The Altar Girl: A Prequel

CHAPTER 8

The Kangaroo and the Giraffe led the way. Nadia followed. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon so she tired quickly.

They found the second couple at the bottom of a small ravine, twenty minutes away from Nadia’s camp. The other woman was the opposite of the Giraffe, with short brown hair and the face of a ferret. The injured guy had curly black hair and resembled an angry rodent. He didn’t look very tough. He moaned and complained as soon as they arrived.

The Kangaroo and the two women stood in front of the Rodent and blocked Nadia’s way so she couldn’t see his lower body. Nadia was curious to study the man’s injury. She’d never seen a broken leg. When she’d learned how to make a splint, someone pretended to be the patient. Now she would get to work with a real, live, injured person. She was psyched.

When the Rodent saw whom they’d brought with them to help, he went ballistic and called the Kangaroo his “moron brother from hell.” The Ferret yelled at the Giraffe for coming back with some “pathetic little girl scout,” and for a moment Nadia considered not helping the Rodent after all.

But she was an altar girl who took her Ukrainian Catholic religion seriously, so she forgave the stranger and stepped closer to take a look.

The Giraffe touched her shoulder. “Just to warn you. It’s a bit gruesome.”

Nadia felt an injection of willpower from the Giraffe’s touch. It was as though beautiful people had a special power, and with their mere touch could turn a social castoff into a more confident person.

Duly emboldened, Nadia peeked around the Giraffe’s waist. The Rodent lay with his arms and legs at odd angles, like the outline of a dead person on the floor on a TV show. It was the left leg. The skin was turning black and blue around the front shin, and the tip of the bone was protruding.

Nadia looked away. Stifled a desire to puke. It wasn’t neat at all. It was disgusting and scary. If the man weren’t such a rodent, she would have felt sorry for him. Nadia closed her eyes and replayed scenes from Mrs. Chimchak’s lectures on lower-body anatomy and first aid.

She could do this. Yeah, she could.

She was a soldier.

Nadia walked up to the Rodent, knelt down, and put her hand on his shoulder. It was a calming thing Mrs. Chimchak had taught her. This man needed the comfort of the human touch, but his wife the Ferret was too busy bitching at the Giraffe, probably because she was jealous of her, and the brother probably didn’t want to touch him because they were always fighting. Not like her and Marko. They never fought.

Everyone stopped talking the second her hand touched his shoulder. The Rodent stopped moaning, too.

Nadia looked into the Rodent’s beady eyes as his mouth dropped open in surprise. His forehead dripped with sweat. The man was hurting bad. Nadia could tell. She knew pain from breaking her nose and this was worse.

“How are you feeling?” Nadia said.

The Rodent exploded with mean laughter, the kind that’s usually a prelude to swears and insults, but Nadia smiled and stopped him cold. Actually made him smile.

“I’m doing great, kid. A-plus, mother. Best day of my life. Who are you?”

“My name is Nadia. In five hours or less, you’re going to be in a hospital, and they’re going to take good care of you. I’m going to help you get there. Rehab is going to be like… like no fun at all, but that’s not something you need to worry about now. Right? Positive thinking, positive thinking. It’s so important. So tell me, before I start, how did this happen?”

The other three exchanged quiet looks of amazement. The Rodent’s jaw hung open for an extra second.

“We were fooling around,” he said. “I was chasing my wife downhill. I had to turn to avoid a rock and my foot just got stuck. The rest of my body moved but it didn’t. I fell over. And then this.”

A spasm of pain hit him so badly he screamed loud enough for anyone within a mile radius to hear. Problem was, the only people within a mile radius were probably at his feet. Unless her father and Marko were nearby. But if they were close, Nadia was surprised one of them hadn’t helped the strangers. Maybe they were far away, just as her father had told her. It didn’t matter now, she thought. She had the situation under control.

Nadia squeezed his shoulder the way Mrs. Chimchak had taught her. The squeeze provided extra comfort, reassurance that the original touch had true feeling behind it.

“You’re going to be okay,” Nadia said.

The Rodent gritted his teeth as a spasm of pain racked him. “You think so, kid?”

“I know so. There’s a name for what happened to you. It’s a common break for athletes and hikers and people like that. People like you.”

That made him chuckle through the pain. He probably wasn’t much of an athlete or hiker but Nadia thought it might cheer him up to hear her say it.

“Oh, yeah?” he said. “What’s it called, kid?”

“Spiral tibial fracture. It happens when you plant one leg, twist it, and then fall. Yup. It’s called a spiral tibial fracture.”