by Carla Kelly
He let her in, and she’d been their servant ever since. Ozzie Washington worked hard at every task assigned her and saved her modest wages, which were paid every other month when the army was paid. She never looked back.
Maybe it was time to put that money to use. She’d liked the look of Cheyenne—it was more refined since the early days, when the rowdy Union Pacific crew went through. The days were gone when she could knock on a door, look both desperate and determined, and find work. She had true skill now in dressmaking.
Any day, she would bid the Chambers au revoir, catch the southbound stage at the Rustic Hotel, and land herself in Cheyenne. Every town of any size had a seamstress or two. She could find work with one of the dressmakers, see where the land lay, and start her own business.
Any day.
A
Where the story actually begins
“Things are slow, Callahan. If I have to treat one more case of diarrhea, I’ll take to drink,” Captain Dilworth had announced one morning.
Colm was far too wise to say that he alone had treated those so afflicted, because it was a homely duty beneath the notice of the post surgeon. As for taking to drink, Captain Dilworth was already lurching down that road. Again, Colm was too wise to mention it.
“Captain, are you thinking about a bolt to Cheyenne?” he asked instead.
“I was thinking more in terms of Omaha with the missus. We’ll catch the UP in Cheyenne and spend a week there. Can you manage? I expect no trouble.”
Yet again, Colm was far too experienced to suggest that the nature of medicine often meant a nasty surprise now and then, something beyond the official duties of a hospital steward. But who was he kidding? In the absence of post surgeons, Colm had extracted arrows, set bones, pulled teeth, prescribed probably useless medicine, done a successful shoulder resection because someone had to, and had even delivered a stubborn baby.
“I can manage, sir. When are you leaving?”
They had been through this conversation several times since Captain Dilworth had arrived three years ago. Colm had worked with better surgeons before, and worse ones. He could handle a hospital in a backwater garrison for a week.
The Dilworths were gone in a day, which made Colm Callahan happy; he liked being in charge. He had stood by his favorite window, looking down on the venerable fort below. “Bring it on, Old Girl,” he boasted.
A day later, Colm Callahan wished he hadn’t tempted Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine. That day began long before days should, with banging on his door by a frightened first-time father, a lieutenant of cavalry with the Fifth. Colm was pulling up his suspenders before the man finished knocking.
“My wife isn’t due for confinement for another six weeks, but … but, there’s water everywhere!”
So there was. When Colm arrived, Mrs. Lieutenant looked as frightened as her husband; he had two youngsters to calm down. He sent the lieutenant running down Officers Row to the Chambers’ quarters with a note for Ozzie. Five minutes later, she arrived, and the calming began. Ten minutes later, the sheets and Mrs. Lieutenant were changed and the mother-to-be was back in bed. In another twenty, there was an addition to the dependents at Fort Laramie, a little one who looked almost as surprised as her parents.
“Nothing’s ready!” the mother wailed.
“Heavens,” Ozzie said so calmly. “All we need is a bureau drawer and some toweling.” She turned to Colm. “Or should we put this little one close to the kitchen range, Suh?”
“My thought precisely,” Colm said, happy he had been so wise to summon Ozzie.
While Ozzie laid a fire in the wood stove and pulled up a chair padded with a quilt, Colm cleaned the infant. “We’ll keep her warm by the fire for a few days,” he explained. “She’s a wee one and could use a boost. Happily, ’tis summer. And what will you name her?”
Soon Eugenia Victoria—so much of a name for one so small—had gathered herself into a compact bundle and slept, warm, before the open oven door. When all was calm at the lieutenant’s, and Sergeant Flaherty’s wife was in firm control there, Colm thanked Ozzie. With a nod, she started back to the Chambers’ quarters. He stood a moment looking at her, a smile on his face.
That night, he managed forty-five minutes of sleep before the bugler sounded sick call. Luckily there was only a bilious stomach and a hacking cough to deal with before the next emergency, an ankle avulsion caused when a soldier-turned-carpenter (the army hated to pay for experts when privates existed) fell off a partly shingled stable roof.
