“How long has he been shaking like this?”
“Awhile, I reckon. How long you ’spect he’s gonna live?”
Charlotte tapped her foot, rapidly sorting through options. If she operated on McCabe here and he survived, the Confederate Army would hang him. “At this rate, only a few hours.”
He opened his eyes very slightly, only a sliver, but she could somehow see the color—emerald. He was a handsome man, even with all the swelling and bruises on his square-jawed face. Long, dirty blond hair lay across his forehead, covering most of an open cut above his brow. Over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, probably weighed one-eighty or ninety. If he couldn’t walk, she couldn’t carry him. She checked that option off the list.
He tried to lick his lips, but his swollen tongue stuck in his mouth. His pitiable attempt at communication touched her doctor’s heart. This soldier wasn’t ready to give up. And if he wasn’t, then she wouldn’t give up on him either.
McCabe reached for her hand. “Water.”
She glanced at the nurse. “Bring me clean bandages.”
The nurse stared at her and shook his head slowly, his mouth going tight beneath his mustache. “My orders are to leave him be.”
“I’m not going to watch a man die without trying to make his last moments comfortable. Now go.”
The nurse nodded, then spun on his heel and hurried away.
She sat on the edge of the spindle-back side chair, scooted it closer, scraping wobbly legs against the floor, and took the major’s cold, long-fingered hand between both of hers. He would die soon if she didn’t help him. But to help him, she would have to take him to her time and operate on him. Did she really want to do this?
The major’s eyes were not quite closed and a sliver of white showed among the bruises. Was he trying to open them for one last glimpse of the world? If she took him to the future, this could be his one last glimpse of his world.
President Lincoln called him a friend. General Grant thought highly of him, too. Members of the Richmond underground risked their lives for him. All excellent character references.
Suddenly, her brain slammed against the question of the day, and she swallowed hard. Would the brooch take both of them to her time? Would the brooch even take her? And if the magic worked as she hoped it would, how would the major handle living in her time? What if he freaked out and told people he was from the nineteenth century?
She fought back a growing quiver of panic.
What if the major was married and had children? He’d never see them again. What if…
Stop it. Now.
Going through a litany of what-ifs didn’t help a damn bit. She was stalling while the life of the man whose hand she held slipped slowly away. This was a waiting-at-the-red-light moment. She could waste precious minutes, or she could do something. Why did surgical decisions come so easily and all others seemed to require in-depth analysis?
It was now decision time. Do it, or walk away.
She took a deep breath and saw her decision flow out in the spluttering flame of the candle. She glanced over her shoulder at the flickering shadows. No one was paying attention to them. If anyone was, the light was too low to see clearly.
She turned back to the patient, leaned in close, and whispered, “I’ve been sent to rescue you, Major. I’m getting you out of here.”
“Am I dead?” he whispered.
“No, and you won’t die today if I can help it.”
“My legs won’t carry me very far.”
Sweating profusely, as if she’d just run a race, she let go of his hand, reached into her waistband, and unpinned the brooch. The stone was hot, and not from the heat of her skin. Using the tweezers she’d stolen, she squeezed the clasp and sprung the latch.
“Hold on. We’re going for a ride.” I hope.
His mouth turned up in the faintest of grins. She imagined in his delirious state he was telling the Devil to go screw himself because he didn’t intend to die today.
Well, I don’t either.
Praying she’d been given a round-trip ticket which allowed two to fly for the price of one, she held his hand and haltingly sounded out the inscription on the stone, “Chan ann le tìm no àite a bhios sinn a’ tomhais an gaol ach’s ann le neart anama.”
8
Winchester Medical Center, Winchester, Virginia, Present Day
When the fog cleared, Charlotte was still sitting in the spindle-backed chair holding McCabe’s hand. He lay on the bed, moaning.
Street lights indicated she was no longer in the nineteenth century. But were they in Richmond? Washington? Cedar Creek? At least they weren’t in a Civil War hospital any longer. Any other place would be an improvement.
She’d made it back with a nineteenth-century spy, a bed, and a chair. How was she going to explain this? At least they were period appropriate.
She checked her patient. No change. The clock was ticking faster now, and he didn’t have much time. She had to figure out where she was, then get him to the closest medical center.
Once on her feet, she had a better view of her surroundings. Several hundred yards away sat Belle Grove Mansion. “Oh my God. I’m back.” Her first impulse was to jump up and down with overwhelming relief, but she forced her feelings under control. If her car was still in the parking lot, then she would allow herself a small shriek of joy.
She squatted next to the major. “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”
When he didn’t answer or grin, she ran like she was approaching the finish line in a race, holding nothing back.
Her SUV was where she had left it, squashed next to a tree. She let out a loud sigh of relief, and said a quiet, “Thank you, God.” Her keys were in her haversack, and she had no idea where that was now. Of course, thanks to Jack, she had a spare key hidden in the front passenger-side wheel well.
Once under way, she turned on the high beams and drove across the field, stopping a few feet from her patient with the headlights aimed right at him. There was no way she could move him. She had to call 911.
