Doing No Harm (4 page)

“I’m a surgeon,” he told the woman as she tugged at his arm. “Leave me be!”

She understood him now. She sank down beside him, her bloody hands to her face. “I’ve been telling and telling my man to fix the stone steps to the cellar, but does he ever do anything but drink?”

By now, heads were popping out of store doorways. They drew back in as a man staggered toward Douglas, a stick in his hand, which he slammed down on the woman’s back, shouting in a language Douglas recognized as Gaelic.

Douglas leaped to his feet and grabbed the stick, forcing the man backward until he fell down in a sodden heap and made no move to get up. Douglas handed the stick to the woman, probably the drunkard’s wife. “Use it on him if he makes a move.”

“I daren’t,” she said softly.

“I wouldn’t mind,” the coachman said as he got down from his box and took the stick from her.

Douglas turned back to his unconscious patient, relieved to see that his jury-rigged tourniquet had done its duty. He took a long look at the compound fracture.

“I can reduce this,” he told the boy’s mother. “Which is your house?”

She pointed to a stone building with an unpainted door open and hanging onto its hinges for dear life. She struggled to her feet until Douglas gave her a hand up. Disturbed, he looked around at the small crowd, wondering why no one offered to help.

“What’s the matter with people here?” he asked the coachman in a low voice.

“No one lifts a finger for Highlanders,” he replied. “Nobody wants them.”

“I was better off at sea,” Douglas muttered under his breath. He picked up the boy and carried him toward the hovel faintly disguised as a house.

The mother hurried ahead of him and opened the door wider. He stood on the threshold, stared at the filth within, and turned around.

“Madam, I wouldn’t put a dog in there,” he snapped. “The poor beast would die of infection.”

Uncertain what to do, he walked back to the coachman. “Do you know … is there someplace clean in this pathetic village where I can treat this child?”

The coachman shook the stick at the man lying on the road, who was beginning to groan. “Wouldn’t know, sir. I just drive through to the Hare and Hound. It’s a noisy inn. You wouldn’t want to tend him there.”

“Can anyone here tell me where to take this boy?” Douglas asked, pitching his voice to hurricane strength, a voice used to shouting orders to be heard above the roar of cannons and the shrieks of wounded men on a bloody deck.

“Only one place for you to take Tommy Tavish,” one hardy soul told him, stepping out from the growing crowd. “  ’Tis Miss Olive Grant’s Tearoom.”

“Where?”

“Follow me.”

Chapter 4

I
t’s a rare delegation, comin’
down the road. I don’t think it’s luncheon they’ll be after.”

“My goodness, you’re right,” Olive Grant said to her customer.

Olive brushed her fingers against her spotless apron, the lace one she changed to once the luncheon simmered on the hob or roasted in the Rumford. She stepped into the doorway, door open to receive diners, now that the weather had turned warmer, and stared at the crowd coming her way.

Only an imbecile would have gaped in wonder, and Olive was no imbecile. A swift glance took in a tall man carrying a limp child in his arms. She looked closer at the bloody bandage, the foot turning in a direction not generally achievable, and then bones. She gulped and spoke to her scullery maid, not taking her eyes from the strange parade coming closer.

“Maeve! Take that piece of canvas from the scullery. You know the one. Put it on the little bed upstairs. Hurry now!”

Olive took a deep breath and stepped outside in time to hold the door wider as the tall man came inside. Because staring at the wounded child made her queasy, she looked at the man instead. What she saw reassured her. There was nothing in his expression of terror or worry, merely calm competence. She let her breath out slowly, less afraid.

“Someone told me this was the cleanest place in town,” he said by way of introduction.

“Next to Lady Telford’s big house, I daresay this is true,” she said, gesturing toward the stairs. “First door on the right.”

He didn’t hesitate to move swiftly up the stairs, calling over his shoulder, “Hot water, please, and towels.” She held her breath, but he ducked just in time to avoid banging his head on the turn of the stairs.

She hurried to do as he ordered and nearly ran into Mrs. Tavish, eyes wild and hands and face bloody. Olive took the woman by her arm and steered her in the direction of the kitchen, ignoring disapproving glances as she wished some of her fellow townsmen were less judgmental.

She sat Tommy’s mother down and reached for a cloth dipped in the hot water that Maeve, bless her reliable heart, had already poured into a deep basin. Olive squeezed out the towel and pressed it to Mrs. Tavish’s face, thinking to herself that there was as much grime as blood. The woman held the cloth to her face, taking comfort from the warmth.

Olive turned to Maeve. “Pour her tea and make her tidy,” she ordered. “I am going upstairs.”

Olive put several towels in the crook of her arm and picked up the basin. Minding her steps, she hurried up the familiar stairs, avoiding the squeaky treads from habit, and entered the room.

The tall man had taken bandage scissors to the unconscious boy’s trousers. Olive set down the basin on the little table beside the bed and draped the towels over the headboard. She saw the man’s open leather satchel, which had other scissors and tools she didn’t recognize, or possibly chose not to.

“I am Olive Grant,” she said. “And you, sir?”

“Captain Douglas Bowden,” he said without turning around. “Well, no, I am merely Douglas Bowden now, but I am a surgeon.”

He turned around then and gave her such a direct look, the kind of earnest inquiry she hadn’t seen since her father was alive.

“Are you squeamish, Miss Grant?” he asked.

“Aye,” she admitted, but then set the record straight. “However, I do not flinch from duty.”
Honestly, Olive, s
he thought, exasperated with herself.
You sound like a ninny
.

