Doing No Harm (35 page)

“Let’s go wake up Mr. Bowden.”

They crossed the empty street, Flora pressing close to her. She wondered what terrors the child was revisiting, to walk in the dark by herself.

“I believe Mr. Bowden keeps his house unlocked,” she said. Sure enough, the door opened at her touch. She sat Flora on one of the chairs in the first room that had become his surgery waiting room.

She took her own deep breath and went up the stairs quietly, startled to hear Douglas talking. She recalled the few times she had wakened him from his dreams in her own house, when Tommy lay so desperately ill, and he had his own bruises and black eye.

Olive listened a moment to a reasonable man talking to patients. As she listened, her terror gave way to compassion. She wondered how many dead men came to him each night in his dreams, pleading for his help, demanding his services. She stood there with her hand on the doorknob as she finally understood this complex man who only wanted some peace. Treaties could be signed, Napoleon sent far away to St. Helena Island, and navies and armies reduced, but Douglas Bowden’s war still raged.

“They don’t ever let you alone, do they, Doug?” she whispered. “How do you even dare close your eyes?”

Chapter 32

D
oug
?”

He sat up in bed, mentally hushing the scores of patients that had grouped themselves around him. He almost told Olive to mind her steps so she did not tread on any of the wounded, but he woke up fully before he committed that felony which could probably get him tossed into an asylum.

No one else called him Doug. He shook his head to clear the mental fog, and saw Olive Grant before him, dressed, but her hair wild, curly, and magnificent. “What in the world …”

“It’s Flora’s gran,” Olive said. She didn’t come any closer, which should have relieved him but didn’t. For one irrational moment, he wanted to grab her, sit her down beside him, and babble out his own night terrors about patients that refused to let him alone.

“I’ll be downstairs in a moment. Get my satchel. You know where it is,” he ordered, in control again. He was out of bed and looking for his trousers before she even left the room.

He stuffed his nightshirt into his trousers and scuffed his sockless feet into his shoes, thinking of the many times throughout his life that he had wakened from terror, only to find himself in greater terror. Living or dead, he was doomed and condemned to be a surgeon. Hopefully, Olive had not heard him pleading and cajoling his stubborn corpses.

He ran down the stairs, snatching up the satchel that Olive held out to him. He gave her a quick glance and saw something disturbing in her eyes. He wondered if she had heard him talking and figured out just who he was talking to. Well, never mind. He would be leaving soon enough.

He touched Flora’s head and told her he would do his best and ran to the hovel that Gran shared with Flora, Olive and the child right behind him.

He dropped to his knees beside the dying woman. He could tell from the door that she hadn’t long, simply by hearing her tortured breathing, with its gaps and rattles. All he could do was cradle her head in his arms, and he did that, holding her close, hoping she was beyond terror now and fixed on a more peaceful place. He hoped it was her beloved highland glen, before eviction, soldiers, and fire arrived.

As soon as he held her, she relaxed and sighed. Death may have marched beside her, like troops harrying her family away, but she burrowed closer to him.

“We have you, Gran,” he whispered. “Flora is here, and by all that is holy, we will keep her safe. Come closer, Flora.”

Olive gave the child a gentle push forward. Flora hesitated and then sat down beside Douglas. In the space of a few more breaths, Flora rested her head on Gran’s stomach. Gran couldn’t move her hand, but Olive picked it up and placed it on Flora.

“You can’t … ,” Olive began, her voice soft and close to his ear.

“No. There is nothing I can do but hold her and watch her die,” he whispered back. “All my skills are useless at this moment.”

Olive surprised him then, as he already knew she had the capacity to do. She had been surprising and delighting him from the first day he threw himself at her mercy, an injured boy in his arms. “Hush, Doug,” she said, her lips on his ear now, which gave him a pleasant thrill, oddly out of place in the middle of an old woman’s dying, but suddenly vital to every breath he drew. “Almost the first thing you told me was that the hurt and wounded just want a calming hand. Sometimes that is all the medicine a body needs.”

She was right. For the first time in his busy life, he wanted desperately to apply the remedy to himself. He couldn’t, because Gran needed him right now. He glanced down at Flora, who clutched her gran, the only person in the world she thought could help her. He had seen children like her in war-numbed areas, nearly incapacitated when their only sure rock and anchor died before their eyes.

“Flora, look at me,” he said.

She raised tear-filled eyes to his.

“Know this: When your gran is gone, you will not be left alone.”

“It happened before,” she said, her voice so soft he could barely hear her. “No one helped us.”

“Those days are over, my dear. There is an entire town that will help you now.”

He made the mistake of glancing at Olive. She was watching his eyes, his face, not Flora’s. “You will not be left alone,” Olive said, but she wasn’t looking at Flora.

She knows
, he thought.
By all that’s holy, she knows. What must she think of me?

His anguished question remained unanswered because Gran stiffened in his arms, tried to reach for Flora, and died. He closed her eyes, and Flora shrieked and began to shake the old woman. Olive took her by the arms, but instead of pulling her away, she enveloped the child in her arms and included the dead woman in their embrace.

