The soldier stirred. Kitty squeezed his hand, hoping, somehow, to reassure him that someone was near, that someone cared. She was tired. Oh, she was so tired her knees ached to buckle. But the wounded kept coming in, and there were not enough doctors and assistants and helpers to staff the hospital. So they were all ready to collapse—and some did—but each tried to carry on, knowing the desperate need to remain and do everything possible to save lives and ease the suffering of these wretched souls who had tasted the battlefields of hell.
The door opened and Doctor Malcolm Jordan stepped inside, moving with great effort. His coat was blood-splotched, his hands dry and chapped from so much scrubbing to rid the skin of blood, tissue, and dirt from the war. He looked at her from beneath bushy brows, nodded, and stepped to the table. He made a quick examination of the soldier’s wound, then cursed softly and said, “There’s nothing to do but amputate. Can you stand another one tonight, Kitty?”
“If there’s no other way, Doctor Jordan, then I’m ready.” God, she hated to see limbs taken away.
“I hear you do some of this once in a while when there’s a shortage of doctors.”
“I do. But I hate each one. I’m afraid I don’t have the necessary strength to saw through a bone and I take longer than necessary, prolonging the suffering of the poor soldier I’m attending. I think I can still hear the screams of each and every one when I try to sleep at night.”
“I won’t say you get used to it because you never do. But remember you probably saved a life.”
“Most of them said they would rather have died.”
“A usual reaction.” He reached for his instrument case. “But let them see a wound turn green with gangrene and they realize they’re going to die and they’ll beg you to cut that limb off. It isn’t pleasant, I know. Have you looked out back lately?”
She shook her head. She had not been out of the hospital in over two weeks.
“There’s a pile of arms and legs out there about seven or eight feet high. If it weren’t so cold, the smell would run us out of here. We’re just so shorthanded we haven’t had anyone to dig a hole and bury them. It’s a gruesome sight.” He shuddered. “I think I’m going to find the time, and strength, somehow, to get out there in the morning, myself, and dig a ditch.”
He wielded his scalpel, then the forceps crunched as they gripped the arterial wall. Kitty watched him set the ratchet carefully before he cut the vessel beyond and whipped a ligature in place. “I have the femoral artery tied off now,” he said, making a final knot, “The bleeding has stopped. Let’s hope he stays asleep. Chloroform is so scarce. We need every drop.”
“I imagine the pain will awaken him.”
“Then prepare the chloroform. We don’t want him to suffer. God, I know this must be the agony of the damned.”
The doctor took the surgical saw in his hand and began setting steel to bone, whipping down with a low, vicious rasp. The soldier stirred, opened his eyes wildly, at the point of screaming, and Kitty was ready to put him to sleep. He struggled momentarily, then, mercifully, he was out of the horror.
The leg clumped to the floor and Kitty stared at it, in a trancelike state. A leg that had walked, run, kicked a horse into a full run, danced, jumped…a living thing, a part of a human being, and now it lay on the floor in a pool of thickening blood—gone forever, severed from the body. Useless. Dead.
When she continued to stare, transfixed, Doctor Jordan, moving quickly, lifted the leg, walked to the window, and pitched it outside. Then he returned to the table, yelling for hot tar a swab. “And send in the next one…”
The next soldier breathed his last as he was placed on the table. Kitty looked at the doctor and snapped sarcastically: “Do we throw him out the window, too?”
He frowned. “Look, Kitty, I think you are due for a rest. You obviously are cracking. Now go to your room and lie down for a few hours. We don’t need a hysterical woman around.”
“Hysterical?” she cried indignantly. “You call me hysterical because I care? Because it sickens me to see a man’s leg tossed out the window so callously, as though it were a bone for a dog? Forgive me, Doctor, but I’m not void of human compassion, and if you are, then I feel only pity.”
“Please, just go lie down,” he passed a weary hand in front of his face. “I have no time for this.”
