Tavish shook his head, overwhelmed by all that had happened. He took hold of the doorknob to Finbarr’s room. “I mean to look in on our brother.”
He slipped inside the quiet room where Finbarr was sleeping. Ma kept vigil at his bedside. Mr. Johnson stood at the bureau, setting out bottles of powders and ointment. They looked up as Tavish entered.
He offered the most sincere smile he could manage, hoping his grief didn’t show. There was enough suffering without him adding to it.
“I need to be with my wife,” Mr. Johnson told Ma. “Please send word if there is anything the boy needs. He or Miss Katie. Anything at all.”
“I will,” Ma said.
Mr. Johnson’s eyes met Tavish’s as he passed. The tears that hovered there tore into him. There was too much pain in too many hearts. Including his.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Joseph felt sick inside. He’d dreaded this moment all day. Mrs. Smith carefully unwrapped the bandages on Katie’s left hand.
No one had spoken the obvious truth out loud, least of all Joseph.
Katie’s fingers were dying. The ice had helped slow the swelling. They had tried every salve, every folk remedy anyone down either road could think of, but Katie’s fingertips had still turned black.
Katie winced and groaned with each movement of her arm. She hadn’t slept in hours but seemed to hover half-conscious and visibly racked with pain. Her eyes had opened a few times but didn’t focus on anything. Her lips moved with silent pleas. Tears welled in her tightly closed eyes. She was in utter agony, and nothing Joseph had done had helped in the least.
He held his breath as Mrs. Smith exposed Katie’s fingers. His heart stopped. The blackness had spread nearly the entire length of her fingers. He saw resignation and mournful acceptance on the faces of Biddy and Ian and Mrs. Smith.
“What haven’t we tried yet?” he asked, shaking his head furiously. “Did you ask Mrs. Claire? She might remember something she learned as a girl. Or down at the ranches? They see injuries like this all the time. They might know something we don’t.”
“Joseph—” Ian began.
He spoke directly over him. “The ice didn’t help, but we haven’t tried heat. What if we alternate between the two?”
Biddy was already shaking her head. “This cannot be reversed. You and I both know that.”
“I don’t know that,” he said sternly. “We haven’t tried everything. Heat might get the blood flowing better. That could help. It could.”
“Joseph.” Ian took over for his wife. “There’s nothing—”
“No.” He barked out the word. “We have to keep trying.”
“Until when?” Ian asked. “Right now it’s only her fingers. But left unchecked, her entire hand will die, then her arm. What happens when the blackness passes her shoulder, Joseph? What if the dying spreads to her heart or lungs?”
He couldn’t listen anymore. He couldn’t. “We have to think of something else. There’s a way to fix this. There has to be.”
Biddy set a hand on his arm. “We can cut off the fingers, Joseph. She’d be left with the rest of her hand intact. But if we wait—”
“We cannot take her fingers, Biddy. I can’t let that happen.” Pinpricks of pain stabbed at the corners of his eyes. A thick lump grew in his throat. “I won’t.”
“It’s only fingers,” Ian said. “She can live without her fingers.”
“No.” Joseph paced away. Panic roared inside. He would explode soon, he knew he would. “We have to leave her fingers. We have to. You . . . you don’t understand.”
He pushed both hands through his hair, fighting the urge to simply shout with the frustration of it all. Katie was suffering. He wanted to take that away, but what they were talking about was unthinkable.
“I don’t understand.” Biddy watched him from the bedside, worry lining her face. “I know you don’t want to cause her pain, but we cannot leave her like this.”
“No one takes her fingers.” He growled it out, driven by desperation. “We’ll think of something else. But we won’t take her fingers. We won’t.”
They all watched him, brows pulled down, confusion in their eyes and faces. How could they not see what they were doing to her?
“It is one hand, Joseph,” Ian insisted. “Only a hand.”
“It’s more than that. It’s her music.” The echo of his words stabbed his heart. “She plays her fiddle with her left hand. She can’t play without her fingers. If we amputate them, she’ll never play her fiddle again.”
