Sawbones (11 page)

“Were there any defining features to the Indians you saw? Their dress? Scars?”

I shook my head. “I do not remember. It happened so fast. The cattle were stampeding, throwing up dust.”

Mackenzie nodded, and with no further information to be gleaned, lost interest in me. “Mount up!”

The corporal handed Mackenzie the reins to his horse. “Captain, do as the doctor instructs. I need you back on your feet. Lieutenant Colonel Foster will be in charge while I'm gone.” He mounted his horse. “I leave it to you to give direction to Lieutenant Kindle and your regiment.” Mackenzie waved his arm forward and kicked his horse into a canter. His regiment followed. Soon, they were lost in the rain.

“Lieutenant Kindle!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Round up as many cattle as you can find in three days and return with them to the fort. You'll probably find most of them near water.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lieutenant Kindle saluted, which Kindle returned, and mounted his horse. “Regiment! Mount up!”

Sergeant Washington materialized. “Suh? I've put two guns in the wagon for you and some ammunition. Is there anything I can do for you before we leave?”

“No, thank you, Sergeant.”

Washington saluted Kindle and tipped his hat to me before mounting his horse and riding off with the rest. As their column rode out of sight, uneasiness settled over me. We were at the mercy of any band of Indians that might stumble upon us. Two rifles, my pistol, Kindle's pistol, and a secreted knife would hardly be enough to protect us from savages such as I saw yesterday.

When Kindle's regiment rode over the horizon and out of sight, they took his energy with them. He sagged, and for a terrifying moment, I thought he was going to collapse.

“Please, don't swoon!” I rushed over and grasped his arm. “I'll never get you up from the ground by myself.”

“Men don't
swoon
. We fall.” Despite the irritation in his voice, he allowed me to help him to the schooner.

“Lean against the back, here.” I hurried into the wagon and tossed out the two crates Maureen and I had used for makeshift tables at night. I jumped out, splashing mud on us. “Sorry.” I used the crates to make crude steps for Kindle to use.

“I'm not sure I can.” His breathing was shallow, his face frightfully pale.

“You must try.” I climbed back into the schooner and offered my hand. Holding on to my hand, he stepped onto the lower crate with his good leg and pulled the injured leg up. He stood for a moment, breathing deeply, the strength in his hand crushing my knuckles. He repeated the actions onto the next step and was standing, triumphant and pale, on the bed of the schooner when his good leg buckled, tumbling him forward and taking me down with him. There was a sharp pain in my shoulder as it connected with the edge of a trunk and I knew no more.

I woke, gasping for air, the weight of Kindle's body crushing my chest. Panic-stricken, I tried to push him off. Excruciating pain shot through my shoulder and I realized my left arm was numb and useless. I tried to push Kindle off with my right arm to no avail.

“Captain Kindle!”

His head was on my injured left shoulder and turned away. “Captain!” I reached my right hand across and tried to slap his face. “William!” He didn't move.

“Forgive me.” I grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled his head off my shoulder and shook his head. “William! Wake up!”

His face had taken on the gray tinge that so often preceded death. I dropped his head back on my shoulder and searched his neck for a pulse. Relief shot through me when I found it, but it was faint. “Damn you, Captain. You are
not
going to die on me!”

It was futile to attempt to push him off; he was too heavy and I was weak from lack of food. My useful arm was heavy, as if filled with lead. The other was deadened. There was hardly enough room on the floor of the schooner for one person, let alone enough to wiggle myself from under Kindle, but I tried anyway. I had made little progress for what seemed like an eternity of trying when I heard an unknown voice.

“God almighty! Excuse me, Captain!”

“Wait! Who's there?” I peeked over Kindle's shoulder and saw a soldier standing at the end of the wagon, his mouth gaping open and his face flaming red.

“I didn't mean to disturb,” he said, moving off.

“NO! Come back here and help me!”

“I doubt Captain Kindle…”

“Good God, man! This isn't what you think. Captain Kindle is unconscious. Get in here and get him off of me. He is injured and I need to help him!”

The man was hopeless. He stared at the floor of the wagon. “How?”

“Go through the front and pull me out from under him.” Comprehension dawned and soon the man was in the wagon and had grasped me under the arms and was pulling. My scream scared the man half to death and he dropped me when I was mostly free from Kindle.

“God Almighty, ma'am. You're bleeding!”

The front of my dress was soaked with blood. A large stain was centered over my heart, precisely where Kindle's shoulder lain. “It is Captain Kindle's blood, not mine,” I said. “Turn him over. Quickly. Careful of his shoulder and leg.”

“What's going on here, Sullivan?”

Four soldiers were crowded around the end of the wagon. “Captain Kindle is hurt,” Sullivan replied.