His comrades carried the private to the hospital on a stretcher as he moaned and clutched the offending ankle. The private timed his arrival with the appearance of a baker’s assistant who had spilled hot grease on his forearm. Colm sighed and wrote another note, sent with one of the stretcher men. By the time Ozzie arrived, the owner of the avulsed ankle was certain that amputation lay in his immediate future, and the baker’s assistant had fainted when Colm touched his arm.
Sensible Ozzie. “Where do you need me the most, Suh?” The sparkle in her eyes betrayed her amusement, but she looked serious enough to satisfy the patients.
Without thinking, Colm put his hand on her shoulder. “The ankle thinks he’s facing amputation at his hip and sure death. Calm him down while I take care of the burn.”
She went to her duty while Colm made no attempt to revive the burn. Better to clean and prod while the man was in a far better place.
Burns in the second degree, he thought as he went to work. Out of the corner of his eye, Colm watched Ozzie remove the avulsed ankle’s shoes. She wiped the man’s face with a damp cloth, all the while keeping up a soothing conversation. Soon he was silent, caught in Ozzie’s web. What a gift.
When the burn was resting with a cold compress on his arm, Colm pulled up a stool and sat by Ozzie’s patient, whose eyes filled with terror again.
“By the Merciful, steward! Don’t take off my leg!”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Colm said. “But I’m going to poke a bit. The pretty lady will hold your hand.”
The pretty lady did so, freeing Colm to let his experienced fingers roam around a rapidly swelling ankle. “Wiggle your toes,” he commanded, and the private wiggled. This little piggy, Colm thought. “Once more.”
The private looked at him expectantly, but when Colm just sat there, the dread returned.
“Not a break in sight, private,” he announced, putting the man out of some of his misery. “There’s an avulsion, though, which means a little piece of bone has been tugged away by the ligament. We’ll treat it with RICE.”
The soldier stared at him. “Rice?”
“Aye, lad.” Colm ticked off four fingers on his hand. “R-I-C-E: rest, ice, compression, and elevation. And no more roofs, d’ye hear? I’ll send a note to the sergeant.”
“Yes, sir!” The private closed his eyes with relief, certain he had stared down death.
After the man was resting, iced, compressed, and elevated, Colm promenaded from the ward to the entrance with the woman who had come to his aid twice today. He walked as slowly as he could, although he knew Ozzie had other duties. He was too shy to ask her to return later if she could, but he needn’t have bothered.
“I’ll be back this evening to sit with your patients,” she said. She peered closer; clearly more was on her mind.
“Go ahead,” he said, wishing she would reveal her undying love.
No luck. “Suh, do you think you should telegraph Fort Russell for some help? At the very least, where’s your hospital matron?”
“Home with lumbago,” he said and made a face. “As for telegraphing, I don’t think conditions here will get much worse.”
Things did get much worse a half hour later, after Mess Call. As the hospital matron had hauled her bones up the hill to prepare lunch, the bugler sounded sick call, something that never happened at one o’clock in the afternoon.
Captain Dilworth had left his medical bag in his office. Colm grabbed it and was out the door in
seconds. He ran down the hill toward a crowd gathered by the post traders’ complex.
From its off-colored front wheels, he recognized the ambulance as the vehicle that had left for Cheyenne only that morning, carrying mail and several officers bound for court-martial duty. Colm worked his way through the crowd to the sergeant on patrol, a usually genial Irishman like himself who looked anything but genial.
“Colm, dear boyo, we came across the Shy-Dead stagecoach just past the iron bridge, tipped on its side.” He gestured to a piece of canvas from which booted feet poked out. “Couldn’t do anything for the driver.” He pointed again, further inside the ambulance. “Here’s your real patient.”
Ever cautious, Colm raised the canvas. The driver’s neck was cocked at an odd angle, but Colm rested his fingers against it anyway. Nothing. He shook his head.
“Come, come, young man, I am yet alive!”
