Malevolence Ch. 02

Getting Travis up the cliff would be impossible. Lisa looked for a land route, a path, rock ledge, anything. Nothing. The only way back to camp was by water. Using skills learned during teenage lifeguard training, she swam while tugging him slowly, painstakingly. It had been a short walk between camp and cliff, but the water route was taking forever. And towing 210 pounds of dead weight was exhausting. Whenever needed, she tugged Travis into the shallows and rested. All the while blood gushing from the laceration was mingling with water. And she had nothing, not a single stitch of clothing, to use as a bandage. The best she could doing during breaks was to use her hands to apply direct pressure to the wound. She kept looking for a land route . . . nothing but cliff face. She tried wading in the shallows and pulling him along but that proved futile. Rounded pumpkin-sized rocks, slippery with algae, made wading impossible.

Eventually, thankfully, they arrived at the pebbly beach at their campsite. Getting Travis this far had consumed every shred of Lisa's energy. Utterly exhausted, she could barely move. How was she going to get her husband onshore to tend his injuries? Travis was beginning to take stock of the situation. "What happened?" Lisa was running on pure adrenaline. Like a disk jockey on speed, rapid-fire she recounted the entire episode; the tree toppling, tumbling off the cliff, splashing in the lake, the rescue. Travis' mind was still muddled; not all of this was making sense. But he was keenly aware of his wife's distress.

In knee-deep water, Lisa managed to get Travis into a seated position. She tried to stand up. Couldn't. The harder she struggled the more frustrated she became to the point she broke down, crying inconsolably. Travis hated to see her like this but there was nothing he could do. He felt weak, dizzy, and his limbs were numb. Despite mental exertion of the highest magnitude, he couldn't move. His face was pale and he felt nauseated. He was going into shock from loss of blood.

Lisa felt hopeless, ready to give up. They were both going to die right there on that island. She took a deep breath and scolded herself: "Get a grip Lisa." From somewhere deep inside she summoned superhuman strength; she struggled to her feet, hooked her hands under Travis' armpits, and slowly, inch by agonizing inch, pulled him out of the water and onto the pebbly beach. Totally spent, she collapsed. Travis flopped on his back.

After resting a moment, Lisa recouped enough strength to crawl to their tent, fetch their first-aid kit, and crawl back to where Travis laid on his back. Seated beside him, she retrieved from the kit the small bottle of alcohol, opened it, and splashed it on the shoulder wound. "Owwwwwwww!" he bellowed. She was sorry for the pain he felt but it was a good sign; at least he wasn't paralyzed. She applied three butterfly bandage strips to close the gash but they were only marginally effective at stopping the blood flow. She opened a large gauze bandage, placed it over the wound, and taped it in place. Straightaway, it bled through. She changed the bandage. Again, it bled through. She changed it a third time, using two gauze bandages. Within minutes it bled through again. Using both hands, she applied direct pressure to the wound, a last ditch effort to stem the flow. It wasn't working. She could feel warm blood oozing between her trembling fingers. Weeping, in the depth of despair, she raised her bleary eyes to the heavens and sent up an earnest prayer: "Oh dear God please help us . . . please . . .please . . .please . . . "

Brian Brennan was seized with the feeling something wasn't right. His tour of duty as an Army combat medic taught him to trust his inner voice, that 'spidey sense' so many people ignore. Not him. He stopped paddling and placed it across his lap. Seated in front, his wife, Terri, did the same. She figured he was just taking a break. Brian retrieved his high-powered binoculars and raised them to his eyes. He scanned the shorelines all around, not sure what he was looking for. He just wanted to assure himself that in this corner of Knife Lake, everything was okay. He discovered it wasn't okay; in the distance he spied a man and woman on an island beach, both splattered with blood. "Oh my God!"

Suddenly alarmed, Terri turned and looked at him. "What?"

"Times two, (two people) lotsa blood."

"Let's go!"

Brian grabbed his paddle, steered the canoe to the left, and the two of them began paddling at breakneck speed toward the small island a mile away.

Lisa noticed a canoe far across the water, headed straight toward them. For a minute, then two, it didn't deviate from its dead-on course and the people aboard appeared to be paddling as fast as humanly possible. Closer and closer it came. She could now see a man and woman aboard, both wearing determined expressions.

