by Kathy Otten
Behind her came the hurried footfalls of two people. With a glance over her shoulder, she spotted an older doctor in a black frock coat.
“Out of my way,” he snapped as he pushed through the men. If she remembered his name correctly, it was Colfax. He had his own practice in Washington somewhere and worked in the hospital a few days a week. Behind Doctor Colfax trotted the young medical cadet, Emerson, who’d foolishly challenged Doctor Ellard on Sunday morning.
“Having some breathing trouble?” Doctor Colfax asked as he stepped up to the bed and shooed his hand at Gracie with an impatient gesture to move aside.
She rose and tried to step away so the doctor could examine the sergeant, but Robbie’s uncle grabbed her hand and wouldn’t let go. She was not about to force him. The poor man’s lips had turned purpley-blue, and he was now only able to draw short, hiccupping breaths.
Doctor Colfax felt around the man’s throat for a moment. “Open wide,” he said.
The sergeant raised his helpless gaze to Gracie, his fingers squeezing the circulation from hers.
“I do not think he can, Doctor.”
From the other side of the bed, Cadet Emerson said, “There seems to be an obstruction in his throat.”
Help him! Gracie wanted to scream.
The sergeant kept his gaze locked on Gracie’s. His brown eyes widened. The muscles of his face tightened, and the cords of his neck stood out as his tiny gasps grew more shallow.
She forced a half smile and wrapped her other hand around his. Tears burned at the back of her eyes, but she would not let go. Sergeant Mark Baker would not die alone.
“You should have been quicker to summon me, nurse.” Doctor Colfax stepped back.
“Yes, nurse,” Cadet Emerson parroted. “You should have called us sooner.”
The sergeant drew one more tiny gasp then stopped breathing.
In the background she heard the long deliberate stride of Doctor Ellard, quickly drawing close. She glanced back. The group of patients parted. Robbie, close in height to Doctor Ellard, mirrored him stride for stride, as though he were his shadow, a small wooden case in his hands.
“You’re too late,” Cadet Emerson stated smugly. “He’s not breathing.”
Doctor Ellard fixed his icy blue glare on the young medical cadet and shoved him aside. “My patient needs air, and you’re using it. Get out.”
“Now see here,” Doctor Colfax sputtered.
“Get the hell out of my ward.” Doctor Ellard waved Robbie forward as he removed his heavy blue frock coat and tossed it onto the nearby bed.
Robbie set the case on the table between the beds and stepped back, bumping into Cadet Emerson. The medical cadet shot Robbie a dirty look, but Robbie replied with his own icy blue glare.
Doctor Ellard slipped his arm behind the sergeant, supporting his limp torso as he dropped the bed level. Gracie snatched away the remaining pillows, and Doctor Ellard lowered the sergeant flat on the thin mattress.
Then opening the wooden case, he withdrew from the red velvet lining a small knife and a silver tube. Extending his arm across the sergeant, he passed Gracie the tube.
Blowing out a long breath, he stared at his outstretched fingers. They trembled slightly. She’d seen his hands shake one other time, right before he cut away some dead tissue around a poorly healing head wound.
Now he opened and closed his fists a few times, then exhaled again.
Catching the scent of whiskey, Gracie frowned. She hadn’t believed him a drinking man, but before she could think any more about it, Doctor Ellard had taken the knife and made a vertical incision from the middle of the sergeant’s throat to the base.
“You’re making that cut to low.” Doctor Colfax hovered behind Gracie. “Protocol dictates the incision be made higher on the throat.”
Ignoring him, she watched with fascination as Doctor Ellard held the skin open with his thumb and forefinger and made another smaller horizontal cut inside that opening.
Colfax leaned over Gracie’s shoulder. The man snorted derisively. Gracie rolled her shoulder against the huff of breath that fanned her ear. He was a fine one, to offer advice now, to the only man who even tried to save Sergeant Baker.
“This procedure is nearly futile under the best of circumstances, and you’re cutting between the second and third ring. If there is to be any hope you must be above the fifth.”
