The Wild One

by Danelle Harmon

  ~~~~

  "Should've called the undertaker, not me," said Dr. Plummer, as he watched Sylvanus and Will carry the man through the door. "That young fellow's deader than dead."

  "He ain't either!" cried Will, head twisted round to look behind him as, his arms locked beneath the stranger's armpits, he backed into the keeping room where Ophelia and Mildred, busily crunching bacon, gave shrieks of horror and leaped to their feet.

  "William Leighton! How dare you bring that . . . that man into this house!" they screeched. Neither rose to help, and neither moved their chairs out of the way to ease the trio's progress to the table.

  That task fell to Amy, who did it hurriedly and without needing to be told. Standing back, she glanced anxiously at Will's friend as they brought him near. His hair, which had been combed back and tied at the nape with a black taffeta ribbon, had come loose and now hung in bloody swatches over his face, concealing all but the tip of his nose from Amy's curious gaze. He wore muddy breeches of white leather, and a sleeveless waistcoat of ragged olive-green homespun was loosely buttoned over a bloodstained shirt. His frame was lean, his build powerful, wide across the upper body, narrow at the waist and hips, and so long in the leg that she knew his feet would hang over the edge of the table when they set him down. Probably a farmer, she thought, accustomed to hard work.

  But as they carried him past, the his dangling hand brushed her skirts, and Amy's eyes went wide. No farmer she'd ever met had hands that looked like that. Long, elegant fingers. Clean skin devoid of dirt and scars. Short, well-scrubbed nails that were filed smooth and obviously well cared for.

  Her gaze lifted to Will's — but he and Papa were already hoisting the fellow up onto the table. As they set him down, the lolling head fell back over Will's arm and revealed a face that took Amy's breath away. Her hands flew over her mouth.

  He was breathtakingly handsome.

  Absolutely, positively, indisputably, beautiful.

  Dr. Plummer, however, took no notice of the fact. "What happened to him?" he asked, bending over the man's face, lifting one eyelid and peering into the sightless, rolled-back eyes.

  Blue, Amy thought, noting their extraordinarily clear color before Plummer let the eyelid slide shut once more. Oh, God, don't let him die — with those looks, he'll make all the beautiful angels in heaven envious and there'll be war up there all over again.

  "He — he f-fell during the fighting and hit his head," Will stammered.

  "How?"

  The boy shrugged, his gaze darting away. "Don't know."

  "How long has he been out?"

  "Since yesterday, when it happened."

  "Yesterday!?"

  Will reddened. "Y-yes, sir."

  "This man should've been seen to immediately! Why the devil didn't you get him to a local doctor instead of lugging him all the way up here?"

  For answer, the boy only swallowed and hung his head. He looked absolutely miserable.

  Ophelia, however, had no pity for either her brother or his injured friend. "Really, Will, I don't know what's got into you, bringing him here when you should've just let him there to die. After all, America needs good, competent men defending her, not clumsy oafs who injure themselves at first opportunity."

  "Maybe he injured himself so he wouldn't have to fight," scoffed Mildred. "The coward."

  "He wasn't a coward!" Will exploded. "He was a fine man, with more courage than a dozen lions!"

  Dr. Plummer impatiently motioned for them to be quiet, then laid his finger on the injured man's wrist, feeling his pulse. He straightened up, frowning. "Well, he's alive all right, but if I can save him I doubt he'll be a-thankin' me for it. Come, come, let's turn him over so I can have a better look at the back of his head. What's your friend's name, anyhow?"

  "Er, Adam. Adam Smith."

  "Well, let's get Mr. Smith settled comfortably on his stomach with his head turned slightly to the left. Yes, that's good. Perfect. Now, someone get me a candle so I can better see what I'm a-doin' here."

  Adam, his right cheek pressed against the oak tabletop, did not look quite so handsome from the back. In fact, he looked downright terrible, and Amy gasped as they all got a good look at the wound that had felled him. Low down on the back of his head and slightly off center to the left, a gash, nearly three inches long, was still oozing blood out into the tangled blond hair and down his neck. Plummer drew his bushy brows together and began probing the wound. A moment later he straightened up, wiping bloody fingers on his leather apron.

  "I'll have to trepan him," he declared. "His skull is fractured and chances are there's blood pooling just beneath the break. If we don't drain it off the brain, he'll die."

  There was a temporary silence as everyone digested Plummer's words.

  "Maybe we ought to just . . . let him die in peace," Will mumbled, his cheeks coloring as he heard the callousness of his own words. As Amy and Sylvanus turned horrified stares upon him, he added, lamely: "Especially since he isn't going to make it, anyhow . . ."

  Plummer blew out his breath. "Well, Reverend?"

  "I say trepan him — and let the decision rest with God, not us, as to whether he lives or dies."

  "He won't be the same as he was before this happened to him," Plummer warned, resting a possessive, almost affectionate hand over the gaping wound as though he couldn't wait to get started on it. "You know that, don't you?"

  "We have to give him the chance. After all, the poor fellow did do what he could for America, didn't he?"

