The Garden of Heathen

Try Your Best

Aussies hand flew up and smacked over her mouth in shock. Gertie grabbed her tighter and Gally squeezed her arm. Lanie was still crying as the girls carefully brought her up to the edge of the shaft.

"Gertie!" Joan yelled. "We need you!"

Gertie still clung to Aussie, completely frozen, her eyes wide with terror.

"Gertie?" Aussie said softly but got no response from the girl. She knew she had to buy her some time to come to her senses.
"Don't let her touch the ground, we don't want dirt in wounds!" Aussie ordered unable to hide the waver in her voice completely. "Uh, tourniquet! We need tourniquets! If you have a belt take it off."

Aussie turned and grabbed Gertie firmly by the shoulders, turning her away from the scene before them to look directly at her.
"Gertie, look at me. Breathe," Aussie instructed. "Don't overthink it, ok? Don't think about it being Lanie, just... uh think of it... hypothetically! Like in your book, just think of your book and go one step at a time at time, alright?"

Gertie didn't say anything just stared at her still.

"Gertie!" Aussie repeated, carefully but firmly grabbing her face, Gertie's eyes blinking and coming back into focus. "I know this is hard and we shouldn't have to ask you to do this, but we need you! So please snap out of it."

"Ok... ok..." Gertie breathed as she shook her head to clear her thoughts. "Ok! Carry her to the kitchen!"

"Alright, what do you need from the house?" Aussie asked as she followed her to the kitchen.

"Tools, IV, bandages," Gertie listed off.

"I got it," Aussie patted her shoulder before racing off toward the house, Lanie's cries and moans fading behind her.

Once inside the house she heard footfalls on the hardwood floors behind her and figured Gally had come to help. She went to the rear bedroom on the first floor, the one saved for girls who couldn't make up the stairs that also held the bulk of the supplies.

Luckily Aussie knew where everything was as she often helped Gertie with the supplies. She threw open the doors of the cabinet and grabbed a case of sterilized tools, turning and thrusting it into Gally's hands. She grabbed the rolling stand for the IV and rolled it over to him before grabbing the pillow off the bed and ripping the pillow case off of it. She stuffed it a little more than half full of shrink wrapped rolls of sterile gauze and then put two IV bags on top of that.

"Uuhhhh," Aussie vocalized as she tried hard to think about anything else they might need, or might be missing. Time was critical and she didn't want to mess up. "Gally, you got on your pants with all the pockets?"

"Yeah," he said, coming over to her. "Load em up."

She stuffed a roll of medical tape, a canister of needles, a sealed bag with the tubes for the IV in it, and two canisters of pain meds.

"What else, what else? Hurry up," she sang to herself as she looked around, her heart hammering in her chest. Her eyes landed on a box of gloves and she grabbed it. "Ok, let's go!"

They raced out of the house.

"Gally you got the important stuff, just go as fast as you can!" She told him.

He nodded and obeyed, sprinting ahead of her as she tried to go as fast as she could. She burst into the kitchen as Gally had finished emptying his pockets and added her items to the pile as she panted and fought for breath. Rosa was in the kitchen boiling water and Joan, Rani, and Georgia were there to help. Everyone else had been shooed away so Gertie could work.

Aussie's eyes landed on the purplish and bloody stumps of Lanie's legs and felt like puking. Fortunately her stomach was empty. She averted her eyes and reminded herself that she had handled the goat situation so maybe if she pretended this was a goat she could manage.