The question had been asked and answered a dozen times since Griff had been brought here a month before.
“Yes. I’m Jenny Carmichael, Damien’s sister.”
“How … how did I get here, and where is here?”
“You are in our townhouse in Sunderland, Maryland. We … Damien found you in a field hospital and brought you here.”
“My legs. They feel on fire. Will … will I ever walk again?”
Another question, always asked, for which no true answer existed. Jenny sighed, then made the usual reply. “There’s no reason to think you won’t. I have been massaging your legs, keeping them supple so the muscles will not go lax atrophy, the doctors call it.”
“Who is my doctor?”
A fleeting smile touched Jenny’s lips. “I am for the time being. I work at the hospital and have a chance to tap all the doctors’ brains about your condition.”
“The war … then it is still going on?”
“Yes. Tragically so. Grant has Lee nearly beaten. He’s bombarding Richmond.” Her own anxiety for the conflict to end overcame Jenny. “Oh, how I pray it will soon end.”
“Yes. Then I can go home.” He read the hurt in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Jenny. Truly I am. But I want to see my wife and son, my plantation.”
“I know. It’s only—”
“Why do you take the risk? You must be wasting a lot of your life caring for me like this. Why?”
“It’s … it’s because … I love you so. I suppose I never got over my little-girl crush on you.”
Griff smiled gently. “I’m a lucky man. Two beautiful women love me and I can spend time with both.”
“Don’t make fun of me,” Jenny pleaded.
“I’m not. I mean that. If only I didn’t hurt so much, all the time it seems. Where is Damien?”
“At the front again. He was here a week ago. Official business to Washington and he took time to drop down and look in on you.”
“I … I don’t recall it.”
“It was one of your bad spells. Fever and restlessness.”
“I don’t want to be a burden. Why don’t you put me in the regular hospital?”
“Officially you don’t exist. That’s the way Damien put it. You would be a prisoner and would receive only minimal treatment. I know, I’ve … seen what they do to Confederate captives.”
“Will I ever be able to repay you two for all you’ve done?”
“Don’t worry yourself about that. Only get well and we can talk about the future then.”
“I’ll try, Jenny. You can believe I will.”
Jenny finished her shaving and put away the bowl and razor. When she turned back to the bed, Griff’s eyes had gone blank again and he swayed in his upright position. Gently she eased him back onto the pillow and drew up the covers. Immediately, the tears began to slide down her cheeks once more.
Chapter Ten
NOVEMBER CAME, AND with it the tragedy of Sherman’s final advance to Charleston. The Confederacy had been cut in half and reeled under the combined assaults of two mighty armies, both with superior lines of supply, inexhaustible quantities of men and material. Both operated deep in the heart of their opponent’s territory, demoralizing the civilian and military population alike. Griffin Stark continued to drift in and out of reality. The wound in his side healed. Then the right shoulder closed and ceased to suppurate. Even so, fever continued to demolish what gains seemed to be made. Damien Carmichael had been assigned to the spearhead of the Union forces closing in on Richmond. Talk in Maryland turned to the war being over by Christmas. But Lee still had a few surprises. Griff’s status remained unclear. Through Damien’s skillful contriving, his identity remained a secret. The neighbors, some of whom had taken to spelling Jenny in her home-nursing task, knew him as Captain Bradford from Michigan. His frequent bouts of delirium called forth their sympathy and their willing assistance gave Jenny more chance to snatch much-needed rest. Exhausted, on one cold evening in February, Jenny hurried on her way home from the hospital.
Although the war had slowed in the bitter grip of winter, the casualties continued to arrive in great number. Under her double duty the young girl sagged with fatigue, and she seemed constantly in need of sleep and rest. Her mind turned to thoughts of the evening meal. If Griff was awake and rational, she’d fix him pork chops for supper. If not, more of the eternal chicken soup. She would do up two trays, her plans ran on, and they could eat together at his bedside. An urgent-sounding voice interrupted her contemplations.
