Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  Drawing the nightshirt back to look at them, Eleanora bit her lip. Something had to be done, and quickly, or he would die. Despite Luis’s words, or perhaps because of them, she placed little confidence in Dr. Jones’s readiness to recognize the necessity. His attitude was much too casual to inspire faith Her father had not been casual. A slow and meticulous attention to his work had been his hallmark — that, and a fanatical addiction to cleanliness.

  As memory shifted inside her brain, Eleanora looked up at the orderly lolling half-asleep in a chair by the open windows. “Pedro,” she called, “put some water on to boil. Find the colonel’s razor and drop it in the pot, then add salt, a double handful. When the water starts to roll, bring it all up here.”

  “Señorita, I — I could not touch the colonel, if that is what you are thinking of.”

  “I don’t intend for you to do it.”

  “Then you — but, señorita, you have not the skill. You will kill him.”

  “I promise you I will not, but if I should, I also promise I will explain to Dr. Jones, and even to William Walker, himself, if need be.”

  He would have liked, she thought, to run straight to Dr. Jones. Eleanora did not try to prevent him, a fact that seemed to cause him worry. He was caught squarely on the horns, afraid to stay and assist her, afraid to leave and be accused of deserting his patient again. In spite of her reassurances, only the threat of making her own preparations and attending Grant alone caused the orderly to cease his objections and obey her.

  With the scissors that had been a part of the sewing kit Grant had found for her, she cut the bandage away. The ragged hole gaped more purple and yellow than the day before, and just as smelly, despite the surgeon’s swabbing. Using the blade of her scissors, Eleanora picked up a compress of cream-colored linen and dipped it into the steaming salt water. She pressed it against the side of the pot to remove some of the excess water, held it a moment to cool slightly, then laid the steaming cloth upon the wound.

  Grant’s arm twitched, a shudder ran over his frame, but he lay still. Slowly the orderly relaxed his hold on his other arm. Again and again she repeated the operation, each time discarding the linen as her father had shown her. The process was his. In his travels, including his tour of the great hospitals of Europe as a young man, her father had noticed that wounds healed faster with fewer problems on board ships. Sea air was noted for the promotion of good health, regardless of the geographical location of the seaport. The one factor in common was salt. Brine was used for the preservation of meat. It must, then, have some property that helped to prevent decay. Why not apply the principle to living flesh, he reasoned. Boiling the water helped to dissolve the salt and to remove the traces of soap from the razor. Her father had maintained that it helped in other ways in the healing process, though his theory was laughed at by his colleagues, since he could not explain how it worked.

  The moribund flesh at the mouth of the wound turned white under her treatment. Clenching her teeth, Eleanora put down her scissors and took up the razor. With her left hand she stretched the skin of his shoulder taut, and carefully lowered the blade. Suddenly Grant moved, his right hand coming up to fasten with paralyzing force about her wrist.

  He had been insensible so long Eleanora had come to think of him as immune to pain, uncaring of what was done to him. Now she stared into his eyes, bright blue and heavy with fever, in a kind of numb disbelief. His gaze moved from the razor in her hand, traveling up her arm to her face above him. A frown of intense concentration puckered the skin under his eyes. By slow degrees his grip lost its strength, grew slack, fell away. His face smoothed. His eyelids fluttered down.

  Eleanora stood still, watching the red marks on her wrist fade. The razor in her hand trembled with the jerking of her nerves. Had he lost consciousness again? Had he, in that brief moment, been trying to tell her not to touch him?

  Her doubts were answered as he spoke, his voice a soft rustle in the strained quiet. “What are you waiting for?”

