The Surgeon’s Lady

by Carla Kelly

  There was a certain pleasurable selfishness in keeping the news to herself. She woke each morning with her hands on her belly, relieved beyond measure that her first husband had been so wrong. Even when he had berated her for failing to produce a Taunton heir, she had known it was never her fault. Now she understood, and, understanding, took another look at herself. I am better than I know, she told herself. Much better.

  Easy to say, she discovered, the morning the jetty bell started ringing just before noon and would not stop. Sorting a mountain of records in the dining room, she thought to ignore it, except that Philemon sent an orderly running up her front steps. He burst into the dining room. “Hurry!” he said. “There are so many!”

  Grabbing her apron, she ran after him, appalled before she even got to the landing at how many jolly boats stood off in the stream behind Stonehouse. As inured as she was by now to the carnage, she stared at the sight before her.

  The lawn was littered with men, the grass turning red before her eyes. “What happened?” she asked a passing stretcher bearer.

  “Wounded as usual, but the ships ran into a French fleet that mauled them worse,” he said, breathless from running, too. “One of the ships’ magazines blew up.”

  She grabbed his arm. “Was the Tangier among them?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  Willing herself calm, she looked for Philemon and knelt at his side as he labored, his hands deep inside a boy too young to shave.

  “Laura, put your finger on the artery and press it to the bone.”

  She did as he demanded, moving her finger at precisely the right moment as he twirled the ligature around the offender and stopped the blood. He wrapped a tight bandage, then marked the man’s forehead with a number and shouted for the stretcher bearers.

  “Trouble is, they are all numbered one or two,” he muttered.

  He wiped his hands on his apron and reached for the familiar canvas bag. Laura thought he would just indicate where she should start, but he took her by the hand and threaded through a lane of wounded, pushing her to her knees beside a quiet figure with a leg off and a powerful stench.

  Lord Ratliffe sprawled before her. She gasped, then vomited before she could control it. She tried to leap up, but Philemon held her there. “Do what you can, Laura. I fear it will not be much. Don’t touch his leg.”

  She struggled under the restraint of his bloody hand, angry now. “I won’t! You cannot make me touch him!”

  “I will hold you here until you do,” he said, and there was no mercy in his eyes. “Tend this man.”

  He would not relent, even when she began to cry, which made her father stir and moan, calling for water. With his free hand that shook, Philemon wiped her chin of the vomit.

  She could not even look at her father. “I will hate you until I die,” she told Philemon. “Maybe beyond.”

  She knew she had lacerated him, wounding him more than the men around them. Hit me, she thought then, shake me, scream at me, do what men do to women who cannot defend themselves. I understand that. Just don’t make me tend this demon.

  She could not take her eyes from Philemon. She watched him visibly force himself to calmness, even as he continued to bear down on her. As she glared at him, his expression softened.

  “Do you remember when you asked me if I would love you even when you did not love me?”

  She nodded, ashamed of herself.

  He suddenly released his hold on her, stepping back to free her. “This is that moment, Laura. You have to love me—trust me!—even though you do not.” He left her beside her father.

  Her first instinct was to run until she was back in Taunton, hiding in a closet as she had done once, when the demands of Sir James exceeded her power to function. She rose, ready to bolt, determined to do it, except that she could not. All around her, surgeons and mates and orderlies worked swiftly, their faces grim and set.

  Will no one relieve my pain? she cried inside. She glanced at Philemon, who was kneeling beside another sailor now, one terribly burned. He looked at her and nodded encouragement.

  “How can you be so kind to me?” she asked.

  She knew he could not hear her, but he cupped his hand to his ear, then nodded again as he returned to his hopeless task.

  She could do no less, even if she despised the man at her feet. She reached for one of the tins of water orderlies were placing on the grass at intervals, and took a cloth from her bag, wetting it, and wiped Lord Ratliffe’s face. She put her ear to his slightly open mouth, and listened to him breathe. His pulse was thready, but at least he had a pulse.