“We know that. Did'ja already forget the ten miles of mud we just rode through to bring him back?”

“How long will it take us to get to the fort?” With my one good arm, I folded clean linen into a thick bandage and pressed it to Kindle's shoulder.

“It took us three hours to get here. The horses need to rest.”

“We need to leave now.”

“What's wrong with your arm?” Sullivan asked.

“Helping Captain Kindle is of the upmost importance at the moment. My shoulder can wait. I will need all of your help.”

One look at Kindle and the men understood what I left unsaid. They performed each of my directives without question.

Sherman's ambulance had been modified from a wagon used to transfer wounded soldiers in the war to part office, part bedroom. A wooden bench along one side of the wagon covered with a thin mattress served as his bed. On the other side a small desk and bench were attached to the floor and side of the wagon. Before that was an open space, presumably for his trunks. Behind the driver's bench were two built-in chairs original to the ambulance that would have been the seats for the steward and nurse or doctor.

With great care, the men moved Kindle to the bed, and with haste, moved my trunks full of medicine and clothes. I had a pang at the thought of leaving the rest of my possessions on the plains for looting by others but quickly chastised myself for my greediness. I could buy whatever I needed again. My thoughts from then on, and for days to come, turned solely to saving William Kindle's life.

I sat next to Kindle on one of the trunks. I held his hand, dabbed his face with a wet cloth, and spoke to him in a soothing voice about nothing as the ambulance struggled through the mud across the plains. I cleaned his wounds and changed the bandages. When he regained a semblance of consciousness, I forced him to drink water, followed by a dose of laudanum. He murmured, incoherently for a while, then opened his eyes and looked straight at me. Confusion followed by recognition and a smile. “You,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Yes, Captain. I'm here. We will be at the fort soon.”

It was not soon enough for me. By the time we arrived at Fort Richardson, the sun had set behind the dark storm clouds, creating a night darker than any I had seen before. The fort looked forlorn and abandoned in the rain-shrouded darkness, the only proof of life being windows of faint candlelight struggling to break through the inky morass.

I readied Kindle and myself for arrival as well as I could with one arm. My left arm was still numb and the pain in my shoulder was excruciating. I determined it was dislocated, a much better prognosis than the break I initially feared. I could not reset it alone, nor did I trust any of the soldiers accompanying us to help me. I hoped there would be a nurse at the post hospital competent enough to help.

Flashes of lightning and booms of thunder heralded our arrival. Men waiting under the protective awning of the hospital porch ducked their heads and raced into the pouring rain to remove Kindle from the ambulance. Soon, my feeble attempts at helping were shunted aside and I stood and stared as the hospital appeared and disappeared with each blink of lightning. The flashing lightning and rumble of thunder gave the long, stone building a sinister air.

A bull of a man with a bushy mustache and round spectacles stood at the top of the steps and yelled at me through the rain. “Ma'am?”

I shook off my shock at the looming hospital and followed him inside.

“This way,” he said, and led us to the right and into the north wing of the hospital.

“Do you have a surgery table?”

“Yes.”

“Put him there and bring as many lights as possible. I need boiling water as well. Sullivan, take a man and bring my medical trunk, please.”

The wing was a large open space partitioned off by crude walls made of wire, wooden posts, and standard-issue Army blankets. The soldiers placed Kindle on the area serving as the operating theater and went in search of lamps. I stopped the steward with my good arm. “I need your assistance.”

“Of course.”

We retreated into another curtained area. “Have you ever set a shoulder?” I rubbed my left shoulder.

“Yes.”

I lay down on the cot and bent my elbow at a ninety-degree angle. “Go on.”

He gently held my arm, moved it across my chest and back. He extended it past my body and perpendicular to the floor, and with a jolt of pain more excruciating than anything I ever felt before, it popped back into place. Relief was immediate, though it took a minute for me to catch my breath. “Thank you.” I rolled my shoulder and flexed my tingling fingers. Full feeling would take time but at least I would be able to use my arm. I sat up. The steward's eyes were wide.

“What? Did I scream?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Sorry.”

Four men were standing back from the table, holding oil lanterns, eyes as wide as the steward's. “What is the matter? Surely you've heard a woman scream before.”

“Yes, ma'am,” one man said. “Ain't ever heard one cuss.”

“Did I? I am sure God will forgive me.” I looked to the steward. “Will you check on the boiling water? I also need as many clean bandages as you can find.”

The steward nodded and left. I directed the soldiers with the lanterns to the other side of the table and asked one to hold his light up to Kindle's face. The yellow glow from the lantern made Kindle's complexion look somewhat better. I lifted the bandage covering Kindle's shoulder wound and found it slowly seeping blood.

I appraised the men standing around me. “I don't suppose any of you are a nurse.”