  An instant longer she stood, weighing the razor in her hand. Then, with a silent prayer, she blanked out what had happened, concentrating on the job before her, deciding how it must look when she was done. With quick, sure strokes she trimmed away the whitened, nerveless skin, clearing the opening with as much precision as she had ever used on eyelet-lace cut-work. That done, she laid the razor aside and placed her fingers firmly on either side of the wound, exerting a gentle, but steadily increasing pressure. Bloodstained pus welled, but in it was something she had more than half-expected to see, tattered bits of red cloth. It was tiny pieces of Grant’s red shirt, driven into the wound by her brother’s bullet. The larger sections the surgeon had removed, no doubt, but these smaller bits had been so nearly invisible in the fresh, bleeding wound they could not be found.

  “Pedro,” Eleanora said, nodding at the linen square laid ready. Carefully, he wiped the accumulated matter away. Twice, three, four times they flushed the bullet hole, continuing until Eleanora was satisfied nothing remained inside that should not be there. A final application of carbolic, the dressing, and they were done. Grant was pale, with a white line about his mouth, but his pulse was firm and even. With the orderly holding his head up, he was able to drink a little water colored with a few drops of the tincture of opium she had found in a small vial in his medical kit.

  Waving Pedro out with the soiled cloth and the pot of water, in a silent order that would not disturb Grant, Eleanora picked up the carbolic and the razor and started to move away. She had taken only a step or two when she realized she was caught. She stopped, glancing down. Grant’s left hand, lying on the edge of the bed where she had leaned over him, had become entwined in her skirts. She was held fast.

  Her fingers turning numb on the things she held, she stood barely breathing. This gesture hurt her as nothing had ever done. The ache burgeoned within her, pushing past her defenses, liquefying them, assaulting her heart with the flow of acid tears. She did not move until the opium had taken effect and his fingers grew lax with sleep.

  It was late afternoon, the breeze from the lake was beginning to blow cool across the water and the blue shadows, when Dr. Jones visited the palacio once more. He stopped in the doorway, his eyebrows arching above the rims of his spectacles. “What is this?” he growled without heat, his gaze going from Eleanora, sitting on the edge of the bed with a bowl of the señora’s beef broth in her hand, to Grant, propped high upon a mound of pillows.

  It was Luis who answered from his perch on the table. “It is a demonstration of raw courage. My amigo is as out of temper as a rattlesnake with two tails, both sore, and Eleanora is attempting to feed him. It would be dangerous indeed, except he is too weak to do more than shake his rattles.”

  “I can well believe it,” the surgeon said, advancing to the bed. “Evening, Colonel, I didn’t expect to see you so fit. You restore my faith in miracles.”

  Grant looked at him, then at the merriment dancing in Luis’s brown eyes. “‘Evening,” he said with a marked lack of grace.

  “You will have to forgive the colonel,” Luis said on a laugh. “We were just discussing the angelic nature of Eleanora’s healing power, but since she spent the morning cutting on Grant, he is in no mood to appreciate it.”

  “Cutting?” the surgeon demanded. “Let’s have a look at this.”

  Eleanora spoke quickly. “I would prefer that he finishes this broth before he is disturbed. It’s the first thing he has eaten in two days.”

  Dr. Jones stopped, his bristling gaze clashing with the clear, green reason in Eleanora’s eyes. He gave an abrupt nod, and looking around, found a chair for himself and sat down to wait.

  “A remarkable job of debridement,” he said a little later as he fastened the bandaging back into place. He had not troubled to completely remove Eleanora’s handiwork after one swift glance at the wound.

  In answer to the expectant tone in the surgeon’s voice, Eleanora told him of her father.

  “I’ll repeat
what I said yesterday. Colonel Farrell is a lucky man. I should have done what you did yesterday morning, but I had two amputations and a broken leg waiting on me at the hospital. Then, there was a report of a skirmish on the Costa Rican border. The casualties got in late last night, eight men in all, five of them bad.”

  “I thought we were at peace,” Eleanora exclaimed.

  “We are,” Dr. Jones replied with irony, “but the patrols along both borders, Honduran as well as Costa Rican, can’t resist taking potshots at each other. Now and then a patrol is discovered across the line and all hell breaks out. That’s when we get our wounded. God knows what the casualties would be like if there was another major battle. Do you know these so-called Immortals averaged sixty wounds for the fifty-six of them in this last little set-to? The results of Walker’s tactics, the charge with revolvers blazing, that he’s so fond of. Brave and romantic, and in its place, effective — but it can be dangerous when the enemy doesn’t get too rattled to shoot straight.”