Gracie pulled some extra sponges from her apron pocket and captured the blood which flowed from the wound. She tried to block out the annoying man the way Doctor Ellard had, so focused on what he was doing, he didn’t appear to even hear what Colfax said.
“Most all these patients die, fracture of the tracheal rings, loss of airway, or hemorrhage.”
Before Doctor Ellard could ask, she passed him the silver tube. The moment he slipped it into the hole she heard the unmistakable escape of breath and the sergeant’s chest began to naturally rise and fall.
Her own breath caught, awed by the miracle Doctor Ellard had just performed. She lifted her gaze to his face, but his expression remained preoccupied as he grabbed her hand and tugged it close to the tube.
“Hold this.”
Her fingers tips wrapped around the blood-slicked metal.
Reaching into his box, he withdrew a chamois cloth poked through with various needles. Quickly threading one of the small curved ones, he stitched the wound closed around the tube.
Gracie blotted away as much of the blood as she could with the bottom of her apron. When he knotted the last stitch, he gave her a nod, and she slowly lifted her hand away from the tube.
“Corporal Reid,” he called, closing up his case.
“Yes, sir?” Robbie stepped forward.
“Find a stretcher and some attendants and transport this man over to surgery immediately. I’ll meet you there.”
“Yes, sir.” He swung around and darted into the crowd.
Gracie stood, wiping her hands on her apron. She passed him an eight-yard roll of bandage from her pocket, and he wrapped it around the sergeant’s neck.
When he finished tying the ends, he lifted his head, and their gazes met. The normal icy glint in his blue eyes melted, and he gave her a nod that somehow warmed her spirit like the highest praise.
She smiled back so elated by what they’d just shared, that she nearly threw her arms around his neck and hugged him.
But the sergeant lay between them, and a crowd of patients surrounded them, so she continued to wipe her hands, reminding herself that Charles Ellard wasn’t William.
“I could have performed that operation,” Doctor Colfax declared. “If I’d had my tracheotomy tubes.”
Doctor Ellard shot the man a disbelieving glare. He slipped on his coat, tucked his case under his arm, and shouldered his way between the unyielding bodies of Emerson and Doctor Colfax.
The patients again quietly stepped aside for Doctor Ellard to pass. All heads turned to watch him walk up the aisle. The thud of his boot heels against the floor was the only sound as his long deliberate stride took him to the end of the ward and out the door.
As soon as it clicked shut, the ward erupted with the buzz of conversation.
“Arrogant ass,” Doctor Colfax muttered under his breath.
Gracie gasped.
Doctor Colfax swung toward her. “He’s not God, you know.”
“Aye. But he be a closer relative than you.”
He inhaled a sharp breath of air, then spun around and pushed his way through the gathered patients, Medical Cadet Emerson trailing in his wake.
Chapter Four
Robbie returned a few minutes later with a stretcher and men to transport the sergeant to the surgery. Gracie grabbed the blanket from an empty bed and tucked its extra warmth around the man before the attendants carried him from the ward.
Once they left, she hurried to her room to wash the blood from her hands and change her apron. Before tossing it into the pile of soiled linens for the laundry, she checked the pockets—a penc
il, a length of bandage, and the puzzle.
Someone had sat beside Gilbert that night and solved it. She pulled the cord until it formed a large loop then slipped the yoke through the loop, but the disc remained on the same loop. Frustrated, she carried the puzzle back to the cabinet behind her table and tossed it into the box with the other puzzles.
****
Robbie was collecting dishes, and Gracie was spoon-feeding beef tea to a sick corporal, when the sergeant was returned to the ward and tucked into bed. Doctor Ellard checked the thick bandage around the man’s throat then made a few notes on the patient card.
When the broth was gone, she carried the dishes to Robbie and started down the aisle. Doctor Ellard met her half way and passed her the card.
“I removed his tonsils. The tube is gone, but make certain the night orderly knows to send for me immediately if there is the slightest problem.”
She nodded and glanced at the card for instructions as to diet and medicines. The handwriting was barely legible, but she was able to decipher his scrawl.