Colm stared in surprise at the huge voice that boomed from an older man of somewhat ordinary dimensions. He wore a suit that could be called flashy—odd in a man of obvious mature years. Colm looked closer. The man’s cravat was a strident shade of green that would give a statue a headache. Stuck through it was a cravat pin in the shape of tragedy and comedy masks.
“Lysander Locke, the Lysander Locke, awaiting your good offices, sir!” the man boomed again. “I do believe I have broken my leg.”
“I … well … let me look.” Colm moved farther into the ambulance.
Colm felt the leg. The man was entirely correct. Lysander Locke’s tibia appeared to be at odds with the world. To his relief, the skin was still intact.
Lysander Locke watched Colm’s gentle prodding with a real air of detachment, even as he sucked in his breath. “Say it isn’t serious and that I can be on my way to Deadwood, where an engagement awaits to perform King Lear in three days.”
Colm smiled; he couldn’t help himself. The man spoke in such theatrical tones, with a certain flourish. He was worlds braver than the avulsed ankle resting in the hospital.
“It is most certainly a broken leg, so Shakespeare will have to wait a few weeks.”
Lysander Locke put the back of his hand to his forehead, and closed his eyes. “Young man, the show must go on!”
“Not in the next three days.”
His hand still on the broken leg, Colm took a good look at his patient, doubting that Fort Laramie had ever seen such a man. “Otherwise, how are you?”
“A little shaken, my good man, but none the worse for it,” the man announced. “I am Lysander Locke, late of Drury Lane and Covent Gardens, and a noted tragedian.”
Not one to hide your light under a bushel, Colm thought, amused.
Lysander Locke had an accent, but Colm didn’t think he would have placed it so close to England. But never mind. Here was a man with a broken leg, even though Captain Dilworth had assured him that nothing would happen while he was in Omaha.
The medical department does not pay me enough, Colm thought as he scribbled another note to Ozzie.
“Let’s get up the hill,” he told the driver as he crouched next to his newest patient.
With a passing private’s help, Colm loaded the corpse onto a stretcher and left him in the solitude of the dead house, located behind the hospital and next to his own little quarters. The same stretcher moved Lysander Locke into the hospital’s operating bay, if Colm could call such a place where no one had operated in recent memory.
Thank goodness Ozzie arrived so promptly. Without a word, Colm handed her one of his own aprons, which circled her waist and then some.
“Are you game, Ozzie?” he asked when she stood outside the operating bay, looking indecisive. “We’ll need to cut away his trousers and smallclothes. I don’t want to shock you or anything …”
Maybe this was a stupid idea. Holding patients’ hands was one thing, but asking her to assist an operation quite another. “Or maybe I should do this myself.”
“I’m no shrinking violet, Suh,” was all she said as she crooked her arm through his and towed him into the operating bay.
Indeed she was not. Ozzie did everything he asked, all the while delicately covering the actor with a sheet. Praise all the Saints and the Almighty that the fracture was a simple one. Just the right amount of chloroform on a square of gauze put him out so Colm could go to work, rotating and straightening, comparing the two legs, tinkering until he was satisfied.
“You’re as good as Captain Dilworth,” Ozzie said, holding the leg still while he splinted it. “Probably better. You’ve done a lot of this, haven’t you?”
Maybe he was feeling cocky because the whole matter went so smoothly. Whatever the reason, he told Ozzie about the night on the battlefield five years ago at White Mountain. He had assisted Captain Sternberg, who operated by feel in the dark, because Nez Perce sharpshooters kept targeting their kerosene lamp. “We both worked on that man and saved him, all in the dark,” he concluded, as he finished splinting. Plaster would come later.
“You’re a hero, Suh.”
“Just a hospital steward. Pull him toward you a bit.”
When he finished, they rolled the table into the wardroom. The avulsed ankle and burned forearm watched with some interest as the two of them gently lowered the actor into a bed.
“I’ll sit with him until he comes around,” Colm said. “The matron promised to return with food for him, but I have my doubts.” He looked at the lovely woman beside him, who was watching the actor. “Ozzie, I do need you.”