“Jenny! Thank goodness I’ve found you, Jenny,” Mrs. Dockerty, the woman from next door, declared, her face lined with worry.
Immediately Jenny sensed disaster. She had left the woman watching Griff while she went to work. “What is it, Mrs. Dockerty?”
“It’s the young man, Jenny. He … he’s burning up. Regular raging fever it is. And his legs are all swollen.”
Jenny put trembling fingers to her lips. Griff! He had been doing so well... but now what? Anguish twisted a knife blade in her heart. “T-thank you, Mrs. Dockerty.” Despite her fatigue, Jenny began to run.
“Look out! On the right there. Get ’em men!” Griff’s words came harsh from a parched throat. His face was flushed and large, oily droplets of sweat poured down his brow and made his body shiny. Naked, his nightshirt wadded up to his armpits, he had thrown off his covers and thrashed on the bed in the grip of nightmarish phantoms. In a gesture reminiscent of a saber slash, he threw one arm wide.
“The cannon! Cut your way through to the cannon, boys, or we’ll all die!” he cried out. “Oh! Oh, the blood! It’s grapeshot … pull back!”
Weary, tormented by his vivid words of fighting and death, Jenny suppressed her desire to cover her face with her hands and sob until tears would no longer come. She splashed water into a porcelain basin, grabbed up a small towel from the washstand, and hurried to Griff’s side. The poorly heated room had kept the liquid icy cold, she thankfully noted when she immersed the square of cloth and wrung it out. Gently she applied it to Griff’s head. What was it Mrs. Dockerty had said about his legs? That they were swollen. A new fear invaded Jenny’s mind. With her free hand she reached out and touched the angry red flesh that stretched tightly on his left leg.
The heat that radiated from the afflicted area did not disturb her so much as the liquid consistency she felt below the skin. Something had gone terribly wrong. His right knee had enlarged, too, now resembling a small pumpkin in size and color. The situation went far beyond her limited medical knowledge. What to do? She refreshed the cold compress and put it on Griff’s head, then went to the back door.
In the backyard next over the Dockerty boy played with some friends. Jenny forced down her anxiety and called to him.
“Tommy. Run to the hospital and ask for Doctor Sutherland. Tell him I sent you and that there is an emergency. He must come here at once.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the freckle-faced lad replied. He scampered out of the yard, his companions trailing him, pelting the boy with snowballs. The air filled with their high, thin laughter.
When Dr. Sutherland arrived, he made no comment about a military patient receiving private care. Enough of that went on, with families or wealthy Samaritans willingly taking some of the strain off the overcrowded facilities. He went immediately to the patient.
If anything, Jenny thought with a sinking sensation, Griff had grown worse in the twenty minutes it had taken for the doctor to get there. His verbal explosions had turned to incoherent mutterings. Fortunately, the nonsense sounds did not betray his Georgia accent. Dr. Sutherland bent low and prodded at the inflamed areas. Griff screamed and writhed on the bed.
“What is it, Doctor?”
“I am afraid it is something most serious, my dear. Small areas of putrefaction have formed in pockets along the bone, in such a way they cannot drain through the channel provided. Ultimately they will burst and gangrene will set in. He should have had these amputated a long time ago.”
&n
bsp; “Oh, no. Isn’t there any other way?”
“There is one radical solution that is used in some countries. Although in cases of osteomyelitis, amputation is the only sure cure.”
“What is it? Surely anything is better than removing his limbs.”
“We run the risk of spreading the infection through his blood and bringing about an excruciatingly painful death. The technique I refer to is one in which the wound is surgically reopened and the bone scraped, working upward through the entire area until all pockets of pus are broken free. Then the incision is packed in a manner that will let it heal from the bone up. All most controversial, Miss Carmichael.”
“Please, Doctor, won’t you try it?”
“I’ve only seen it performed twice, in Zurich. I’ve never done it.”
“It’s his only chance to ever walk again. Please do it.”