As they drew closer, Brian and Terri could tell they were arriving at a truly dire situation. The man, lying on his back, appeared listless and the woman, desperate. Both were naked and splattered with blood. When the canoe rammed the pebbly beach, Terri jumped out. "What happened?" Lisa's heart leaped into her throat. Her jaw dropped. Wide-eyed, she looked at these total strangers who had come to their aid. A cold chill shimmied up her spine and she wondered: How on earth did they know to come here? Could it be? Could it possibly be? Dumbfounded, she could only stammer, "Tree . . . cliff . . . water . . . "

Terri knelt beside Travis and immediately set about assessing his injuries. He was breathing okay so her concern was blood seeping through a large bandage atop his left shoulder. Brian climbed out of the canoe and walked onto the beach carrying their large EMT case loaded with life-saving gear and supplies. He set the case on the ground and opened the lid. Terri donned latex gloves then peeled off the bloody bandage, revealing the deep jagged laceration. The butterfly strips were not stopping the blood flow. "That needs to be sutured."

"You can do that?" Lisa asked.

Terri looked at her and smiled reassuringly. "Yup."

Brian stood beside Lisa. "By the way, I'm Brian and this is my wife, Terri."

Lisa looked up at his kindly face. "I'm Lisa. This is my husband Travis."

"Are you hurt?"

"No. Well, I don't think so."

"I better take a look, just to make sure. Can you stand?"

"I'll try." Buoyed by hope, Lisa found the strength to rise to her feet and stand facing Brian. Not until that instant did she remember she was naked. But it didn't matter. That she was exposed in view this man simply didn't matter. All that mattered was that Travis was receiving the medical attention he desperately needed.

Brian commenced examining Lisa to make sure the blood splatters were just that and not wounds. And she didn't feel embarrassed. Not a bit. In her mind this was no different than a visit to her family doctor. While searching for signs of trauma, Brian behaved with utmost professional decorum but at the same time he took delight in perusing this alluring young woman's physique; petite, lean, toned, perfect skin save for blood splatters. "Is that a cut?" he asked, pointing at her perky right breast. Lisa looked down. She licked her fingertips and swabbed the dried crusty blood off her rosy button nipple. "No." Brian's eyes continued perusing; slim waist, outie navel, trimmed chestnut pubes, tightly pinched cleft, tanned arms and legs, dirty on elbows and knees. "Turn around." Lisa did what Brian asked. What a cute butt! he thought. Her perfectly proportioned posterior was still imprinted with the pattern of pebbles on which she had been sitting moments earlier.

Lisa checked out okay; no injuries. Not even a scratch. She turned around and watched Terri rummage through the EMT case and retrieve a bottle of sterile water which she used to irrigate Travis' wound. It hurt, but just a little. But when she splashed alcohol on it, he yelped. Lisa winced. Once the wound was clean and sterile, Terri began stitching.

Brian donned latex gloves. Kneeling, he inserted a needle in a vein in Travis' right arm and attached an IV tube to a bag of saline solution to compensate for blood loss. Travis started feeling better almost immediately. Color flooded back into his cheeks. Nausea eased. Numbness in his arms and legs abated. He rolled his head and spied Lisa standing there, utterly at ease in her nakedness. Terri noticed the wide smile spread across her patient's face and commented, "Well, that's a good sign!"

"Yeah!" Travis agreed. "It sure is!" He looked Lisa in the eye. She grinned. Was it the saline solution that raised his spirits? Or was it the exuberance he felt as a result of his wife's newfound bravado? Both. Once Brian finished his examination, Lisa could have easily covered up. But she chose not to. She sat down cross-legged, a posture that splayed her vulva, revealing smallish inner lips. Thusly explicitly exposed, she still didn't feel self-conscious or embarrassed. Being naked in the company of Brian and Terri felt perfectly natural.

While Terri stitched the wound, Brian held aloft the bag of saline solution. He wore a grim expression. Every time he and Terri rolled up on a scene like this, flashbacks erupted. He couldn't help it. He could feel the pounding rotor wash of medivac Hueys landing in the elephant grass. Hear the crackle of automatic weapons fire. See tracers whizzing overhead. Taste acrid gun smoke. Smell napalm and the vile stench of death that permeated his days and nights in the bloody battlefields of Vietnam. He turned and looked at Lisa. She smiled, warm and genuine. He smiled back. Her innocence and beauty forced the flashbacks back into the cave.

Spellbound, Lisa watched Terri work. She made it look easy, like repairing torn jeans. Lisa fancied the scene was some TV drama where EMTs rush in and save the day -only without trite dialogue and stupid commercials.

