4. Connections

CONNECTIONS

ANDREW

The street vendor food is not appealing to me. I decide to look for something more appetizing, especially since I was hoping to bring some back for Ms. Northernfield.

Where have I seen her before? Even her name seems familiar. But I just can't quite place the time or the event where we might have met.Too many years and too much trauma have put a heavy fog over my last months in the States and everything that happened while I was gone.

Giving up, I walk out of the fairgrounds, past the row of cottages, and into the relatively cool shade of an orchard. Bees buzz among the trees. There is a scent of green growing things, overlaid with a sharper, more pungent aroma.

As I walk out of the trees on the other side of the small orchard, I see raised beds, lightly shaded with gauzy white cloth, and filled with a variety of herbs.

The bees hum over these spicy offerings, stirring the leaves and blossoms into releasing a nearly heavenly smell.

An elderly woman looks up from one of the beds and smiles at me. "You must be one of the Lane children," she says.

"I am," I say.

"Richard introduced me to Leland and his wife, so you have to be Andrew," the woman said. "There's a look about all of you. Gives it away."

"Yes, ma'am," I confirm politely, wondering who this person can be. "I'm taking a break from the first aid tent. I'd like to find a place to buy some lunch and where I can get something good to take back to Ms. Northernfield."

"You don't have to buy anything," she says, nodding toward a cottage that seems to have a steady stream of people going in and out.

"We've got a buffet set up in there for the children and for the workers. You just go on in and get a plate or a box, and there are cups of grape juice and cider at the end. They'll help fix you up with some lunch for you, Maddy, and your assistants."

Maddy. Maddy Northernfield. Something about a children's book, and lions in a zoo. I almost catch hold of the memory for a moment, but then it is gone again.

"There you are, long-lost brother," Rylie, my sister, exclaims as I step into the long, cool dining hall. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the interior lighting after the blazing sun outside. Rylie is babbling along by my side, just as I remember she always used to do. "There's queso fresco , queso de cabra , cottage cheese, gouda, cheddar, fruit salad, green salad . . ." While she is chattering, Rylie is loading up four trays. By the time we reach the end of the table, she has them filled, and she has a drink carrier with four cups in her other hand.

"There," she says. "Specialty of the house. Good for restoring energy. Go take care of your people."

Take care of your people . ..take care of my people . . . these were things that Leland would say. It sent a chilly tingle down my spine as if a goose had walked over my grave.

"Go on," Rylie says cheerily, noting my hesitation. "You've got the best food around on those trays. Just don't trip and spill the drinks."

As I near the medical tent, I can see a kid out in front of the tent, David, I think his name is. A line is starting to build up — people who ate the questionable vendor food and have gotten sick from the grease, unfamiliar spices, and cold lemonade gulped down under a glaring sun, children with skinned knees, workers with splinters or smashed thumbs.

A memory pops up of sharing a single serving of rice with Leland in Africa. Both of us were hungry as wolves, but there wasn't a lot of food in Mountain Hold those last days when we were essentially under siege from the neighbors, and Leland had given his serving to a little girl and her mother. Say what you might about Leland, he did his best to take care of people.

"Where is everyone?" I ask.

David gently pats the shoulder of a frail older gentleman, and says, "Take your granddaughter back there to the cool room and rest. Sip your water slowly. I'll come check on you in a little while."

David then turns to me and whispers urgently, "Ms. Northernfield needs you. She and Ramey are in the emergency area with a guy who got stabbed and a bunch of security people."

"Here," I say, thrusting the packages of food at him. "Do something with this." I turn from him, and walk briskly to the flap marked, "ER/Surgery". I had learned the hard way in the past: never, never run toward an emergency. Walk quickly, with purpose, but do not run. Running frightens people, and frightened people can turn into a mob.

I slip through the door flap and see that Ramey and Ms. Northernfield have the coat and shirt off a large black man who has a knife handle sticking up from his stomach.

I go immediately to the sink and start to scrub up. Rolling my sleeves up reveals my flaming crown tattoo, a reminder of youthful trust in the adults around me, and my eventual rebellion against them. I suppress the slight shudder that accompanies revealing it.

The surgery set up is primitive by modern standards, but all we need to do is stabilize him so that he can be sent to a hospital. "Is he conscious?" I ask over my shoulder.

"Yes," the man gasps out. "And it fuckin' hurts. Can you do something about it? They won't give me anything. They just make there-there noises and then they cut up my good shirt."

"They did exactly the right thing," I say firmly.

"Just fix it," the man nearly wails. "It hurts."

He sounds like an injured child. Pain reduces all of us to our most basic selves. I don't blame the man for whimpering with pain, or for being afraid. To be attacked by another human is a shock to most people living in a first-world country. They aren't prepared for the kind of violence that humans are capable of. I sometimes wish that I wasn't so prepared for it.

"I'm here now, and we'll work together to take care of you," I soothe him. "All right team, let's see what we can do."

Forty-five minutes later, we pack the poor fellow into an ambulance and send him off to the hospital in the city. He is accompanied by two security guards and a deputy sheriff.

"So," I say, "Do we have any idea why he was attacked?"

"He said something about he wasn't going to do something, and that they, whoever they were, couldn't make him do it," Ramey replies.

I knew from earlier conversations that both Ramey and David are interns. Ms. Northernfield is an anomaly here. She's an excellent nurse, completely flawless in her patient care. She prepped the victim perfectly and had assisted me with a competence that suggested she could easily have done the necessary work to stabilize the man for his ambulance ride without my help. So why didn't she have an MD after her name?

