Circle Star

by Tatiana March

  “Why can’t I take off his shirt and clean the wound?” she pleaded, the way she had already pleaded a dozen times.

  Pete stood like a sentry beside Connor’s body that had been laid out on clean sheets over the dining room table. “Nobody undresses him until the doc gets in,” Pete replied, speaking with the same gentle patience he used every time he replied to her question.

  “I’ve stemmed the bleeding,” he told her once again. “That ought to do for now. I’ve seen too many men die of infection when a small piece of fabric from their clothing is left inside the bullet wound. We’d best wait until Dr Jameson arrives.”

  Closing her eyes, Susanna slumped deeper into the seat. Earlier, she’d hovered by the table, studying Connor’s pale, bloodless face, willing him to live, but a dizzy spell had forced her to sit down.

  A sharp knock on the door jolted her out of her numbness. By the time she was up on her feet, a slight man in a gray suit and a wrinkled white shirt had entered. She’d never met Dr Jameson before. He was fair in coloring and very young. If it hadn’t been for the medical case he carried in one hand and the urgent, focused expression on his face, she might have mistaken him for a schoolboy.

  “Are you really a doctor?” she asked him.

  A quick smile came and went on his finely drawn features. “I earned my medical degree at Boston University.” He nodded at Pete Jackson and went to study Connor’s inert body. “Don’t worry about my age,” he added without looking at Susanna. “Newly qualified doctors have the most recent medical knowledge.”

  Pete moved aside. “I asked for hot water to be brought in as soon as you arrive.”

  “Good.” Dr Jameson glanced around the room. “I want you to collect more lamps and set them up on the tallest stands you can find.” He lowered his medical case beside Connor on the table and shrugged out of his black wool coat.

  “Which one of you will assist me?” he asked.

  “I will,” Susanna said.

  “I will,” Pete said.

  Dr Jameson quirked another smile. “Make up your minds. The last thing I want is the pair of you bumping into each other around me.”

  “I will,” Susanna said with a glance at Pete.

  He gave her a nod and retreated toward the door that had swung open. Carmen came in, carrying a steaming pot of hot water. Behind her, Miranda delivered two empty enamel bowls and a stack of clean linen towels. Dr Jameson pointed to the sideboard. The maids set down their burden and left as silently as they had arrived.

  The doctor rolled up his shirt sleeves. “Are you sure you are up to it?” he asked and threw a sharp look in Susanna’s direction. “I don’t want any fainting spells or shaking hands or distraught weeping that could break my concentration.”

  Susanna bit her lip, hard enough to draw blood. “Yes. I’m up to it.”

  The doctor studied her a moment longer, then gave a single nod.

  Relieved, Susanna let the blanket slide down from her shoulders. She tossed it on the chair she’d been sitting on and walked up to the table. “Have you taken out many bullets before?”

  “Too many to count,” the young doctor replied, and pulled a small metal box from his medical case. Susanna thought he was going to show her the collection of bullets he’d extracted from wounded men, but he opened the tin to reveal a cake of soap.

  “Did those men live?” she asked.

  “Some did. Some didn’t.” He turned to gesture at Pete who stood hovering by the sideboard, and ordered the wiry foreman to pour hot water into one of the enamel bowls.

  Pete followed the instructions. Dr Jameson walked over and pushed his rolled-up sleeves higher along his arms. He added cold, testing the temperature until he could immerse his fingers. Then he rubbed soap over his hands and forearms, all the way up to the elbows.

  As he worked to clean his nails, he spoke calmly. “By the time I get to gunshot victims, if the bullet was going to kill them, they’d already be dead. It’s infection you need to worry about now. That’s why hygiene is paramount.”

  Susanna watched him complete the task of washing his hands. Then, upon his prompt, she rolled up the sleeves of her shirtwaist blouse and did the same. To her relief, the sharp chemical smell of the carbolic soap dispelled her earlier lightheadedness.

  The doctor raked a glance over her. “Make sure your hair won’t come loose.”

  Susanna turned to Pete and told him to pull a long, narrow towel from the stack. He complied, and she covered her hair with the length of fabric, securing the ends with a knot at the nape of her neck.