  She wiped his neck and upper chest, which made him stir. She sat back on her heels as his eyelids fluttered and he returned to consciousness. “Hello, Father,” she forced herself to say.

  Stupified, he stared at her, trying to figure out who she was through a film of pain that she had seen in other wounded men. Davey had described it to her once as looking up from the bottom of a pond, with people wavy and disembodied looking back.

  He recognized her then and began to breathe faster. She forced herself to remember what Philemon had taught her, and just rested her hand on his chest. “It’s all right. Just breathe easy.”

  He closed his eyes, did as she said, then opened them again. “Laura?” he asked, disbelieving, then, “Laura,” as the pond cleared.

  She continued to wipe him, the cloth more grimy than bloody. Where have you been? she wanted to ask. What happened to your leg?

  When she turned him on his side, she noticed the bullet wound, angry, weepy and infected as badly as what remained of his leg. She grabbed another can of water, and quickly washed him until the wound was clean. She held a compress over it, ready to apply adhesive, when she stopped. I could probe it, she thought suddenly. Maybe I can remove the ball, for it obviously has not exited.

  She looked around for a probe, then realized what was happening to her. She swallowed, trying to remember how much she hated Lord Ratliffe, except that it wouldn’t come. He was a dying man in pain, and she wanted more than anything to ease his passage. “Why do I not hate you?” she whispered. “I should, you know. I have every right.”

  She attached the compress to the wound and made herself comfortable on the grass beside her father. He was unconscious again, so she lifted the blanket covering his amputation and stared at the trauma. Maybe the surgeon on land or sea had been overworked. Maybe he had tried to perform a miracle on a leg that should have been tended weeks earlier. She closed her eyes against the red streaks that snaked nearly to his chest. And I wanted to probe a bullet, she thought. I might as well spit in the ocean to fill it.

  She covered him, washed her hands in bloody water, then grasped his hands. The touch woke him. He looked at her with surprising interest, perhaps wondering how she came to be there, or maybe just accepting it.

  He tried to speak and she leaned closer, holding his hands tight against her chest now, where her heart seemed to jump out of her body. “Tell me, Father,” she urged softly.

  “I regret,” was all he could manage, but it was enough.

  She thought she wanted to tell him she was glad he regretted, glad he suffered, but she could not. She glanced at Philemon, who had moved to another man close by, this one less seriously burned. He worked, but took the time to watch her, too. Husband, you are so determined not to abandon me, she thought in wonder, even though you are busier than any mortal I know.

  She returned her gaze to her father. “It is this way, Father,” she said, amazed at herself. “How can I be small, when I have so much? I accept your regret.”

  Lord Ratliffe nodded. She released his hands to wipe the tears on his face, then clutched him again. She was still holding his hand when the stretcher bearers came.

  “Take him to Block Four.”

  Philemon was beside her now, helping her to her feet. “Brian is there. I will attach a note on Lord Ratliffe and tell him to probe for that bullet. It’ll relieve some of his suffering.” He kisse
d her forehead, although she couldn’t imagine there was a clean spot on her face. “Can you tend some more here?”

  She nodded, then took his arm when he started away. “Philemon, I am so…”

  “We’ll talk later, madam.”

  “You need to know something.”

  “And you will tell me.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Laura stayed at the jetty until nearly dark, tending to the less wounded, joking with some of them, listening to others tell of the fight at sea. Philemon and the other surgeons and mates had long left the landing and were working indoors.

  Exhausted, she went home only long enough to wash, put on another dress, and write a note to Nana, begging her to come to Block Four as soon as she could, and bring Rachel. She began the letter to Nana as she always did, with the underlined words, “Oliver is safe and well.” No sense in terrifying her. “It is our father,” she wrote, after stewing over the matter.

  Nana could decide whether or not to come. After his last visit with them, Oliver had said he had warned Nana, just as Philemon had done, with the reality that Lord Ratliffe might be recovered anytime now. “If she hadn’t been nursing Rachel, I think Nana would have thrashed me with a poker,” Oliver had joked. Laura sent the note with a passing carter and a generous sum. Nana could make up her own mind.