“Then you have me, Suh,” she said quietly. “Mrs. Chambers will manage.”
“It’ll be more than a night or two,” he said, doubtful again.
“She’ll manage,” she replied so softly, touched his shoulder, and left the ward.
He watched her walk away, embarrassed that he had boasted about that battlefield surgery. It was all true, but he had never been a man to toot his horn. He couldn’t help wondering when she would get tired of helping him.
“That is a lovely woman.”
Colm looked around in surprise. The stentorian voice, which could probably blow out the back wall of a theatre, was considerably weakened, but there was no mistaking the dramatic timbre.
“You’re among the living again,” he said, putting a hand against the old gent’s chest. “Firm beat.” He touched his two fingers to his wrist. “True there.”
To his further surprise, the actor grabbed Colm’s wrist and inexpertly felt for a pulse. “Lad, are you smitten by that pretty lady?” He closed his eyes. “When I feel better, you must tell me everything.”
When pigs fly, Colm thought, not sure if he was amused or exasperated. Gadfreys, was he that obvious to a man coming out of anesthesia?
A
As it turned out, Ozzie didn’t have to exert any pressure on her employer. She explained the situation, and Mrs. Chambers barely heard anything beyond actor.
“Do you think he might perform for us when he is better?” she asked. “We could hold such a party.”
“It’ll be a few days until he is lively enough,” Ozzie hedged. “Surely you can arrange for a corporal’s wife to help out while I am busy at the hospital.” She delivered the clincher. “It’s for the good of the regiment.”
Mrs. Chambers was no slouch, and no kinder than most penny-pinchers. “If you will promise her the wages I would have paid you.”
“Yes, indeed,” Ozzie replied, secretly amused.
As she hurried to her little room to gather up an apron that fit, and her extra dress, Ozzie stopped a moment to pat her hair here and there, then wonder how long she might have to stay at the hospital. It would be a pleasant change from garrison tedium, if nothing else. She patted her hair a little more.
All was calm in the hospital when Ozzie returned. She hesitated in the corridor, wondering if Suh really needed her.
She sniffed the air. He needed her. She peeked into the kitchen. There he stood, stirring madly at a pot from which a burned smell rose like gas in a Louisiana swamp.
He took the pan off the hob, looked inside hopefully, as if something might have changed, and sighed.
Without a word, he handed her the wooden spoon, turned around and bent over, which made Ozzie whoop with laughter. Soon, he laughed too.
“Help me?” he asked simply, straightening up. “I have eggs, milk, and cream.” He looked toward the pot. “We’ll forget the farina.”
Ozzie carried the offending pan to the dry sink and left it there to suffer third-degree burns. “We may have to throw out that pan altogether,” she said. “I will cook for you all.”
Suh put his hand to his heart and staggered backward. “Thank the Almighty.” Perhaps he had learned something from Lysander Locke, Shakespeare tragedian. “‘We,’ she says. ‘We.’ She’s not leaving me alone to suffer.”
Ozzie wiped tears of merriment from her eyes. “I am going to make scrambled eggs and flapjacks.”
“That’s not a low diet.”
“Honestly, Suh, how can anyone get well on gruel?”
“So I’ve tried to tell any number of post surgeons in the past decade, with no success.” He looked around elaborately. “But Captain Dilworth isn’t here, and those men are hungry.”
“Then stand back and let me cook,” she said. “Any vanilla? Dare I ask for maple syrup?”
“You dare, indeed.” He pointed out the objects in question. “I will retreat to the ward and assure the broken leg, burned arm, and avulsed ankle that good food will arrive shortly, and that I had nothing to do with it.”
Smiling, she went to work in the hospital kitchen, grateful for the matron’s lumbago. The kitchen was well stocked and quiet. Ozzie found herself humming as she made flapjacks, that staple of army life, but with a touch of vanilla. They went into the warming oven while she scrambled eggs and added cream, something even the Chambers didn’t see in their kitchen too often. Medical rations were far superior, as long as amateur cooks weren’t allowed to roam at will, like Suh.
