by Tara Johnson
She stepped back, stung. Unshed tears burned her throat. “Since I’m not needed, I should go.”
“No, Cadence, I didn’t mean it like that. I—”
His words were lost, and she ran to the room she’d occupied, crammed her scant belongings into her bag, and fled the house.
The tears didn’t fall until she stepped onto the uneven street. She’d not even been able to tell the children good-bye.
And it was good-bye. Her heart could bear no more encounters with Joshua Ivy.
The front door slammed behind the swishing of skirts. Silence descended. His heart swelled until he feared it might split.
He collapsed into the stuffed parlor chair and cradled his head in his hands, sucking in a sharp breath against the searing pain in his side . . . pain that somehow seemed far less than the aching throb in his soul.
He was a fool. She’d misunderstood him completely. He didn’t need her as a nurse. He needed her. Her compassion, wit, and beauty brightened every room she entered.
Every fiber of his being yearned to chase after Cadence. To pull her toward him and apologize for his poor choice of words. More than that. To confess what was trapped inside, but he could not. Perhaps it was better this way. Being tethered to him would mean heartache. The bullet hole in his side was burning reminder enough of what could happen.
Etta wandered into the parlor, cookie crumbs sticking to her round cheeks. “Mith Pi-puh?”
His chest constricted as he reached for her chubby fingers. “Gone.”
“’Tory?”
Bitterness wrapped cold tendrils around his heart.
“No, Etta. No more stories. No happily ever afters. Not today.”
Her lower lip protruded, and as she buried her face in his knee, he brooded.
There were no happily ever afters when a man fell in love with a woman he could not have.
Chapter 16
JUNE 1862
OAK GROVE, VIRGINIA
A piercing whistle raised the hair on the back of Cadence’s neck just before the ground beneath her feet quaked. Her teeth rattled in her head. That one was close. Far too close. The soldier at her feet groaned, recapturing her attention.
She poured a cupful of water from the bag strapped to her back and held the dented tin cup to his dry lips.
He gulped down the sustenance, nearly choking in his eagerness. “Bless you.”
She forced a smile, trying to ignore the sight of his bloodied legs, crushed to a pulp below his belt. How he’d lived this long was a wonder. The woods beyond the battlefield were full of the wounded and dead. Some had crawled to the shelter on their own . . . large boulders, hollowed logs, and thick brush provided ample hiding places. Others had been dragged by fellow soldiers. Moans and cries of the wounded rose up all around. Surgical tents were being hastily constructed not more than thirty yards away. The white canvas quivered every time another cannon found its mark just beyond the line of trees. Smoke colored the woods a hazy blue.
“Mercy! Someone have mercy on me.”
A soldier to her left was reaching out. His arm lay at an unnatural angle, twisted backward like a snapped tree limb.
“I have water.”
As she knelt, she hummed the melody to “Fairest Lord Jesus,” though she doubted the tune could be heard above the dull thump of cannons, the explosions of gunfire in the valley below, the rat-a-tat of drums, or the moans of the dying.
A hand squeezed her shoulder. She turned to see Nurse Nelson looking down at her with anxious eyes.
“A far stretch from Judiciary Square Hospital, no?” She practically had to shout the words to be heard.
“Indeed.” When the call had gone out for more nurses at the battlefront, Cadence had gladly volunteered. Father had shown little resistance, consumed as he was with Tate and his shop. As taxing as nursing was, at least she was needed . . . and wanted.
Nurse Nelson jerked her head toward the nearest surgical tent. “Dr. Price needs a nurse who can administer a chloroform cone. I told him I have no experience but you might.”
“Yes, I am able.”
She nodded. “Good. I’ll give them water. Make haste, for he has a slew of amputations to perform.”
Her stomach clenched as she hurried to the surgical tent. With her wrist she wiped away the perspiration running in thick beads down her temple. She ducked under the white canvas, letting her eyes adjust to the interior. Instead of blessed relief from the late-June heat, the tent’s air was even more sweltering and oppressive.
