Kent and Hannah were nearing the edge of Warwick, heading to the path that led to the shed they had been camping in. It was their 3rd day in 1777.
“No princess,” Kent said. “We’re out of food. No money…”
Hannah shrugged. “Maybe this is another butterfly effect thing.”
Just then, between them and the shed, rose the sound of a horse braying loudly and a woman screaming.
“Or not,” Kent and Hannah ran toward the sound.
Merritt and Emma were already coming from the shed. On the ground lay the woman they had seen riding several times before. Around her stood men; a courtier and some guards.
The kneeling man looked up. “Get help! She’s bleeding badly!”
Hannah reached the woman and the man. “Move.”
He did.
Hannah looked at the wound in her side. “Bandages… Lots… Anything sort of clean…”
Emma and Merritt reached the fallen woman just as the captain of the guard called out. “Stand back at once! I’m the captain of her guard!”
Emma stood between him and Hannah. “Leave her alone unless you want to be captain of chained in a dungeon if the girl dies!”
He scowled. “Step aside, woman, or I shall strike you down!”
Merritt moved in and shoved the captain back. “That WILL NOT happen. And if you even flinch a finger toward your flintlock, it shall be you struck down.”
Emma hurried to Hannah to help.
At the same time Merritt was dealing with the captain, Kent had turned to the man riding with the fallen woman. “Who are you?”
“Oliver, of Warwick. My uncle is the earl.”
“Oliver, I’m going to rip the sleeves off your shirt.”
Kent ripped the sleeves from his shirt and handed them to Hannah, then he ripped the sleeves off his own shirt.
Others from the town were approaching, and Emma pointed at a man. “Go get a cart… We need to get her to a doctor… before she bleeds to death.
It was then that Kent realized they were tapping into the memories of their duplicates—EMT training… Hannah-1858’s medical school.
Kent then said, “We need a stretcher… she might have spinal trauma.”
While Kent organized a few men to get a door off the abandoned shed to use as a stretcher, Hannah and Emma triaged the girl.
Emma assessed under a tear in her dress near her hip. “Numerous superficial abrasions on the lateral vastus region. Deep puncture wound into the glutes…”
Hannah handed her a sleeve. “You know… pressure…”
People murmured, marveling and questioning in equal measures as Hannah and Emma worked to stabilize the woman. Merritt moved in and took over applying pressure to the puncture wound, raising protests from some in the crowd.
“Look how he’s touching Princess Marguerite de Bourbon-Bretagne! Shameful!”
Emma continued to assess injuries. “Oh no… I think we have a broken radius…”
“She's gonna need a lot of sutures,” Hannah said. “And soon!”
She looked up to see Kent returning with the door from the shed at the same time the man reached them with the cart.
“Let’s get her on the stretcher… door…” Kent said. “I’ll do the head when we roll her. Merritt, slide the door under her.”
Using the EMT training the 1985 Virginia Moment had learned, the Translocated Time Travelers moved the woman onto the cart.
When they got to the physician office it was locked. Someone in the crowd said he had gone to Kenilworth where the Court Leet’s wife was delivering a breech child.
Hannah looked around. “Anyone have a key?”
Kent just kicked open. “We don’t need a key.”
A woman in the crowd protested. “He can’t do that!”
A man beside her said, “He just did!”
Once in the physician's office, Hannah’s 1880 doctor training went into full speed. And she found herself knowing things she had no recollection of learning.
She located a bottle of laudanum and administered some to the princess to sedate her. Then she found suture supplies—crude needles and silk thread. Using brandy as an anesthetic, she cleaned the wounds and sutured them closed. Once the bleeding was stopped, she and Merritt set the broken arm and splinted it.
It took some time, but by the end, it was clear that the princess had been saved. All that remained was to Translocate back to 1984.