The door opened and Judith Gibson’s dark curly hair bobbed up and down as she looked about before whispering to Kitty, “Can you come with me for a moment, Kitty? It’s terribly important.”
“No, I can’t…there’s a patient.”
“Go!” Doctor Jordan’s voice boomed. “Please, Kitty. Go for a little while. You’ll feel better and so will I.”
Annoyed, she brushed by him, stepping outside into the hall. In the dim glow of the lantern hanging on the wall she saw that Judith was terribly excited about something.
“You won’t believe it, Kitty, but he’s here. I know it’s him, from the way you described the way he looks now.”
“Him? Who?” She felt icy fingers moving up and down her spine. Nathan? Here?
And Judith’s next words made her sway in shock.
“It’s your father, Kitty, John Wright. He’s outside and he says he has to see you right away.”
She stumbled down the hall, past the open doorways of rooms with soldiers stacked almost on top of each other, past the rooms filled with the dead waiting for their graves to be dug when the rains stopped. Judith pointed to a closed door that led outside the building, then smiled, patted her shoulder, and discreetly disappeared.
Kitty stepped into the cold, rainy night. Immediately his arms were around her, his voice cracking as he said, “Kitty, Kitty, my girl, my girl…”
“Poppa, it is you.” She returned his caress, tears streaming down her face. “How…did you know where to come to find me? Isn’t it dangerous?”
“Come with me to the end of the porch, quickly. I haven’t much time.” He led the way. She noticed he wore an ordinary pair of trousers, shirt, and poncho. With a patch over his eye, he looked like an old retired soldier who had served his country and paid the price. And oh, how she drank in the sight of him!
He told her that he was actually a scout for General Sherman. “I got so close to home, I had to take a chance on findin’ you, girl. I figured you’d be here. Leastways, I prayed you would. I wanted to see you one more time.”
Forcing a laugh, she echoed, “One more time? Poppa, you talk like this is the last time we’ll ever meet. The war will be over soon and you can come home and we’ll start a new life, both of us…”
He touched her lips with his forefinger, bringing her to silence. “Hush, girl. You’re smarter’n that. You know the war news. The South is crumbling fast. They’re starving and they’re whipped, and it’s just a matter of time. Soldiers are so hungry they’re eating meat so rotten off of dead mules that it shreds in their fingers before they can even pick it off the bone. Men are without shoes or coats, and they’re freezin’ to death if they don’t starve to death. It’s coming to an end, girl, and soon, and General Sherman is headed straight for Goldsboro. I found out what I need to know and I have to go back, but I wanted to see you, tell you how I hope everything works out for the best for you if we don’t meet again. I want you to know that I love you…I always did.”
“Poppa, no.” She reached for him, heard a gentle whine, and glanced down, startled. “Killer! Poppa, he’s still alive,” she said in wonder.
“Sure he is,” he laughed in spite of the sadness of the moment. “The Confederates can’t kill an old man like me, or an old dog like Killer.
“Say.” He cupped her face in his hand, tilting it upward. “Did you marry Nathan Collins? Are you his wife now?”
“No, Poppa. I met up with Nathan and he brought me home just before the battle in Atlanta. He’s with General Johnston’s army. I was to stay at his house, but I couldn’t…”
“That’s not important,” he said, cutting her off. “I don
’t have much time. This is risky, me being here. If I got spotted, I’d get lynched for sure. Now listen to me. When Sherman marches into town, you stay put here at the hospital. You may have to treat our soldiers, but if you cooperate, you won’t be hurt. I’ll be close by and I’ll keep a watch on you…”
He raised an eyebrow, stared intently out of his one eye as he said: “Me and Travis. We’ll watch over you.”
The familiar stab of heat and warmth shuddered through her body uncontrollably. “Travis? He’s all right?”
“Finer’n a fiddle any day of the week. Still one of the best damned cavalrymen in the whole United States Army, him and Sam Bucher…”
“I don’t want to hear about Captain Coltrane,” she snapped. “Not after…” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t want to tell her father all of it, how he’d made a fool of her, how she had been so weak as to let him.
