Shattered Rainbows fa-5

by Mary Jo Putney

  Kenneth looked startled. "You can't go onto the battlefield, Catherine."

  "Try and stop me," she snapped, her voice vibrating with emotion. "If Michael is alive, he'll need medical help."

  He indicated Charles's sleeping form. "What about Mowbry?"

  "He's resting quietly from the laudanum. It won't hurt him to wait a little longer. It might even be beneficial."

  "Come along, then." Kenneth smiled wearily. "I haven't the strength to fight both Napoleon and you on the same day."

  Ferris rose to join the search. Everett drove the cart while the others rode. Colin had exchanged horses and saddles, so Catherine rode Michael's gelding. Thor was weary and a bullet had grazed his flank, but he carried her without complaint. She stroked the chestnut neck, blessing him for saving two lives.

  The 105th had been positioned near a road, so the first part of the trip went quickly. The nightmarish journey made Catherine grateful for the darkness. Bodies and wrecked equipment were everywhere. When she heard groaning, she forced herself to ignore it. They could not help everyone. She wondered how many wounded men would die during the night, but understood why the exhausted survivors had not even tried to help. In the morning, the task of aiding the casualties would seem less overwhelming.

  They followed the road until they were as close as possible to where Tom Hussey had last seen his colonel. Rather than risk the cart becoming bogged down in the muddy earth, they left Everett on the road and cut off across country. Their pace slowed, for the ground was scattered with broken swords and bayonets that could cripple a horse.

  Tom dismounted and began leading his horse. The others did the same, Kenneth and Ferris carrying the lanterns while the ensign studied the landscape. They zigzagged several times before he said hesitantly, "I think he was by that hedge."

  After they followed the line of the hedge for a hundred yards, the lantern light suddenly washed over two men in peasant dress who were leaning over the limp form of a fallen soldier. Growling an oath, Kenneth pulled out his pistol and fired into ther air. The peasants fled into the night.

  "Looters," he said with disgust as he reloaded.

  Catherine was unsurprised. In Spain, sometimes the dead and wounded had been robbed even when a battle was in progress. Her pace quickened and she went to the fallen man. The height and lean, muscular build were right, the dark jacket…

  Heart pounding, she dropped to the muddy ground beside the man. Kenneth was right behind her. His lantern illuminated the sharply planed features of Michael Kenyon. His face was pale as a death mask and his uniform saturated with dried blood.

  Fearfully she touched his throat, seeking a pulse. She could not find one, and he was cold, so cold. Her vision blurred as grief swept over her.

  Kenneth asked harshly, "Is he alive?"

  His voice pulled Catherine back from her near-faint. Lips dry, she said, "I don't know." She lifted Michael's arm. It moved easily. "I can't find a pulse, but there's no rigor." She pressed her hands to her temples. What should she do?

  She must think of Michael as a patient, not as a man she cared for. "Do you have something highly polished, like a watch?"

  Tom Hussey said, "Take this, ma'am." He pressed a silver locket into her hand. She held it in front of Michael's mouth. A faint film of moisture appeared.

  Dizzy with relief, she sat back on her heels. "He's breathing, though only just."

  "We'll have to move him," Kenneth said.

  "Let me examine him first."

  When Catherine returned the locket, the ensign said, "The sling is from a ball that went through his arm-a flesh wound. His ribs were slashed by a saber."

  There was a deep gash in his back, perhaps from a lance. It had bled, but the earlier bandage had afforded some protection. There was also a messy flesh wound in his thigh, with the bullet still buried. She bound it, then turned him onto his back.

  Her heart contracted when she saw the ragged hole above his waist. Abdominal wounds were invariably fatal. She pulled the blood-crusted fabric away so she could see how much damage had been done. To her surprise, her fingertips touched the coolness of metal. She traced the shape, then removed a flattened silver tube with a lead ball embedded in it. "This thing, whatever it is, stopped a bullet from going into him."

  "It's a kaleidoscope," Kenneth answered. "It makes changing patterns of colored glass. He called it his good-luck charm."

  "Good luck, indeed." She dropped the object into her medical case.