  Her father was on Ward B, according to the chart by the main door. She went to the familiar ward and looked for him. The orderly indicated he was behind the screen, which told her everything. No hope at all, she thought, and felt her own regret.

  He was clean now, but smelled as abominably as ever because of his rotten stump. Still in bloody apron and stained shirt, Philemon sat with him. She kissed her husband and went for a basin of warm water and a cloth. She wiped Philemon’s face, and ran the cloth inside his shirt, because she knew how much he liked that.

  “Forgive me for what I said,” she told him when she sat beside him.

  “I know you didn’t mean it.” He put his hands on her neck and massaged it. “What a day. I am ready for this war to end.”

  “How is he?”

  “He won’t last the night. Brian removed the ball, so he’s easier, but there is nothing we can do for him.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  Philemon nodded. “There was another prisoner with him, a soldier captured during the retreat to Corunna. He said the colonel in charge of the prison was moving them north to France when they were attacked by guerillas. Your…Lord Ratliffe’s leg was broken and left untreated for too long.”

  She put her hand on her husband’s knee. “It’s all right if you call him my father. He is. Has he been able to speak?”

  Philemon moved her hand higher on his leg, telling her volumes about his own need for comfort. “He told me over and over how sorry he is for the way he treated you and Nana. I don’t think he knows who I am, though.” He chuckled. “I told him I am married to you, but he can’t seem to grasp the idea. Hardly surprising, considering his toplofty ways.” He patted her hand. “He just keeps saying, ‘I regret,’ over and over.”

  “I don’t hate him.”

  “I know. You’re far too big in spirit for that.”

  “I didn’t think I was. How did you know?” she asked.

  He only shrugged.

  She sat with her father all evening, giving him sips of water when he drifted into consciousness. Philemon came and went, tending to others. Just when she thought Nana was not coming, she heard light footsteps on the other side of the screen.

  Paler than she had ever seen her, Nana joined Laura, sidling along the screen and keeping as far from the bed as she could. She carried Rachel, clutching her daughter.

  “He can’t hurt you, Nana,” Laura whispered.

  She told Nana of his injuries, and his words of regret. Gradually, the frown left her face. In a few more minutes, she sat beside Laura, keeping as close to her as she could, which warmed Laura’s heart. I am the older sister, she reminded herself.

  Laura took her father’s hand. He was hot to the touch, and she knew infection was waiting to claim him. She ran her hand over his fingers, long and shapely as her own, then twined her fingers through his.

  “How can you bear to touch him?” Nana asked. “He did you so much wrong. Me, too, I suppose, but I had an ally.”

  “I did, too,” Laura said. She turned to her sister. “I didn’t know it until this afternoon. It was I. All along, it was I. There was something inside me that refused to break. I don’t understand, but I can live with that.”

  Nana started to cry then, handing her baby to Laura as she covered her face with her hands and sobbed. “He tried to do us such mischief! I should hate him, shouldn’t I?”

  Laura closed her eyes in relief at Nana’s question and pressed her face into Rachel’s curls. “It’s not worth it to hate him. I wish things had been different, but if he had not been who he was, we would never be here. Captain Worthy would sail in and out of Plymouth, and Surgeon Brittle would tend patients, both without us. That is what is too awful to think about.”

  Nana sucked in her breath with the enormity of it, and let it out slowly. She picked up her stool, and carried it around to Lord Ratliffe’s other side, where she could hold his other hand.

  He regained consciousness around midnight, looking at them both clearly. Laura got up to call for her husband, who came quickly, sitting on the bed. “Sir?” Philemon asked. “Can you hear us?”

  Lord Ratliffe nodded, looking from one daughter to the other, then at the sleeping baby.

  “We named her Rachel, Father,” Nana said, her own voice firm as she spoke to her father. “After my mother.”

  “Rachel was so lovely,” he said. “We?”

