CHAPTER ONE

Fourteen-year-old Tyler Chantyman woke to the ranting of a teenage girl demanding to be assisted out of bed. Disoriented, he raised his head to look for her but a searing pain in his chest forced him to lie down again. To his amazement, he wasn’t in his own bed.

Cautiously, he rolled his head from side to side to see where he was. Through the doorway of the small glass room where he lay, he read ICU and G.R. Baker Memorial Hospital on the counter across the hall. Why was he in Quesnel’s hospital? His eyes surveyed the wall behind the nurse’s desk for a clue as to what day it was. In bold characters, a calendar displayed February 3, 1998.

He willed his mind to remember what might have happened, but it refused to cooperate. It was as though chunks of memory had been torn from his brain, like pages ripped out of a phone book. He needed to talk to somebody, badly.

As two nurses swished past his door, he croaked, “Nurse!” They didn’t hear him; they were rushing to the room next door, to persuade the distraught girl to calm down and stay in bed.

During his only other visit to a hospital, he’d observed a patient summoning a nurse by pushing the button on the end of a cord tied to the bed’s railing. He groped the bed for such a cord and found it pinned to his gown. When he pushed the button, a horrible twanging echoed in the hall; it was almost as irritating as the girl’s incessant crying and whining. Eventually, the twanging stopped and a nurse came to him.

“What’s happened to me?” he asked, confused and weak. “Why am I here?” “You don’t know?” replied the nurse, a pleasant middle-aged woman. Tyler’s mind was blank. “I…uh…I guess I don’t.” “Well, dear,” she said slowly, “you’ve been shot.” “Are you sure?” “Oh, yeah, I’m sure,” she said. “But we’re taking very good care of you.” And before

he could question her further, she left. Shot. Why? By whom? It didn’t make any sense. He could remember that he, his brother Chester, 13, and their best friend, Tonya

Clement, were taking his grandmother, Tilda Chantyman, to Kluskus because she had had a stroke and they were afraid their social worker, Margarite Phillips, would find out. The government had assigned her and two dozen other social workers to search Quesnel for kids at risk and they didn’t want her to find out about the stroke. Seventy kids had already been placed in foster homes, and they didn’t want it happening to them.

For three days, Tonya had told Tyler and Chester’s teachers that the boys were at home with the flu so they could look after their grandmother, or atsoo, as Carrier children called them. Then after school, without her parents’ knowing, Tonya would help them. With some basic nursing skills she had learned from her mother, Natalie Clement, the manager of Nazko’s medical dispensary, Tonya showed the boys how to keep the stable, but seriously ill, woman comfortable.

When they weren’t looking after their patient, the teens were brainstorming how to sneak her out of Nazko in the night, and transport her to Kluskus by toboggan, where her sister would take care for her. They had it all planned; they were going to leave for Kluskus on Wednesday after supper, and return to Nazko on Friday.

Everything was going well. Tonya had convinced her parents she was going to Kluskus with the Chantymans to visit relatives and their back packs were loaded. They were confident they were ready for this trip.

Then Wednesday afternoon, as though it was an omen of things to come, the social worker showed up unexpectedly at the Chantymans’ door. To keep her from becoming suspicious, they let her in. The moment she stepped through the door, she appeared to be searching for something. Who knows what: rodents racing through the kitchen, a can of gasoline sitting on the stove, a loaded gun behind the bathroom door.

Her unannounced visit should have been their first clue that they might not have prepared for everything. Sure enough, before midnight the first night, Chester had been chased by a pack of wolves and they made a wrong turn in a snowstorm. A few hours later, at the Baezaeko River, Chester fell against a boulder and badly bruised his arm, and Tyler and Atsoo nearly drowned when the toboggan broke through ice on the river.

The next afternoon, they met Teddy, Atsoo’s nephew from Kluskus. He saw Chester holding his arm and insisted on driving them to Quesnel. When they refused to go with him, because he was too drunk to stand, he flew into a rage and threatened to shoot them. While he stumbled back to his pick-up truck looking for his rifle, they escaped into the bush and got lost.

It had been one calamity after another. Just when they thought it couldn’t get any worse, Tonya’s father, Rick, one of Nazko’s two RCMP officers and Bill Wilcox, Atsoo’s best friend, found them. They believed their luck had finally changed; the men would drive them the rest of the way to Kluskus. In a bizarre twist of fate, though, a predator worse than Teddy appeared: Margarite Phillips. Not only did they lead her to them, they had driven her. The boys nearly fainted when she stepped from behind Bill. Tyler would’ve punched her if Rick and Bill hadn’t stood between them.

