The Woodlands (#1 THE WOODLANDS SERIES) (COMPLETE)

39. TIES

Five minutes after the birth of our son, Joseph’s heart stopped. As he had before, outside, he clutched his chest in pain, tried to breathe but couldn’t, and then he fell to the side of me.

I sat there in shock and watched as they dragged him away. His usually large form looked oddly small. They put metal pads to his chest and yelled ‘clear!’. His body pulsed unnaturally, rising as if attached to the pads by magnets. They did this again and again. His heart would start and then it would stop, over and over. I sat there shrouded in a blanket, an onlooker to the chaos, barely noticing the people fussing around me.

*****

Now I sit in my room. Pieces of the puzzle slowly filter through as visitors come and go, feeding me small bits of information. They had me in with the baby to start with, but after two days, I asked them to take him away.

One thing I knew, Apella was right all along. These people were the survivors. They were not from the Woodlands and, as of yet, I didn’t exactly know where they came from.

Joseph lay in the bed next to mine, breathing with the aid of a machine. It pumped air in and out of his lungs for him, squeezing in and out like a concertina. The blip of the heart monitor, a comforting noise, let me know, for now, he was alive. How had it come to this, so quickly, so violently?

The kind doctor, who introduced himself as Matthew after all the confusion had subsided, explained it to me carefully, repeating it several times, as it took a while to sink in. Joseph had been bitten by a spider.

“A spider?” I raised my eyebrows dubiously.

“Yes,” he said running his hand through his hair casually. “Think of it as a tiny, microscopic killer with eight legs, smaller than a grain of sand.”

“Is this supposed to make me feel better?” I asked, scowling.

A warm smile spread across his face and I felt my temper calm. He tipped his chin, “You asked me, remember?” His voice was the timbre of honey, slow, deliberate. Sure. I crossed my arms and listened. “Joseph would never have seen it. They are translucent and live inside the rings of the tree trunks.” Guilt stabbed me, jagged and pulsing. It must have come out of one of the trees I had asked the boys to fell for the cabin.

Matthew moved to Joseph and pointed to his ragged arm. “The venom started here, eroding the skin as it went.” I covered my mouth, feeling the heave of a cry creeping up my throat. They had left it open so the wound could breathe. The muscle was gone and it was a concave mash of red flesh. It hurt me so much to see him this way.

Matthew returned to me. I watched his lips moving, the way his mouth turned up on one side as he spoke, “The poison worked its way through his system, arriving at his heart. Usually it takes a long time to get to the heart, but because he ran so far, the blood was pumping faster around his body. It sped the whole process up.”

“So he should have died,” I said, feeling deadened myself.

Matthew nodded, his hands clasped across his lap. He lifted his hand and I thought he was going to touch me but he just rearranged the covers around my knees. “We got to him in time,” he said.

While I was in labor, Joseph was in the other room, close to death but fighting. They administered the anti-venom and began the process of cleansing his blood of the poison. He was awake. He had asked for me and they had told him I was safe. They didn’t tell him I was in labor.

Then I’d screamed.

“They tried to hold him down. The nurses were swinging from his arms like pendulums,” Matthew said with humor in his eyes, “but he’s strong. He was too strong.”