Silence stretched between them. At that moment she wished they were arguing again.
She glanced up.
He looked poised to say something then seemed to change his mind. “Good evening,” he said instead.
Disappointed that he didn’t want to stay and talk, she moved aside as he stepped past her. Her shoulders slumped. She released a weary sigh and stared after him as he continued through the ward and out the door.
Returning to her table, she recopied the medication notes for the steward to pick up the medicine from the dispensary. Setting down her pencil, she rose and stretched her lower back.
Across the ward, Gilbert’s bed stood empty. It had been such a long day she’d hardly had time to think about the poor child. How could she have forgotten him so quickly?
She’d only known him a few weeks, but he had touched her life. She glanced up and down the ward. Half the beds were empty right now, but once the spring campaigns began, more men would arrive to fill them. No one stayed. They passed away, went home, or returned to the war. It did her no good to get attached. Maybe Doctor Ellard had the right of it.
Gleason arrived, and she gave him the key to the medicine chest. They briefly discussed Doctor Ellard’s notes on the sergeant, and she headed to bed.
As she passed the sergeant, she saw his eyes were open. Stepping close beside his bed she smiled.
He silently mouthed, Thank you. He lifted his hand, and she wrapped her fingers around his icy digits.
“Are ye warm enough? Maybe we can move yer bed closer to one o’the stoves.”
Soundlessly he drew both their hands closer to his throat and mouthed, Thank you, again.
She shook her head. “’Twas Doctor Ellard saved ye.”
He gave his head a slight shake and squeezed her hand.
Tears filled his eyes.
Her eyes stung as she accepted his gratitude for her small part in saving him. She bit her lower lip then nodded. “Ye are welcome.”
Holding his hand, she sat beside him and remained in the chair by his bed, long after he fell asleep.
****
She missed breakfast the next morning, so exhausted she hadn’t even heard the bugle blow reveille. Tying on her apron, she hurried from her room at the end of the ward, down the wide aisle, to her table.
Doctor Ellard had already begun his rounds, Corporal Timon following behind jotting instructions in his notebook.
Robbie sat in her chair examining two odd-shaped blocks of wood. He stood as she approached. “I was wonderin’ if ya was all right.”
“A wee bit tired is all.” She glanced around. “Have the men all had their breakfast?”
“Yes, ma’am. Me and Micah and Harvey got all the beds changed, too.”
“Ye did a fine job, Robbie. I’ll sorely miss ye when ye go back to yer regiment.”
He picked up the wooden blocks, studying them intently as he spoke. “I ain’t much for letter writin’ and such, but I’d be right pleased iffen you’d write to me.”
She smiled, smoothing the back of her skirt before lowering herself onto the chair.
“O’course I’ll write. I be as fond o’ye as me own brother.” She withdrew a pencil from her pocket along with a small notepad. Carefully she wrote, Cpl. Robert Reid, then waited.
“Seventh West Virginia, Second Corps at Falmouth,” he added. “Reckon it’ll get to me.”
“I’ll send ye all the news from Armory Square.”
Robbie brought the blocks in his hand together, turned one, and held them together again.
“What have ye there?”
“Micah found it by Uncle Mark’s bed. I mean Sergeant Baker. It was together. He took it apart and reckoned he could put it back again, but he couldn’t do it. He give it to me, but I cain’t do it neither.”
She watched as Robbie made several attempts to fit the halves together. The puzzle hadn’t been there when she’d gone to bed in the early hours of the morning. Perhaps Gleason, the night orderly had cleverly worked this puzzle as well as the yoke and disc puzzle.
Each block was identical, with sloping sides. Each side had pegs and hollows which slid back and forth, so when the pegs and hollows came together correctly, they interlocked, joining the halves.
“Micah says iffen ya put the two pieces together it makes a pyramid.” He shook his head and set the blocks on the table. She picked them up and tried putting them together, but couldn’t figure it out.
From down the ward, Doctor Ellard barked something at Corporal Timon.