“How is it that you always know to do the right thing?” he asked.

Olive looked up at him. “Prove it to me. Trust me,” she said.

He broke their gaze, too ashamed to look at her or say anything. He just sat there holding the old woman who had borne too much, with her granddaughter and the kind lady holding her too. With painful clarity, he realized he might be the most wounded of them all.

Flora began to keen then, the high-pitched sound similar to something he had heard in North Africa. Gently, Olive pulled the child away from her grandmother and into her own arms. She rocked back and forth until Flora was silent.

Grateful he had something to do, Douglas picked up the woman and set her on the bed. He arranged her hands, sorry to the depths of his heart that she could not have died in her own bed, in her own glen, and not in a distant town.

He turned to Flora, who watched him with dull eyes now. “When morning comes, I will ask Mrs. Tavish to take care of Gran. Right now, though, where would you like to go, Flora?”

He was so certain that she would speak Miss Grant’s name that he was momentarily taken aback when she whispered, “Mrs. Dougall.”

Olive was much quicker than he. She hugged Flora and said, “That is a wonderful idea. Would you like Mr. Bowden to fetch her?”

Flora nodded. She turned anxious eyes on him. “What will she do?”

Douglas touched the child’s cheek. “I think she will knock me down and trample me in her hurry to get here and hold you, missy. I also believe she will include Pudding, her mother, and the other kittens.”

Flora smiled at that image, as he hoped she would. He drew the coverlet over Gran. He stood there a moment looking down and wishing that life was fair and kind, and then he went across the street to the Hare and Hound. He saw a light on and wasn’t surprised to see Brighid Dougall peering back at him through the window by the door. He knew the first coach arrived shortly after six o’clock from Dundrennan, and her yeast buns, hot and drenched in melted butter and sugar, certainly didn’t make themselves.

She let him in, giving him her full attention, even though he knew she was busy with predawn preparation. Her eyes misted when he told her what had happened. When he told her of Flora’s request, her lips began to tremble.

“I had a wee lass once,” she said. “But you already know that. You’ve seen Flora’s dresses.”

“I think you are going to have another wee lass, if it won’t be a burden.”

“No burden,” she assured him, all business now. “You bring her over here with her clothes and her kittens. I’ll have her help me finish these buns. Then we’ll find a nice room.” She sat down suddenly as though she had lost all strength and put her hands over her eyes. “Have you ever prayed really hard for something, Mr. Bowden?”

He couldn’t think of a time, but he knew it wasn’t a question that needed answering. He left her there and went back to Gran’s little place, a house that he knew belonged to the Church of Scotland, one of several hovels parceled out to the Highlanders who straggled south.

Flora was dressed and ready to go when he returned. Her few possessions were tied in a sheet that she kept lifting to her face to dry her eyes. She sat on Olive’s lap in the room’s only chair, looking young, small, frightened, and far from Edgar’s most engaging entrepreneur. Olive had rounded up the kittens and mama cat into a basket.

Douglas knelt by the chair. “Mrs. Dougall didn’t trample me down only because she is making her buns for the six o’clock coach.”

His reward was a tiny smile. “Does she need some help in the kitchen? I helped her once before.”

“So she told me. Aye, she can use your help. And then she’ll find a nice room for you. Shall we go?”

He stood up and held out his hand. She hesitated only a second before putting her hand in his. She tugged on his hand. “Gran got me to a good place, didn’t she?”

“The best place. We’ll take care of things here.”

The door to the Hare and Hound was wide open, with both Dougalls standing there. “It’s early but you’re welcome here, lassie,” the innkeeper said, his voice none too steady.

Whatever resolve Flora had mustered dissolved at the sight of Brighid Dougall’s open arms. With a sob, she dropped her bundle and threw herself into the woman’s embrace. Douglas stood there a moment, relieved beyond words, as Brighid picked her up and murmured words of comfort.
Olive, do that for me
, he thought, then banished the idea. He was a grown man, after all.

He stood in the street, tired down to his toenails. He knew the morning would bring the women to Gran’s place to wash her body, try to find a dress that wasn’t in tatters, and prepare her for the long sleep. He wasn’t needed there; this was now the women’s domain. He wondered if Flora would spare him one of the other kittens, then reminded himself that he was leaving.

He glanced at the tearoom, seeing lights on. Probably despairing of any return to sleep, he imagined Olive was in the kitchen, preparing for a new day. He wanted to talk to her, to make light of whatever she had discovered about his dreams, but he knew any woman as smart and practical as Olive Grant would see right through his paper-thin disclaimer.

There was nowhere to go but back to his house. He couldn’t face a return to bed. Just the thought made him break out in sweat, maybe even afraid that if he opened the door, his dead men would tumble out. No, better to remain below deck and wrap bandages or inventory his medicines.

He sat on a chair in his surgery waiting room and dozed until he could go to Olive’s tearoom with a crowd of workers and their families, preparing for a new day of work in the newly resurrected ship yard. He could sit with them and not have to face any look of concern or pity on Olive’s pretty face.

She knows
, he thought in misery,
she knows
.