Their Light In The Darknesses

Chapter Three

Duke:

We had been out most of the morning cutting trees and loading them into the wagon to take back to the cabin. As we walk back now, the snow is picking up and covering the ground fast. I was just looking around when I saw a bunch of coyotes running on the hill by my side. That’s strange, I think. What are they after? I look up the hill a bit and something bright red caches my eyes. I stop and look harder. Hell is that a body over there. I start to move towards it and as I do I see blood all around it. I called out to the other guys and started running to the body. “Guys come on, there is a body over there. We need to see if there is anything we can do to help.” They started running right behind me now, seeing what I was running towards. Monty pulls out his gun and fires in the air. The coyotes stop in their track looking at the body, then at us. They ran the other way. As I got close to the body, I saw that the red that had caught my eyes was long wavy red hair. O god don’t tell me that there is a woman out here covered in blood.

My blood runs cold as I get up to the body. The guys are right beside me as I roll the body over. What I see breaks my heart and makes me want to kill someone for the hell they put her thru. I saw a very beaten woman. There is not a spot on her that has not beaten black and blue. As I move my eyes lower, I can see that she is with child. What the hell is she doing out here? Who could do this to her and why? Then I saw the blood running down her legs. Marshall is by her legs in a heartbeat. “I need to take a look and see if I can do anything to help right now. “With that he pulls her legs apart. “f**k it looks like someone tried to pull the baby right out of her. I need to get the child out now and hope it can be saved.”

Marshall:

What the f**k is wrong with this world? Who could do this to her and why? I spent a lot of time in the Army Special Forces. We had all joined about after high school. With all the killing and hate going on all over the world, I learned a lot about taking care of the hurt and pregnant woman there. Why is this woman and her child left out here like this? “Guys, I hate to do this, but I need your shirts now. Cody, do you have your knife on you? I will need it to cut the umbilical cord, so the baby doesn’t bleed to death if it is still alive. As I am working on the woman, she comes to. But what she says kills me “please save them even if you have to cut them out of me, please save my babies”, then she out again. I look at the faces of the guys and see a variety of looks; pain, love, compassion, murder. I look back down and see a head start to show. I told Duke to push down on her belly just a bit. As the baby comes out, I see it is a girl. I clean her face the best I can and wrap her in a shirt fast, so she doesn’t freeze. I blew in her mouth just a bit and she let out a hard cry. I breathed.

Then it hit me, she said save my babies, meaning more than one. O hell. “Duke Push harder now”. He looked at me. “ What the f**k is the baby out. Why hurt her more?” “she said, save my babies, meaning more than one. There must still be one left inside.” This gets him moving right away and Cody holds the baby girl to his chest and wraps his coat around her to keep her warm. Just then I see the other baby start coming out “ Push more, the baby is coming. Come on, push down on her hard” Duke. I can see it hurts him to do it with how beat up she is, but we must try and save the babies. That’s all she asked us to do. As the baby comes out , I can see it is not breathing. I cut its umbilical cord and lay it down on my coat. It’s a boy, but he is not moving. I covered his nose and blew into his mouth. Still nothing. The others are all looking on “ little one, you can do it, breath.” I repeated, giving him air three more times, then just as the baby girl cries out, so does her brother, “thank god” I say. I wrapped him up and handed him Monty. He puts the baby on his chest and covers him with his coat. I turn back now to help the mom.

She is still bleeding but breathing as well. I took off my shirt and pushed it between her legs to stop the bleeding. I look at the guys. “ We need to get them back to the cabin now or they will not make.” Duke picks up the woman holding her to his body. I look at the other two guys, see how they look at her and the babies. I know in my heart they are not going to want to give them up and have her and the babies for their family all of them. Maybe she is what they had been waiting for all this time, the one that could piece their soles. I just hope she is not broke. But if she is, I will be by her side. Hell, by the looks of the guys, they will all be by her side.

Monty:

As I hold the baby boy to my chest and we run back to the horses, all I can think is who would let this precious lady out of there site this fear along with child. The shape she is in. There is more going on here than we know. I spent most of my military career looking down on scope. Watching others, but right now watching Duke carry this lady in his arms bleeding all the way and this tiny baby to my chest, I will never let anyone hurt them again, even if it takes my own life. When I heard her voice begin to save the child, even if we had to cut them from her body. I know deep in my heart that this is a mother. She was willing to give up everything just so they would live. I couldn’t ask for a better woman, and I was dam well going to show her what a real man was, not the fucker who did this to her and left her for dead. I look over at Cody as he holds the baby girl and I see same way. He is not going to let that baby girl go.