  “Good,” Dr Jameson said. “Let’s get to it.”

  Susanna followed him to the table. Connor’s face had a gray pallor beneath the suntan. It made his eyelashes look very dark against his skin. He seemed so alone. So vulnerable—the way she remembered him from his boyhood days. Love and longing welled up inside her, misting her eyes, and she had to blink to chase the tears away.

  “Please, doctor,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Save him.”

  “I’ll do my best.” He glanced up at her. “I always do.”

  Carefully, he peeled the soiled shirt from Connor’s chest, using a clean rag dipped in hot water to soak away the caked blood. Next, he ordered Susanna to slide the shirt down Connor’s shoulders and arms while he twisted the inert body side to side.

  “Experienced gunfighters wear silk underwear,” the doctor explained in a quiet, conversational tone. “Silk is strong, and often a bullet will not penetrate the garment but the fabric stretches into the wound, and you can use it to pull the bullet out of the hole.”

  Susanna didn’t reply. The metallic odor of blood filled her nostrils. She lifted her hand to her face and breathed in the antiseptic smell of carbolic to quell the bout of nausea.

  On Connor’s chest, crimson trails ran down the muscled contours, along which she liked to run her hands when they were together at night. On the far side from her—his left side—a small ragged hole broke the smooth expanse of his bronzed skin.

  She closed her eyes and swayed on her feet. Please God. Let him live.

  “No fainting,” Dr Jameson said sharply.

  Susanna blinked her eyes open and took a steadying breath, filling her lungs as deeply as she could and exhaling again slowly. The doctor was holding out to her a small steel cup. “I’m going to move to the other side of the table,” he told her. “Hold this cup over his chest. As soon as you see me lift the bullet out of the wound, bring the cup closer to my instrument so I can drop the bullet into it.”

  Her throat felt too tight to speak, and Susanna merely nodded her understanding. Her fingers curled over the cool surface of the metal cup. She’d been vaguely aware of shuffling sounds that came behind her. As the doctor circled the table, she stole a quick look over her shoulder to see what was going on.

  Several men crowded in the doorway, dragging in tall washstands from the bedrooms. Carmen and Miranda each carried a pair of oil lamps. They passed them to Pete, who lit them one by one, adjusted the wicks and set the lamps down on the washstands.

  “That’s enough,” Dr Jameson said when four flames blazed beneath their glass domes. “Everyone out except Mr. Jackson and Mrs. McGregor.”

  The men and maids departed, the sound of their footsteps fading down the corridor. As soon as Pete had closed the door again, the doctor studied Susanna with narrowed eyes. “Are you really up to this?” he demanded to know. “If you faint on top of him while I’m digging out the bullet, you’ll most likely kill him.”

  Susanna flinched. Her body tensed. “I’m fine.”

  The young man gave a satisfied nod, and Susanna understood he had baited her on purpose. The reaction triggered by his blunt remark had helped her to focus her mind. “I’m fine,” she said again, and held the tin cup steady over Connor’s chest.

  “Good.” The doctor dipped his head and probed inside the wound with a metal implement that resembled scissors but had a small scoop at the tip of each blade. “The shot came
at an angle,” he said, muttering to himself. “Makes it harder for me to locate the bullet and get it out.”

  Susanna gritted her teeth as she watched the tool dig into Connor’s flesh.

  The doctor leaned lower and gave the implement a sudden twist. “The bullet missed his heart and lungs,” he observed. “Another inch to the left and it would have been nothing but a scrape in his ribs.” His fingers tightened over the tool, and for an instant he ceased all movement, although he continued his muttering. “An insensate patient is a mixed blessing. They won’t flinch, but you can’t use their pain to guide your search.”

  Slowly, with infinite care, he pulled out the bullet. Susanna slipped the steel cup beneath the scoop of his tool. The small lead ball made a muffled clunk as it fell. She lifted the cup up to her face and peeked inside. “There is a bit of cloth stuck to the bullet,” she said and raised her eyes in question at the doctor.

  “If you’re right about that, he might live.” The young medical man held his hand out for the cup and used a pair of tweezers to pry the small shred of fabric away from the blood covered bullet.