Robbie leaned close and whispered, “Cap’n Ellard ain’t in a very good mood. He already put Harvey and Micah on report an’ he’s been yellin’ at Corporal Timon since he got here.”
“Why don’t ye check the linen room for me and pick up some lint and bandages.” She jotted the quantities on a piece of paper and passed it to him. “Take yer time, and when ye get back, Doctor Ellard will be done his rounds.”
Robbie snatched the paper from her fingers with a grateful smile and hurried off as Doctor Ellard approached the table.
He passed her the stack of cards. “You were late.”
Despite the frown marring the line of his brow, she met his pale blue gaze and flashed her brightest smile. “I be sitting up with Sergeant Baker last night and overslept.” She took the cards and set them beside a blank sheet of paper.
“Coddling the patients again? It won’t do, Mrs. McBride.”
She searched his face and wondered if he was deliberately picking a fight.
“It will do, Doctor Ellard. Sergeant Baker nearly died, and he rested easier knowing there be someone beside him in the dark, knowing he wasn’t alone if his breathing stopped again.”
“The orderly was given instructions to come and get me, was he not?”
“O’course.”
“Then he would have been fine.”
“He was afraid.”
“He is a soldier.”
She shook her head at a loss for words to counter his argument. Did the man possess even one ounce of compassion?
“If you exhaust yourself staying up all night with one patient, the efficiency of this hospital is compromised, and likewise the quality of care the rest of the patients receive.”
She pushed to her feet. “After I give instructions to the orderly at nine o’clock, me time is me own. And I’ll be spending it where I will.”
He placed his hands on the table and leaned closer. “Not if what you do affects this hospital and my patients.”
Gracie planted her fists on the table and leaned toward him so that mere inches separated their noses. “On me sainted mother, ye know nothing I’ve done has hurt the patients. Ye be no more than an overgrown bully, Doctor Ellard.”
His nostrils flared, and his clear blue eyes narrowed. In the late morning light, each dark hair of his beard was visible, and she clenched her fist tighter, angry with herself now for wanting to trace his jaw-line.
“I, a bully?” He bit out each word with disdain. “It is you lady nurses who are bullies.”
She drew an indignant gasp.
“None of you belong here. You waltz into the hospital with your smiles and blushes, exciting the patients. Then you hang curtains and pictures and rearrange the wards. Next you quietly change my orders, because your grandmother’s herbal recipe is better than the medicine I’ve prescribed…”
Some of the tension eased from her shoulders. At least he wasn’t talking about her. She’d heard that Nurse Sarah in Ward F, constantly changed the orders on the patient cards.
“…then you run to Major Bliss and use your womanly tears to manipulate him in your favor.” He leaned in closer.
She didn’t back away, even as his nose just missed bumping hers.
“I am not an ogre, Mrs. McBride.”
The warmth of his breath brushed across her mouth. She stared at his lips, so temptingly close. “I know,” she whispered.
Her tongue flicked out to moisten her suddenly dry lips, and her heart beat quickened. She ached to feel the power of his kiss, the unique taste of—
No! These feelings were wrong. William couldn’t be replaced by the first man to stir her senses in three years. And while Doctor Ellard might be attracted to her, he didn’t respect her as a nurse.
Besides they were in the middle of the hospital ward with more eyes on them than she cared to think about. She straightened, her fingers gripping the edge of the table.
He seemed to draw into himself then, stepping back from the table, his stiffened spine making him appear taller. With a curt nod, he swung away and started down the length of the ward.
She released a long breath and dropped heavily into the chair. Sweet Mary Jesus, could the Father in Heaven have created a man any more powerful than Charles Ellard? He drained her emotions and left her exhausted every time she stood in his presence. Scooting forward she picked up the cards, trying to remember what she needed to do.
She snapped her fingers and jumped to her feet—Sergeant Baker.
“Doctor Ellard,” she called grasping her skirt and darting around the table. “Doctor Ellard, could ye wait, please?”
He stopped but didn’t turn around until she stood behind him. Frost once more edged the blue of his eyes.