“I know, girl.”
She blinked in amazement. “Know what?” How could he possibly know? How could anyone know?
“I know that he loves you and you love him and the reason you saw him with that woman was because he set it up for you to see him. He figured you’d be so mad you’d do just what you did do, high-tail it to Richmond. Where we went was no place for you, girl. And I think, too, he wanted to give you a chance to get back to Nathan—let you see for yourself how you felt about him.”
“Travis told you this?”
“Me and Sam figured it out. Travis ain’t one to tell me much what goes on inside him, but I know him pretty good by now. You don’t stand up with a man and face death every day and not get to know just about everything inside him.”
She didn’t speak…couldn’t speak. Turning away, Kitty went to stand at the railing and looked out at the dark town about her. “You ain’t said whether or not you even care,” John spoke directly behind her.
“Poppa, I don’t know what I feel. Nathan…he has me all confused, but then so does Travis. Maybe it’s best I forget them both.”
He swatted her soundly on her bottom and she jumped. “Maybe it’s best you quit actin’ so damned stubborn and started figuring a few things out instead o’ refusing to see the light. None so blind as those who won’t see, I always heard. Now then, I’m going to have to ride out of here. It’s a tricky ride back to where I’m goin’ and I can’t risk being followed.”
He kissed both her cheeks, hugged her, and turned away, but Kitty reached out and clutched his shoulder as the tears burned in her eyes. “Poppa…the war…is it as bad as they say? Are we losing?”
“The South is losing.” He spoke sadly in spite of his allegiance. “Sherman is advancing toward Goldsboro, and he’s got enough men to take the town if the town doesn’t surrender. It’s just that simple, girl. It ain’t a matter of you and the rest of the citizens running. There’s no place to run to now. The war is upon you. At least Sherman stopped the burning and raping and killing once he crossed into North Carolina. Everyone says he’s got a soft spot in his heart for North Carolina, but he sure had a hard one everywhere else we’ve been. He just turned his head to what the soldiers were doing, let them destroy and do whatever they liked. He says we have to teach the South a lesson, but I think the South has learned it already…”
“Halt! Who’s there?”
Kitty and John froze as the uniformed Confederate soldier came walking out of the shrubbery with fixed bayonet. “Soldier,” his voice cracked with authority, “what the hell you doing out here this time of night? You sick or wounded? You get your butt inside. If you’re okay, then you get the hell back to your company. Everyone is standing by Sherman could get here anytime.”
“Yessir, I’ll go now. I had to slip out here and see my lady for a few minutes.”
“Just git!”
Kitty’s heart was racing with tension. Would he be able to just ride away? Would he be able to get back to his own company? There were those who would have said at that moment she should have turned in her own father to the South. Hadn’t he just admitted he was practically a spy for General Sherman, that he had the information he had been sent to obtain? She was on one side and he on the other, but where did her allegiance lie?
No. She could never turn him in, no matter what the consequence. “He’s just leaving.” She spoke to the soldier for the first time. “Please forgive us.”
His tone softened somewhat. “Sure. I’ve got a girl, too, and I wish I could see her, but right now everyone is supposed to be with his company to be ready to fight when the time comes. You, lady, should be inside. The Yankees wouldn’t fire on the hospital. At least we hope they wouldn’t.”
“Yes, yes,” she nodded, turning back to her father for one farewell embrace. “God speed,” she whispered, choking with dry sobs.
“Any message for Coltrane?” he asked lightly, wanting to stop her crying over his leaving.
She thought for a moment. “Goodbye. You can tell him goodbye. That’s what I was doing when I found him that night by the Rapidan.”
He laughed. “You take care, girl. We’ll meet again. Damn a bear! I didn’t know I’d raised such a stubborn little filly!”
And chuckling to himself, he disappeared into the night. The Confederate soldier seemed satisfied and he, too, drifted away. Kitty leaned against the wall, slowly letting herself slide down until she was sitting down in the shadows. She would not be seen unless she chose to be.
