have plant needles in your mouth. I’m going to swipe them out for you.
I just need you to hold your mouth open for me. ”
Creed looked at Gator. “Sounds worse than the rose hip seeds we used to torment the girls with when we were little. That just made us itch. You think wet or dry with this gauze?”
“Split the difference. Go with moist.”
Creed held out his fingers, and Gator drizzled a stream of water onto the gauze.
The first swipe went fine.
Creed set that gauze aside and opened a second packet, so he didn’t risk re-embedding any crystals he’d wiped out.
This second time, Jeb clamped down hard on Creed’s finger, growling at him, with the wide-eyed fierceness of a kid that didn’t give a shit; he just wanted the pain to stop.
If someone did this on the battlefield, Creed would have punched the guy lights out and called it a day. Here, though, he tensed his muscles so he wouldn’t flinch and kept his eyes soft as he asked in a soothing tone if Jeb would please open his mouth.
Jeb was seven. This was probably the most intense, scary pain of his little life, and his developing survival brain was glitching. It happened. Creed could stay soft. Speak to the boy kindly and wait for Gator to intervene.
Gator reached around Creed to press gently into the boy’s temporomandibular joint, easing the bite enough for Creed to extract his hand. The gauze, catching on Jeb’s teeth, was left behind, and Gator snatched it.
As soon as Creed’s finger was free, the kid was back screeching.
“Brother, check that Jeb didn’t bite through your glove and that he didn’t draw blood. Did you know that a human bite is one of the most deadly bites there are?”
“Not Komodo dragons’?” Creed asked, removing the glove and inspecting the deep dents the boy had left in his fingers.
“Yeah, well, that’s more a case of venom.
I’m talking bacteria here. And I paraphrase Dr. Jefferson the last time I had a call patched through, ‘the pathogens are diverse and aggressive, the bites tend to lead to infection, and those infections are treatment resistant, keep people’s mouths off your body, please. ’”
“Good counsel,” Creed said as he gave his hand a vigorous shake to stop the throbbing. “Hey, Jeb, I’m taking you back to your mom. It’s your decision: Do you want me to try to remove the berry needles from your mouth, and then we go? Or do we just go?”
The boy pointed—it was in the wrong direction, but that was probably how they’d ended up on the search in the first place. It was the easiest thing in the world to get turned around in the woods.
Creed caught Gator’s eyes so he could weigh in. There was no way they could force their help on the boy.
“Speed of extraction,” Gator said.
Creed opted for a quick text to the mother because a call might get involved. Gator gathered the equipment and put the berries into a bag, marking the date, time, and probable plant source.
Then Gator took over Creed’s backpack. “Do you want me to put you on my back like a piggyback, or do you want me to put you on my shoulders?”
The kid held out his arms.
Gator lifted the boy onto Creed’s back, and Jeb immediately wrapped his arms tightly around Creed’s neck, cutting off his airflow.
“Hold your elbows like this. See? Nice, safe, and much more comfortable. You can put your head on my shoulder if you’d like.”
Jeb squirmed around, and Creed was afraid he’d want to get down. It would be a long damned trail; the child was too invested in screaming to make progress walking on his own two feet. Then Creed realized that Jeb was looking for Rou.
Rou was the one who found him and stuck by him, lending her sharp bark, which traveled the furthest, so Creed could locate the sound.
“She’s here. Rou’s going to lead us out.”
Rou looked up at Creed when she heard her name. And because it was the easiest way to make this work and keep Rou out front where Jeb could see her and feel comforted, Creed held out his leg and commanded, “Scent. Scent.”
Rou booped him with her nose.
“Track back,” Creed said, so she’d follow his trail to the dell.
The boy only stopped his screaming for the brief moment that he was clamped down on Creed’s finger.
With the screeches in his ear, and little Rou racing by his side. It was a hell of a twenty-minute run.
Striker liked to repeat the seal phrase, “The only easy day was yesterday.”
But who could have predicted that in the grand scope of the day, Jeb’s Virginia creeper, scream-filled rescue was the easiest part of their mission?