  Her examination confirmed that none of his injuries were necessarily fatal. What worried her most was that there was no active bleeding, indicating that he had already lost massive amounts of blood. She had a jug of water in her bag, so she spooned some between his dry lips. He couldn't swallow. She stopped, fearing he might choke, and got wearily to her feet. "I've done as much as I can here. We must get him to a surgeon."

  Kenneth and Ferris carefully lifted Michael onto the litter and Catherine covered him with a blanket. Then they set off across the fields to the waiting cart. The sky was lightening in the east. The endless night was almost over.

  Michael was alive. But would that be true in an hour?

  Chapter 13

  It was late morning when Catherine and her two patients arrived back in Brussels, escorted by Everett and Ferris. Kenneth and Ensign Hussey had returned to their regiments. She had promised to send news of Michael's condition, but from their bleak expressions, she knew they expected the worst.

  The journey had been made slowly to minimize the jolting of the unsprung cart. Catherine had ridden behind, watching her patients like a hawk. Even with laudanum, the trip was hard on Charles, though he had born the pain stoically. Michael had been so still that she feared they were carrying a corpse.

  As soon as they reached home, she had dismounted and checked Michael for vital signs. His skin was bluish and clammy and his pulse and breathing were almost nonexistent, but he still lived.

  A rumpled but rested Elspeth emerged from the house and hugged Will Ferris. "How is Captain Mowbry?"

  "He's doing well," Catherine replied. "When the men have settled him in his room, will you administer a dose of laudanum and sit with him?"

  Ferris said, "I'll stay with the captain, ma'am."

  "Not until you've slept," Catherine said sternly. "You fought a battle yesterday and have had no rest since."

  He started to protest, but Elspeth gave him a look. "To bed with you, Will, or I'll send you there myself with a skillet over your stubborn Sassenach head."

  Ferris gave in with a tired smile. As he and Everett placed Charles on the litter, Catherine said to Elspeth, "Colonel Kenyon is in a bad way. Is Ian Kinlock here?"

  "Aye, he's sleeping. He came in a little after you left."

  "Please wake him, and ask him to come to the colonel's room as soon as possible."

  Elspeth nodded and left. After Everett and Ferris took Michael inside, Catherine dismissed the two men and began cutting off Michael's ruined coat and shirt. He had not taken time to change the night of the ball, so he was still wearing his dress uniform. He had looked so splendid then. So alive.

  As she pulled pieces of garment out from under him, he gave a faint, breathy moan. She touched his cheek. "Michael, can you hear me?"

  His lids fluttered once, but he did not wake. Trying to sound confident, she said, "You're going to be all right, Michael. The best surgeon I know will be here in a few minutes."

  She turned her attention to his battered body. He was bare from the waist up, except for the stained bandage around his ribs. His torso was a mass of bruises and abrasions. Long-healed scars were overlaid by new wounds, and there was an enormous purple-blue bruise where the musket ball had rammed the kaleidoscope into the muscles of his abdomen.

  She had seen many men's bodies in the course of her nursing work, but never had she felt such tenderness. She skimmed her fingers over Michael's collarbone, thinking that it was criminal that a beautiful, healthy body had been so abused. Once more, s
he damned Napoleon Bonaparte and his insatiable ambition.

  Then she set her emotions aside and began the laborious process of cleaning the wounds. She was picking bits of scorched cloth from the hole in his arm when the surgeon joined her.

  Ian looked like a wrinkled, unshaven beggar, but his blue eyes were alert. "An emergency?"

  She nodded. "Colonel Kenyon is a particular friend. He was billeted here. We found him on the battlefield last night."

  Ian moved to the bed and studied the patient. "Why weren't his injuries dressed in Waterloo?"

  "We took him there, but Dr. Hume said that… that there was no point. Other men needed him more." The words had fallen on her heart like a death knell. "I decided to bring him here in the hopes that you would treat him."

  "I see why Hume decided not to waste the time-the fellow is more dead than alive. Still, since he's a friend of yours…" Ian began an examination. "Hmm, I worked on him somewhere in the Peninsula-I recognize the wounds. Grapeshot, very messy. I'm surprised he survived. Get my instruments. I left them drying in the kitchen after washing them last night."