  “Yes. I am married to Captain Oliver Worthy of the Channel Fleet. Hold her, Father.” Nana looked to Philemon for reassurance. He took Rachel and tucked her close to Lord Ratliffe’s chest.

  “He’s not feeling any pain now, sister,” Laura said. “Neither should we.”

  Lord Ratliffe tried to raise his hand to his granddaughter’s head, but he could not. Taking a deep breath, Nana picked up his hand and guided it to her daughter’s head. He sighed and smiled, then looked at Laura. “Do you…”

  She shook her head. “Not yet, although I am with child. I…” She stopped when Philemon put his hand on her shoulder, and ran his thumb gently along her neck. She was suddenly too shy to look at him or respond to Nana’s delighted laugh. “Sometime in the spring.”

  He seemed to understand, looking at Philemon and then at her, something of the viscount in his tone again. “Daughter, he is so common.”

  “So am I. We’re uncommonly happy, though.”

  Lord Ratliffe nodded and closed his eyes. Nana reached across him to grasp Laura’s arm, too excited to speak.

  Philemon was called away a few minutes later. He took Laura by the hand and pulled her after him around the screen. “I’m needed in Block Two. Stay with him until he dies, then pronounce him, Laura. Write the time in the log and initial your name.”

  “Not yours?”

  “No. Yours.”

  He took her in his arms and held her close. “My family, my family,” was all he said, before he left for another block, a longer night.

  Lord Ratliffe’s daughters sat with their father until he died. Laura closed his eyes gently and looked at the timepiece Philemon had left. With a firm hand, she wrote time of death in the log book, and led her weeping sister back to her home, her arm tight around her.

  She saw Nana and Rachel upstairs and settled, then peeked in her bedroom. Philemon was not there. She went downstairs and into the dining room, certain she had heard him come in when she was upstairs. There he was, head forward on his chest, asleep. She touched his shoulder, unwilling to startle him, but certain he would sleep better in bed with her beside him.

  He stretched, then pulled her onto his lap. “What time did he die?”

  “Half past two. I recorded it.” She leaned again
st him, secure in her love. “I don’t think the news of our baby surprised you.”

  “It didn’t.” He chuckled. “I’ve been wondering when you were going to summon the nerve to tell me.”

  She settled herself more comfortably on his lap. “How did you know? I’ve only missed one flow and you couldn’t be suspicious of my queasiness this afternoon. I wasn’t alone in that.”

  “Too right. We all took our turns hugging the basin. Even I.” He cupped her breast. “See there? You’ve been flinching lately. You’re a little tender. And I keep a mental calendar of your cycles. Face it, Laura, I’m a man and I crave my pleasure. I also like to know what’s going on inside my nearest and dearest.” He started to unbutton her dress. “Besides, have you taken a good look at your breasts lately? I have. It’s one of my favorite pastimes.”

  “My blushes, Philemon,” she said as he untied the string holding her chemise together.

  He pulled back her chemise. “The areola around your nipples has changed color. See?”

  She would have looked, but he was kissing her then. “I love you,” she told him.

  “Well, what a relief,” he teased gently. “Any idea when this event might have taken place? Springtime is too vague to suit a surgeon.”

  She didn’t answer him, but straddled him on the dining room chair. He threw back his head and laughed.

  “My God, Laura! I promise never to tell anyone.”

  Lord Ratliffe’s three natural daughters were not invited to his funeral at Stokes Manor a week later, but they attended anyway, sitting close together in the back row of the parish church. The vicar eulogized their father, England’s hero, as a vicar might, who owed his living now to Ratliffe’s heir—a distant cousin—who was taking in every word.

  The interment in the family vault was also a private affair, so the sisters stood in the cemetery, watching from a distance.

  “Does our cousin know who we are?” Nana whispered to Laura.

  “Probably. From those black looks he’s been darting our way, he must think we’ve come here to make demands on the vast family fortune.” She smothered a laugh. “He’s probably prepared to shoo us away, but we know better than he does that Stokes is mortgaged to the rafters. What a jolt that will be, when the solicitor reads the will.”