He could see by their faces they hadn’t pieced that together, and the realization gave them pause.
“Music is like breathing to her,” he said. “If I take that away from her, it’ll kill her.” He swallowed on the last words, fighting to control his emotions. “I can’t do that to her. I can’t.”
Katie had sacrificed her feet for the sake of her hands all those years ago in the cold Irish winter. She’d run back into her burning house to save the very violin she’d played for him and his girls these past months. Music was everything to Katie. It held her happiest memories. It was her strongest connection to her home. It was her one abiding source of peace. He could not—would not—take that from her.
“She isn’t able to make this decision herself.” Ian’s calm was both admirable and grating. “Someone has to decide.”
He shook his head again and again, the movement only growing more frantic. “I say no. Absolutely not.”
Another voice entered the argument. “Katie and I have an agreement between us.” Mr. O’Connor stood in the doorway of the room. His expression was somber. Apparently he’d been listening for a while. “She hasn’t a father here to look out for her, so I offered to stand in for him. She did me the honor of accepting that offer, and I’ve taken the responsibility very seriously.”
He looked around the room. When his eyes met Joseph’s, something like empathy, understanding, and a plea for trust passed between them.
“I love her like my own daughter, Joseph. I’d not let anything hurt her if I could help it. And I’d never take her well-being lightly.”
Mr. O’Connor meant to take the weight of this choice on his own shoulders? Joseph hated that he was even considering handing such a crucial decision over to anyone else.
Mr. O’Connor was not a tall man, but he could command a room. He stepped up next to Joseph. “I understand about Katie’s music. I saw the love she has for it and her need for it in her eyes the first time I ever saw her play. Let me promise you now, I don’t take that lightly. Not in the least.”
Joseph could feel the man’s sincerity. The tension squeezing his heart lessened the slightest bit.
“Katie trusted me enough to think of me as family.” Mr. O’Connor spoke only to him. “Can you trust me to care for her as I would my own child? Can you put that trust in me, Joseph Archer?”
Could he?
“I swear to you—I’ll bring in the preacher and give my word on his Bible if that’ll help you believe me—that I won’t make any choices without thoroughly weighing the consequences. I swear it on the souls of the sons I lost—may they rest in peace. I swear it to you.”
There could be no stronger assurance than that. Joseph nodded, even as he fought down a fresh surge of desperate emotion.
Mr. O’Connor set his shoulders. With mingled compassion and determination, he spoke again. “The first order I’m giving is for you to leave.”
“I . . . what?”
Mr. O’Connor didn’t waver. “You are not equal to what the next hours may hold, son. You’ll not do our sweet lass here any good if you fall apart. You’ll crumble clear to pieces if you stay. You have to leave her in our care and trust us to look after her.”
That hadn’t been part of the original bargain. He couldn’t agree to it. “I promised her not to leave. I’ve promised her again and again that I would stay with her. I won’t break my word.”
“Then make her a new promise, Joseph. Tell her you’l
l be nearby. Tell her you’re leaving her in the care of trusted people.”
“I can’t—”
“She will understand.” Mr. O’Connor pulled him across the room to Katie’s bedside. “We can give you a few moments alone.” The others in the room nodded. “Then you need to go. Go love your daughters—they need you too. Go rest your mind and body. Your Katie needs you to be strong enough to leave.”
Even as the room emptied, Joseph doubted he had the strength to simply leave Katie there, knowing the enormity of what she faced. But he knew for a fact if her fingers or hand or arm had to be amputated he couldn’t sit there beside her while the deed was done. Even understanding the necessity, he would likely fight them every step of the way.
Mr. O’Connor was right. He had to find the strength to walk away and let them take care of her.
He sat on the edge of the bed, looking into her pale face. The agony he saw there broke his heart. He knew, though he struggled to admit it, that much of her suffering came from her hand. His mind understood what had to be done, but he couldn’t force his heart to accept it.