  “You dare to criticize the military genius of our general?” Luis asked in mock ferocity.

  Dr. Jones shrugged. “I can’t quarrel with success, but I’d be better satisfied if he had more care for his men.”

  “It isn’t that he doesn’t care,” Grant said, entering the conversation. “It’s just that he rates some things higher than human life.”

  “Idealists are fine in their place,” the surgeon granted. “Their place is just not in a position where they control the lives of human beings.”

  “I think you must be something of an idealist yourself, Dr. Jones, or you would not be here in Nicaragua,” Eleanora said.

  “What I am is a damn fool,” he answered.

  When the surgeon took his leave, Eleanora saw him to the door, and then, obedient to his signal, walked with him along the galería to the head of the stairs.

  “Keeping the colonel quiet is the right thing, certainly it’s more than I ever managed. Fluids, he needs those. Solid, food when he asks for it, which will be soon, if I’m any judge.” He went on in this vein, though Eleanora thought his mind was not on what he was saying. At the stairs he came to a halt.

  “I meant what I said about coming to the hospital Our orderlies are like Pedro, recruited from the natives here. They are fine, but they’re untrained for the most part, and language is still a problem. I’m worried about the increase in casualties lately. I see a trend, a build-up in the resistance to Walker and the Democráticos, and in the fighting. I’m not sure it’s accidental any more, these border clashes — not that Walker listens to me. He wants the peace to last so he can entrench himself here. He won’t listen to anything he doesn’t want to hear. Never mind that. The point is, I’d be grateful for your help if you can see your way to giving it. Yours, and any other woman who can speak English. Anybody can point out the hospital to you. Just ask for me.”

  Eleanora could promise to do no more than think about it. Dr. Jones had to be satisfied with that. Watching him clump down the stairs after a last round of compliments, she did not think he would let it end there, however. The idea had its appeal, but she had other duties to attend to first. Dismissing the doctor and his request in an instant, she turned back toward the sickroom.

  Grant’s improvement was steady. He slept much of the time at first. When he was awake his mood varied from temperamental to a docility that was infinitely more distressing. He would lie, watching her every movement until she grew clumsy with embarrassment. Sometimes at night she would leave her bed in the room next door, his old room, and pad through the darkness along the galería to assure herself he was all right. She often thought, standing beside his bed, that quiet as she tried to be, her presence wakened him. She could never be certain; she had no more desire to call his attention to her vigil than she thought he had to acknowledge it.

  Luis was the only visitor admitted. Gradually the emissaries from the Government House stopped coming, sending their most urgent requests through the lieutenant colonel. In time, Eleanora learned to trust his judgment of how much or how little to ask of Grant on a given occasion. The Spaniard had an innate courtesy, based on a well-hidden sensitivity, that prevented him from overtiring his friend. By degrees the two men moved their work from the bed to the table once more. As long as Luis was with Grant, Eleanora could relax, seeing to the small things she had neglected, such as keeping up her scanty wardrobe, washing her hair, and marketing for special foods she wanted prepared.

  Meeting Mazie in the plaza on one such shopping excursion, she brought her back to the house for coffee. As they settled down in the patio with their cups, Eleanora inquired after the troupe.

  “Doing fine,” Mazie nodded. “Excited just now about the new play. It opens the day after tomorrow, you know. If Grant is well enough the two of you will have to come and see it before the run is over. And if you see the general, you might put in a good word for us. The rest of the bunch would be thrilled if he came, and I don’t imagine it could hurt the box office, either.

  “I’ll try,” Eleanora said ruefully. “I don’t think the general is too pleased with me at the moment, since I denied him access to his favorite officer.”

  “How you dared I can’t imagine. The man frightens me to death.”