Dr. Sutherland looked at the anguished face of the young woman whose dedication in the hospital had generated admiration in him and a sense of rightness regarding her work. He read, too, her deep concern for the ravaged man on the bed. It went beyond a nurse’s compassion for a patient. He sighed heavily and began a mental review of the process.
“Will you assist me, Miss Carmichael?”
Jenny swallowed around the lump in her throat. “Yes, Doctor.”
“Fine.” He took a small note pad from his black medical bag and scribbled on it. “Here’s a list of things I will need from the hospital. The most important thing is the boiled moss for the packings. Make sure they give you a fresh batch. When you return, we will begin.”
Damien Carmichael looked across the snowy field at the bedraggled Confederate positions. Here and there in the no man’s land between, a body humped under a layer of snow. Shell holes made ugly black scars on the wide expanse of white. His thoughts were far away, though, in his native Maryland. How was Griff Stark faring? Would his closeness present an impossible problem for Jenny? Impressionable and passionate at seventeen, Jenny would find it hard to control her emotions with Griff so near. He had not received a letter in a week. By itself, that meant nothing, though he couldn’t help worrying. Snow squeaked and crunched under approaching boot soles and snapped his attention back to the present.
“Good afternoon, Major.”
“Oh, I didn’t see you coming up, General. The Rebels are quiet today.”
Ulysses Grant produced a grim smile. “That won’t be for long. This is their country, remember. They can operate in this sort of weather far better than we. I didn’t come up to discuss tactical options, though. I came on a personal matter. I understand that you attended the Academy with a young man named Stark … Griffin Stark.”
“Yes, sir, I did. We also attended the intelligence training together.”
“Recently, too, didn’t you have occasion to identify his body and certify his death?”
A cold spike of unease touched Damien’s heart. “Yes, sir. I had that sorrowful task. Griff was my friend.” Damien emphasized the word.
“So you are certain it was Stark?”
Alarms clamored in Damien’s brain. “Yes, sir. Positive. Why? Is anything wrong?”
“No. Only a Mr. Kane in the War Department in Washington sent an inquiry to me requesting I verify Major Stark’s death. Why … I am not certain.”
“Kane? I’m not familiar with the name. I wonder what he wanted that for?”
“So do I, Major. Oh, by the way, I also wanted to be the first to extend congratulations. Your name is on the top of the list for lieutenant colonel. It will all become official the day after tomorrow.”
“Why … thank you, sir.” It should have been Griff getting that promotion, he thought sorrowfully.
“By way of celebration, you might drop by my tent tonight for a little whiskey and a cigar.”
“I’d be honored, sir.”
“About eight, then?”
No amount of chloroform could deaden the incredible pain from the scraping operation. Time and again Griffin Stark screamed out in his comatose state and feebly attempted to rise. Each note of his agony tore at Jenny Carmichael. Her hands trembled and waves of nausea cramped her stomach by the time the doctor finished with Griff’s left leg and began to close the incision with catgut sutures. Then they started on the right knee.
“Ah-ha! Look what we have here,” Dr. Sutherland exclaimed with the sort of glee a child exhibits on Christmas day. A thick stream of yellow-green pus squirted from under Griff’s patella and splattered on the doctor’s white smock. He seized the triangular bone and squeezed violently. More infected matter sprayed from the incision and Griff shrieked in unconscious agony.
Immediately, Jenny’s knees went slack and she staggered away from the bed, barely making it to the glazed crockery chamber pot in time before she vomited up the sour contents of her stomach. She gagged and retched again, then cleansed her mouth with a wet cloth. A deep breath and momentary pause to let her pulse stop racing, then she returned to aid the physician.
“Not long now. It looks like a clean job so far. If we’re lucky, we may save his legs.”
“Will he be able to walk?”
“That, I am afraid, is up to God. I don’t like the looks of this kneecap. It was an excellent job of surgery, but the healing process went wrong somewhere. I am going to remove some scar tissue and perhaps with this packing process we can look forward to the bone not fusing to the wrong points this time.”