Cody:

What the hell is going on? We went out for wood and now are running back with a bleeding woman and two newborn babies in our arms. This baby girl is strong. She has her tiny hands wrapped in my chest hair. It hurts like hell, but if it keeps her holding on to life, she can pull it out for all I care. I sneaked a glance over to Duke as he held the woman close to his body. I hope God, we don’t lose her. I need to find out what’s going on with her. The babies will need their mom. I was still in shock. She told us to cut them out of her body just so they could live. Hell, I know some who want nothing to do with their child and here this one would die right there so they could live. There is not many good soles left in this f****d up world. I don’t want to lose this one brave lady who, no matter how badly they beat her, was still fighting for her babies to live. I look over one more time and say “Please live, for the babies you brought into this world, they need your strength and love more then you know. As we get to the horses, we get off the wagon, we can come back for it as soon as we get them in the cabin and safe from the cold. The woman was losing color by the second, and I could tell that we were losing her right there in front of us. We rode hard back to the house. As soon as we showed up, our litter housekeeper. Annie, an older Mexican lady, came running out to see what was going on. As soon as she sees all the blood and the lady in Duke's arms, she calls for her husband and two boys who work there in the barn. Their mom says it keeps them out of trouble.

As they all come running up from the barn and see the blood, they start asking questions we can’t answer yet. I yelled out “Stop, we don’t know anything, yet we just found her and had to get the babies safe. Annie, please you have had all your kids at home, can you save her? Annie looks over and tells us to take her inside. The boys held our horses so we could get down with the two babies in our arms. I looked at the oldest and asked, “Can you take two of the other horses back and bring the wagon back, the ones we took needed to rest. We rode them hard. The boys said yes and took our horses to the barn and got the others, head out. Annie’s husband came to me. “ I just got the cows milked, do you want me to run to town and get the babies some of the things they will need right ways”. I looked down at the baby in my arms. “ Yeah, have the store put it to the cabin. If anyone asks just make something up about your family, we don’t know who had her out here and why she looks like this. If there is anyone looking for her, I don’t want them to find her till we get her her side.”

“Yes sir” he walked over to their truck and I walked inside the house, still holding the baby girl. She starts to cry, and I have no idea what she wants. I am looking over at the other guys. What do we do now? Just then Annie came walking back in. She looked at the crying babies, then back in the room we had put the woman in. “Did you let them eat when they were born” we look at her like she is mad. “Hell no. we don’t know how to get them to eat." She just shakes her head. “Come this way all of you will need to help her out till she can hold them herself. When Zane gets back from town, I will show him too.” I had forgotten that Zane had gone to town to get some stuff for the house and help with some trouble they had in town today. “I've already called Zane. He was on his way back and said he may know a bit about this but didn’t want to say it,“ Marshall says. We walked back in. I could see that Annie had cleaned her up the best she could. But it made it harder to look at her. Now you can see how badly she was beaten and cut up. How long had they hurt her for?

Just as we are getting into the room and about to find out how to feed the babies. Zane walks in the front door. He heads right for us in the room. He sits a lady’s bag down on the small table by the bed and holds up a driver’s license. “Avalon June Greenburg, she is 28 and, from what I found in her bag, she is a Nurse Practitioner. She lives in Rapid City, South Dakota.” He says I look over and see her photo when she was not black and blue. It is her. What was going on then and how did she end up like this? Annie looks cold at us. “I don’t care about that right now, we need to get the babies to eat, or you will have two dead babies when she wakes up.” We all shut up, even Zane, and look at her.

Zane:

Well, hell I was not thinking when I walked into the house and to the room, they found a lady out in the snow. When I first stepped in, I didn’t even look at what was going on in the room. I have just started giving info on her. If I had stopped and looked, I would have seen the two upset babies and the very mad Annie now. That’s when I looked at the woman in the bed for the first time. She looks nothing like the photo right now with busted lips and black and blue all over her face. Her one eye has a cut above it and the other looks like she was hit so hard she can’t open it. How could anyone do this to her? As I was looking at her, I could see her standing in the sun, her red hair flying around her holding her belly, smiling at me.

