Treasure

The single episode turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

Treasure woke up about noon, running to the bathroom to throw up. She flushed the toilet, wondering what the chunks of red were, and she could have sworn she saw a tuft of white fur or something in there, but it was soon gone and she dismissed it. Rinsing her mouth out and brushing her teeth, she paused when she looked down and saw the trail of blood spots her feet were leaving. As if by signal, her brain started processing the pain and she yelped a little and pushed herself up to sit on the vanity. “MOM!”

The door opened a few moments later and Dawn came in, pausing when she saw the light on in the bathroom. “Are you all right, baby?” She could see the blood on the floor and could see how she was sitting, plus she could smell the vomit.

“I threw up, then I felt my feet and couldn’t go any farther,” she said.

Dawn put her hand on her forehead. “You’re a little warm, let’s take your temperature too.” She opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out a digital thermometer which she put in her mouth. “Hang on, I’m getting Dad to clean this up while I fix your feet.”

The thermometer beeped. She pulled it out, one hundred point six degrees. She sighed, knowing Mom would restrict her to bed now until the fever was gone.

She went back out and came back a minute later with a stool and her big first aid kit. While her Dad damp mopped the blood trail she had left and stripped the bed of the bloody sheets, Mom was cleaning and bandaging her feet. “You soaked through some of my earlier work,” she said. “Nothing is deep or serious, but I need to check it twice a day to make sure nothing gets infected.” When she was done, she got some fuzzy socks and put them over the bandages to protect them. “I want you to stay off your feet for a day or two, call Dad or I if you need to go to the bathroom.”

“You can’t lift me, Mom!”

“Oh you hush, I’ll get the wheelchair out of the garage and take care of you that way. If you keep tearing these cuts open, they won’t heal well.”

“Yes Mom,” she said with a roll of your eyes. She lifted her shirt as her Mom checked the other scrapes and cuts, these were shallow and scabbed over so she put the shirt down.

“How are you feeling, honey?” Her Dad stood at the door, leaning against the frame, dressed in a State Patrol T-shirt and shorts.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m sorry I made you miss work. You’ve missed so much this past year.”

“It’s all right, I’ll always be here when you need me,” he said. Dawn had packed her kit up and stepped out so Dad could take her back to bed. He laid her on the fresh sheets while Mom tucked her in. “Are you hungry?”

“My stomach feels better now,” she said.

“I’ll bring you saltines and Seven-Up. If this is the flu, we don’t need you eating too much too fast. And drink a lot, it’s important to…”

“Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate,” she finished. “I know, Mom. Can I have my phone, laptop and sketchpad?”

“Sure, honey. I’ll be back in a few minutes, but you make sure you rest up, and no getting out of bed without help.”

“Yes Mom.” She looked up at her Dad, who was sitting at the end of the bed still. “I’m all right, Dad. I’ll be healed up in a few days.”

“You scared me, baby. If it was a colder night, you could have been in real trouble out there, not to mention if anyone decided to take advantage of your state.” She looked down, she had been so scared when she woke up, and she hadn’t even considered that. She was more worried about someone seeing her.

“I still don’t remember anything,” she said. “I was watching the stars, trying to relax and then it’s all a blank until I woke up in the woods.”

“We’re going to talk more about this with your Doctor, we’ve got an appointment late this afternoon,” he said. “I know you won’t like it, but I’ve also ordered an electronic locator beacon for you.”

“A what?”

“It’s a device you wear on a necklace, it has GPS and a distress call,” he said. “I can use it to find you if you wander off again, or you can use it if you need help. They’ve got an app for our phones that shows your location, plus I can set alarms on you. For instance, I can set it so if you get more than a hundred feet from the house after midnight, it gives me an alarm.”

She was quiet for a few moments before she looked up at him. “I’ll wear it,” she said. “Dad, last night scared me too. I woke up and I didn’t know where I was or how I got there. I kind of stumbled around until I found a trail I recognized and followed it back to the house.”

“It will be here in a few days,” he told her as he pulled her into his arms. “We just want you to be happy and safe, and I don’t want to have to lock you up so you don’t wander away.”

“I love you, Dad.”

“I love you too, my Treasure.”

Mom came in with two Seven Ups and a sleeve of saltines and set them on her bedside table. “Eat a couple and wait a while to make sure they settle before you eat more,” she told her as she opened her closet. She found the plastic bucket and set in on the other side of the bed in case she threw up again. “Get some rest,” she said as she kissed her before leading her husband out.

Rea looked at her phone and ate half a sleeve of crackers before she went back to sleep.

A few hours later, she was being wheeled out to Mom’s car for the doctor visit. She didn’t know anything more than she did earlier, so they talked for a while about the events leading up to the episode. He couldn’t identify any triggers, unlike the anger that had fed previous episodes. “The headache is the last thing you remember?”

“Yes, I didn’t hear anything this time. I don’t remember taking my clothes off, though they were piled on the deck by the chair. I don’t remember anything until I woke up.”

He wrote some stuff down. “When you woke, how did you feel?”

“Like I’d been beaten with a baseball bat. Seriously, my whole body hurt; my muscles, my joints, it was like I had an intense workout then slept bad. I probably did, I was on the forest floor with roots and rocks around. It took me a few minutes just to roll onto my hands and knees. I’ve never had pain like that before, but it went away after a bit.”

“What were you thinking when you woke up?”

“How the hell did I end up here, mostly. Then I was freezing and realized I was naked in the woods and the sun would be up soon. I started working my way out of there, scared to death I’d be seen, or I was going the wrong way and would never get out. I didn’t have shoes, and it was slow. There were rocks and twigs everywhere, and it really hurt my feet. It took me a long time to make it back.”