Dr. Price scurried around a makeshift table, laying out equipment. The elderly physician’s gray hair stuck out like tufts of combed cotton. His apron was soaked with crimson.
“Nurse Piper?”
“Yes, sir?”
He speared her with a sharp eye. “Can you handle a chloroform cone?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent.” He nodded at a stack of cloths and a handful of brown bottles. “Make haste. We will begin any moment.”
“I need only wash my hands first.”
He stared at her as if she were daft. “Why? You’re not performing the surgery, only applying the anesthesia. We don’t have time to waste on such frivolities.” He snapped his fingers toward the blue-clad ambulance runners at the tent flap. “Bring in the first one.”
Cadence folded the cloth into a tent and placed it over the soldier’s nose before applying three drops of chloroform at the peak, slowly counting as the delirious soldier began to twitch. The moment brought to mind another surgery so many months before.
If he could only see how far I’ve come.
How was Joshua faring? Had he returned to work at Judiciary Square? Likely he had pushed too hard, resuming his duties long before he was ready.
And the children . . . what had they made of her hasty departure?
No. She would not think of him. Of them. She pinched her eyes closed to the memories. If only her mind could blot out images as easily as her eyes.
Cadence sat at the edge of a small creek and splashed her face and neck with water, wishing she could wash away the memories of the past few days as easily as she could the dirt and sweat from her skin. How many amputations had she assisted in now? Fifty? Seventy? More?
Death saturated everything. Her ears rang with screams and explosions, the shriek of horses and shouts of panicked surgeons. Her nose was filled with the metallic odor of blood and the stench of decay. Yet the mounds of the dead, the dying, the wounded continued to grow, covering the hills.
The battles had raged for three days. Or was it four now? She kneaded the muscles of her shoulders and stretched the kinks from her back as she sat on her heels. Every muscle in her body ached and her eyes burned with the need for sleep. She’d only snatched scant hours here and there, trading off with the other nurses. There was too much work to be done. It was impossible to rest when moans of agony flooded her tortured dreams.
Footsteps crunched through the brush. Nurse McDonald appeared, her face drawn and haggard.
“Cadence, I thought you were sleeping.”
“I did for an hour or two.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It’s hard to sleep when so many are suffering.”
The older woman’s face softened. “I know, but they count on you for help, which you cannot give if you fall ill yourself.”
She nodded and let her fingers cut swirls through the cool water.
Nurse McDonald sighed. “If I can’t convince you to rest longer, there are men beyond surgical tent number five who could use water.”
“I’ll go to them.” Cadence rose and shook loose twigs and dirt from the hem of her skirt. She’d not sit idly by while men languished from lack of water.
As she tromped through the woods toward the wounded, a thought skimmed over her mind.
“You could say it was about the princess laying aside the need to prove herself and rest in the knowledge of her royal identity, whether anyone else knew it or not.”
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br /> She gritted her teeth and pressed forward. Why wouldn’t the story or Joshua’s remark leave her be? That wasn’t what she’d been doing, was it? Becoming a nurse to prove something to herself or to her father, to find her significance or fill some kind of emptiness inside? Ridiculous. She longed to help people. Nothing more.
Then why the yawning emptiness in the dark of night when the world was silent? Why the sting when Father failed to praise her accomplishments?
She shoved the musing aside. This was not the time. Men needed her. One of the stewards passed her a water bag and she took to her task, kneeling, murmuring words of comfort, dribbling sustenance between parched lips and praying over those whose time was near. In the distance, the battle raged as fiercely as it had days before.
A sharp wail split the air. “Mama! Mama, please! Help me!”
A lad of no more than sixteen or seventeen lay on the ground. Crimson bubbled from his mouth. Cadence’s heart shredded at the tears glazing his eyes. His outstretched hands begged for comfort.