That was the last thing he remembered about the trip to Kluskus. What happened next was anybody’s guess. Maybe he and Margarite had gotten into it and she pulled a revolver from her purse. Maybe Teddy found them in the end. Tyler rolled over in bed so confused.

Staring blankly through the glass walls of his room, he noticed the curtains next door were open slightly. He could see the nurses bending over a wholesome-looking girl, about 16, with bushy, straw-coloured hair, and hear them pleading with her. “You can’t go home yet, Zeet. Your pelvis is broken and you have a serious concussion. We need to observe you for a couple of days.”

For a few blissful moments, the whining stopped. Then, as though she hadn’t understood a word they said, it started up again.

Distracted by her, Tyler hadn’t noticed his own problem; a clear hose, coming from his side, appeared to be draining all his blood. When he spotted it, he gasped. This sent a sharp pain from his neck to his navel, preventing him from taking a breath.

He felt like he was suffocating. One of the nurses happened to glance toward his room as he was gulping for air, fighting sheets away from his face. She ran to the nurses’ station, and returned to his room with a syringe in her hand. Then she injected some medication into the intravenous tube taped to his hand. Soon, he was drowsy and relaxed. He could breathe again.

“You have a gunshot wound in your chest,” she said. Her words sounded far away. “Sometimes a lung gets a little cranky when there’s a tube in it.” As she elaborated on his journey of recovery, which had started in the Prince George Hospital and brought him to Quesnel, he drifted off.

The next time he woke, it was to something bumping his bed. Peering through heavy eyelids, he saw Tonya, her parents, Bill and Chester huddled around the foot of his bed.

“Hey, Ty. Where have you been?” teased Tonya. After his brush with death, and the wailing next door, their smiling faces was the best

medicine of the morning. The sight would’ve been perfect had it not been that something was missing. For a

minute, his stupor wouldn’t allow him to find out what it was. A nurse passed his room just as he began to search the faces surrounding his bed. Her seasoned instincts told her to pull the curtains and close the glass door. With eye contact, she alerted her partner that

Tyler was about to receive news of his grandmother’s death. They huddled behind the desk waiting to see if their support would be needed.

“Where’s Atsoo?” whispered Tyler. Chester glanced at Tonya, then she looked at Bill. Bill had been Tilda Chantyman’s closest friend for years, and a believer like she was.

Somehow, Bill knew that he would be the one to break the news to Tyler, even though the group hadn’t actually discussed it. Fortunately, he had rehearsed many times the night before. He practised a bad news, good news approach: Your atsoo has died, but you’ll be out of the hospital in a couple of days.

Then he practised good news, bad news, and good news: You’ll be out of here in a couple days, your atsoo died, and you’ll be living in town for a while, so you could eat a Blizzard every day if you wanted.

But there was so much more to tell Tyler. Since he had passed out on the Kluskus Trail, he had lost part of a lung and needed to convalesce near the hospital for weeks. This would mean living with his mother and her boyfriend in town.

The biggest shock was that Teddy had asked the Nazko Chief if he and his wife could be Tyler and Chester’s foster parents. No one could figure that one out.

Bill didn’t have a clue where to begin. He only hoped that when he faltered, Rick and the others would fill in the gaps.

He held his breath and shot up a silent prayer. “Tyler, your atsoo isn’t here…” Tyler switched off the sound at “here.” Chester’s reddened down-turned face and his

heaving chest were all Tyler needed to receive the worst news of his life. His eyes slowly panned the group. Tonya and her mother were staring at the foot of his bed. Rick’s eyes were glued on the window. Bill blinked at a spot just past Tyler’s left shoulder.

In the awkward silence, a loud abrasive female voice blurted, “Will the owner of the vehicle with license plate, KOH- 279, please return to the parking lot? Your lights are on.”

To maintain his composure, Tyler piped up, “Would that be your old wreck, Bill?” The comment made them laugh. It was true. Everyone in Nazko knew that Bill owned

the oldest, still-running wreck in the region. “No,” chuckled Bill, relieved that Tyler had taken the news so well. “Not this time.” The chuckle reminded him that he had a tube stuck in his side and he still didn’t know

how he’d been shot. Looking at Bill, he inquired, “Can someone please tell me who shot me?”

