Indivisible (Overlooked by Liberty) Read Online Free PDF Page A

to take him to the hospital.  Now!"
           Still performing CPR, three women and Max reached under Barry and carried him to the back of the pickup.  Tater followed, prancing and whining.  As Helen and Mrs. Larson crawled in, Tater jumped in the back with them.  "Get out, you damn dog!" Larson yelled.  Another woman tried to grab the dog's collar to pull it out, but Tater snarled and flared teeth.
           "Just go!  Just go!" yelled Helen between breaths.
           The tailgate and back door stayed open as Max sped off down the hill, leaving the anxious parents behind with a glimpse of their own boys' fates.
           Tater, perked ears and motionless, gazed longingly at her pallid companion and whined.  When Helen came up for air, Tater dipped down to lick the boy's face to wake him as she had every morning.  Helen pushed the dog back.  "Stay, you mutt."  Helen paused, "Barry, you can't die.  You can't."  She turned and gazed at Tater; the distressed animal had a look of confusion.
           Helen shared that anxiety.  Her son was her life.  After her failed marriage and the illusion of true love shattered, she clung to the hope that her son would not be deprived of a happy childhood.  Her ex-husband Bradley, rarely paid child support and didn't visit his son for months at a time.  She struggled to make payments, cleaning rooms for the Balsams Resort after she had lost her nursing job due to Federal cutbacks.  In her youth, Helen had been smart and attractive; grades came easy in school, boys crowded to be near her.  All that had changed, she learned what it was like to struggle; she had discovered failure.  Helen had been determined not to let her fate affect Barry's happiness.  Now, the life she gave breath to was her own.
           Her face streaked with tears, Mrs. Larson squeaked, "My boy was up there too."  Her sizable frame quivered as she said it.
           Helen wiped the tears from her cheeks and continued resuscitation.
           Max opened the back window of the cab, "Holler if it's too rough back there."  Uncle Max had raced stock cars in his younger days; he was a mechanic now.  Today he raced for life, accelerating out of corners faster than he went into them--using his horn as a siren.  Whining the Nissan to an extreme rpm, he jettisoned in front of other cars just before oncoming traffic whisked by.  Trees, farms, and fields of wildflowers zipped by in an undefined mass.  And the stunning red sunset they raced toward went unappreciated because of its blood-like hue.
     
           "There's a dog trying to get into the hospital," said an orderly, entering the emergency room.  "It bit a guy."
           Mrs. Larson relinquished her spot on heart massage to a nurse, and found a man at the hospital to take her back to Dixville Notch.
           "Somebody get the defibrillator and prep 1cc of adrenaline for injection!" Helen ordered.  "And where's the damn doctor?  Who's on duty?"  Helen insisted on staying at her son's side, even though she no longer worked at Upper Connecticut Valley Regional Hospital.
     
           In a two-patient room on the ground level, a nurse delivered dinner to Margaret Bouvier.  Mrs. Bouvier was raising a spoon of green gelatin to her mouth just when Tater dove through her screened window and bound out the other side of the room toward the hallway.  Gelatin on Margaret's spoon flew into the air; her tray landed on the floor.  The nurse ran into the hall after the animal.  Undaunted, Tater's paws clicked on tile as she slid around corners.
     
           "What the hell's wrong?  Where's the hypo?  Where are the damn paddles to jolt him?"  Helen used a mechanical ventilator now instead of mouth-to-mouth.  The young doctor she was addressing stood aloof with the boy's statistics chart in hand.  Deb Philbin, Helen's best friend and former coworker, was on duty and worked the heart compressor--but out