  “I doubt I could have in person, but then, I don’t imagine it would have been necessary. The general may be self-centered, but he isn’t unreasonable. If he had realized how ill Grant was he would not have troubled him anyway.”

  “You sound as if you like him.”

  “I do.”

  “Such a cold fish?”

  “How can you say that of a man whom the men under him call “Uncle Billy”? A man who keeps a mistress — and such a pretentious shrew of a woman — against his own principles?”

  “Men follow other men, and men have been known to take mistresses, for a number of other reasons besides a warm nature.”

  “I suppose,” Eleanora agreed, running her finger around the rim of her coffee cup. “But I still like him. He’s charming and audacious; he has character and courage. You can’t say as much about most men.”

  “Dear Eleanora, don’t turn cynical on me at this stage. Believe me, it’s fatal. Women without expectations attract men they can expect nothing from.”

  “Marvelous,” Eleanora teased, “and what do you expect from John Barclay?”

  “A ring,” Mazie said, and leaned back, waiting for the reaction.

  “You mean — marriage?”

  “Why not?”

  “No reason — I’m just surprised. He doesn’t seem the type of man I would — you would—”

  “Because he isn’t rich? Money matters only when something else is missing.”

  “Such as—”

  “Respect, affection, common interests.”

  They had both carefully avoided the word love. Eleanora left it unspoken. “You think you will be happy?”

  “As happy as I have any right to expect to be. Why not? I will have John, the troupe for a family, and a quasi-respectability. I may even have a career as an actress.”

  “Here, in Nicaragua?”

  “Or in New Orleans, San Francisco, Mobile, Charleston, even Boston or New York. All that’s needed is a little push to turn the troupe from a collection of players into a successful theater company.”

  “I’m sure you can do it, if anybody can.”

  Mazie laughed and they were quiet a moment, looking out into the sun-soaked center of the patio where a cloud of sulfur-yellow butterflies moved from pot to terra-cotta pot of the señora’s flowers. When they rose from the mauve blossoms of a creeping plant up and out of the confining walls like a yellow cloud, Eleanora spoke again.

  “I had the offer of a new pastime several days ago.”

  “What was that?” Mazie stretched, narrowing her eyes to slits like a large tiger cat.

  “Hospital work.”

  The other woman froze. “You didn’t accept?”

  “I couldn’t, not just now.”
>
  “You realize what it means?”

  “It means they need help, I would imagine,” Eleanora said, nettled by Mazie’s portentous air.

  “No, my pet. Doctors only ask women of a certain class to work in hospitals. It is assumed that we, having seen the seamier side of life, will not be shocked at anything we may encounter — and, of course, the sight of naked males is presumed to be no novelty.”

  “My mother worked with the sick—” she protested.

  “Women and children, I’m sure, and with her husband close to hand. What you are being offered is dark, dirty rooms full of sick and maimed men, lousy, bedbug ridden, fly-blown, wallowing in their own filth.”

  “You have seen the inside of the hospital?” Eleanora asked, the skin of her scalp tight with horror at the picture Mazie evoked. “You have seen it, and didn’t try to help?”

  “Help? Have you any idea of the back-breaking labor involved? One person couldn’t make a dent in it, even if they could stand the horrible sights and smells.”

  “That’s not true. The papers were full of tales a few months ago of an Englishwoman who went into the military hospitals in the Crimea to nurse the soldiers. I’ve forgotten her name, but she was a lady, certainly not a prostitute.”

  “Nightingale was her name, so theatrical, I remember thinking. The ‘Lady with the Lamp.’ Touching, but that was in Russia. The woman would faint dead away at the sight of a military infirmary in this tropical climate. The wounds have maggots, Eleanora. Arms and legs swell in the heat. Open, running sores, fevers that rage so high they can kill overnight. It is truly unbelievable.”

  “And yet, sick men are supposed to live and get well under such conditions. No wonder those who can, stay away from the hospital.”

  “Hospitals are always like that in warm places.”