by Regina Scott
Clint dug a groove in the dirt with the heel of his boot. “Hope you’re right, Lije. Sorry that happened to you this morning. Did the rest of the service go well? Did more people come?”
Elijah was just going to tell his brothers about Alice Hawthorne and his hope that she would lend her nursing skills as needed, when he heard the sound of running footsteps heading toward them.
A heartbeat later a wild-eyed man burst into the circle of firelight. “Preacher, you got t’ come! Deacon Gilbert’s hurt bad—he’s cut his leg and he’s bleedin’ somethin’ terrible! I’m afeared he’s gonna bleed t’ death! His missus sent me to fetch you!”
“How did it happen?” Elijah demanded, as he strove to control the dread that threatened to swamp him. What could he do in the face of a serious injury but pray and try to comfort? Was he about to lose the man who’d been the very first to step forward and support Elijah’s work?
“He cut hisself with his own ax—he was choppin’ firewood. I—I gotta get back there!” the distraught man cried, already turning to run in the direction he’d come. “Miz Gilbert, she’s carryin’ on somethin’ fierce!”
Elijah started to follow the messenger, but he had a sudden idea and turned back to his brothers. “I’ll go to the Gilberts’ and see what I can do for Keith. You two split up and see if you can find a Miss Alice Hawthorne in one of the tents. She came to chapel this morning, and she’s a nurse. She has dark red hair and blue eyes, and I’d reckon she’s in her mid-twenties. Ask if she’ll come help. Tell her to bring bandages, and whatever else she thinks is needful, and come with you to help Mr. Gilbert.”
Then he turned and ran toward the Gilberts’ campsite, sending up a silent prayer that one of his brothers would be able to find Miss Hawthorne quickly among the maze of wagons and tents, and that she would be willing to follow his brother and help save a life.
The Gilberts’ tent lay on the other side of Boomer Town, but it didn’t take long for Elijah to reach it at a dead run, even though he had to weave through campsites, and dodge wagons and picket lines to which the horses were tied. Even from a distance, he could hear the sound of a woman’s shrieks, and after hurdling the tongue of a freight wagon, he spotted the circle of men and women.
Half a dozen lanterns held by onlookers illuminated the scene, their lights bobbing and flickering. At the edge of the crowd, another woman held the wailing Mrs. Gilbert. Everyone was talking at once, some calling out advice to a kneeling man dabbing at the wound, others softly opining as to whether Keith Gilbert would bleed to death or die later of blood poisoning—assuming it was even possible to stop the bleeding. A handful of women joined the chorus of Mrs. Gilbert’s wails, wringing their hands.
“Let him through, fellers. He’s the preacher!” cried the man who had come for Elijah. “Don’t let Keith die without so much as a prayer said fer ’im!”
His words parted the crowd like a sword, and in the pale light of an upheld kerosene lantern, Elijah beheld Keith Gilbert, lying there pasty pale with wide, terrified eyes. Someone had rolled up a coat and put it under his head. A bloody-bladed ax lay amid an armload of kindling at his feet. But it was the crimson-stained left pants leg and the spreading pool of blood in the dirt that captured Elijah’s attention.
“P-please, Preacher, d-don’t let me die!” Keith Gilbert begged, panting and raising his arm in a feeble beckoning gesture. “It was my own fault—somethin’ d-distracted me just as I swung my ax—a fool thing, to take my eye off an ax I’d just sharpened…”
Dear Lord, spare this man, Elijah prayed silently as he went forward and knelt by Keith. Let Clint or Gideon find Miss Alice quickly, bring her here and give her the skill to save this man!
“You’re not going to die,” Elijah reassured his deacon, though he had no idea if he was telling the truth. The man had already lost a good deal of blood, and he was pale as a shroud. “I’ve sent for a nurse, and I’m sure she can stop your bleeding.” Someone had laid a towel over the wounded leg, and it was already saturated with blood.
Elijah aimed a look at Cassie Gilbert. Maybe giving her something to do would help her calm down. “Mrs. Gilbert, may I please have your apron?” he said. The apron was wrinkled and stained here and there, but it was better than nothing.