He smiled then. “I could have used a plain speaker like you during the war and saved myself enormous amounts of time. I need you now. Will you please keep the twist tight on my neck cloth?”

She looked at his neck, then realized he meant the bloody scrap he must have tightened around the boy’s leg.

She would have been embarrassed, but he wasn’t going to let her. “I don’t think any amount of laundry soap will ever make this clean again,” he told her, entirely at ease. “Put your fingers right by mine. Underneath them now. Keep up the pressure on the knot.”

Their hands touched and she tightened her grip when he let go.

“Excellent!” he said and rummaged in his satchel. He was even humming, which made her smile, even as she kept her grip on the ghastly tourniquet and wished she did not have to contemplate the bone ends protruding from torn skin.

“Are you going to have to … to … oh, my … amputate?” Better to know now, even if he thought her an idiot because her voice squeaked.

“Not if I can help it,” he said cheerfully.

With a clink of metal on metal, he pulled another pair of scissors from a cloth pouch he unrolled with one hand. Olive gasped and looked away from the saw and knives even longer than those in her kitchen, and probably sharper.

“My capital knives,” he said. “I won’t need them, except for this little bistoury. Hand me a small towel.”

She did as he asked with her free hand. He spread the towel by the boy’s leg and set the little curved knife on it, and the scissors.

“What … what …” Her mouth just wasn’t working.

“I’m going to lengthen this laceration a little, then snap that bone back in place. Young ones fare better from this sort of injury. Then I’ll start suturing. Hmm. Reach under my arms and see if you can find a bodkin about four inches long.”

She did as he asked, closer to a man than she had ever been in her life.

“There it is. Here now.” He teased her bloody fingers away from the improvised tourniquet and twisted in the steel bodkin, anchoring it with strips of bandage plaster. “It’ll stay in place now. I need your hands.”

Olive looked at him, struck again by his pleasant attitude, as her stomach did little flops. He even seemed to be enjoying himself.

“At least you introduced yourself,” she grumbled, which made him laugh.

“You don’t do surgery here more than once or twice a day?” he teased, which had the effect of slowing down her racing heart and steadying those hands he thought he needed.

“You, sir, are trying me,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

He pulled out one thin steel instrument with two hooks on the end. “Tenaculum,” he said as he handed it to her. “Go around on the other side of poor little Tommy Tavish and pull back the skin.”

She did as he said, tears in her eyes, fearful for Tommy. “I’m hurting him,” she whispered.

“He’s unconscious,” the surgeon reminded her. “If he comes around before I’m done, and I’ll work fast, just drop the tenaculum and hold him down.”

He must have seen the fear in her face, because Mr. Bowden or Captain Bowden or whatever he was put his free hand over hers and squeezed. “You’re a bonny lass,” he said, “and that’s all the Scottish I know.”

She had to laugh, her fear shoved back into a dark corner. The tenaculum tidily held back the skin. She watched in growing admiration as the surgeon worked quickly, every move decisive. She gasped when he snapped the bone in place and dabbed at the blood where he pointed.

She was aware that Maeve, her eyes huge, had come into the room, carrying more water in a brass can. The surgeon must have seen her from the corner of his eye.

“Aha! I need you too. You are …”

“Maeve Gibson,” the child quavered.

“Maeve, Maeve, what a pretty name,” Douglas Bowden said. “If I had a daughter, I would name her Maeve, but I would need a wife first, all things considered.”

Maeve put her hand to her mouth and giggled, the terror leaving her eyes. Olive looked at the surgeon, wondering how he knew just what to say.

He turned to Olive. “Can you spare a bed slat?”

“Take one from the end of my bed,” she told Maeve.

The child darted from the room and returned in a few moments with the length of wood.

“Excellent!” Douglas Bowden said as he continued to dab gently around the black sutures. “Is there a crowd assembled downstairs, my dear?”

“Tha wouldn’t believe the size of it,” Maeve declared.

“Take this slat and find a capable-looking man. I can recommend the coachman, if you’re at a loss.” He turned to Olive. “My dear, do you have an ax in your woodpile?”

“Indeed I do. How long do you want the splint?” Olive said.

“Twelve inches, for one, and three times that for the other. Maeve, can you do this? All of Scotland is depending on you.”

The scullery maid flashed him a smile and tore down the stairs with the slat.

“You are a remarkable manager of people,” Olive told him.

“I get what I want,” he replied, all complaisance, because he meant it. “He’s coming around, Miss Grant. It is Miss, isn’t it?”

“Indeed it is.”

Why that should have made her face go warm, Olive Grant couldn’t have said. She was thirty years old and long an antique virgin. No need to feel embarrassed about her lot in life. She turned her attention to Tommy, who was starting to moan now and tossing his head.

“Just sit down by his head and put your arms around him,” the surgeon said simply. “Just hug him. It feels so good when someone is terrified.”

By the time Tommy opened his eyes, Olive’s arms were tight around him. He was dirty and smelly, with hair so greasy that she should have been repelled. She felt Tommy’s long, shuddering sigh, followed by a sob, and then silence, as the surgeon put his hands gently on both sides of the boy’s face.

“You’ve been as brave as men I have cared for in the middle of battles,” Douglas Bowden said. “Tommy Tavish, you’re a wonder. Just hold still now, that’s a good lad.”

Maeve pounded up the stairs, followed by Tommy’s mother, moving slowly, exhausted with such effort in her late pregnancy. Olive ran next door to her own room and brought back a chair. Mrs. Tavish sank down gratefully, her face a study in worry and fright. Tears filled her eyes, but she remained silent.