“Mama!”
She rushed to his side and cradled his head with one arm while clutching his flailing hands with her free one. “Shush. You’re not alone.”
“Mama.” His cries turned to whimpers. Poor lad. In his delirium, he thought hers to be the comforting arms of his mother. She’d not tell him differently.
He looked up into her face as a single tear rolled down his filthy cheek. “Help me.” The words gurgled in his throat.
Tears warmed her skin. Her throat cramped. She loathed this war, the hate, the blood, the violence. She despised everything about it.
The memory of a tiny grave in Washington coaxed a melody to her lips, even as her eyes burned. Rose’s grave.
“Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee,
All through the night.
Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night.
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping,
Hill and dale in slumber sleeping,
I my loved ones’ watch am keeping,
All through the night.”
He quieted, as did the cries of the hurting around him. She looked up at the hazy sky, willing herself to see past the smoke, the disease and blood. To see beyond the grip of death tainting everything around her. Salt filled her mouth as she lifted her voice louder.
“Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee,
All through the night.
Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night.
Death will not have the victory,
To paradise Jesus will lead thee,
All through the night.”
She glanced down to see a faint smile hovering on the soldier’s face. Air left his lungs in a gentle whoosh as his body went limp in her arms. A sob shook her chest. She kissed his bloody face, rested her forehead against his, and wept.
“Death will not have the victory,
To paradise Jesus will lead thee,
All through the night.”
Joshua knew that voice. He stepped from the surgical tent and froze, his breath coming in labored pants. It couldn’t be. Not here. Yet it was.
Cadence sat in a field of the wounded, cradling a dead soldier and weeping over him.
When the Union had contracted him to work as a field surgeon for several months, he thought it would be a wise decision. It would get his attackers off his tail, thereby providing an extra measure of safety for the children. He left them in Miriam’s capable hands, although he already missed them terribly, and had hired Zeke to protect them as a bodyguard in his absence.
And he’d prayed the turmoil of war would keep his mind off a certain blue-eyed beauty.
He’d never dreamed she would be here. Hot anger lashed his insides. Why had her father permitted such a thing?
Stepping back inside the confines of the tent, he took a deep draft of stale air. He’d just keep his distance. He had to.
For her sake.
Chapter 17
THUMP, THUMP, THUMP.
Would the pounding of cannons never cease? Cadence’s head throbbed with the monotony of it. Then finally, after seven excruciating days, the battle fell into ominous silence. Finished, leaving carnage in its wake.
She picked her way carefully through the pockmarked battlefield, wincing at the sight of bloated bodies now festering in the summer heat. Flies buzzed in thick swarms around corpses. Bullet-riddled horses and splintered trees made the scene even more ghastly. Yet it was the eerie, ghostly moans of the survivors that made the entire atmosphere feel like the bony hands of a specter shadowed the land.
She lifted her skirt hem, watching for signs of life among the dead as she directed ambulance runners to carry the living to surgical tents. The slightest twitch of fingers, the shallowest intake of breath could make all the difference.
A blue-clad soldier lay facedown in the dirt. His limbs were motionless, yet she watched as the cords of muscle in his neck flexed. He attempted to lift his head and fell limply back into the dust.
“There!” She pointed the wounded man out to the runners, who hurried to lift him into a stretcher. They carefully flipped him, exposing a dirt-crusted bullet wound to his left thigh. The man moaned, but his eyes fluttered open. Despite the growth of beard covering his jaw, something was familiar about him.
He croaked, “Miss Piper? Am I dreaming?”
“Mr. Dodd?” It seemed a lifetime since the dinner so long ago in the Dodds’ home, yet despite Stephen’s agony, his stare was piercing.
“I can die a happy man now.” His voice was gravelly. Weak.
“Hush. I’ll not hear that kind of talk. You must endeavor to fight.”
“For you I shall.”
“You must fight for your own sake, Mr. Dodd. You have much life to live.”
