Words Heard In Silence / Xena Uber

by T. Novan

  Rebecca found a crate and sat down on Charlie’s other side . She took his hand. With her other hand she gently ran her fingers through his hair. "I am here, my love." She leaned over and gently kissed his fevered brow. Then she looked at Elizabeth. "If it is not too presumptuous of me, I would like to make a suggestion."

  "I will take any suggestion you have. Jocko came up with washing the wounds with boiled brine. It has helped some."

  "I know it may not make much sense, but when I was growing up, my mother always used honey to draw out infections. I never knew her to use anything else."

  Elizabeth frowned and looked at Charlie’s wound. Somehow she knew there still had to be something from the shell left in the wound that was causing this continued infection. But finding some small shard in that mess of chopped meat was almost impossible. Anything that would tend to draw it out would help. "Would you alternate it with the brine washes?"

  "Yes, honey applied to warm soaked cloths, left just long enough to draw the infection to the top, then cleansed with the salt solution or possibly alcohol."

  "Or perhaps a hot honey compress? Left on for say half an hour at a time? Then cleaned with a warm brine wash to flush out anything the honey drew? We would need heat to melt the honey, I would think."

  "Yes, that is how it is done, for the most part. My mother used this cure on every living thing on our farm at one time or another."

  Jocko spoke up. "Yes, damn me, me mother used honey for every scratch and scrape we had as children. Seemed to work too. I am just sorry I di’ not remember it."

  Elizabeth looked directly into Rebecca’s eyes. "Do you think you could stand to help with it? Charlie is in a pretty bad way, and these are ugly wounds. The stench of the infection is nauseating. It would be very hard, and I do not want to ask you to do anything you do not feel comfortable with."

  "Elizabeth, I will do whatever you or Charlie need. I did not come here to say goodbye. I came here to take him home."

  "Good. Come over and sit beside me. I will show you how to clean and dress each of his wounds."

  Rebecca nodded, then pushed up the sleeves of her dress as she moved next to Elizabeth. She took a deep breath, clenched her jaw and vowed not to vomit again. She also commanded herself not to cry at the sight of Charlie's wounds. Mrs. Redmond was resolute. She was going to save Charlie's life.

  Elizabeth was working on Charlie’s hip and thigh. From halfway between his knee and hip up almost to his waist, his right side was raw. He was missing a chunk about the size of Rebecca’s hand of the heavy muscle in his thigh. At least the lower part of the wound was clean and showing signs of beginning to heal. A large chunk of his buttock was also gone, but this site was angry, inflamed and infected. There were several pocket of pus; the wound was oozing and stank of infection. Elizabeth carefully opened the pockets of puss with the tip of a small scalpel, drained the infection, and rinsed the area with warm brine. "When I finish, you can make a honey compress for it, if you would."

  "Of course." She looked to Jocko. "Can you please go find some honey? I believe Charlie may have had some in his personal things. It will be in a black clay jar. Lizbet sent it with him, along with a few other comforts from home."

  "Yes, ma’am. I know what you are speaking of. But, I think that we have some in the mess. I can save your special honey for his tea when he can have some. I will be right back with it, and with more boiling water."

  "Thank you." Rebecca then set to finding clean cloths that could be used to make the warm honey poultice. She glanced back to watch Elizabeth open yet another pocket of infection which ran red and yellow with pus. She saw Elizabeth clench her jaw as she took a small cloth and dabbed out the mess that was so significant it was running freely onto the sheets.

  She found a package of boiled lint in the surgical tray. Sure that she would have what she needed, she turned back to Elizabeth. "Let me finish. You look exhausted."

  "Thank you. I appreciate it. You need to learn how to do this if you are to care for him."

  "Just tell me what to do." She took the seat Elizabeth vacated and picked up the scalpel. "I am ready."

  "Look for the places that look shiny and rounded. The shine is from the flesh being drawn tight from the infection underneath. Make a small incision, perhaps a finger’s width long, and let it drain. If you can, press on either side of the lump to push out any additional puss." Elizabeth looked at Rebecca, who had paled noticeably. "It does not hurt as much as you might think, and it feels much better afterwards. The pressure and heat of the infection is terribly painful."