“We were driving to Kluskus,” replied Rick, sheepishly, “You, Tonya, Ted and I in Ted’s pick-up. Ted was unconscious on the rear seat, and you kids were sleeping beside me. Then I fell asleep. The truck rolled over in the ditch, Ted’s rifle went off and you were shot.”

Tyler studied his face to see if he was joking. It was poker straight. So were everyone else’s. They’d had an accident, and he didn’t remember a thing.

As Bill contemplated how to drop the other bombs, he had an uneasy feeling that he’d seen the announced license plate number somewhere before. Then it occurred to him; it was on Margarite’s car. During the snowstorm in Nazko the week earlier, while he was patrolling the highway for stranded vehicles, like he usually did in severe winter weather, he spotted her car nosed into the ditch.

He towed it onto the highway, then invited her to his trailer for supper while the road crew cleared the road. Margarite insisted on driving back to Quesnel. At 49, and never married, you weren’t going to convince her that she was safer at a stranger’s place than driving in a snowstorm.

Bill was just beginning to cook supper for them when Rick called. Rick had been driving to Kluskus on police business, and looking for the kids, when the detachment’s Blazer became high-centred in the middle of Baezaeko River. He needed Bill and his truck to winch him out. Margarite overheard the kids’ names and persuaded Bill to let her

tag along. She said her first-aid attendant experience could come in handy. God only knows why he gave in to her; he regretted it every time she reminded him

that he was driving too fast. It wasn’t until she saved Tyler’s life that he forgave her for suggesting to Rick and him that they might have more success driving the Blazer out of the river if they put it into four-wheel-drive.

Bill’s and Rick’s eyebrows raised. They could hear Margarite whispering to the nurses. Tyler craned his neck to peer through the curtains. Chester and Tonya weren’t quite as subtle; they lifted the curtains. With the enemy’s presence confirmed, they turned to Tyler for his response. “If she even tries to come in here, I’ll wrap this tube around her neck,” he said, fuming and coiling the IV tubing around his hand.

The still small voice of Atsoo rebuked him for being disrespectful. The sound seemed so real, he searched for her in the room. When he didn’t see her, her death finally registered. Tears filled his eyes. His chest began to convulse, inflicting a pain that stripped away his pride. He sobbed uncontrollably—as they all did—until every Kleenex in the room was gone. Gradually, as the tears subsided, they were replaced with smiles. The room brightened like the first rays of sunshine after a heavy rain.

It had been wise of Bill to deliver the bad news first, because by the time Tyler heard Teddy’s request, he and everyone else thought it was hilarious.

Margarite, too, had made a wise decision to come back at a better time. Tyler’s lunch tray arrived and his visitors left so he could eat. The smell of the soup

and sandwich made him retch. “Come on, Tyler,” coached the nurse. “If you want to go home, you have to prove to

me that you can eat.” This was all the incentive he needed to gag down every last mouthful. Afterwards, he was glad she had talked him into it; he felt much better. And soon, he drifted off.

A half hour later, the girl next door woke him, again, crying and cussing. This time, there were no footsteps hurrying to her room, and her call bell rang on and on.

That’s odd, he thought. I don’t hear any nurses. Tyler pressed his call bell to see if one of them would answer it. After five minutes, when nobody showed up, he started to get worried. What if there was a fire? He was tethered to his bed by a drainage tube.

Urgently, she whimpered, “Will somebody please help me? I’m going to wet the bed.”

“Hey,” shouted Tyler. “What’s wrong?” He knew what was wrong; she had just told him. He was hoping to distract her until the nurse showed up.

“Hey, yourself,” she yelled back. “What’s it to you?” “Where did the nurses go?” he called. “Code Blue. They ran out of here like there was a fire.” Did she have to say fire? “You mean nobody’s here to help us?” “Oh, they’ll be back—eventually. A nurse from another ward is supposed to stay with

us until they return. At least, that’s what happened yesterday.” “This has happened before? How long have you been here?” asked Tyler. “Two days. Two days too many!” They waited. Still, no nurse. “Are we the only patients in here?” he said. “I don’t know.” Suddenly, she bellowed, “Hey! Is anybody else in here?” Then she

started whimpering again. “I can’t hold it much longer.” “What do you need?” he huffed, exasperated. “Someone to help me onto the commode. You know, the toilet on wheels? Can you

help me?” His eyebrows raised. “Are you serious?” “I just have to go to the bathroom, for Pete’s sake. I’m not having a baby. Now, can

you please hurry? I’m going to explode!” “All right, all right. Give me a minute. I have my own problems, you know.” He

looked over the side of his bed at the shoe box sized plastic container where all of his

blood was going. A searing pain made his eyes water. He wasn’t crying, though, just reacting to the pain.