Doc wrote some more notes, he felt for her. Most of his patients didn’t have the complete psychotic breaks that Treasure had; they had voices or visions, but they didn’t lose themselves. It was like she was two people in the same body, neither sharing with the other. He called her parents in to join them. “I think her current drug therapy is close, but not enough to control all the symptoms. I’m going to wean her off her current medication over the next week and start a new one.” He gave them the name, it meant nothing to them. “The hope here is that it gives more complete relief from the breaks, while not having the side effects of the first-generation drugs.”

They picked up the medication on the way home, Mark was once again glad he had good health insurance through his State Patrol job.

By the time her feet had healed enough to walk without pain a week later, two things had changed. The new medication was in place, and she was lucky not to experience side effects. The second was that she wore a tracker around her neck, held in place by a beautiful sterling silver necklace her Grandmother gave her.

New Year's Eve, 2014

Rea kissed her Dad goodbye as he headed out the door for his 12-hour overnight shift. The State Patrol was at its busiest on this night, with every available officer and supervisor out on drunk driver patrols. Her whole life, New Years was celebrated without her Dad and often without Mom too, as nurses were in high demand. Grandma would come over, they would bake cookies and watch movies, and she would try to stay up until the ball dropped in New York City.

Mom wasn’t working tonight, and she was old enough to stay up, but the rest of their night was set. Chick flicks, popcorn and cookies.

“Be safe, Dad. I love you.”

“I love you too, Treasure. Don’t stay up too late with them, they’re getting old you know.”

“I HEARD THAT,” Dawn yelled from the kitchen.

“I’m sixteen, I just graduated from high school, I can handle them,” she giggled.

He just laughed and hugged her tight. “I’ll be back home by seven,” he said. He kissed her head, then turned and walked out into the cold December night. The weather forecast wasn’t good, a front was coming through about 10 pm and it was going to be near zero with blowing snow by morning.

After dinner, she felt like some air, so she told them she was going out to walk around a bit. They were used to this, with no school to go to and no friends to visit, she had to get out of the house sometime. She put on her Sorels and her jacket, hat and gloves, and headed out the door to the back yard. Over the years she had started walking through the same woods she got lost in, creating a trail of her own. Since it didn’t intersect with the paved trails in the area, nobody else knew about it and she could walk for miles without being seen or harassed. In the summer, it was a good running circuit, but tonight she would just walk for a while.

The air was still near freezing as she entered the woods. Reaching her trail, she stopped and pointed her flashlight at the trail.

There were tracks. Big ones, like a dog, but these were HUGE. She knelt down, putting her hand over one of them. Even with gloves on, the pad of the print was larger than her hand and fingers. “It must be a big fucking dog,” she thought. Using her flashlight, she followed the trail of tracks. The dog had stayed inside the woods, but had spray marked several trees along the way. She could see the yellow snow, plus the dirt that was torn up when the dog scraped its back legs to kick the dirt around. It was classic canine behavior, derived from their wolf ancestors. The dog was marking the edge of its territory.

Her curiosity satisfied, she went back to her trail and walked along in the silence of the winter night. She was about thirty minutes into her walk when she heard a howl and froze.

It was close.

“It can’t be a wolf, they aren’t this far south,” she told herself. "It’s probably someone’s dog.” Thinking back to the tracks, she decided her walk was now over and turned back for home. She hurried more than usual, and nervously checked the tracker she wore around her neck. Another howl echoed through the woods, this was even closer.

Running wasn’t easy in winter boots, but she made a go of it. Her flashlight illuminated the trail as she ran towards her home, the crunch of snow and ice under her feet and the loud beat of her heart the only noises she heard.

That didn’t last. She heard the thunder of paws as several big dogs ran her way.

She made the last turn, she could see the lights of her house, and sprinted as fast as she could for the yard. Racing up the steps, she opened the door and jumped inside, locking it behind her. Using her flashlight, she pierced the darkness of the woods, stopping when she saw the yellow glow, the reflection of light in a wolf’s eyes.

The creature was no dog, that was for sure. This thing was huge, black in color, with bright white teeth. It was panting and looking at the house, then it turned and ran off again.

“Are you all right?” Mom had heard the door slam closed and was wondering why her daughter was on her knees, still looking outside, while breathing like she just finished a race.

“There’s a wolf out there, he followed me,” she said.

“Where?” She grabbed one of the super-powerful flashlights her husband used, the one with big D-cells and super-powerful LED’s.

“Just left of the maple tree, but he took off.” They both searched the trees and found nothing.

“It was probably just a German Shepherd, maybe a hybrid,” her Mom said. “I’m glad you’re home, though. Why don’t you go take a shower and then we’ll start the movie.”

“That was no pet,” Rea said softly. She took off her winter gear and laid it over the chair, then slipped out of her boots. “I’ll be down in a few.”

They ate too much, drank sparkling cider toasts at both eleven and midnight, and went to bed about one. She was up again at six and had a quick breakfast, then she pulled on her coat and boots to clear the driveway before Dad got home. She put the snowblower away was heading inside when she saw the cruiser turning onto their road. “He’s home early,” she yelled to Mom as she closed the front door again.

She was at the top of the stairs leading down to the walk when it turned into her driveway, and her heart dropped to the ground when she didn’t recognize the driver.

When the passenger door opened, a priest got out. Treasure shook her head side to side as she fell to her knees. “No no no no…..”

She heard the door open and her Mom came out. She took one look at the two men approaching her on the sidewalk and let out a wail. The men moved around Treasure, rushing to catch her mom as she passed out.

There was only one reason they would show up like this, and they both knew he was never coming home again.