Free Teleporter (a Hyllis family story #2) by Laurence Dahners

big one who’d been threatening Daum asked suspiciously, “Did one of them do something to Mr. Farley?”
    The smaller guard shook his head slowly, “No one even got close to Mr. Farley. You think I should sit him down?”
    Eva stepped forward, “He should be lying down! This looks like a stroke and keeping him upright decreases the blood flow to his brain even further.” She took Farley’s other arm and tugged him to the side, “Let’s get him lying down on this table here.”
    Uncertainly, the guard helped her maneuver him with his back to the table and then lay him down on it. Tarc dragged over another table to put under Farley’s feet, saying, “Should we be rubbing Mr. Farley’s carotid mom?”
    Eva shot Tarc a glance, saw his microscopic nod, then put her hands to Farley’s neck and began rubbing gently. “Yes, a gentle carotid massage might help.”
    Tarc released the back pressure he’d been holding on Farley’s artery, wondering whether he’d held it so long that Farley would have permanent effects or whether he would recover completely. He didn’t want to have crippled a man, but on the other hand, he didn’t want Farley to resume making their lives miserable.
    The bigger of the two guards stepped over to stare down at Farley’s face, “Aw, man, the side of his face is droopin’ like my granddad’s did when he had his stroke.”
    Eva said, “Yes, it looks pretty bad. But I’ve seen this trick with the carotid massage work before,” she gave Tarc a knowing glance. Making the guards think she’d saved Farley should earn them some good will.
    Tarc tilted his head slightly and gave a minute shrug. Farley didn’t seem to be coming around and Tarc was beginning to think he’d kept the pressure on long enough that it had caused permanent damage.
    Suddenly Daussie appeared and stepped up close to Farley’s head. Tarc assumed that she was probing Farley with her own talent and wondered whether she would be able to figure out what had actually happened. She kept her eyes on Farley for a moment then glanced up at her mother. “It’s a left middle cerebral stroke, isn’t it?”
    Astonishment washed over Tarc. How did she figure that out?! First of all, Tarc found it surprising enough that she knew the name of the artery. He knew its name because he’d just been studying it while wondering whether he could do something like this. Daussie however, must have committed the names of all the arteries in the brain to memory! Then he realized that she had arrived after he had let normal flow resume in the artery. If the flow is normal how had she been able to tell which artery had been blocked?
    Tarc sent his own ghost into Farley’s head. He immediately recognized that there was something different about the brain tissue in the area fed by the middle cerebral. It wasn’t very different, but he could imagine that Daussie found it easy to recognize that something had happened to that part of the brain. Still, without a blockage still present in the artery, he thought it was amazing that she could deduce that something had cut off the blood flow in that area and that was what had made the tissue sick.
    Daussie said, “He seems to be getting better though.” She cut her eyes up to Tarc, narrowing them suspiciously then glanced back at Eva’s hands where they still gently rubbed Farley’s neck. “Massaging his carotid seems to be helping a lot, isn’t it Mom?”
    Tarc sent his ghost back into Farley’s head. It was starting to get hard to tell which part of Farley’s brain had been different.
    Farley let out a groan.
    Eva said, “Yes, I think he’s going to recover! Let’s move him over to the treatment table.”
    To Tarc’s bewilderment, Eva soon had the two big guards picking Farley up and carrying him over to the big table near the kitchen where Eva usually treated patients. She continued massaging Farley’s neck the entire time she was bossing the two big men around.
    By the time they got