Seventeen stitches were required to close the laceration atop Travis' left shoulder. Most of the bleeding stopped but tiny amounts continued to ooze and congeal. "That's normal," Terri said. "It should all stop soon. We'll stay for a while and watch it." Terri bandaged the wound with a big gauze pad and taped it in place. Lisa felt the weight of the world lift off her shoulders. But Terri's work wasn't yet done. She helped Travis sit up then gently manipulated his left arm through a range of motion to determine if any bones were broken. Travis winced in pain. Terri's professional assessment: no broken bones but she couldn't rule out tendon damage. "When you get home," she said, "get checked out by your doctor."

"I will."

Brian had a two-way radio with frequencies used by both the U.S. Forest Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Since the patient was stable, there was no need to radio for a medivac helicopter. Travis was feeling dramatically better. The bodily numbness was almost gone. But he was suffering much shoulder pain. Terri gave him prescription pain medication that quickly did the trick.

"How do you feel?" Lisa asked.

He looked at her. "Tired."

"You wanna lay down?"

"Yeah."

Brian was still standing there holding aloft the bag of saline solution. Once it completely drained, he detached it from the IV and removed the tube from Travis' arm.

Brian and Lisa helped Travis to his feet. The newlyweds retreated to their tent. She laid on her side facing him. Tragedy had been averted, but those terrifying emotions of the last 45 minutes remained raw. Gently, she took ahold of his injured arm. Tears of relief trickled down her cheeks. "We are so lucky . . . so, so lucky . . . " Her voice trailed off to silence. Travis, sleepy, eyes closed, nodded in agreement. She kissed him lightly. "You get some rest now." Despite being injured, with his lady at his side, everything was alright with the world.

Was the appearance of Brian and Terri intervention by a higher power? Yes, Lisa believed so. Sometimes, life's trials made her question the power of prayer. Now, all doubt had vanished. And she uttered a quiet prayer, beseeching forgiveness.

Lisa dozed for awhile. Eventually, she roused and checked on Travis. He was sound asleep and the bandage was not bleeding through. She looked out the tent door. As they had pledged, Brian and Terri were still there, swimming. Still naked, Lisa left the tent and waded into the lake.

"How's he doing?" Terri asked.

"He's sleeping."

"How's the bandage?"

"It's not bleeding through."

"Excellent!"

Lisa continued wading in until she was waist deep. She began washing dried crusty blood off her skin. "You guys wanna camp here tonight?" she asked.

Terri spoke up. "We were gonna ask if that would be okay."

"Sure! Absolutely."

Brian and Terri waded out of the lake. Both were naked. Lisa wasn't surprised. She understood the pure joy of being nude in the great outdoors. Both possessed lean, athletic bodies devoid of tan lines. From their canoe, they retrieved their backpacks then commenced setting up their tent.

Awhile later, Travis awoke to the sun hanging low in the west, its golden glory reflecting off the dappled face of Knife Lake. Unseen, Lisa was talking and laughing with Brian and Terri. Travis unzipped the tent door and found all three of them naked, seated cross-legged on towels around a small campfire. Travis smiled so broadly it hurt his bruised face. But he didn't care. That Lisa made the leap to social nudity in such grand fashion, and so quickly, was worth the suffering. He was so stiff and sore he could barely move. It seemed counterintuitive, but he knew he had to get up and walk around. He crawled out of the tent and tried to stand.

Lisa noticed him and came running. "How do you feel?"

"As bad as I look. I need t' move around some."

Lisa helped Travis to his feet. "I wanna see that tree that hit me. I need to know what happened."

"Are you gonna be able to walk that far?"

"I'll make myself."

Clutching Travis' arm, Lisa walked beside him up the trail. Minutes later, they arrived at the cliff. The tall pine that struck Travis appeared to be a healthy specimen. Loaded with green needles, it laid on its side with a good portion of its top hanging over the cliff edge. Its huge root ball was upturned and studded with small rocks embedded in soil.

Travis shook his head. "I don't understand this. That tree should not have fallen." His assessment was on-the-money. Other fallen trees on the island had been dead for many years and then, after rotting at the base, toppled over.

"Well," Lisa said, "nature doesn't follow a playbook. Strange things happen."

"Yeah, I guess so."