“I wish I could make it go away,” he whispered to her. “If I could give you my hands, I would. I would do anything for you, Katie.”
He gently took her blackened fingers in his hand. He could do nothing to save her from this. Nothing at all.
“I am so sorry.” He placed a featherlight kiss on the back of her hand. “So very sorry.”
Her whimper of pain nearly broke him.
“I know I promised not to leave you.” He struggled to push air through his tight lungs. “But I’m not strong enough to watch them do what they need to do.”
He ran his fingers along her hair, letting his eyes linger on her face. She was the most beautiful thing in the world to him. He could only hope she would forgive him for what was about to be done to her.
She grimaced, shifting about as if searching for a position that would relieve her pain. A tear trickled over her temple.
“I love you, Katie Macauley.” He swallowed with effort. “I have almost from the very beginning. The longer I know you, the more I—” The pain of regret and worry forestalled any further admissions. “I need to go sit with the girls,” he said. “The O’Connors are going to look after you. I promise I’ll be back. I promise.”
A moment later, Mr. O’Connor peeked inside. He didn’t say a word; he didn’t have to. They both knew what came next.
Joseph forced himself to stand and walk away from Katie’s side. This had to be done.
Mr. O’Connor set a reassuring hand on Joseph’s shoulder as he passed. Joseph nodded his understanding. Reverend Ford, Karl Kester, Ian, and Seamus Kelly waited in the corridor. The reverend had likely come to pray over their efforts and Katie’s well-being. Ian and Karl, no doubt, meant to help hold her down through the agony of an amputation—there was nothing for the pain but ineffectual powders and all the liquor they could gather up.
Not until the men had stepped inside the room and closed the door behind them did Joseph piece together Seamus’s role in the coming operation. As a blacksmith he had tools—those that hadn’t been destroyed by fire—and was skilled with his hands, and he was by far the strongest man among them. Seamus was the one who would be cutting off her dead fingers.
Joseph slumped against the wall. He blinked hard against the tears that gathered hot and furious in his eyes. A blacksmith had removed Katie’s toes. Now the same thing was happening all over again. For all his money and influence, he couldn’t even give her a real doctor.
He had failed her. Utterly.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Marianne Johnson was buried on a clear Sunday morning. The frozen earth seemed as unable to accept the child’s death as the townspeople were. Every able-bodied man, Irish and Red Road alike, took it in turns to pound into the icy ground. Hands bled with the effort. Hearts broke. Tears were shed in abundance. In that moment of such acute sadness, an odd sort of healing began.
The fire had not cared about nationality. Everyone in town felt the tragedy.
Finbarr sat by the graveside throughout the service, his eyes heavily bandaged. Tavish didn’t know what would become of his brother. The lad had always spoken of working his own land someday. Could a blind man live on his own in such an unforgiving land? And what of the boy’s heart? Finbarr had spoken very little since awakening after the fire, even less after he’d finally been told of Marianne’s fate. What he did say lacked the joy and lightness that was so much a part of him. He didn’t smile. He didn’t wish to talk to anyone.
The only person who seemed able to get through to Finbarr was Emma Archer. She sat next to him at her dearest friend’s graveside service, holding his hand as if he were the only one of the two of them needing comfort, though her fragile heart must have also been breaking.
Tavish’s eyes turned toward the road. He could just make out the distant shape of Joseph Archer’s home. Katie was still there, just as she’d been the past two days, lying in the dark in Joseph’s bedroom. The last he’d seen her, she was resting more peacefully than she had before the operation. Her breathing was less strained.
She pricked at his heart. She likely always would.
He was letting her go. He would still do all he could to help with her recovery, but he was stepping back, giving Joseph the room he needed to fill the role that was rightly his.
Jeremiah Johnson stood beside his daughter’s grave, the very picture of a broken and grieving father. “I asked Reverend Ford if I might say a word or two.” He took a moment, clearly attempting to get himself under control. “I need to thank Finbarr O’Connor for—for risking his own life for my daughter.”