O hell I am so f****d. I want her in my life and, by the looks of it, I am not the only one. Annie says “Zane, you are the biggest of you boys. Duke and Marshall help to sit her up. I want you to move in to sit behind her, you will ack as her back rests and steady her so she won't fall over on the babies. I move in like Annie tells me to lean Ava back on my chest. Wrap my arms around her to hold her in place. She lets out a small sound of pain but doesn’t wake up. Annie steps up and uncovers her chest. It is not a good thing, we see more cuts and makes over them too. This is bull s**t. This should not f*****g happen here. We came all the way out here to get away from this s**t. Why her? Annie tells Cody to come sit on the left side of Ava's body. She shows him how to get the baby to sit by her very full breast and shows us all how to get the baby to start sucking. It takes a bit, but the baby gets it in the end, and you can see a small bit of milk from the corner of the baby’s mouth. Cody smiles and says” she’s eating. Thank God, she is going to be OK, right”, he looks at Annie. So that one is a girl. Its hard to tell with them wrapped up in the guy’s tops. Annie looks over the baby. “I hope so but only time will tell. And Monty does the same with the other baby.” “It's a boy “,Monty says. That’s good to know. I watched them set the baby boy to try and eat. He is not doing well and can’t seem to get the milk to start from mom’s chest. I looked over the baby. “ Is there something wrong with the boy at the moment” Marshall looked at me with a sad face. “ We almost didn’t save him at first. We didn’t know there were two of them in there till it hit me that she, I mean Avalon, said to save her babies, meaning more than one, even if we had to cut them out of her to do it” Annie let out a small cry at this. So, this woman would do anything to bring them safely into this place, no matter the cost. Annie tells Monty to back up a moment. Then, with a straight face and look at Duke telling him he would have to suck on the breast to get the milk to start coming out. I thought he was going to fall over at this point and all of us had the same look “You want me to do what to her. That’s not right. That makes me dam well raping her too. She is not giving me the OK.” He is right to a point, but I don’t think Annie would have said it if it didn’t need to be done. “ No, you’re not”, Annie says “you are saving her sons life. What do you think she will hate you more for, sucking the milk down to feed her child or sitting back and watching him die when you could have saved him ? They need that first feeding from her to get all the stuff they need to get a good start.” I look at Duke “From what I was told about her and what she told you to do for the babies. I think she will be OK with you doing this to help them.” Duke looks a bit torn about it, then Marshall steps up. “I will do it man, I know how you feel about anything that is not given freely by a woman its ok I got this.” He leans down softly gets a hold of her full breast and starts sucking on her n****e. She wipers a bit but lets it happen. After a bit, he backs off licking his lips,, dam any other time and I would think that was hot as hell, but right now its all about the babies, “there it’s just coming in, so I didn’t take what he needs.” Monty moves back up and sets the baby boy up to eat. he is getting a bit better but still having trouble. Annie tells Monty to very softly squeeze her breast to help the milk come more freely. So, he does and then it looks like the baby is getting more now. We keep this up for a good 45 minutes when the baby girl stops sucking and is just looking around.

Annie walks over to Cody with a small towel and lays it over his shoulder. Then she shows him how to hold the baby to him and burp it to get any air out of her tummy, so she doesn’t get sick. About this time the baby staff comes into the house. Duke walks out of the room to get the baby's bed and Annie walks out and comes back in with dippers and some outfits for the babies. They look warm but are light colors, nothing saying boy or girl. I will have to fix that next time I go in town. She shows us how to clean the babies and put them in a dipper the right way, then how to dress them. Looks like we will be doing this for some time till Avalon can move on her own. Duke and Marshall get the bed all set up in the room for the babies. About 15 minutes later, the boy seemed to be done eating. Monty does the same thing Cody had done to get the air out of the baby. When he is done with this, the bed is set up and ready for them to sleep in. The guys lay the babies down and cover them to rest. I am still sitting behind her but had pulled up the cover to keep her from having been seen by Annie boys, not that they would look. They are good kids, but just so she knows, we care about how she would feel showing all of herself off like that. Feeding her babies is one thing ,but just sitting there to be looked at is another.

As I sit there, Annie tells us all we need to know about the babies for now, like when they cry they need something, it could be they have a dirty dipper or are hungry or had a bad dream and just need held. By the time Annie is ready to leave for the weekend. We know most anything there is to care for the two babies for now. As she gets ready to live, she looks over at me, still sitting holding her to my chest. “She should have a nice hot bath. It will help with all the cuts and what not. But she can not hold herself up at all. One of you will have to sit in the tub and hold her and someone will have to clean her. But you must be very careful. Who every tried to pull the baby out of her messed her up badly.” My face goes white. I looked over at the guys. “Someone tried pulling the babies out of her without any help?” Marshall stepped up “That’s what I was afraid of when I first saw how bad she was between her legs. I didn’t say anything to you because I didn’t know if it was true or not. I didn’t have time to do a full check up right then and there.” “It’s true she would have been in so much pain and we don’t know if it was time for them to come out yet or not. We just don’t know “,Annie says with a sad look. I ran my finger over the side of her face as softly as I could. How did you make it that long sweetie? How did you deal with all that pain on your own? Annie leaves with her family. All the guys are standing around the bed we are still sitting in. I looked over at the table where I had the lady’s bag that I found on the side of the road on my way from town today. It looked like someone had just thrown it all out on the side of the road. I was going to drop it off with the Shafer but then I got the call about the woman the guys had found in the woods. I keep it with me just in case.