She rummaged through her purse she’d left in the car, and extracted her cell phone…which still held a charge. But what really surprised her was the date. It was Sunday night. Only thirty-six hours had lapsed since she went into the fog.
She dialed, unsure of what her story would be, but well aware of time running out.
“What’s your emergency?” the 911 operator asked.
“I’m at Cedar Creek Battlefield. There’s a man in the parking lot who’s been shot. He needs an ambulance.”
“What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Charlotte Mallory. I just found him in the parking lot.” She almost choked on the lie but composed herself quickly. How many more would she have to tell before this situation righted itself? She shuddered. She couldn’t worry about that now, or she’d stay blanketed in a sheet of fear that had been suffocating her since she landed in the midst of the Battle of Cedar Creek.
“An ambulance has been dispatched. Is he breathing?”
Charlotte hurried back over to the bed, sat in the chair, and put her hand on McCabe’s chest. “Shallow breathing. He said his name is Major McCabe, and now he seems to have lost consciousness.” She pulled off her beard and wiped her face with a towel she’d brought from the car, then removed the wig and shook out her hair.
“Please remain on the line with me until help arrives,” the operator said.
The shrill of an ambulance soon cut through the night. She grabbed the ticket off the hook at the end of the bed and shoved it into her jacket. Very little personal information was written on the ticket, but it would only confuse the police, especially the 1864 date. It was illegal to tamper with evidence, but right now she didn’t care. If she got arrested, she knew where she could find a good lawyer.
“I hear the ambulance,” she told the emergency operator. “The driver should be able to see my headlights.” The ambulance pulled into the parking lot and stopped a shor
t distance from her vehicle. “They’re here. I’m hanging up.”
She disconnected the call as two EMTs rushed over. “Gunshot to the abdomen. Looks like the wound is a couple of days old.”
One of the EMTs checked McCabe’s vital signs, and then looked at his wound. “You’re right. This isn’t recent.” He glanced up at Charlotte. “You found him here? Bed and all.”
She nodded, slowly. “And the chair.”
The EMT shook his head. “Never seen anything like this.” He turned to his buddy. “Tachypneic, tachycardic, and hypotensive. Let’s get this guy into the ambulance. He’ll need a miracle to survive the night.”
They wheeled a gurney next to McCabe then lowered it to the height of the metal bed. As one EMT tossed off the blanket and lifted an edge of the sheet, another slid a trauma transfer board between the sheet and the bed. The first EMT said to the other. “Slide him over on three. One, two, three.”
McCabe groaned but never opened his eyes. The EMTs rolled him to the ambulance and guided the gurney in. While they called into the hospital and started oxygen and an IV, Charlotte sat in her car and called Ken.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“It’s a long story. I’m in the battlefield parking lot right now. I found a gunshot victim and an ambulance is here now. We’ll be leaving for the medical center as soon as they get him hooked up. Will you meet us there?”
“I’m not on call tonight,” Ken said.
Charlotte used a face cleansing cloth and washed her face while they talked. “I need you to do this for me. If he’s going to survive, you’re his best hope.”
“I’m just pulling into my garage. I’ll turn around and meet you there. Where’s he shot?”
“Abdomen.”
“And he’s still alive?”
She threw the cleansing cloth onto the floor and opened another one. “I wouldn’t be calling you if he was dead.”
“Are you going to tell me where you’ve been? You’ve been missing for over thirty-six hours. I found your haversack with a strange-looking box. You met someone, didn’t you?”
“Sure did. A major in the Union Army with a bullet in his abdomen. See you at the hospital.” She hung up in the middle of Ken’s next question.
She hustled over to the ambulance. “How is he?”
One of the EMTs climbed out and closed the rear door. “Not good. We’re taking him to Winchester Medical Center.”
“I’ll follow you,” she said.
Twelve minutes later, she whipped her car into a reserved space in the parking lot at the Winchester Medical Center’s ER entrance and tossed her doctor tag onto the dashboard. If a parking attendant looked close enough, he’d discover the tag was only valid at her hospital in Richmond and would have her car towed. But that was another thing she didn’t care about right now.
Ken pulled into a spot next to her and jumped out. “What the h—”
She pushed him toward the ER entrance. “Patient now. Explanations later.”
He followed the EMTs into the ER, barking orders. “Get him to the trauma bay.”
The EMTs rolled McCabe down the hall and into the first available cubicle. They transferred him quickly to the hospital bed, then the trauma nurses went to work cutting off his shirt and trousers.
One of the nurses held up the bloody shirt. “These look like old-timey clothes. He must have been at the reenactment.”
The other nurse, hooking McCabe to the monitors, said, “I thought safety marshals checked all the weapons. How’d he get shot?”
Ken snapped on a pair of gloves and inspected the wound. “Change his oxygen mask to a one hundred percent non-rebreather and start a second IV. Hang LR and run both wide open. What are his vitals?”
If this had been Charlotte’s hospital she would be working on McCabe, but it wasn’t and she had no privileges here. She resigned herself to standing in the back against the wall. Ken didn’t need her watching over his shoulder.