A chorus of “No, ma'am”s was faint under the sound of rain pounding on the roof. “I didn't think so. Is there a nurse here tonight?”

Blank, uneasy stares greeted my question.

“I can help.”

A Negro woman stood in the doorway of the makeshift room. She was taller than I and had a regal bearing more common in the upper echelons of New York society than former slaves. A white apron, stained brown, protected her dress, which, even in the semidarkness surrounding her, I could tell was well made and rich in color, if a little threadbare. A multicolored cloth was wound around her head in an impressive turban. Though her eyes never left my face I knew she had taken my measure from top to bottom. How I fared in this measurement I could not tell, nor did I care.

“You have nursing experience?”

“I have helped in the hospital for months, ma'am.”

Sullivan spoke up. “I don't think sitting by the bedside of dying niggers qualifies you to help operate on the captain.”

“Would you like to help instead?” He was angry at my rebuke but said nothing. “What is your name?” I asked the woman.

“Caro.”

“Take off your apron and follow me.”

She followed me to the basin where we washed our hands. “You will hand me instruments when I ask for them and clean blood from the wound with a clean cloth when I ask.”

She nodded and I handed her a towel to dry her hands. “Do not touch any part of your clothes now that your hands are clean.”

We returned to the table and I explained to her briefly what each instrument was called and when I might need it. She listened silently, never taking her eyes from the instruments. When I was finished she only nodded.

“Miss Elliston!”

A dripping wet General Sherman stood in the doorway of the curtained area, a look of astonishment and anger on his face.

“General Sherman, a pleasure to see you again.”

“What do you think you're doing?”

“Preparing to remove a bullet from Captain Kindle's shoulder.”

“Where is Dr. Welch?”

“I don't know who that is.”

“I wasn't asking you.”

The steward returned with the water and bandages. “Dr. Welch stepped out.”

“Stepped out where?” Sherman roared.

“He didn't say, sir.”

“It matters not,” I said. “Captain Kindle is
my
patient and the surgery cannot wait. You are welcome to either leave the room or grab a lantern.”

The soldiers in the room went still and silent, almost as if they were holding their breath. In two strides Sherman had wrested the lantern from the soldier at Kindle's head and stood erect, holding it and glaring at me with his blazing blue eyes.

I smiled up at Sherman. “Let us begin.”

I remember Kindle's surgery in great detail, from the incision to removing the bullet to cleaning the field and to stitching the wound. When I tied off the final stitch, the rush of energy required each time I performed surgery evaporated as suddenly as it occurred. I struggled for mental coherence lest I lose the trust of the men who surrounded me. I directed everyone without mercy and with what I suspect with much more fire than necessary. With fresh bandages soaked in carbolic acid on his shoulder and thigh, Kindle was soon settled on a cot topped by a straw-filled mattress and I in a straight-back wooden chair next to it.

A touch on my shoulder woke me. I looked around, disoriented. A small beam of light from a lantern shone on a man who was sleeping peacefully in front of me. I stood and leaned over him. I lifted his wrist and took his pulse while my own racing heart slowed and my senses returned.

Kindle. Fort Richardson.

Maureen.

Anna.

I swallowed my nausea and stood upright.

The steward stood next to my chair, holding out a tin mug of coffee.

I took it gratefully. “Thank you.”

“Don't thank me until you've had a taste.”

It was horrid and my faced showed it.

“I've never learned to make a good cup, and the dregs we have here don't help.”

“Thank you anyway.” I forced myself to take another drink. It was still vile.

“How is he?”

“His color has improved and his breathing is steady. Good signs.”

“How's your shoulder?”

My arm was resting across my abdomen in Kindle's sling. “Stiff.”

“Let me sit with the captain while you get some rest.”

“No, thank you. I am fine.”

“It is General Sherman's orders.”

“Is it?”

“He thought with what you've been through…”

I wanted to accept his offer, find a bed, pull a blanket over my head, and mourn Maureen, Cornelius, and Anna. God, how I hoped Anna was dead and not being violated. I closed my eyes as images of what might be happening to my young friend flickered in my mind, alternating between the phantasmagorias of Anna's abuse, Maureen's face, Cornelius's gaping chest, Herr Schlek's severed head, the baby.

I inhaled to stave off my threatening tears. No, I did not want to be alone to think. Not yet.

“What time is it?”

“Midnight.”

I placed my cup on the small wooden table next to Kindle's bed and with one hand freshened the damp cloth I used to mop his fevered brow. “With all due respect to General Sherman's orders, I thank you, but I will stay with him through the night. This is a critical time. I should be here. And your coffee will keep me up for hours, I fear.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No, thank you.”

As the man left the curtained area I stopped him. “What is your name?”

“Waterman. Corporal Waterman.”