  Kinlock's insistence on cleanliness when possible produced much teasing from other surgeons. He had always smiled and said his Scottish mother had been a demon for washing, and surely it did no harm. Perhaps because Catherine was a housewife, clean instruments made perfect sense to her. She suspected that they were one reason why Ian's patients did so well.

  By the time Catherine had retrieved the instruments from the kitchen, Ian had finished the examination and removed the rest of Michael's clothing. He began to clean and dress the wounds with the combination of strength and dexterity essential to a good surgeon. Catherine handed him what he needed and took away what he didn't. The lengthy process made her thankful Michael was unconscious.

  Even so, when Ian was probing for the ball buried in his thigh, Michael made a hoarse sound and tried feebly to pull away. Catherine caught his knee and hip to immobilize the limb. Embarrassingly aware of his nakedness, she averted her gaze. No matter how much she tried, she could not make herself think of him as an ordinary patient. "Is his reaction a good sign?"

  "Perhaps," the surgeon said noncommittally. There was a dull scrape as his forceps closed around the lead ball. He tugged the ball free with painstaking care and dropped it in the basin Catherine held. Then he took a different kind of forceps and began removing fragments from the gaping wound. "Your friend was lucky again. The ball missed the major blood vessels and only chipped the thigh bone without causing serious damage. Half an inch either way and he would have died on the field."

  With such luck, surely Michael was not intended to die. Yet all the humor and vivid intelligence were gone from his face, leaving an austere mask. Her eyes ached with unshed tears.

  Ian finished and pulled blankets over Michael's chilled body. Fearing the answer, Catherine said, "What are his chances?"

  "Damned poor," Ian said bluntly. "The wounds are survivable, even though it looks like half the French army used him for target practice, but he's bled out." He shook his head with regret. "I've never seen a man so deep in shock recover."

  Catherine pressed her fist to her mouth. She would not cry. She wouldn't. Ian had only said what she already knew. It was not wounds that would kill Michael, nor infection, for he would not live long enough for that. Loss of blood would be the cause. She stared at his still body, her mind racing desperately through all of the medical theories she had ever heard.

  Kinlock was cleaning his instruments when the idea struck her. "Ian, didn't you tell me once that occasionally blood has been transferred from one person to another?"

  "Aye, and from animals to humans, but only experimentally. It's a chancy business at best."

  "You said that sometimes the procedure helped."

  "Seemed to help," he corrected. "Perhaps the patients that survived would have lived anyhow."

  "And the ones who died might have died." She ran nervous fingers through her hair. "Would blood transfusion help Michael?"

  "Good God," Ian said, horrified. "Do you want to kill the poor devil?"

  "What are his chances if nothing is done?"

  Ian sighed and looked at the man on the bed. "Almost nil."

  "Might more blood be the difference between life and death?"

  "It's possible," he admitted reluctantly.

  "Then let's do it. You know how, don't you?"

  "I've seen it done, which isn't quite the same thing." Ian scowled. "The patient died in the case I saw."

  "But sometimes patients survive. Please, Ian," Catherine said softly, "give Michael a chance."

  "The Hippocratic oath says doctors should first do no harm," he protested. "Besides, where would we get a donor? Most people would rather face Napoleon's cavalry than a surgeon's knife."

  "I'll be the donor."

  Shocked, he said, "I can't allow you to do that, Catherine."

  Frayed by fatigue and anxiety, she exploded, "I'm so tired of men saying 'Oh, Catherine, you can't do that.' I'm a healthy, strapping wench, and I can certainly spare some blood."

  "That's the first time I've ever seen you lose your temper." He surveyed her with a faint smile. "I don't usually think of you as a strapping wench, but I suppose there's no reason why you shouldn't give your blood. There's little danger for the donor."

  "So you'll do the transfusion?"

  "He's a tenacious man, or he would never have survived this long." Ian lifted Michael's wrist, frowning as he felt for the pulse. There was a long pause before he said decisively, "In for a penny, in for a pound. Very well, we'll try. A transfusion might just give him the extra strength he needs."