As he’d hoped, the deaconess untied it with shaking fingers and threw it to Elijah, who caught it and wadded it up. Elijah yanked off the blood-soaked towel, replaced it with the apron and leaned on the bleeding leg with all the force he could muster. When Alice got here—if his brothers could find her—he’d need to rip open the trouser leg so she could see the wound, but for now, trying to stop the bleeding was the first priority.
“Reverend,” rasped Gilbert. “I know I’m a sinner, but the preacher at home said, if I gave my heart to the Lord, He’d take me straight into Heaven. That’s right, isn’t it? I’m a Christian, so He’ll keep His promise, won’t He?”
“Of course He will,” Elijah assured him. “But we’re going to do our best to save you. The nurse I spoke of will be here any second now,” he said, and hoped it was true.
“Lord, in Jesus’s name, please help Your servant Keith Gilbert so he can go on doing Your will on earth,” Elijah prayed aloud. Please, Lord, let Miss Alice get here in time.
It seemed like an eternity that he leaned on the wound, not daring to let up on the pressure lest the scarlet stain spread farther on the trouser leg. Then he heard booted feet shifting in the circle of onlookers around him, and suddenly Gideon was leading Miss Hawthorne through the crowd.
Thank You, Lord.
*
Alice had barely been able to keep up with the big man who’d hastily identified himself as Elijah Thornton’s brother Gideon.
She didn’t want to do this. She knew if she tended to the wounded man, she would no longer pass unnoticed in the tent city. People would know her name and that she was a nurse, and the requests would never end.
And Maxwell Peterson might hear of it.
But how could she say no when a man’s life hung in the balance? It wouldn’t be right, even on a basic humanitarian level, and it certainly wouldn’t be a Christian thing to do.
So she’d hastily gathered up her supplies. The kit she’d put together before her journey contained sturdy darning thread—which she’d boiled, then wrapped in an ironed handkerchief—similarly wrapped boiled needles, bandaging lint and a stoppered bottle of disinfectant.
She had hoped she’d never need those supplies, but now here she was, panting from her run and staring down at a man whose ghastly pallor told her that he would die if she didn’t help him. Or maybe even if she did.
“Thanks for coming, Miss Hawthorne,” said Elijah Thornton, who was kneeling over the man, leaning on a blood-stained wad of cloth on the man’s left leg. “Mr. Gilbert accidentally gashed his leg with an ax. Obviously he’s lost a lot of blood,” he added, indicating the dark crimson puddle beneath the limb.
Alice took a deep breath, summoning the calm that had earned her a valued reputation with the doctors of Bellevue. She couldn’t help a victim if she succumbed to the vapors, after all. “Let me see the wound,” she said, carrying her bag over to the recumbent man.
“Very well, but I must warn you, each time I let up on the pressure, the blood starts flowing again,” Elijah cautioned her. Splotches of dark scarlet on his sleeves confirmed what he said.
She nodded and said, “Give me one minute, please, before you release the pressure.” She stared at the circle of gaping men and women around her. “Does anyone have a belt I can use? And a sturdy stick, or long-handled spoon, as well as a knife?”
Most of the men’s trousers were held up by suspenders, but finally a skinny man at the back of the circle made his way through the throng, one hand holding a belt, the other one holding up his trousers; another man furnished a wicked-looking knife from his boot. A woman—Alice recognized her as the deaconess who’d passed the collection sack this morning—stopped wailing and rummaged in a crate fastened
to the nearby wagon, coming up with a long-handled spoon, which she held out to Alice.
Kneeling beside the man, Alice did her best to smile down at him. “Mr. Gilbert, I’m Miss Hawthorne, a nurse, and first we’re going to stop the bleeding with a tourniquet, so I can see your wound.”
Mr. Gilbert swallowed with difficulty, but his wide eyes were trusting as he gazed up at her. “Thank ya, Miss H-Hawthorne…I don’t wanna die. Please don’t let me bleed t’ death.”
“I won’t,” she assured him, hoping and praying it would prove to be the truth. Lack of hope could kill a man as quickly as blood loss.