The ambulance runners whisked him away, and she murmured a prayer for his healing.
As afternoon slipped into the lengthening shadows of evening, the fatigue of the past week soaked into her bones. Nurse McDade tugged her toward the nurses’ tents with a stern frown, the light from nearby campfires dancing across her high cheekbones.
“You’re about ready to fall over, dearie. You must sleep. Nurse McDonald and I will take the watches tonight.”
Cadence was too exhausted to argue. Half-asleep on her feet, she was plodding toward the row of tents when the snap of a twig behind her caused her senses to roar to life.
“Mighty dark night to be walking alone.”
She spun around. A lone soldier stood mere feet away. The silver moonlight was bright, yet his kepi shadowed his bearded features. The glitter of his eyes was plain enough to see. A shiver coursed down her spine.
“Not alone, sir. Only joining those in my company.”
He came closer, and she took an instinctive step back. “You look alone to me. Alone and lonely.” He tilted his head. “I’m lonely too, if you catch my meaning.”
Cold fear snaked around her stomach. “I do not. Alone and lonely are two different things. I’m neither.”
He lurched forward and grabbed her by the arms, pulling her roughly to him. “Don’t you long to forget?” His sour breath fanned her cheek. “Help me forget. Just for tonight.”
He smashed his mouth to hers, and shudders racked her body. She tried to jerk away, but his wiry frame was far too strong. She whimpered against his punishing touch, but he only pressed harder. She bit down on his lip.
“Ouch!” he roared but didn’t release his grip.
Her pulse pounded dully in her ears as a maniacal gleam shimmered in his eyes. He shoved her to the ground. Pain exploded in her back. A scream was trapped in her throat when his hand clamped down on her mouth. He straddled her, muttering oaths as he fought the fingernails she clawed into his face, his arms.
“Fight all you want. The outcome will be the same.” The teeth flashed.
Nausea climbed up her throat. Jesus . . .
His weight was jerked from her in a
sudden whoosh. She gasped and rolled onto her side, her heart slamming into her ribs like a runaway wagon. A shadowy figure circled the soldier and attacked, landing punch after punch to his face. The soldier cursed and connected his fist to the stranger’s jaw with a sharp thud. He stumbled back and rounded on the soldier. With a sickening crack, the stranger landed a blow to the soldier that dropped him to the ground in an unconscious heap.
Cadence’s chest heaved as the intimidating man approached. His steps seemed slow. Calculated. Would this man do the same as the soldier had? Terror rendered her unable to move, to breathe, to think.
He crouched and his features grew clear in the silver light. Her breath fled.
“Joshua.”
Joshua’s heart tripped as he stared at Cadence. Her hair was mussed, the sleeve of her dress torn. A sick sensation crawled through him. If he hadn’t come down the pathway at that particular moment . . .
He reached out to smooth her hair but stopped short and dropped his hand. “Did he hurt you?”
She blinked up at him, her large eyes luminous in the moonlight. She shook her head.
He cupped a hand under her elbow to gently lift her to her feet. Her body quivered.
“You’re trembling.”
She wrapped her arms around her middle. “I didn’t know you were here.”
He turned to yank the unconscious soldier to his feet.
“What will become of him?”
Her soft voice scraped his heart. He turned and studied her. “He’ll be hauled to the captain and likely be court-martialed. Punished.”
She nodded but said nothing more. When he returned from hauling the unconscious soldier to his superiors, he stretched out on the ground in front of Cadence’s tent to keep watch as she slept.
No one would attack her again. He’d make sure of it.
Cadence looked for Joshua the following day but could not find him anywhere; however, she did notice the two soldiers now stationed as guards over the nurses’ tents. Joshua’s doing? Likely.
She’d suffered no more than a few bruises, broken fingernails, and a bad fright, yet the memories of the foul man’s groping hands left her feeling vulnerable and exposed.