  Pete handed Connor’s torn shirt to him, and the doctor measured the scrap of cotton against the hole in the garment. “I think we got it all,” he said. “It’s impossible to be sure. Even a few cotton fibers left inside the wound can cause an infection.”

  Susanna swallowed hard. “When will we know?”

  The doctor began to clean the wound. “In a day or two.”

  Please God, let him live, Susanna prayed as she watched the fair haired, boyish doctor sew a neat line of sutures to seal the hole in Connor’s chest. Please God, if he lives I’ll never ask for anything else.

  ****

  A fire burned in his chest. Not the comforting glow of whiskey but a hot poker that pierced his flesh with pain. Connor cracked one eye open. A whitewashed ceiling stretched above him, like a colorless sky. He turned his head a fraction. Steady lamplight illuminated a large room. Pictures on the walls. He moved the fingers of his right hand, then the left. Pain tore through one side of his chest. He continued his fumbling until he could figure out that he lay on a hard surface covered with a crisp cotton sheet.

  “Water,” he croaked.

  “You’re awake.” The voice that he loved drifted out to him.

  “Susanna?” he rasped.

  “Yes, darling. I’m here.”

  He tried to turn toward the voice. “Don’t move,” it cautioned him. A gentle hand smoothed his matted hair. A moment later, the face he’d spent thirteen years dreaming of hovered above him. Something cool pressed against his lips. A tin cup, tipping water into his mouth. He drank. Each labored swallow sent another wave of agony rippling through his chest, likes knives poking and twisting. He made a grunting sound to say he’d had enough and let his head fall back. The cup lifted away.

  “Am I dead?” he croaked.

  “Hush,” Susanna said. “You’ve been shot. The doctor has been. He took the bullet out. He said everything went well, and no vital organs were damaged. You’ll be fine, but we have to keep the wound scrupulously clean to make sure infection doesn’t set in”

  He tried to look around the room without moving his head. “Doctor?”

  The gentle hand resumed its stroking. “Dr Jameson, a very skilled young man. He had to go and deliver a baby but he’ll come back this way in a day or two.”

  “Where am I?”

  “In the dining room. The table is a better height for surgery than a bed, and the tall windows give the best light in the house.”

  “Dining room…where?” he rasped.

  The green eyes that were studying him widened.

  “Don’t you remember?” Susanna said. “You are at Circle Star.”

  Circle Star.

  In a dizzying rush it all came back. Susanna finding him, forcing her to come home with her. Their marriage. The life they’d led, the nights filled with passion and the days when he’d kept his distance. Connor reached out a hand. Pain arrowed through him but he gritted his teeth and forced his arm to rise until he could touch the side of her face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. His arm fell back. Darkness swirled around him. He wanted to tell her, in case the wound in his chest went putrid and he didn’t survive the infection. “I was afraid to let you get too close to me.”

  “I’m sure you still are,” she said in the solemn tone of he remembered from a million arguments he’d lost when they were young. “I’m afraid to love you too, but I think it might be easier than trying to hate you, so I’ve decided to give it a chance.”

  Connor managed a wan smile. “The men? Garrett? Ramirez?”

  “Both are fine,” Susanna reassured him. “They said a single bullet came from behind a rocky outcrop, but they didn’t see who it was, or what he was firing at.”

  “Upstairs,” Connor said. Waves of hot and cold washed over him. Sweat broke out on his skin as the pain dug its sharp claws deeper into his chest. “Move me upstairs. Keep the shutters closed. Post guards outside the house.”

  When Susanna regarded him with frightened eyes, he used the last of his strength to spell it out. “It was no accident. The gunman was firing at me.” Connor let his eyelids flutter down, and then the world around him went black again.

  ****

  Susanna gripped Connor’s left arm with all her might. Across the bed, Miranda clung to his right arm. Carmen sat on top of his legs, immobilizing them with her weight. Dr Jameson stood by the fireplace and held an iron poker in the flames.

  “That should do it,” the doctor said. He took a step back, turned around. As he walked over to the bedside, the orange tip of the iron poker glowed like a firefly in the room darkened by the tightly pulled shutters.