Quickly and efficiently, she slit the trouser leg up the seam and pushed it back from the wound. “Reverend, if you would apply pressure once more?” Then, trying to remember everything about the safe use of tourniquets—taught to her by a surgeon at Bellevue, who’d once treated soldiers in the Civil War—Alice drew one end of the belt under his upper leg, fastened the buckle, then began to twist the belt until she could twist it no more. Finally she stuck the spoon handle into the small remaining loop. Her eyes sought Gideon, who’d remained nearby. “Please hold this loop twisted tight as I have it,” she instructed him. “Don’t let it go unless I tell you.”
He did so, keeping pale gray eyes trained on her.
“Now you can remove your hands,” she told Elijah, and he eased away from the victim with a sigh of relief.
“Can you hold that lantern directly over his leg, please, so I can see what we’re dealing with?” she asked another man who’d come into the circle, a man who looked so much like Elijah he had to be another of his brothers. Once the lantern light flickered over the temporary bandage, she gingerly lifted a corner of it and inspected the gash.
Thanks to the tourniquet, the blood flow had stopped, so she could see the wound on the inside of the left lower leg was about four inches long and at least an inch deep. It must have crossed a big blood vessel to have bled so much—not an artery, she thought, for the bleeding hadn’t been spurting when pressure was loosened, just a steady, continuing crimson stream.
“I’m going to have to stitch up the wound,” she told Gilbert and his wife. “It’s going to hurt some.”
He regarded her with eyes that were now calm. “You do whatever you have t’ do, Miss Hawthorne. I’m in the Lord’s hands as well as yours. Say, weren’t you the newcomer at chapel this mornin’?”
She pretended not to hear the question but directed those with lanterns to come closer and hold the lanterns as steady as they could. Then, after cleaning the wound with carbolic, she started stitching.
Conversation died down as the men watched her work until all Alice could hear was the steady inhale and exhale of her own breathing, and the pounding pulse in her ears.
*
An hour later, Elijah watched Alice straighten after putting what was left of her supplies in an oilskin bag. Mr. Gilbert slept inside his wagon, having been lifted there by some of the men. His wife, who’d been profuse with her gratitude, sat beside him. His color was better, and a clean white bandage was wrapped around his newly sutured leg. Those who had been standing around watching the drama began to disperse to their own campsites.
“Thank you, Miss Hawthorne,” Elijah said. “I am in awe of your ability.” The words were so inadequate. Without a murmur of disgust or shrinking from such an awful sight as the ax wound had been, this woman had saved a man’s life.
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said, her voice weary as she pushed back an errant curl that had strayed onto her perspiration-dampened forehead. “He could still develop septicemia—blood poisoning. What I wouldn’t have given for a handful of catgut ligatures, instead of boiled darning thread,” she said. “I’m glad now that I brought a jar of carbolic acid on my journey. There’s nothing better to cleanse a wound.”
“I thought we might have need of your skills but not so soon as it happened,” Elijah commented.
“Once a nurse, always a nurse,” she responded wryly.
“You met my brother Gideon, of course, but this is my other brother, Clint,” Elijah said, when both men joined them.
“It’s an honor to meet you, ma’am,” the man who’d held the lantern said, and beside him, the big man who’d summoned Alice rumbled an agreement.
Elijah saw Alice staring dazedly at the wagon and around the campsite, as if she’d forgotten where she was.
“Come on, it’s late,” he said gently, wondering if she was a bit in shock herself, now that the emergency had passed. “We’ll walk you back to your campsite.”
“No, I must stay. Mr. Gilbert has to be watched,” Alice protested. “His wife can’t do it—you saw that she was exhausted. If he moves around in his sleep too much, the wound could reopen and bleed again. Or he could develop fever—”
Elijah hadn’t thought about the need to watch Mr. Gilbert through the night, but it was plain Miss Hawthorne was dead on her feet and couldn’t do it. Her cheeks were pale, and her eyes showed the strain of the past hour or so.
“I’ll stay,” Elijah said, “and my brothers will walk you home. I’ve sat up with the sick before,” he added, when she opened her mouth with the obvious intent of objecting. “I’ll come fetch you if he worsens during the night, I promise.”
She stared at him, then her shoulders sagged in surrender and fatigue. “Now it’s my turn to thank you, Reverend Thornton,” she said. “I’ll check on him in the morning. I’ll have to keep an eye on him for several days and take the stitches out.”