Word had just been received that Johnston had assumed command once again on February 23rd. The report was that his army was scattered, dislocated, extending over an area from Kinston to Charlotte. General William J. Hardee, with two divisions totaling seventy-five hundred men, had been in almost daily contact with Sherman’s column for several weeks, but everyone said his small force could only delay Sherman’s advance momentarily. The feared Yankee General who had left a wave of smoldering destruction behind him on his march to the sea was headed straight for Goldsboro, wanting to capture the valuable railroad center.
And they could do nothing but await his arrival.
And she would have to wait, also.
Travis had wanted her to see him with that woman—the knowledge burned into her being. Was it so? What difference did it make? It was over. All of it. She had been weak, careless. Perhaps she did not even love Nathan. Maybe she was incapable of loving any man. She pressed her fingertips against her temples wearily. God, why wasn’t she born a man instead of a woman? She would not have rebelled. She would have accepted her role, her lot in life. That life would have been different.
Closing her eyes she could see that mocking, smirking smile and those steely gray eyes that could be all fire with anger one moment and warm with passion and desire the next. He could hold her gently or shake her into submissiveness—and all the while her blood flowed like rivulets of fire within her veins, leaving her spent and breathless.
Nathan. So boyish and charming. The ideal husband and father. Dreams shared, dreams broken—all because of the war. Was he the man for her? If one existed, then he had to be the one. They were alike in many ways, yet miles apart in others. Marriage would be interesting, perhaps, in bed, but for the most part she saw herself having a baby every year, occupied with womanly things, womanly chatter. The thought was suffocating.
But no man had ever excited her the way Travis Coltrane had been able to do. Even Nathan’s kisses, which made her feel warm in a way, were merely the touching of lips compared with the way Travis’s seemed to crawl inside the very depths of her soul, making her choke with wanting him to consume all of her. Passion. That was all it could be. What would marriage be like to a man like that? Babies? Yes, he would want sons to carry on his name. But somehow, she knew that he would want a woman to stand beside him all the while they lived. He would not be content to have her at home doing things she despised. No, he would have taken her hunting, fishing, maybe even let her pursue a life of her own in nursing. He believed in freedom—for himself, for everyone. He would not have stood in her way.
But she
had to remind herself of one important fact: Travis did not love her. He merely wanted her. Marriage could not be a happy state if based merely on physical needs. But then, as a woman, she was not supposed to care about such things. Her needs were to be filled by a cuddling baby, day-to-day chores. A man took his pleasure and a woman gave it to him. That was the way Nathan viewed it, as did every other man she had ever heard speak of marriage.
Travis would not have shared those views, but it was no longer important how he felt about life because that life would not be shared with her.
And why was marriage so important to a young girl, anyway? Her mother said a girl should marry well, as young as possible, to be assured of security in life. Well, with the war, what security did anyone, male or female, have? And what kind of life if it is spent in total misery?
Bullshit! She did not feel very ladylike as the word entered her brain—the only word that seemed to describe her opinion of the world around her. But then, why did she have to be on guard against her thoughts, to make sure she was always the lady, doing the “acceptable” thing, the “right” thing? Couldn’t she even have the precious pleasure of thinking the way she chose privately? Not according to decorum? Should she always be ladylike?
“Bullshit!” She whispered the word out loud. Maybe it wasn’t feminine, but suddenly she felt good saying it, as though the walls were at last torn down. She was free—to say what she pleased, do what she pleased, and most of all, think what she pleased.
“Bullshit!” She said it again, louder this time.
The soldier stepped out of the bushes once again. “You say something?” he snapped. “You get back inside, lady. This is no time for a lady to be outside.”
She put both hands on the railing and leaned over as far as she could without toppling over. She stared straight at the soldier in the darkness, searching for his face, and when she found it, she laughed out loud and cried: “Bullshit, soldier!”
Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 Page 55