We picked the kid up just after midnight. He was sitting by the road, resting against a telegraph pole.

'John, he's somebody’s son. Let's give him a lift,' Marsha said.

I don't usually take detours. Get to your destination, do the business and get back home to a cold beer. Still, we were probably his only chance of getting to safety before dawn.

I slowed the old blue Volvo. 'Where you headed, son?'

'Somewhere where there are people.'

'We’re trying for Jackson. That suit?'

He nodded and minute later he was snug in the back seat, next to the equipment.

'Coffee?' Marsha asked.

'Thanks. Easy on the milk.’

'Tired?' she asked, filling one of the screw-on thermos cups with Java. 'Nothing stopping you shutting your eyes for a spell. We aren't great conversationalists.'

The car lights picked up the brush holding back the desert on either side of the blacktop. Occasionally, the cold eyes of a lizard or coyote were caught in the beam unti they scuttled off.

We were still a good few hours from our destination, driving through a small town, when the kid began coughing. He couldn’t stop.

'Pull over, John.'

We sat him on the sidewalk. In the cold night air, his breath rasped out in little clouds. The sodium streetlights lit the shivers running through his body, the sweat on his brow.

'Nothing to drink for a while I expect,' Marsha said.

The kid nodded and began coughing again.

'He needs help, John.'

I looked up and down the street. The little houses were dark, the good citizens asleep in their beds. No insomniacs here.

A copper plate caught my eye.

'There's a Dr Henry lives here. He should be used to late night calls.'

The Doc came straight to the bell.

'I'm not a medical man,' he kept saying as we walked to the car. 'My PhD is in Creative Writing.'

The guy was confused, half asleep.

'What’s all this stuff?' he asked, nodding at the equipment on the back seat.

One whack with the blackjack put him out. I shoved in the needles and attached the tubes.

At first the kid was too weak to come to the car, so Marsha fed him by mouth.

Shared by three of us it was a pretty light supper. We'd find more food on the road.