  Amy was the only one who saw her brother wince as though he'd been struck. Ophelia and Mildred were too busy making their exit. Sylvanus was still looking at the stranger. And Dr. Plummer was laying things out on the table: a linen rag, a razor, two long metal retractors with hooked ends, and the trephine — a small, ring-shaped saw with a handle in the center and deep, jagged teeth designed for grinding a small plug out of a person's skull. Amy looked at it and felt her knees go all wobbly.

  Don't you dare get squeamish! She berated herself, fiercely. She gazed down at Adam, whose long eyelashes just brushed the table. Poor Adam with the blue, blue eyes that might never open again.

  Her heart ached with pity for him. "I'll help you if you need me to, Dr. Plummer," she said quietly. "Just tell me what I have to do."

  Five minutes later, Sylvanus, who couldn't stand the sight of blood, made his excuses and Amy found herself pressed into service. Under Plummer's direction, she fetched a bowl of warm water and a pillow from her bed while Plummer went outside to have a few pulls on his pipe — no doubt to steady his own nerves, Amy thought. Racing back downstairs, she gently lifted Adam's head, put the pillow beneath it, and then eased him back down so that his brow was cradled on soft down instead of oak. Involuntarily, her hand smoothed the hair back from his temple, as though she could comfort and encourage him for the ordeal that lay ahead; then she dampened a rag and washed the wound, trying not to look at the blood and water running in halting pink streams through his pale hair.

  Plummer returned, rolling up his sleeves and grimly eyeing his patient as though trying to determine the best way to approach the task ahead of him. Amy's heart begin to pound with apprehension.

  "Stand at the head of the table, Amy, and put your hands on either side of his head to steady it," the doctor directed. "Good." Wiping the razor on the leg of his breeches, he shaved the area around the wound with as much skill as any barber. Amy watched the soft clumps of hair tumbling forlornly down over her knuckles, falling on the pillow, the table, the floor. Finally Plummer set the blade aside. "There. That ought to do it. Now, brace his head real steady, Amy, and don't let it move." And then, noting her pallor, he added, "You don't have to watch if you don't want to."

  She didn't want to — but she could no more look away than she could stop breathing. It was as though by finding the courage to watch, she was somehow going through this ordeal right along with him. To look away and abandon Adam to such a thing, to allow him to suffer it all by him
self, seemed cowardly. She would be brave — for him. And so she held his head and held up her own and forced herself to take deep, steadying breaths as she watched Plummer draw his scalpel and make his first cut. As the doctor progressed, first with scalpel and then with the trephine, Amy found herself gently talking to the unconscious man as though she could somehow soothe him.

  "He'll not hear you," Plummer grunted, leaning his weight into the trephine and rotating it, "but if it makes you feel better, go ahead and talk to him."

  "It does make me feel better. And maybe he can hear me. . . after all, who's to say that he can't?"

  "What a fanciful girl you are," Plummer said, amused. "But the best assistant I ever had. Now, keep your wits about you. We're almost there."

  Amy no longer wanted to look. She squeezed her eyes shut and locked her knees together and it was then, as she stood there holding so tightly onto Adam's head that her arms began to ache, that she noticed that his breathing had changed. Her eyes flew open.

  "Dr. Plummer?"

  "For God's sake, girl, not now."

  "His breathing — it doesn't sound the way it did a moment ago . . ."

  Still gripping the trephine, Plummer paused only long enough to note that Amy was correct.

  "Tarnal hell, I'm losing him."

  Amy, fingers entwined in Adam's hair to better anchor his head, the terrible grinding vibrations of the trephine coming up through her palms, shut her eyes and prayed like she never had in all her seventeen years. Please don't die, she begged silently, pressing her palms to Adam's ears and willing her own life into his fading body, please, please, don't die . . .

  But Adam's soft respirations were coming more and more slowly, growing ineffective, growing faint.

  Please God. Oh, please, give him a chance, I beg of you —

  "Pay attention there, Amy!" barked Plummer, his upper lip beaded with sweat as he tossed the trephine down on the table. It began to roll away. Impatiently he slammed it back down. The trephine rolled again, this time falling off the table and hitting the floor. Plummer swore and left it there. And now Adam was no longer taking shallow little breaths, but gasping desperately, trying to draw air into his dying lungs. Tears stung Amy's eyes, burned in her sinuses. She had seen fish in buckets die like that; to see a man going the same route, especially one as strong and handsome as this one, filled her with an unbearable agony.

  "The devil take it," Plummer swore, grabbing up the scalpel and prying the plug of bone loose. "Damnation!"

  And now even the erratic gasps were coming slower and slower. Amy sniffed back the tears. Oh, God help her, this was awful, awful, awful —

  "Come on, damn you, breathe!" Plummer all but yelled, his voice rising in urgency as Adam gave a final, heavy sigh and fell still. He watched the trickle of red, red blood oozing up and out of the gaping wound. "Breathe!"

  But as each moment filed past, Adam did not move, did not breathe, and Plummer's frozen, rapt expression began to melt into despair. He stood staring down at his patient, hands clenched and a myriad emotions crossing his face, before his shoulders finally sank and, looking haggard and old, he swore beneath his breath and turned away in defeat.

  "Call in the undertaker, then," he said bitterly. "I've lost him."