Monty sees what I am looking at. "How did you know it was hers?" “I didn’t”. I tell them how I had come across it and why I still had it with me. Monty goes over to the bag and opens it up. He starts pulling all the stuff out. There is an ultrasound photo that shows two babies, and the date was one month ago. “Had she been being beaten for a month”, Monty asked, looking up at us all. “God, I hope not there is no telling how much she had to deal with if that is the case.” Cody says

I keep running my hands over her in a smooth way to help her rest. He pulls out a small notebook and starts going page by page. I saw his face fall a bit, then get hard like he wanted to kill someone but who, I think. “She was due at the end of this month, so thank God they didn’t come any snorer they would not have made it had it happen before this. It also says she is getting marred next yr. Do you think it was the father of the child that did this? Maybe he changed his mind and didn’t want them or her anymore?”

“f**k that there are better ways to go about not wanting a family than almost killing them all ” Duke says. Avalon moves just a bit in my hold and makes a small whimper that has everyone looking our way to see if she was waking up. But soon she settled down again. “Let’s try and keep it down for now. She needs to rest for a bit.” I said, and I keep stocking her hair now.

Monty:

I keep looking in the book, wanting to know as much about her as we can find now, then help her get back what she lost. As I keep reading, I have to smile. I loved some of her small side notes, just little things that she had been thinking about. Then I came to a page full of names. My guess was baby names, and I was right. As I turned the page there were two full baby names. I read them to myself, then smiled and walked over to the babies. The guy watches me. As I looked down and ran my hand over each baby, I said the names out loud, “Alexis Lee (or Lex for short) and Alexander Dale (and Alex for short). Your mom picked very good strong names for you two. I know you will grow to be strong just like her” They both seemed to smile. I look back over to their mom and now see what Annie was saying about her needing to get cleaned up. She still had blood and who knew what else all over her hair and spots on her skin? My phone buzzes in my pocket so I pull it out and see it is from Annie. Reading it, then looked over to the bed. “Annie just sent you an email, Zane. She said it was about Ava and she didn’t want to say anything with her boys here before, so she emailed it to you. If you could see what it is about that way, we know if there is more, we need to know about the babies or not. I will set up the tub. Cody, you are the smaller of us all, so I want you to sit in the tub and hold her so she doesn’t slip in and drown. herself, like Annie, told us she needs to get cleaned up. We don’t want to lose her just because we didn’t get her clean. Duke, I want you to wash her. You have the softest touch out of all of us and I think she will do better with you than one of us” I was thinking he would fight me on this again about touching her without her. OK, but he didn’t.

“ OK, but only because she has more pain than she should ever have to deal with. I don’t want to see her hurt more just because I was worried about touching her” “ Ok when you guys are taking care of that, I will get the bedding all changed and clean. She can not sleep in that with all the blood and stuff still on them” walked off to the bathroom and got the tub going with warm water and a bit of bath salt to help her feel better. I called out to the guys to take her in. Cody climbs into the tub still in his boxers to give her a bit of comfort if she was to wake up. When he is sitting down, Zane lowers Ava down. She moans a little as he puts her in the tub, but soon she is resting on Cody's chest and Duke gets to washing her clean nicely and slowly. I walked back to the room and got to work on the bed. Once it is all done, I look over and look at the book. I wrote down when the babies had been born and who was first. After reading the book I think she will want to know this. I looked at that baby quickly to see if they were still out, and they were. Marshall walked in. At that time, I looked up at him. He had put the rocking chair together and was putting it by the baby’s bed. "Can you keep an eye out on them for a bit? I was going to see if there was anything else we needed to know in the email so we can care for the babies the best we can till their mom can do it." Marshall leans over and just rubbed his finger over the baby boy's cheek, the baby reaches up to gets a hold of the finger and brings it to his body, just holding it. He smiled down at the baby. “I hope we can get her to stay with us, I don’t want to see this little one go and hold anyone else. “I knew how he felt we had not even had them here for a whole day and we all wanted them to stay. I pat him on the back and walked out of the room and up stares to Zane’s office. When I walk in and see his face, I know the email is not good. It would take a hell of a lot to bring the biggest of us all down and have him crying, but that’s just what I am seeing. “What is it, what’s wrong with the babies or Ava” I said as I walked over to him.