Tavish watched his youngest brother sit in stoic silence. With the top half of his face bandaged, his emotions weren’t readable. But his mouth was pulled tight, as still as stone.
“There is some small comfort in knowing Marianne was not alone when she died.” Mr. Johnson blinked a few times, his Adam’s apple making several trips up and down as he swallowed his emotions. “And I need to say that I have been moved by the outpouring of support and kindness we’ve received, from both the Red Road and the Irish Road. I’ve not always treated my Irish neighbors with fairness or kindness, and I am . . . humbled to be receiving their comfort now.” Mr. Johnson’s voice broke. “I wish I could say, had the situation been reversed, had it been an Irish barn burning with Irish inside, that the Reds in this town would have rushed in as quickly and selflessly as this Irish man and woman did.”
Such a speech would have been unimaginable only a few short weeks ago, even a few days ago. If only Katie were there to hear it.
“Miss Macauley was always kind to Marianne in the time she spent working in my shop, even though I was often cruel. Marianne, herself, scolded me for my uncharitable heart.” His pained whispers brought fresh tears to every eye. He wiped at his eyes with a white handkerchief. “I’ve paid a terrible price for my pride and my hatred. Though I can’t promise to be perfect, I mean to be better.” His shoulders squared. His eyes met Da’s. “I’d like the chance to start again and make things right.”
Da gave Mr. Johnson a nod of acceptance.
Mrs. Johnson wept openly. Tavish’s heart broke to see it. No mother should have to bury a child.
Reverend Ford read the remainder of the graveside rite, declaring ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Each person tossed a handful of dirt into the painfully small hole.
Tavish waited until everyone had left except the Johnsons and Reverend Ford and Finbarr. Emma had only abandoned her post at her father’s insistence.
The Johnsons’ oldest son, Joshua, a young man not many years older than Finbarr, approached. The sight of his red-rimmed eyes cut Tavish deeply. He was grieving a sister, something Tavish could comprehend, if not fully understand. He had sisters. The loss of any one of them would hurt terribly. He’d lost two brothers and a fiancée and that pain had never fully left him.
“My pa says to tell you tha
t he’ll see to it Finbarr reaches the Archer place so you don’t need to wait for him.”
Tavish looked uncertainly at his brother. Would Finbarr resent being left to these people who, only a few days earlier, were considered enemies?
“He’s in a difficult place just now,” Tavish said. “He blames himself, hates himself for what happened. I don’t know that I can leave him.”
“Pa understands that,” Joshua said. “He blames himself as well, and his heart is torn to pieces. What your brother did for my sister—” He took a quick breath, blinking fiercely. “He is safe with our family, I promise you that.”
The sincerity of his declaration couldn’t be doubted. “Thank you,” Tavish said.
The walk back to the Archers’ house, where the rest of his family would be waiting, was a contemplative one. Finbarr was facing a future nearly as uncertain as the one their family had faced during The Famine, and Tavish could do little to help. He’d lost Katie—not to death, thank the heavens, but to a man he might one day be willing to admit was better suited to her. He knew letting her go was right, but it didn’t stop the loneliness.
Finbarr will need me, whether he likes the idea or not. Helping him get through the coming days and months, maybe years, will help me do the same. He’d have a purpose, a distraction.
Katie would be happy; that was critically important.
He would learn to be happy, too.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Katie?”
A small voice was whispering her name.
“Katie?”
There was no urgency to it, no fear or worry. ’Twas as if someone simply wanted to get her attention.
She tried to open her eyes, but they fought her. A general ache filled her as though she’d worked herself too hard the day before and her body was protesting the effort.
“Katie?” Little hands touched her face; she could make out the feel of each tiny finger. In a flash of understanding she knew who was speaking to her: Ivy.
Hope Springs (Longing for Home - book 2, A Proper Romance) Page 33
