Stone Dreaming Woman

by Lael R. Neill

  The farther they went up the ridge, the deeper and darker the woods became. Then they dropped over the top and onto a relatively flat area or, Jenny thought, an area at least less steep. She saw smoke ahead, and a thinning in the trees that might be called a clearing. That had to be North Village. When the trail widened. she drew Fleur abreast of Midnight.

  “Is that where we’re going?” she asked, pointing vaguely to their left.

  “Yes. It’s not far now. But we’re still not moving above a walk. Come summer, when the snow is off, you’ll see just how rough this is.” She took his warning to heart and dropped back, letting him break trail.

  The sun was climbing toward noon as they arrived in North Village. “Village” seemed a dignified name for the varied structures laid out circle-fashion, like an Indian encampment. She counted only three substantial log buildings. Her heart twisted when she took in the rest, a strange and ramshackle combination of wattle and daub, hides, salvage lumber, and brush. Don’t tell me people actually live in those, she thought, a chill going through her. They’re just asking for an epidemic here.

  “This is North Village,” he said, with one all-inclusive gesture of his left hand. He paused to indicate a white clapboard structure a hundred yards or so to the west. “That’s the schoolhouse and also Father André’s church.”

  He rode through the center of the circle, past a depression in the snow that looked like a very large fire pit. She tried not to stare as dark eyes peered from doorways and childish faces peeked out from behind corners. It seemed routine to Shane, for he did no more than glance around as he led her to the largest house in the village, a good-sized shotgun log cabin with a cedar shake roof and a porch set well off the ground on sturdy piers.

  Shane dismounted and tied his reins around the porch railing, then turned to help her down. This time, however, Jenny did not wait for him but tethered the mare herself while he untied her medical bag.

  They were met at the door by a tall, graying woman of indefinite age. Her eyes, so black they lacked clear delineation between iris and pupil, regarded Jenny without expression. She wore a belted buckskin dress with a blaze of bright beadwork across the shoulders, and she had drawn her hair back into a single, wrist-thick braid. Shane said something to her in his language of soft sibilants, and Jenny realized she had heard the same Iroquois when he had quieted Midnight while she cleaned his wire cuts. The older woman nodded, ushering them into the warm cabin.

  Jenny took it all in with one brief glance. To her right, a huge fireplace of river-worn granite stones dominated the whole wall; a fire leaped brightly on the hearth. One rocking chair stood close to it, draped with a bear robe; an ancient Sharps buffalo rifle dominated the mantelpiece; and a collection of traps, snowshoes, parflèches, and bright, dried corn hung suspended from the rafters. Then the world narrowed to her patient.

  She had expected to find him in the bedroom, but instead he lay beneath a three-point Hudson’s Bay blanket on the long table at the far end of the room. His slim body made only a small, pathetic shape beneath the cover, his face ashen and his eyes filled with terror. Shane spoke to the woman who hovered beside him, evidently his mother, and she and a slightly younger boy stood aside.

  “His name is Jimmy Richardson,” Shane volunteered. “These people are his mother and his brother, and the other woman is his aunt. Incidentally, this is her house. They want to know what you need.” Jenny peeled her coat, gloves, and scarf off in one motion, dropping them on a bench.

  “Hot water to wash, and I need to boil my instruments. Then the fire must be put out completely.”

  Shane gave her a questioning look. “You want them to put the fire out?”

  “Ether is flammable.”

  “Oh. Of course.”

  Jenny turned to the boy. She stroked the sweaty hair from his forehead and took his hand reassuringly. “Jimmy, everything will be all right. I’m a doctor and I’m here to help you. Don’t be afraid. Do you understand?” He nodded, drawing meaning from her tone even though he might not have understood everything she said. His pulse was racing from shock and fear, but it was strong. At least she had that much to go on.

  Shane had evidently forewarned them, for a large kettle of water just below a rolling boil hung over the fire. She set her medical bag on the bench next to the fireplace, sorted out the instruments she would need, set them in a rack, and lowered it into the scalding water. Then she dipped some out into a graniteware basin, rolled her sleeves back, tied an apron over her clothes, washed her hands, and rinsed them with alcohol.