  Rebecca nodded, wondering briefly if she could actually do this. Then she remembered she had helped her father do similar things to injured horses, and if she could do it for an animal, she could certainly do it for someone she loved. She steadied her hand and made the first cut, being very careful to do exactly what Elizabeth had told her. "Like this?"

  "Good, but you need to cut a little deeper –– you will actually feel your knife break through to the infection. It is considerably less dense than the muscle tissue."

  "All right." She tried again, making the cut a little deeper and a little longer. When she did, the cyst broke open covering her fingers in sticky yellow fluid.

  "That is exactly right. You go ahead, I will just watch to make sure you get everything."

  Carefully, Rebecca dabbed at the wound, cleaning it out and applying pressure to force out more of the infection. Very soon she was so involved in her job that everything else, including the foul smell, seemed to fade from her consciousness.

  Jocko returned more quickly than she expected, or perhaps time had passed more quickly than she noticed.

  "I have plenty of good, fresh honey, Miss Rebecca. No sugar crystals in it at all, and it has been strained to get any comb out. And I brought a small a pot of boiled water, too, to make the compresses. My mother used to pour about a cup of honey into about two cups of hot water, then soak the lint in it to make a compress. Do you want me to prepare it?"

  "Yes please." She answered without looking up from the next area that she was working on. As she made another cut, she felt the blade catch on something. "Elizabeth, I think there is something here. Can you give me more light?"

  Elizabeth reached into her surgical kit and pulled out a small mirror, which she used to focus a beam of light on the small incision that Rebecca had made. Tersely, she commanded, "Expand the incision." She pulled a pair of forceps out and used them to spread the incision. There was a small sliver of something the color of the red clay mud; it was almost the color of the flesh around it. With a pair of tweezers, she carefully pulled it out of the flesh in which it was embedded. It was a long sliver of half rotten wood.

  "Oh, God. How could I have missed this?"

  "Elizabeth, look at it. It is the same color as everything else. I would not have seen it. I only found it because the scalpel touched it while I was cutting."

  "So do you think that each one of these pockets of infection may be hiding a bit of debris?"

  Rebecca chuckled. "Me? You are the doctor."

  Elizabeth smiled, possibly for the first time in over a week. "Right now, I am feeling more like the fumbling fool than the doctor. Let us finish cleaning up his wounds, get him a bit more stabilized, then do some serious probing."

  "All right. Whatever you think it best."

  --*--

  Rebecca sat next to the bed, holding Charlie's good hand and praying. She placed a cool cloth on his forehead, hoping to help bring down the fever that still gripped his body. She, Elizabeth and Jocko had spent two and a half hours flushing the wound and taking turns pulling out small pieces of wood, that had embedded themselves deeply into his flesh.

  She leaned over and kissed his cheek. "I love you, Charlie. You need to get better and come home. Your daughter misses you and there are two baby boys who want to meet their Papa. Please, Charlie."

  A soft moan came from the recumbent form, and Charlie’s good hand twitched, as if reach
ing for something.

  "I am here darling." Rebecca's voice was hopeful as she leaned closer to his cheek, giving it a kiss. "I am right here."

  Charlie’s eyelids fluttered open. He looked at her, blank and unrecognizing for a moment, then murmured, "‘Becca?"

  "Yes, my love." She kissed his cheek again and brushed her fingers through his hair.

  "Dream of you. Always you." He smiled and relaxed some.

  "And I of you. We are together now, Charlie, and I will not leave here without you."

  He tossed his head and shifted in the bed, trying to get a little more comfortable. "Hurts. So much. Please make it stop."

  "I know it hurts my love, we are doing everything we can. We are going to make you better. I promise."

  He stirred again, clenching her hand convulsively. She almost cried when she felt how weak his grip was. "Say goodbye for me."

  "No one to say goodbye to, my love. You are going to be just fine and I am going to take you home to our farm and our babies."

  "Home? Home. Becca. Sweet Becca. Miss you so." He smiled and closed his eyes.