  “Hold him tight,” he ordered. He raked a worried glance over the women. “Are you sure you have the strength? If he comes to and starts thrashing about when I press the poker to his flesh, you’ll need to keep him still.”

  Susanna tightened her grip, nodded for Miranda and Carmen to do the same.

  In a day or two we’ll know, Dr Jameson had promised after he took the bullet out. It had only taken one day. Apart from a few moments of consciousness, Connor had been insensible, not waking up even when Ramirez and Garrett carried him upstairs.

  By the evening, a fever had set in. For an hour, he’d burn with heat, the sweat running in rivulets down his skin. For the next hour, chills would rack him. His teeth would clatter, and his skin turn would cold and clammy.

  All night, the cycle repeated itself.

  At dawn, when Susanna changed the dressing, she could see a band of gray, putrid skin around the neatly sutured bullet hole, and she could smell the rancid odor of rotting flesh. It had taken another day of anguished waiting for Dr Jameson to return and confirm that infection had set in.

  “Ready?” the doctor asked, holding the glowing poker aloft.

  “Ready,” Susanna replied.

  Carmen nodded. “Si.”

  Miranda clung tighter to Connor’s arm. “Ready.”

  The orange tip of the blunt iron tool came down. Susanna could hear the faint sizzle, could smell the odor of burning flesh as the hot metal pressed against Connor’s chest.

  Connor let out a muffled scream. His eyes flared open, the whites flashing like they might on a panicked animal. His body bowed so violently on the bed that he almost tossed Carmen’s heavy weight off his legs. Tension streaked through his muscles, turning his arms into steel. Then a shiver traveled down his body and he slumped back to the mattress and fell into a stupor once more.

  Doctor Jameson lifted the poker from his chest and lowered it carefully to a flat stone they had carried in to protect the floorboards from burning. He leaned over the wound and sniffed at it, like a hunting dog might sniff at its prey.

  “I think that’s enough.” Glancing up, he added, “You did well, ladies.”

  Susanna gave a curt nod. She took small, swift breaths to quell the nausea that churned inside her
. It might have been foolish to rely on women to hold Connor down, but she had wanted to spare him the indignity of the ranch hands watching him being branded like a steer. And, she had wanted to protect him from masculine scorn in case he failed to tolerate the pain—a notion that in retrospect seemed foolish.

  The doctor dressed the wound. He gave instructions for daily cleansing with a carbolic lotion. As he tied the bandage, he added, “If you can find fresh cobwebs, put some on the wound beneath the dressing every time you change it. It’s an old Indian remedy which seems to work.”

  Susanna bit her lip. She’d cleaned every nook and cranny of the house in preparation for Claire’s visit. She turned to Carmen, who was scrambling off the bed. “Search the attics,” she told the cook. To Miranda, who looked close to fainting, she said, “Go outside and find your husband. Tell him to send the men scouring the shady corners of the outbuildings. Only clean cobwebs. Give them linen towels to collect them in.”

  After the women had hurried off to their tasks, Susanna returned her attention to Dr Jameson. He had packed away his instruments and was closing his medical bag. “Please,” she said. “When you get back into town, could you avoid mentioning to anyone that my husband has been shot?” She met his gaze. “I’d prefer people not to know.”

  The doctor’s eyebrows went up. “Not even the sheriff?”

  “No.”

  For a moment, the fair haired young man contemplated her. Then he shrugged and gave her a single nod. “I saw the armed guards outside.” He spoke in a low, confidential tone. “If you’re under siege from outlaws, the sheriff could send deputies to protect you.”

  “Thank you,” Susanna replied. “We have enough men at Circle Star.”

  She could not share her suspicions with the doctor, but the most likely reason for anyone to want Connor dead was the ranch. She had refused to believe what Rafael De Santis had said about his parents being bullied into selling their property to Burt Hartman, but it had to be true.

  It had to be Hartman who had tried to kill Connor, so he could do to her what he had done to Rafael’s parents—terrorize her until she was ready to sell Circle Star for a pittance. If Connor died, she’d be a vulnerable widow, and suppressing the news about his condition was for her protection as much as for his.