  “Sergeant, I’ll need your help in a minute, but all I’m going to do now is examine him.” She turned the blanket back, and Jimmy whimpered in terror. Shane laid his hands gently on the boy’s shoulders, speaking to him softly in Iroquois. She lifted the makeshift bandage away from his lower leg—Shane had only folded something like a towel around it—and swallowed hard at the abomination she saw. The trap had all but severed his leg just above the ankle. Its jaws had shattered and degloved the tibia and fibula, and she could see where he had severed the last remaining strip of skin. You brave, brave child, she thought, near tears. She replaced the makeshift dressing.

  “I’ll perform a proper amputation and give him a stump he can walk on,” she said quietly. Shane nodded. “Tell him I think he’s very brave, and tell him he’ll walk again. Also, tell him I won’t touch him until he’s completely asleep, and he won’t feel a thing. You can handle the ether for me, but if you’re the least bit squeamish, don’t stay. If you start to feel lightheaded or sick, get out immediately. Understand?” He looked startled as she took charge, but she kept her gaze level, asking for his acquiescence to her authority.

  “I understand.”

  “Good. And ask him when he last had anything to eat or drink.” She took a new ether mask from her bag, filled the reservoir, and set the mask aside while Shane talked to the boy.

  “He said he ate supper last night but all he’s had today was water early this morning.”

  “Good. That’s probably going to save him a lot of misery. Tell him that in a few minutes he’ll go to sleep, and when he wakes up he’ll feel better, his leg will be fixed, and everything will be all right.” She completed the final preparations for surgery. She took the rack with her instruments from the boiling water and wrapped a sterile towel around it, then brought it to the table and set it down out of Jimmy’s line of vision.

  “Now, please have them put the fire out.” After a little discussion, the boy’s aunt went outside, and a moment later two men with metal buckets took care of the fire by the simple expedient of shoveling everything from the hearth and taking it outside. Jenny adjusted the ether mask, and Jimmy did not wince when she pressed it over his face and secured it behind his head. His eyes searched hers, then drifted oddly and closed. She waited the proper interval, then tested his corneal reflexes and adjusted the ether drip again.

  “All right, Sergeant. Just watch this, please. I think there’s plenty of ether. If not, here’s more.” She set the bottle at his elbow. “I may ask you for more or less ether. If I do, here’s the adjustment knob. This way for lighter, that way for heavier. Only a quarter turn at a time unless I tell you otherwise.” She tied on a surgical mask, then pulled the blanket up to the boy’s waist. Fortunately someone had removed his pants or she would have had to cut them off. She reset the tourniquet high on the boy’s thigh. Then she rinsed her hands with alcohol again, took a pair of sterile gloves from her bag, broke the seal, and slipped the gloves on. She carefully cleaned the leg with alcohol, draped it in sterile towels, and prepared to get down to serious work. She made two semicircular incisions in the skin, the one over the shin concave and the back one like a long shirttail. However, when she came to the nitty-gritty business of dissecting the muscles away from the tibia, tying off arteries, and severing the fibula very high, Shane looked away. Eventually she reached up into the incision with a bone saw.

  “I may have to ask you to steady hi
s leg. Just let me see how I do here.” It was the first thing she had said since she started. “No, stay where you are,” she amended. “I’m managing fine by myself. He’s so young and small that his bones aren’t heavy.” She sawed through the tibia and rasped the raw bone smooth, working very carefully. This was where it counted. Irregularities in the bone tended to become spurs later. After a time she concluded by bringing the muscles down to pad the end of the tibia, then approximated the flaps of skin and stitched them with precise, interrupted silk sutures. She loosened the tourniquet, then waited as the stump pinked up with returning blood. As she expected, the wound oozed slightly here and there, but there was no overt bleeding. She cleaned it once more, then applied a heavy, soft dressing and taped it down.