The container, and the IV pole it was hanging on, were secured to the floor with waterproof tape. If he could pry the tape off the floor, he could hold onto the pole for support.

He braced his wound with one hand, and gripped the pole with the other, then inched his legs over the side of the bed.

“Awrg…feels like my guts are being ripped out,” he hissed. “Come on, it can’t hurt that much,” she teased him. “You wanna bet?” When his toes reached the floor, the room began to spin. He shut his eyes (the wrong

thing to do). The ambient sounds of the ward were drowned out by the loud ringing in his ears. He guessed he was fainting and carefully lowered himself down to the bed before he fell on to it.

“I can’t do this,” he said, cringing. “You’ve got to!” she shrieked. “Okay. Give me a minute. I’ll try it again.” Biting his lip, he fought the pain and

slowly twisted into a sitting position once more. This time, he took a deep breath and waited for the dizziness to pass. He grasped the handle of the container and shook until the tape lifted off the floor. Then, holding it and the pole with one hand, and the back of his gown with the other, he staggered into her room.

Her thick hair was tied into a ponytail on the top of her head. It reminded him of a fountain. Faint freckles dotted her upper cheeks and nose, accentuating her tear-filled dark brown eyes. Bedding was tangled around her upper body. She looked as helpless as he felt. He didn’t have a clue how he was going to assist her.

“Thank you for coming,” she said, sniffling. He set the container on the floor and took her outstretched hand. “Help me move my legs to the edge of the bed,” she said. “I think I can do the rest

myself, after that.” “No, you can’t!” barked a woman’s voice. Tyler felt like he’d been caught with his hand in a cookie jar. He turned and gasped.

“Margarite!” “I’ll help her,” she said, escorting him back to his bed. “You’re not supposed to be

out of bed, yet.” For the next ten minutes, the worst yelping and cussing Tyler had ever heard came

from Zeet’s room. When it was over, finally, there was peace and quiet. “Where is everybody?” asked Margarite, straightening Zeet’s blankets. “There was a Code Blue,” she replied. “Somebody was supposed to replace the

regular nurses while they were away.” “I guess they thought you were well enough to take care of yourselves,” Margarite

snipped, sarcastically. A few minutes later, a frazzled nurse pushed open the department’s door and flopped

into a swivel chair behind the desk. Margarite was on her in a flash. With her usual tact, she questioned the nurse, “Why were these very sick patients left to fend for themselves?”

“They’re not that sick,” defended the nurse, “I wouldn’t have left them if they were. Furthermore, I haven’t had a coffee break, or my lunch, yet.”

“Oh,” said Margarite, retreating. Tensions defused briefly, as they discussed issues relevant to both of them: the

government cut backs and staffing shortages. Then the phone rang. The nurse picked it up and rolled her eyes. “He’ll be ready in 20

minutes.” After she slammed down the phone, she tossed the papers comprising Tyler’s chart into an envelope, muttering, “They never give you a break around here. The nurses are always the last people they think about. Tyler’s going to a different ward, she spoke

directly to Margarite. A sick patient needs his bed.” Margarite was on her way into Tyler’s room to tell him about the move when her

pager went off. She stopped and read the number. As she turned to leave ICU, she announced to him, “I’ll be back as soon as possible, Tyler.”

Don’t rush, he wanted to say. He was so exhausted from her near-visit that he fell asleep.

Moments later, he was shaken awake as his bed bumped through the ICU doorway. Soon, it was rolling down a long, bright corridor decorated by massive wildlife paintings. As the air moved past his face, he imagined he was outside, in the sunshine. It felt like months since he had been outdoors.

The wall clock in his new two-bed room read one thirty as the porter parked him next to the window. A couple of young female nurses were waiting for him. They plugged in his IV machine, taped the drainage container to the floor and teased him about skipping out of school. Their youthful faces and bubbly conversation gave his spirits a lift.

On their way out, they turned off the lights and told him to get some sleep; it was patient rest time. Sleeping was the last thing on his mind. He needed to come to grips with Atsoo’s death and moving to his mother’s.