Clora's House of Gathered Up Children

[Vtshooter]

Getting tired of Bruce. He either needs to wake up, or go away. Thank you Pac

[kua]

No, no, Vtshooter. Bruce can only go away when/if Dr. PAC will let him go. He has been so important to the story, especially where Tessa is concerned, that if there is hope, he needs to be recovered and a member of the community in good standing.

[PacNorWest]

#5b

It never rained but that it poured sluicing down drafts of water that flooded the clan. The whole retreat was in a terrible uproar when Mark and Clora returned.

Tess had tried to get out of bed, and had fallen on the floor. Tethered to the poles that held her drips in her arm, she had fouled herself in the plastic tubing and all of it was on the floor. Ben with only one arm, couldn't get her up, so Cody had been recruited to help.

Cody when he bent over to help pull Tess upright, blacked out and fell on Tess. Ben was shouting for Robert to come help, and in turn Robert was yelling for Mandy to assist. Mandy left the school room with TJ, Barry, Julie unsupervised as she rushed to Tess's room.

Toby and Rennie had just arrived with the new baby and the little girl was screaming her head off in a hungry wail that upset everyone.

Toby helped Rennie in their house, went to the patio and yelled at Abbi to get her butt to the school room and watch the young kids. Abbi finally choose this time to burst into tears in a soul cleansing, cathartic meltdown, and the three in the school room decorated themselves with permanent markers as a fun way to wait for class to begin again.

Toby got to Tess's room to help the absolute chaos there, yelling at Ben to get a blanket to cover Tess, he and Robert were attempting to move the blacked out Cody when Dawg hit the room door with savage growls, thinking Tess was being hurt in the melee somewhere.

Toby got bit, Cody got bit and that brought him right out of his faint, Robert hit Dawg across the snout to keep from being bit, Dawg was ki-ayying and growling and Gary tried to hold Dawgs collar and keep the frenzied animal from clearing the room as he protected Tess.

Mark and Clora hurried in the house at the sounds, and rushed down the hall to the source. Mark got Dawg called off, Cody crawled to the side of the room and Ben got Tess covered. It took Gary, Milo and Ben to get Robert and Cody to their feet, and then there was a anguished yell from Clora.

Mark was slumping down the door with his hand clutching at his heart.

Toby called 911 as Clora dove forward to keep Mark's head from hitting the door edge and the floor at the same time. Toby thrust the phone at Robert to give the details and moved to Mark to start chest compressions.

They kept Mark alive, the ambulance finally arrived and took Ma and Mark back to the hospital.

Tess was a bloody mess. In her arm where the IV needles were located, she was bleeding profusely as the needles poked out of her veins and through her skin. Toby made an executive decision and pulled them out.

Applying compression to the arm, he got the bleeding covered but the drips were still working and sending their liquid all over the floor. Mandy was trying to keep Tess covered and protect her from the milling people, and Milo finally had to whistle.

Trained as they were, all movement ceased when Milo whistled "freeze." He looked at Toby and between Toby, Milo, Ben, Robert and Gary, they got Tess rolled on a sheet and lifted back on the gurney. Mandy got her covered, but Tess was laying on her back.

Toby as the oldest one there, called the decision to leave Tess as she was, until they could get ahold of Bruce or Tricia. The clan had no idea that both doctors were back at the hospital where Bruce was being operated on.

Rennie got the new baby fed and walked to the big house to see Abbi having a hysterical melt down on the patio and in the house it looked like an explosion had happened. She sent Cody out to comfort Abbi, had them all get to chairs so she could assess what damage had been done and happened to look at Ben who's arm was hanging uselessly by his side.

Ben sat down in his usual chair beside Tess and pitched forward, hitting his head on the gurney rail Toby had pulled up. He had broken the frozen shoulder open with the effort to lift Tess.

Just then, the three well decorated children showed up to have the adults congratulate them for such a good job of coloring on their faces.

There was that absolute deadly silence that happens when adults realized the little darlings had marked them selves red, green and purple.

Rennie took one look at her children and put a protective arm around the baby girl and walked out, leaving the little monsters with their father.

[Dosadi]

Wow, I'm just... WOW

Thank you for MOAR

Dosadi

[jimmycthemd]

PAC,

You really know how to inject total mayhem into the mix!! Love it :-)

[OldArcher]

Whew!!! Things are finally getting back to "NORMAL!!!"

Thank-You, and God Bless You and Yours, Mrs. Pac! Never, ever, think of the Lindermans as "Normal!"

Maranatha

OldARcher

PS Lime Green for Hospital Jello- for the Clan receiving TLC...

oa

[bjoyce09]

Great chapters, Pac.
Love this story.

Take care of Yourself and Yours.