  “All right, Sergeant, that’s it,” she said with a sigh. He turned off the ether drip and set the mask aside. The rank, clinging odor filled the room, along with the cloying, urine-like stench of blood. But Jenny scarcely noticed, filled with the elation of a successful surgical procedure, a life saved. This was medicine, the very purpose for which she had been put on earth. She placed her instruments carefully in the same basin she had used to wash and gave them a rough cleaning, rinsing her gloves at the same time and folding everything in a towel. Not until she removed her mask did she realize she had been working in a state of concentration that approached a trance. Now she felt limp with the aftermath of her own adrenalin. She dried her instruments and returned them to their case, promising a more thorough scrub when she had the time. Finally she asked for clean water, carefully washed her hands, and paused to rub a dab of Honey Almond Cream into them against the drying effect of alcohol.

  “As soon as this place airs out they can light the fire again,” she said. “I’d like to get him into a bed before the ether wears off. Is that possible?”

  “I think so,” Shane replied. He turned to speak to the older woman. She nodded gravely, gesturing to the back room Indian-fashion by pointing with her chin. Jenny understood instantly.

  “Can you carry him?” she asked. “I’d really like to get him settled and comfortable before he wakes up.” Shane slipped his arms beneath the unconscious boy. Jenny unbuttoned Jimmy’s clean though faded shirt and maneuvered it off, then turned the bedclothes back over his sleeping form, taking extra pains to make sure they were tented over the bandage.

  For the first time since they arrived, she took a close look at Shane. His face looked drawn and parchment pale, and he clenched his left fist against the outside of his leg in an effort to steady it.

  “Sergeant, you’re as white as a ghost. I think you’d better go outside and get some fresh air. I can see to everything for now.”

  “Won’t you need an interpreter?”

  “Not right away. He’ll sleep for another hour or so at least. Generally speaking, the total time a patient was anesthetized is also how long they take to wake up. Go on. Outside. You look terrible. Go.” She made a shooing gesture, and he capitulated without argument, pulling the bedroom door nearly closed behind him. She returned to her patient, pressing a stethoscope to his chest and listening with satisfaction to a strong, young heart and clear lungs.

  In the front room, Shane confronted two anxious women. His stomach churned and his head swam from the odor of ether, and he did not want to talk to either of them at that moment. “He will be well and he will walk again,” he said, slipping easily back into Iroquois.

  “She is certain?” the older woman asked.

  “Grandmère, I have to go outside and see to the horses. I’ll be back.” He took up his parka and made as quick an exit as he could without being obvious. He shrugged the parka onto his shoulders and drew in a grateful draught of chill, winter air. It cleared his head, and his stomach calmed to a bearable level as he descended the steps, patted Midnight’s rump, and talked softly to both horses until Fleur acknowledged his presence with a glance and the flick of an ear. He loosened their cinches and tossed ponchos over the saddles. A few more breaths of the pristine, cold air sufficed; now he could return to the house. As he climbed the porch steps, the older woman came out to meet him, wrapped in the bear robe from the rocking chair.

  “My grandson, I realize it is not completely proper that I should speak to you so openly, but I must. This woman…is she the measure of the old healer?”

  “Yes, she is. She may exceed him in many ways. Her education is better than his. There are circumstances in which she knows more than he does. And why should a tribal elder apologize for addressing a warrior, even when that warrior is the son of her daughter?”

  “Yes, Grey Eyes. You are right. I am within the bounds of propriety to speak to you as I may not have been three moons gone. And I hope you are right about this woman.” He turned to her, looking down from his six feet plus.

  “She saved his life. Since she has said he will walk again, he will.”

  The older woman averted her eyes. “She did well,” his grandmother agreed, and he realized that, as she had often done in the past, she quizzed him only to get his opinion. Then Jimmy’s mother and younger brother came out onto the porch. The boy waited until Shane acknowledged him with a nod.

  “Mother would know when she can go to Jimmy,” he said, a little uncomfortable because his mother, an old-fashioned woman, still observed tribal taboos about speaking directly to adult male relatives.

  “When the healer leaves, she may sit at Jimmy’s bedside.” In the past he had often chided his aunt for observing the old ways, but not now. It was simply not worth the effort.