  Rebecca leaned over, allowing tears to fall for the first time, as she realized that he did not understand she was there with him. "It is all right, Charlie. I am not leaving. I will be right here with you, until I can take you home. Rest now my darling. Just rest."

  "Rest. Yes. Rest." He turned his head into the hand stroking his hair, closed his eyes and lay still. The only sound in the room was the slight rumble of his breathing and the soft sound of Rebecca’s tears.

  --*--

  Dusk had dimmed the light in the tent to soft shadows when Elizabeth came in, followed by a trooper carrying a tray with two steaming bowls and a pot of tea.

  "I thought you might need some food, dear. You have had a long day. I know I am starving. How is Charlie doing?"

  "He was talking awhile ago. I thought he was talking to me and then I realized that he did not know who he was talking to." She reached for the bowl. "Thank you." She took a bite and watched as Elizabeth settled down with her. "Is it true? Is President Lincoln dead?"

  "Evidently, yes. The telegraph said that he was shot in the head last night by some actor while he was at the theater and died today."

  "How horrible. It would seem his dream was prophetic after all. I feel terribly sorry for Mrs. Lincoln."

  "I feel more concerned for us, dear. Already, there is a great deal of anger at the South for his death."

  "I am sure. What do they know about the man who shot him?"

  "Evidently it was one of the Booth boys. John Wilkes, I believe. Ironic, since his father was on stage at that theater not four months ago."

  "Oh, Lord, it was his father Charlie and I saw while we were in Washington. We attended a performance at Ford's Theater."

  "Well, of the children, Wilkes was the least talented. I always thought he was trying to outdo his brother Edwin –– and usually failed. Perhaps this is his way of being famous. Pretty poor solution, in my opinion."

  "Did they catch him? Do you know?"

  "I believe they are still looking for him. Personally, I hope they catch him and he burns in hell. They will surely execute him for what he has done."

  "I do not doubt that. Hopefully, that will be the last of the killing from this awful mess." Rebecca looked to Charlie and replaced the cloth on his forehead. "It has cost us all too much."

  Elizabeth finished the last bit of stew in her bowl. "Well, this is just the beginning. What will it take to put this land back to work? To repair the damage? I have seen fields that were so soaked with blood and torn up with canister shot, I doubt anything will ever grow there again."

  "To be honest, Elizabeth, I have little care about that. The South brought these problems on itself. I just want to make Charlie better and take him home. I have little sympathy for these fools who did not know when all was lost, who did not have the brains God gave a nanny goat, to know when to stop. They should have stopped months ago and because they did not, look at what they did to Charlie."

  Elizabeth was a bit startled. She had seen Rebecca angry, offended, annoyed, lost, depressed, and downright ready to kill Mrs. Williams. She had never seen this deep, despairing bitterness before. "My dear, it has been a long and very difficult day. You have a long, hard road ahead of you nursing Charlie back to health. Can I give you something to help you sleep? Jocko and Samuelson will take turns watching over Charlie tonight."

  "No. No, I want to be able to come if he needs me." She gestured to the other side of the tent, where a blanket had been strung. "Jocko has provided me with a place to sleep when I get tired, but I do not want to leave Charlie."

  "I did not mean for you to leave him, dear. I just thought you would need some sleep sometime, and the men will be happy to watch and call you if he wakes."

  Rebecca looked at Charlie, whose face twitched with pain. "He does not know I am here. I want him to know I am here."

  Elizabeth’s heart almost broke at how forlorn Rebecca looked as she said those words. "My dear, he is delirious. Now that we have dug out all the debris from his wounds, he should start to improve. At some level, I think he does know you are here. He is trying more, trying to cooperate, to stay still when we work on him. His hand must hurt as much or more than his leg, but he held it still while you worked on it today. He has been trying to pull it away from me."

  Rebecca nodded and could no longer be strong. The tears began to fall.

  --*--

  Sunday, April 16, 1865

  After letting her cry herself out, Elizabeth convinced Rebecca that Charlie would probably sleep through the night. Reluctantly, she accepted a mild sedative from the concerned physician, and settled onto the cot Jocko had made up for her.

