To Journey's End Part One.

He was cold. He looked around for a place to shelter from the rain. Up ahead a bridge offered some shelter underneath it. Shivering he stumbled to it. He shuddered at the clap of thunder overhead covering his ear. Lightening flashed across the sky and he screamed falling to the ground. "No! No More!" He crawled trying to escape the imagined enemy. Suddenly the ground dropped and he tumbled forward rolling down the embankment. He crawled back up under the bridge and huddled there, his eyes staring into the darkness. "Don't hurt me. I don't know what you want." he sobbed shaking trying to find that peace again. He couldn't go back there. That avenue had been closed to him. He began crying until exhausted he passed out.

***
It was a good morning for hunting, Beth had said to get a pheasant because she was tired of deer meat. So he was determined to oblige. Red was searching the underbrush when suddenly he flushed one. Sam brought his rifle up and fired one shot. A sharpshooter in the army he knew it was a good hit and watched the bird tumble to the ground close to the river bank. He waited patiently for Red to bring the bird back to him until he heard Red howl. The dog had found something. It only took a few minutes to track down his dog. Red was sniffing around what appeared to be a bundle of rags. Damn it, someone had dropped another bunch of kittens, he could hear their mewling. As he got closer, he realized it wasn't a bag of kittens but a man. He was moaning but obviously unaware. "Good boy Red, sit." Sam moved in to get a closer look at the man. The man was in the throes of something terrible. "Mister...," he got no response to his voice. He turned the man onto his back, taking note of his soaked condition and his blank eyes. It wasn't good, the man needed help but they were miles from any hospital.

"We'll have to get him to Beth, she'll be able to help." He grabbed up the bird sitting on the ground and put it in his bag. Putting the strap over Red's head. "You're going to have to carry dinner and the rifle boy. I'll get him." Once everything was balanced on the dog. He turned to the man on the ground. The last time he had carried a man through the underbrush he had been trying to get his pal to the evac point outside Da Nang. "Don't worry son, we're going to get you some help." he lifted the man onto his shoulders realizing that the man's body temperature was dangerously low and he better hurry.

As he neared his home, he again shifted his burden, the man had stopped moaning and the only way he knew the man was still alive was his labored breathing. Once he knew he was in hollering distance, he let out a yell. " Beth, get your bag, I'm bringing in an emergency."

She had been getting the rest of dinner ready when Red had trotted in the door wearing the rifle and the hunting bag. She knew immediately that something strange had happened, she prayed no unfortunate had been shot out in the woods. She had already been reaching for her bag when she heard the yell
.
She was standing on the porch when her husband entered the clearing and she saw his burden. "Dear God, is he shot?"

"No, but he's almost dead. Where do you want him?"

"Put him in the office Sam, on the spare bed. I'll examine him there."

He laid his burden down and watched his wife begin her examination. She was the only doctor around for miles.

She didn't like the way he was breathing. He was ice cold. "We've got to get him out of these clothes Sam. You get him undressed, I'll go get some warm blankets. I'll need to bring his temperature up first before anything else."

Sam nodded and began to remove the soaked garments. He paused when he saw the condition of the man's body. His torso had numerous scars, from knife slashes to bullet scars. But what alarmed Sam more were the obviously new wounds on top of old scarring around his wrist and ankles. He shook his head, he had seen similar scars on fellow soldiers. As his wife came toward him carrying the blankets he said. "Beth, it's bad."

She looked down at the man lying on the bed. "My God, he's been tortured." Taking the blankets she covered his body, she couldn't think about what had been done to him. Her main concern was making sure he lived. After careful monitoring, his temperature rose to a safe level and Beth decided she could safely examine his wounds. She gently pulled one arm out to view the burns at his wrist. Judging from the scarring he had been repeatedly tortured in some manner that had gone on for years. They looked like electrical burns of some type. She suddenly gasped as it hit her. The marks were consistent with being strapped in an electric chair. He had been electrocuted not once but many times. There was no telling what kind of internal or mental damage that could have caused. Beth walked over to her medicine cabinet and reached for an antibiotic. From the sounds of his lungs, he was sufficiently weakened to get pneumonia. she wanted to stop that before it happened. She was preparing to give him a shot when his hand gripped hers painfully.

"No more, please!..." His voice was hardly a whisper but filled with such anguish. What really surprised her was the strength of his grip. His adrenaline level had to be at an all-time high for someone in his condition to hold her like that.

"Shh, it's all right, this is just an antibiotic. I don't want you getting pneumonia. You're ill and you've been seriously hurt. I'm a doctor I just want to help."

"No more, please..." He said again. His hazel eyes stared at her pleading.

"Sam, Come help me." she called.

"Beth, what is it?" Sam was surprised to see the man staring at his wife and holding her arm.

"I think, he thinks I'm going to hurt him. Talk to him, see if you can get through to him."

"Hey kid, you don't have to worry about Beth. She's going to get you better."

The moment he heard the name he had searched the room looking for him. his eyes had followed the man into the room taking in his gray hair and tall stature. "Sam? No,.. dead?"

"Nah kid. I'm right here." Sam knelt down next to the bed and slowly but gently removed the hand from his wife's arm. The man was watching him with something akin to hope and his fingers just released her. "There that's it, you just need to relax. I won't let anyone hurt you. Beth just wants to help. You need to trust me. I promise."

He closed his eyes and tears came forth, he recalled hearing Sam's voice. I'm sorry kid, no one is going to hurt you again, that's a promise. "Where were you, Sam? I couldn't find you... They hurt me. I don't know why....Don't go again." Sobs shook his whole body and Sam lifted him up and hugged him close, as Beth gave him the shot.