  He went back inside, left his parka on the bench, and pushed the bedroom door open. Jimmy looked up at him, glassy-eyed. He could tell the boy was making a valiant effort to control his terror in front of Jenny.

  “I’m glad you came right back. He woke up much sooner than I thought he would. He’s a very strong young man. I’ve given him an injection of morphine. He’ll sleep now, and he’ll be fine. But please explain to him that as soon as the stump heals enough to bear his weight—about a month—I’ll see that he’s fitted with a good prosthesis. He’ll walk as well as you or I. Modern prosthetics aren’t crude like they used to be. We’ve come a long way from the days of pirates with peg legs.” The boy’s eyes followed Jenny’s face. Though she still doubted how much English he understood, he seemed reassured by her soft voice. Shane translated for him, patiently answering his few questions. Eventually he answered in groggy monosyllables, then his eyes drifted closed. She pulled the covers higher around his shoulders and gave his thin cheek a pat. Her hands stroked his eyelids closed and, understanding her meaning, he smiled faintly. Jenny led Shane from the bedroom, then turned to him.

  “Tell them that he’ll be fine. He can only have fluids until tomorrow morning. He can sit up if he wants, but he should stay quiet. Tell them not to bother the dressing. I’ll come back tomorrow to change it. Here is medicine for him if he’s in pain. Two tablets every four hours. Can they understand that?”

  “I’ll explain so they can.” He turned to the two women, and Jenny noted with some curiosity that the younger would not look directly at him. She wished she could understand the strange language they used. The women spoke briefly to each other, and then the younger looked directly at Jenny for a long moment and murmured a soft, shy sentence before disappearing into the bedroom. The boy left, closing the heavy front door with effort, and Shane, Jenny, and the buckskin-clad older woman were alone in the room.

  “What did Mrs. Richardson say to me?” Jenny asked.

  “She thanked you for the life of her son. Do you want me to take you back now, or do you need to stay longer?”

  “There’s not a lot I can do now. Jimmy will probably sleep the rest of the night. We can leave if you want to, but I’d appreciate it if you’d bring me back tomorrow. I’ve another favor to ask of you between now and then. Oh, I so wish I could talk to these people!”

  “I’ll bring you back, and I’ll handle whatever else you need. Just let me know when you’re ready to le
ave. We’re only going to have another hour or two of good moonlight, and then it’s going to get very dark very quickly. I’d really like to be back down on the road before then. Midnight and I know the trail well enough to negotiate it safely, but you and Fleur don’t yet.”

  “Fine. Here’s medicine for Jimmy. Explain it to them, and then we can leave.” She went to her bag and doled out ten pills into an ancient stoneware cup that Shane remembered from his childhood. Then she retrieved Mavis’s jacket from the time-polished rude bench while Shane spoke with the older Indian woman. She was tall and square-shouldered, with long, slender hands, and Jenny was struck by a marked similarity in their facial bone structure. The woman broke away from Shane and studied Jenny intently for some moments before touching Jenny’s shoulders lightly and speaking a few involved words. Jenny looked questioningly at Shane.

  “She has given you a ceremonial name. It translates as Stone Dreaming Woman. I’ll explain the significance on the way home.”

  “I’m honored, then, considering how it was meant.” Jenny bowed her head respectfully. The woman was still watching her closely.

  “You are not married?” she asked, switching to oddly accented French. Jenny was surprised, but contained it.

  “Non, Madame.”

  “Et votre mère?”

  “Ma mère est mort, Madame.” The woman nodded gravely, her face expressionless.

  Shane put his gun belt on, fastened the lanyard to the ring on the butt of his pistol, and reached for his parka.

  “You are leaving now?” the older woman asked. Jenny had to listen closely to follow her unusual pronunciation.

  “Yes, Madame. My horse and I do not know the trail yet, and it will be dark soon.”

  “Go with God,” she responded. Jenny picked up her bag, and Shane took it from her, escorting her to the door. The woman’s somber eyes followed them until the door closed.