Help! - Part Two

As the tempest roared outside, Lena struggled to the sofa and collapsed.   About the same time her husband was rushing to her side, a sharp cry had escaped a cottage on the other side of the island.  Robbie lay in his bed delirious as his 7-year old body shook uncontrollably.  His parents torn between trying to keep his shivering body warm under layers of blankets or to keep his forehead cool to bring down his temperature.

The storm raging outside tried to enter the cottage as it rattled open windows, sprayed rain water onto furniture, or offered a luminous show with intermittent lightning flashes.  Little Robbie babbled illegibly, rambled about missing his soccer practice, recalling the time he ventured into a dark forest.  His parents had exhausted their list of home remedies and stood watching him, helpless.  They had applied cold towels on his forehead, placed a brandy-dipped cotton swab on his belly, rubbed ice on the soles of his feet, and other countless treatments.  But the fever rose with the crescendo of the booming thunder as the darkest clouds passed overhead, until all became silent.

Under his wife’s protests, Robbie’s father grabbed the boy, wrapped him up in blankets, and ran outdoors.  The tail end of the storm left now, sprinkled water from the sky forming a wet mist on the father’s dark hair.  He flagged down a taxi and panic-stricken, commanded the driver to rush to the island’s only clinic.

The doctor, dressed in hurriedly draped bathrobe over his pajamas and disheveled hair peered through his dark rimmed glasses at the boy on his exam table.  Thermometer in hand, he shook his head and declared that the boy needed fluids and an I.V. must be started on him at once.

To be continued...