  She slept late the next morning after a restless night broken by needing to get up repeatedly and check on Charlie. Jocko, having taken over from Samuelson sometime in the middle of the night, let her sleep.

  The first thing she heard that morning was Charlie’s voice, talking to Jocko.

  "I dreamed of her yesterday, Jocko."

  "Dreamed, Charlie?"

  "I dreamed of Rebecca."

  Slowly, she stepped out from behind the blanket and approached his bed. "It was not a dream, my love." She took his hand and smiled at him.

  Charlie looked up at her smiling face, floating above him and nearly passed out. "Rebecca?"

  "Yes, my dear. I came as soon as I could." She ran her fingers over his forehead and through his hair, relieved beyond measure that his fever seemed to be going down.

  Charlie closed his eyes and just savored her touch for a moment. Then his eyes popped open. "How bad is it?"

  "You have been wounded, you know that, but it is nothing we cannot deal with. All that matters is that you are alive." She smiled and kissed his cheek. "And the war is over, Charlie. When you are well, we can go home."

  "The war is over?" A look of vast relief came over his face.

  "Yes Charlie, it is over. Lee surrendered."

  "Thank God. Oh, Rebecca, if you had seen those men?"

  "I know darling, but it is over now. All we have to worry about is making you well enough to go home. You have a little girl who is desperate to have her Papa home and you have two fine healthy sons waiting for you."

  "How is Em? I miss the little imp."

  "She is growing like a weed. She talks of you constantly and she is waiting for us to come home. She misses her Papa."

  "And the boys? Charles and Andrew?"

  "Beautiful and healthy, waiting for you to come home so they can be properly christened."

  "Who is taking care of them?"

  Rebecca chuckled. "Well in reality, Tess and Ginny, but Miss Emily thinks she is in charge."

  "Ginny?" Charlie was tiring; as much as he wanted to know how the children were doing, he could feel the energy draining from him.

  "The wet nurse." She leaned over and kissed his cheek. "Rest, dear heart. We can talk later."

 
; He closed his eyes for a few minutes, and then opened them to look directly into Rebecca’s eyes. "Tell me. How bad is it?"

  "You are going to be fine, my love. We will get you through."

  His hand closed around her wrist. "Tell me. I need to know."

  She took her seat next to him. "It is bad, Charlie. You have lost a lot of mass in your thigh and buttock. You were wounded in the shoulder and you lost two fingers on your right hand. You have been fighting infection for ten days. But it does not matter. What matters is that you are alive."

  Charlie laid there, eyes closed, trying to absorb the implications of her stark statement. A few fingers he could live without, but what about the shoulder and how much mass was gone from his leg? Finally, bleakly, he asked, "Will I be able to walk?"

  "Yes. Yes, you will be able to walk. Elizabeth did everything she could, Charlie. You asked her not to take your leg and she did not, though she thought she might have to. You will be able to get up and about again."

  "Will I be a cripple?"

  She sighed. "Charlie, it does depend on your definition of cripple. Will you be able to run your circuit at the farm? No, probably not. Will you be able to run the farm? Yes. Will you be able to be a father to the children? Yes, without question."

  Charlie was quiet for a long time. Finally, he spoke again. "You know, I thought I had died. I remember calling your name. I remember dreaming of you."

  "You called and I came. I will be here with you until it is time to take you home. Then I shall do just that and we will begin the life we have planned."

  Charlie murmured, "Love you," then closed his eyes and slept again.

  --*--

  Monday, April 24, 1865

  Elizabeth had slipped a small amount of laudanum into Rebecca’s tea that morning, hoping the exhausted woman would go to sleep. Over the last few days, Rebecca had sat, quietly washing Charlie’s wounds with alternating washes of warm honey and salt water every hour, and bathing his fevered forehead with cool water in the interim. The doctor was concerned at her friend’s refusal to leave Charlie and finally decided to take matters into her own hands. She slipped into the tent in the early afternoon to find Charlie’s fever down for the first time in days.