As for the man…he had been well-dressed in slacks, a button-down shirt, and a blazer. His clothing was not expensive. It looked like something that might be worn by a church minister or a schoolteacher. He'd only dropped a curse once, despite his pain, as if he didn't use bad language casually. You had to wonder why a man like that has been attacked by anyone.

Ms. Northernfield goes out to the front while Ramey cleans up the ER so it will be ready if we have another emergency. I follow her, and we resume helping patients, quickly reducing the line of people outside.

Ms. Northernfield works with an assurance that shows she has plenty of experience with soothing small injuries and illnesses. With her bedside manner, she could have instructed some of my colleagues in calming people and getting them to cooperate.

Her tan skin flushes when she catches me looking at her. I quickly refocus my attention on the patient in front of me. Why does she seem so familiar? I should remember, I am certain of it.

I catch a scrap of memory. Something about lions in the zoo. I almost have it, but my victim – er, patient – gives a squeak of pain as I extract gravel from a skinned knee. The memory is gone again.

With the youngster dismissed, I look up to see Richard entering the tent with a stack of boxes. "How busy are you?" he asks.

I look around. Ms. Northernfield is working with the last person in her line, and there is no one remaining in mine.

"Not too, I guess," I say. "Why?"

"Catriona wants everyone to do a DNA test. Some idiot with a briefcase approached Rylie, Catriona, Kate, and Julia about some kind of fancy private boarding school while they were walking with the kids over to the park. Rylie went off on him, because she's got no love for boarding schools. Then he said that Leland can't be a real Lane, and therefore can't be the legitimate heir for the arranged marriage, and it should be annulled."

"Why would he say something like that?" I ask, trying to muddle my way through family relationships and figure out what Richard wants.

Richard sighs. "It seems weird to me, too. But the girls are all upset. Kandis is pretty level-headed about most things, and Rylie can usually laugh stuff off. But Catriona is in a full-on, red-headed rage over it. Can't say that I blame her. The girls have her in the childcare cottage, trying to get her calmed down."

"So this is why you have the kids?" I ask, surveying the crowd of youngsters trailing after Richard.

"That's why," he says. "I thought I'd seen the ladies lose their cool, but Catriona flew into a full rage. She says her marriage to Leland is legitimate and witnessed, and that they have two lovely children, and where the heck does he get off tearing up happy families. So he comes back with this ‘not a real Lane' BS again, and that the contract was for her to marry the oldest son of Albert Lane, and that they can be sued for breach of contract."

"Dad's oldest son would be my brother, Leland," I say. "Mom and Dad told me about him when they visited while I was in South Africa. After their yacht sank, as I recall, I messaged you not to throw out their stuff, that they had papers you needed to see. It took a few messages back and forth to discover that the guy I'd been hanging out with is actually my older brother, so I can see why someone might be confused. But I'm still not sure what you want me to do."

"I brought the youngsters all here, to make sure that we have permission-to-treat forms on file for everyone. We need to order DNA kits or else take samples ourselves and send them out. I need to ask Charles what the best way to handle this will be. But for now, we need to make sure we are allowed to test them."

"That seems like a really petty thing to have to do if you all consider yourself to be family. Who cares what the DNA says," I say.

"I don't disagree," Richard says. "To us, the kids are all family. But not to everyone and so here we are. Give me a hand with this, and maybe we can get the ladies all settled down. Kate suggested we use the information to make family trees so it would make sense to the youngsters."

"That's the weirdest story I've heard in a while," I say. I fully understood why Catriona would be angry. She went through a lot to keep her husband and her tiny country safe. "Why aren't their parents here with you?"

"Oh, that's not the whole story," Richard says. "I can tell you the rest later. Oh, I forgot, Charles and I were joining the girls for lunch, when he and Austin were asked to go see about some guy who got stabbed here on the fairgrounds. You know anything about that?"

"I do," I answer, while accepting a stack of permission slips to go through. "Security brought him in. I'll tell you more later. So we are testing all the kids so they can make family trees, is that the story we tell them?"

"Yes," Richard says, beaming with delight. "Isn't Kate clever? No one gets singled out, and the youngsters do something fun."

"You do realize," I say, handing a paper form to a slim tow-headed little guy I don't recognize, but who has a definite look of family about him, "that you might not be able to get the parents' consent for this?"

"I think we can," Richard assures me. "Not only are they mostly all family, we get signed permission slips from the parents for medical treatment and for participation in field trips. It makes things easier."

"I think you might be pushing the boundaries here," I say. "But if you are sure, we'll go ahead."

Richard calls Charles, who says that someone can send over some testing kits from the clinic the next day. We finish verifying that we have consent forms on file for all the children, and Richard makes a few more calls to chat with parents who aren't present.

I listen idly while he explains to the kids that they are going to do a project about how they are all related and learn about DNA at the same time. The kids seem really enthusiastic, even if I think the whole thing is strange and invasive. Maybe I've just never been that attached to family pride. Perhaps I'd understand better if I was proud of being a Lane like they seemed to be.

"What was that all about?" Ms. Northernfield asks, coming up beside me.

"I'm not really sure. Something about an accusation that Leland isn't really a Lane, along with DNA testing so the kids can make family trees."

Ms. Northernfield turned wide eyes on me, looking as shocked as if I had stabbed her. She whispers, "They're doing what?"