[PacNorWest]

#5c

Mark, in the care and control of the ER Doc., had an angioplasty. The stents placed in the narrowed arteries, and when they reached six, they had the man's heart open for business. Mark had violently insisted that he be awake but semi sedated and that Clora be there with him. He got his wishes, and afterward had to lay still the required amount of time to let the incision in his groin clot, and begin to heal.

He had a prescription for a blood thinner that he had no intention of taking, and a diet that precluded most all animal fats. The heart Doc. told them both, that only Mark's good physical condition had prevented a massive heart attack. As it was, a tiny clot had gone through, coming up against a narrowed vein with painful results.

In a week, Mark was to begin walking, but he wasn't cleared to do his more energetic exercises. Mark didn't feel happy, he didn't look happy, he didn't act happy and he didn't sound happy.

As they were being wheeled into the waiting area, Mark was giving his opinion of the situation, when he was finally allowed to sit up and go for home.

They had to sit and wait for Toby to come get them, and Clora put her hand on Mark's good shoulder. "You will follow the protocol, you will stick to the diet and you will sit down and be quiet. Or I will adhere you to that chair as I did Bruce." Clora left no room for doubt.

She sat behind Mark so she didn't have to look at his scowling face. Clora was deep in thought about the cancers and their unusual mass and fingers that were filaments that reached out and attached to other organs.

Bruce, John, Liz and now Luke all had approximately the same appearing type of tumor.

John's had appeared when they were in Henderson. They had not much interaction with Bruce until they got to Greenville, now here in Raleigh they had Liz's fatal tumor, Lukes's reoccurrence and now Bruce. There had to be a common factor and she couldn't find it.

Mark had turned his wheel chair around and was watching Clora. Her head was back leaning against the chair, her eyes were closed and her lips were faintly moving. To him, she appeared to be in some kind of trance. He had seen Clora this way, once or twice before and it scared him. Her breathing was so shallow, she lost a lot of the color from her face and her fingers were contorted in strange positions and seemed locked in place.

That's how Toby found them, and Mark motioned for silence. Frankly, he didn't know if it was safe to wake her or not. Softly he started calling to her, hoping to intrude at the edge of her consciousness and bring her awake.

"Dad, you've got to wake her. All hell is loose at home and we have to go. We can't wait." Toby was impatient.

Both of them picked up Clora's hands and started rubbing them, and slowly she started to stir.

Toby helped Mark in the Carry all and then Clora into the back seat. "Buckle up folks, we've got to get for home.
Me, Rennie and Mandy are the only able bodied people there, and the others are hurt from Tess's crash. Ma Dad, you are going to have to get a nurse for Tess and someone to help our wounded. I missed an important trial that I had to default to the other side, because we were having such a crisis. I'm going to be fired if we can't get a handle on this. Rennie has her hands full with the new baby, and Mandy has the youngsters.
You two are about three hours away from total exhaustion, and the whole place is suffering. Lemmie and Hank are worked to the bone, and something has to change."

Toby had said his piece, and now it was up to Dad and Ma.

When they got home, Mark called for a private duty nurse and a mental health professional to come to work. As they had done with Bruce previously, all special privileges were suspended and the wounded came to the table if they wanted to eat.

The nurse kicked Ben out of the room, picked up the mess, mopped the blood and solutions up and put clothes on Tess. Stopping the pain relief had Tess jittery but certainly more responsive to her surroundings. It took four days for nurse Phoebe to have Tess up and walking around.

Later the night of the fifth day, Phoebe reported to Mark that she believed the bags of painkiller sent for Tess had been tampered with, some solution added to cause the zombie state that had befallen the daughter.

Phoebe had discovered one of the unused bags of morphine with a hole near the stem, where a drop of orange looking liquid had dried. Mark sent it to be analyzed, and he and the nurse discovered all the bags had been compromised.

All but the bag sent for testing, were opened and drained to prevent further use. Mark destroyed every liquid, crème, solution and wound care supplies that had been sent; not trusting that it hadn't been tampered with.

The biggest change at the retreat happened because Chilly and Vic were gone. Whining and griping and blank stares were reduced to almost nothing. The wounded started stirring within themselves to learn ways to over come their problems.

Phoebe took Milo to his eye surgery appointment, and brought him home the next day, feeling better with the assurances by the specialists that the eye would be useable.

Tess was up and walking around, starting to do simple things for herself. Ben was due for a checkup on his arm in a week, when Bruce came home from the hospital.

[Sully]

Thank you Pac.

Sully

[tired-medic]

Wow ! Had me sweating . I have seen families just about like this. Went to a call for a patient with a gangrenous toe , ended up with three ambulance patients, police took two into custody and Dept. of Human services moved one person into an assisted living center. Yeah that kinda day.
Pac this is great.