  She felt almost dizzy with relief. "What do you need?"

  "A couple of clean quill pens, one a little larger than the other, and an assistant. You'll be in no position to help."

  Catherine went to enlist Elspeth, leaving the cook to sit with Charles. Thank God the girl had stayed; her own maid would have shrieking hysterics if asked to do such work.

  Kinlock's preparation didn't take long. He trimmed the goose quills and ran a wire through them to ensure that they were clear. Then he fitted the large end of one into the large end of the other and sealed the joint with sticking plaster.

  When he was satisfied, he said, "Catherine, lie next to the colonel, facing the other direction. I'm going to make the incisions inside the elbows."

  Catherine pulled Michael's bare arm from under the blanket and rolled up her right sleeve. Then she lay down on top of the covers, feeling a nervous twinge at the intimacy of sharing a bed with Michael even under such bizarre circumstances. Ian laid down towels to absorb spilled blood, then made adjustments until he was satisfied with the positions of their arms.

  She tried to relax, but it was difficult when she was acutely aware of Michael's nearness. His life seemed like a frail spark that could be extinguished with a single puff of breath. Yet in spite of the odds, he still lived. She clung to that fact.

  "It's a simple process, really," Ian said conversationally as he lifted a lancet. "I'll expose a vein in his arm and an artery in yours and tie ligatures around the vessels to control the flow of blood. Then I'll insert one end of the quill apparatus into the colonel's vein, tie it in place, and do the same to your artery. After that, it's only a matter of loosening tourniquets and ligatures so the blood can flow."

  Catherine laughed shakily. "You make it sound easy."

  "In a way, it is. The hardest part will be finding and opening one of his veins when they're almost collapsed. Close your eyes, now. You don't want to see this."

  She obeyed, following what was happening by sound. Ian's muttering confirmed the difficulty of finding Michael's vein and sliding in the quill. Success was signaled when he said, "Hold the quill in place, Miss McLeod."

  Then he laid a hand on her arm. "Ready, Catherine? It's not too late to change your mind."

  If Michael died when she could have done something to help, she would never forgive herself.
"Cut away, Ian."

  The razor-edged blade sliced into her arm. It hurt, of course. It hurt a lot. When Ian tied off her artery in two places with waxed thread, she bit her lip to prevent herself from whimpering. She stopped when she noticed a metallic taste in her mouth, thinking a little hysterically that it wouldn't do to waste blood that might be of use to Michael.

  The lancet cut again, more deeply. Ian swore and there was a strangled moan from Elspeth. Catherine opened her eyes to see blood spraying from her arm and Elspeth weaving, her face ashen.

  Ian barked, "Damn it, lassie, you don't have my permission to faint! You're a Scot, you can do this." Swiftly he stopped the splattering blood. "Close your eyes and breathe deeply."

  Elspeth obeyed, gulping for air. A little color returned to her face. "I'm sorry, sir."

  The crisis past, he said soothingly, "You're doing fine. I've seen strong men drop like felled timber after a single incision. Don't look again. All you have to do is hold that quill in Kenyon's arm."

  "I will, sir," Elspeth promised.

  Feeling faint herself, Catherine closed her eyes, not wanting to watch as the narrow end of the quill was inserted into her artery. A good thing she was lying down. After securing the quill, Ian loosened the ligatures and tourniquet. He gave a murmur of satisfaction. His hands stayed on her arm, holding the crude apparatus in place.

  She opened her eyes a slit and saw that the translucent quill had turned to dark crimson. Her blood was flowing into Michael. Now, when it was too late, she questioned the arrogance of demanding a procedure that might kill him. She had no right-yet what else could she do? As a nurse, she recognized approaching death, and it had been in Michael's face.

  Curiosity overcoming her queasiness, Elspeth asked, "How can you tell how much blood has been transferred, Dr. Kinlock?"

  "I can't, any more than I can tell how much the donor can spare," he said harshly. "Catherine, how do you feel?"

  She licked her dry lips. "Fine."

  "Let me know the moment you start to feel dizzy or unwell."