This revelation staggered Jenny. “You mean … before this there might have been a chance that he wouldn’t be able to walk?”
“Not a ‘chance,’ young lady, no possibility at all. At least not normally. Taking that into consideration, perhaps this emergency operation will turn out for the best. When we’ve finished the only thing we can do is wait.”
Chapter Eleven
OUTSIDE THE OPEN window, a robin earnestly trilled in hopes of a mate. Early orioles flirted in a bare-limbed tree and worked at a nest. Fat buds swelled on the beech and elms, and the breeze had a seen t of new life. In the small guest room of the Carmichael town-house at Sunderland, new life had manifested itself strongly and permanently.
Griffin Stark sat upright in the wide bed, a folding wooden tray over his lap. Beside him, her legs draped over the edge, Jenny Carmichael helped him feed himself. He eagerly took in a prodigious portion of Smithfield, Virginia cured ham, eggs, grits, and biscuits, along with the early April splendor beyond his window.
“I never dreamed food could taste so good,” Griff enthused.
Jenny produced a fleeting frown, but answered candidly. “Your fever burned out a lot of memory. Several times, over these months, you have been able to take solids. Pork chops, rabbit stew, venison. I even shot us a brace of ducks,” she went on proudly.
Griff shook his head. “All that I … funny, but I don’t recall a thing. It’s as though I passed out on the battle field and only now awoke. For all of that, only one thing bothers me. My legs. I know they’re there, I can see them, yet ever since I came out of it in the middle of the night, I haven’t been able to get them to do what I want them to.”
“Don’t rush things, Griff. You were wounded last October. It’s April seventh now.” She tried to make light of it. “You were a mighty sick boy. Why, I had to wash you and feed you, just like a big baby.”
Crimson flushed Griff’s cheeks for a moment. “You … washed me? All over?”
“Of course,” Jenny answered through a light chuckle. “I’m a big girl now. I’ve been working in the hospital for nearly a year. That sort of thing is … ordinary for me.”
“I’ve been … like that since October?” Griff’s words held a tone of wonder. “What’s happened in all this time? What about the war?”
Jenny frowned again and fussed with some wild plum preserves on a round, flaky biscuit half. “Grant has Lee cornered, pressed now by two armies.”
“Two? Then—”
“Yes, Griff. I’m so sorry. Sherman pushed all the way through Georgia and cut th
e Confederacy in half. It’s only a matter of time.”
“What about my family? What’s happened at Riversend? “
“We … we still don’t know. There has been no news from Georgia since late November. Damien is trying. He has friends in the occupation forces.”
Griff suppressed a groan. “Georgia occupied by enemy troops. It would be more bearable if they were foreigners. If … if they are entirely in control, why then hasn’t something been found out?”
“For one thing, you are listed as dead. Don’t you remember? I told you all about it once before.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t.”
“Officially, Major Griffin Stark, C.S.A., is dead and buried. So, no inquiries regarding your family can go through regular channels. At least, that’s the way Damien explains it to me. You are supposed to be Captain Stewart Bradford, of the Two-eighty-second Michigan Volunteer Infantry.”
“Speaking of Stewart, what about J. E. B. Stuart? Is he ...?”
Jenny shook her head sadly. “He died of the wound inflicted by his own men.”
“Just like Stonewall Jackson. I want to write them.”
“Write? What do you mean?”
“I want to write to Bobbie Jean and my son. My Lord, Jeremy will be five now. I can’t let them go on thinking I am dead, or wondering and not knowing. Can Damien arrange for a letter to get through?”
“I’m not certain. Everything is … so fluid.” She used the military term in a manner that spoke of her familiarity with the soldiers of the Union. “Come, let me take that tray away. It’s time for another workout for your legs.”
Griff handed her the remains of his breakfast. “What sort of workout are you talking about?”
“I massage your legs, gently bend the knees and ankles, and wiggle your toes.”
Griff managed a fleeting smile. “That sounds decidedly wicked.”
“But fun,” Jenny added with a light toss of her head. “I’ll be right back.”
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