Slowly, carefully, they walked to the spot near the cliff edge where Travis had been standing when the tree fell. Apparently, he had been struck by a branch. That branch, 3 inches in diameter, had broken off and now laid on the ground. Had the massive trunk struck him squarely, he might have been killed. From the broken branch, Travis plucked a pine cone, a souvenir of his brush with death. Lisa bent over and retrieved her T-shirt she dropped before jumping off the cliff to rescue her husband.

Back in camp, Brian and Terri were now dressed in cargo shorts and sweatshirts. A northerly breeze across a long fetch of deep water had cooled the evening air. Travis and Lisa got dressed to ward off the chill then joined their new friends seated by the campfire. The foursome pooled their foodstuffs and enjoyed a hearty supper seasoned with convivial get-to-know-you conversation.

When Brian returned from the war, he was honorably discharged and found employment as an EMT in his hometown, Chicago. His duties often found him in the emergency room at Mercy Hospital where Terri worked as a registered nurse. At the end of whirlwind courtship, they were married on June 20^th, 1970.

That summer, and the two summers since, they paddled the Boundary Waters. And every summer, their traveling medicine show got a workout. When called upon by fellow trekkers, they tended cuts, scrapes, burns, poison ivy, animal bites, you name it. Never did they seek or accept compensation for their services. They ask only that those they helped 'pay it forward' and help others in need. Forward and forward and forward it goes until one day, the circle is complete.

One time they met a group of ten college students. One of the young women, a petite redhead, spent too much time naked and was suffering from a severe total body sunburn. Blisters. Peeling. Terri gave her a bottle of aloe gel and sage advice: "Stay dressed."

They spoke of their canoeing vacation the previous summer. Early one morning they happened upon three young men and an extremely distraught young woman at a portage on Magnetic Lake. During the night, a black bear had entered their camp and severely mauled one of the men, the young woman's boyfriend. They had bundled the mauled man into a canoe and were attempting to evacuate him 14 miles by water and portage to the nearest ranger station, a trip that likely would have likely proven fatal given his highly unstable condition. Brian's and Terri's combined experience jumped in and took command. Immediately, he radioed for a medivac helicopter. Terri began lifesaving measures.

Terri and Brian did everything in their power to keep the man alive. It wasn't easy. Having lost much blood, he was in shock and slipping in and out of consciousness. The paramedics worked feverishly for an hour and ten minutes before a Life Flight helicopter arrived on scene. The medivac crew had sophisticated lifesaving equipment as well as plasma ready to transfuse. Once they had stabilized their patient they loaded him aboard the chopper for transport to hospital. There was no room aboard for his girlfriend. Distraught, despondent, she was left to paddle and portage out of the wilderness with the other two guys. Several weeks later, Terri contacted the Forest Service inquiring about the man. He survived. Had they not stumbled upon the scene, the outcome might have been much different.

At bedtime, Travis and Lisa crawled inside their double-wide sleeping bag. She cuddled close but, at his urging, pulled back because his numerous cuts and bruises hurt too badly. Once he fully recovered, there would be ample opportunity for snuggling. Lisa was content to lie on her side and hold his hand. The contact was enough to let her know he was there. And she thought: Please, don't ever leave me.

* * * *

Lisa and Travis loaded their gear aboard their canoe and pushed off. Onto open water they ventured, dipping their paddles forward and swinging them back. Before long they arrived at the mouth of a river where water departed Knife Lake and flowed toward the big lake Gitche Gumee. They hadn't planned on running this river so they paddled away from it. At least they tried; the current was too swift and they were swept away downstream. Faster and faster they were helplessly hurled through churning whitewater rapids, spinning through wicked whirlpools and bouncing off rugged rocks that nearly capsized them. Somewhere up ahead, they heard it: the unmistakable roar of a waterfall. They reached for overhanging tree limbs, desperately trying to grab one and pull themselves up to escape certain death. But each time they reached, they came up empty-handed. In the nick of time, Lisa managed to grab a limb with both hands and hang on tight, high above the torrent. She was safe. But not Travis; he failed to grab a limb. He, the canoe, and all their gear, were swept over the waterfall and plunged down, down, down . . . Horrified, Lisa screamed, "TRAVIS!"

"TRAVIS!" Lisa's loud outburst awakened Travis from a deep sleep. He switched on his flashlight. Lisa, sweating, hyperventilating, was awake and staring at him wide-eyed.

"Bad dream?"

She nodded. "Real bad."