The adrenaline that had been her constant companion throughout her ordeal was dissipating, leaving her lightheaded and exhausted. Or maybe it was the diet of coffee and hardtack combined with little sleep. She considered a shower, a decent meal, and downtime, but as long as the major fought for his life, she would stay close by.
The ER doc stuck her head in. Ken told her he was attending and he’d call her if he needed help. Nodding, she watched for a minute then left. Technicians hurried in to assist Ken, draw blood and cultures, and take X-rays.
Charlotte’s eyes strayed from the monitors to the shredded, bloody clothes someone was shoving into a bag, to the naked man, modestly draped. He had a V-shaped, ripped, lean torso from his broad shoulders down to a distended abdomen covered with dried blood and reddened with cellulitis. Perfect symmetry and proportion till you got to his belly. Nurse this guy back to health and he might be a classic hunk. Great physique and, based on his friends, he had to be intelligent. For now, she wouldn’t hold the fact that he was a lawyer against him.
If he survived, how was she going to explain what happened to him when she was completely mystified herself? Maybe none of the adventures of the last few days really happened. Maybe she’d never left the reenactment. Maybe she’d slept through the last few days dreaming of being captured and meeting Abraham Lincoln.
Really? Then how did she explain the man attached to oxygen, IVs, and monitors with a Civil War-era minié ball, of all things, in his gut?
There would be consequences for bringing him home with her. When Jack heard her story, he would jump into the middle of the mystery wearing combat boots.
“Are the antibiotics in yet? Call OR and see if they’re ready for us,” Ken told a nurse before turning to Charlotte and extending a professional courtesy. “Do you want to observe?”
“Yes.” She pushed off the wall. Until she scrubbed away the grime, she wasn’t going anywhere, especially into the OR. “I’ll join you in ten minutes. Where’s the closest shower? I’ve spent two days in the field and I’m way too dirty for the OR.”
“Second floor call room,” a nurse said. “You’ll find clean scrubs in the cabinet.”
Stress, sweat, and dirt melted away under the hot spray. Although she was tempted to linger, she didn’t. Returning to her patient preempted her physical needs, including food. Her empty stomach growled. She hoped Ken still had steak and wine left.
As soon as Ken finished surgery, she planned to invade his house, eat, drink, and soak in the hot tub. She also had to call Jack to fill him in. If McCabe survived, he would need someone with him who knew his identity and could answer his questions. She had a full day of surgeries and office appointments scheduled for the next day, which meant returning to Richmond in the morning by six. After all she had been through, she needed to return to her normal life, to structure and safety. Jack would be psyched to babysit a nineteenth-century Union cavalry officer who also happened to be a spy. Perfect story material.
She dressed in scrubs and hurried off to the OR.
Two hours later, Ken had removed the bullet, repaired the bowel, and copiously irrigated the major’s abdominal cavity. The police would want the bullet for evidence once it was released by pathology. When they questioned McCabe, what would he tell them?
Two police officers were waiting when she and Ken exited the OR. One man was tall and lean with close-cropped brown hair, and the other was a broad-shouldered blond with a grouchy face. She disliked them both on sight.
“Doctor Mallory?” thin man asked, approaching Ken.
“I’m Doctor Mallory.” Charlotte glared at the man with an exasperated shake of her head. She was exhausted and not in the mood to be interviewed, but she knew from personal experience that if she ignored the police, they could be more problematic than the press. She would stick to the truth as much as possible.
The grouchy looking officer said, “We’d like to ask you a few questions about the man you brought in earlier.”
“Have you learned anything about him?
” she asked, hoping to deflect some of the attention from her.
“We were hoping you could tell us,” thin man said.
“When we finished late this afternoon, I got in my car to go back to Richmond but decided to close my eyes for a few minutes before making the drive. The next thing I knew it was three hours later. I didn’t realize I was so tired. Glad I didn’t try to drive.”
Heat crept up her neck as a ripple of tension went through her. Lying made her uncomfortable. She would not pass a polygraph test today. “Anyway, I pulled out of my parking space and spotted someone lying on a bed. I jumped out of the car and approached cautiously. I asked his name. He was still alert enough to answer, ‘Major McCabe.’ I saw his abdomen and realized he’d been shot. I called 911.”
The tall officer made notes. Grouchy just glared. If they were trying to intimidate her, good luck. She had been trained by surgical professors who had perfected the art of intimidation.
Thin man flipped a page in his notebook. “Have you ever seen him before?”
She shook her head. “He’s a pretty good-looking guy. I would have noticed him.”
“He told you his name was Major McCabe,” thin man said. “Is that his rank or first name?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Thin man wrote in his notebook. “Why’d you call Doctor Thomas? The ER docs could have handled the case.”
“No, the ER docs would have had to call a surgeon. Dr. Thomas is the best. He’s my friend, and I thought he’d find it an interesting case. Besides, he would have been pissed if he had missed this one.”
Thin man tapped his pen against the notebook. “Is that right, Doctor Thomas?”
Ken gave her a wry grin. “That I’m the best? Yes.”
“Did you see anyone else? There was a chair next to the bed as if someone had been sitting with him,” Grouchy said.
The Sapphire Brooch Page 6