“Please, call me Elijah,” he said, surprising himself. It just didn’t seem right to stand on formality after such an event. He could see how fatigued she was by the dark shadows blooming under her eyes. “Get some rest, Miss Hawthorne. Gideon, Clint, please walk Miss Hawthorne back to her tent.”
Gideon had told him that Miss Hawthorne’s tent was five campsites to the left of theirs. Now Elijah knew where to find Alice, but he prayed he would not have to seek her out because of a medical crisis any time soon.
Chapter Four
“Good night, Miss Hawthorne. Thanks again for what you did,” Clint Thornton said, tipping his hat to her.
“Good night, gentlemen.” Alice watched Gideon and Clint Thornton walk away from her tent. Elijah Thornton was a good man, she thought. Apparently he was a true shepherd to his flock. His brothers seemed like good men, too, both the taciturn Gideon and the more talkative Clint, though very different from their preacher brother.
Alice stretched, feeling the muscles in her lower back and legs protest the long time she had knelt to suture the wound. She was more exhausted than she’d ever been, even after a double shift at the hospital or a difficult calving on the farm. The coppery, acrid stench of blood lingered in her nostrils.
Please, Lord, let Mr. Gilbert heal without infection, she prayed as she lay down on her cot a few minutes later. She’d have to go check on her patient first thing in the morning and hoped she could remember how to get back to the Gilberts’ campsite. She’d been so intent on not losing sight of Gideon running ahead of her that she hadn’t paid much attention to where they were heading.
She’d have to check and redress the wound every day, and make sure the patient and his wife knew the importance of keeping the wound clean and dry. Even sterilized silk suture was an irritant to the skin, compared to absorbable catgut, and she’d had to use coarse cotton darning thread. She’d go to the Gilberts’ at sunrise, she decided, so that Elijah Thornton could return to his tent and prepare for his chapel service. Poor man, after sitting up with his deacon all night, he’d be even wearier than she expected to be come morning.
She’d offer to make some broth for Mr. Gilbert from the beef bone she’d been intending to make stew with tomorrow. With the blood loss, the man would be weak and perhaps feverish. Better take some dried willow bark to make into tea, she thought, in case the man’s wife didn’t have any. With the list of chores running through her head, she feared she wouldn’t sleep.
But the
heat and sunlight stirred her, apparently hours later. When she awakened, one glance at the watch she’d unpinned from her bodice and left lying on an upended crate by her bed told her that she’d overslept straight through to midmorning. She dressed quickly, then picked up her valise full of dressing supplies and medicaments, and headed in the direction she thought the Gilberts’ tent lay.
Elijah would be conducting his prayer meeting at this hour, she thought, regretting that she had missed him, then assured herself it only mattered because she’d wanted to hear from him how his deacon had passed the night.
She managed to find her way to the tent with only one wrong turn. She found Mrs. Gilbert stirring a pot over the campfire, and Mr. Gilbert reclining in the shade of the wagon, propped up on pillows.
He was pale, but without the flush of fever Alice had been dreading. Nevertheless, as soon as she had greeted them both, she knelt at his side and felt her patient’s forehead. She was pleased to find it no warmer than her hand.
“He had some fever during the night,” Mrs. Gilbert volunteered, “but I brewed him some willow bark tea. I’m simmering some broth in this pot here, ’cause his appetite’s still a little puny after all the blood he lost last night.”
“Excellent,” Alice said approvingly, silently commending the woman for her common sense.
There were only a few spots of dried blood on Mr. Gilbert’s dressing, she noted, unwrapping it from his leg. She found the wound as she had hoped—a little pink around the edges, as was to be expected, but with no fresh bleeding and without the angry red appearance and purulent drainage she had feared. Thank You, Lord, she breathed.
After first anointing the wound with some salve from her bag, she applied a new dressing and a fresh bandage. “I’ll be back to check on him this evening, Mrs. Gilbert. Keep an eye on his temperature, would you? Meanwhile, if you have need of me, I should be at my campsite most of the time—five tents to the east of the Thorntons’. If I’m not, please just leave me a note, and I’ll come as soon as I find it.”