They didn’t take the vehicles. Hunter’s Place for Steaks was just up the road and they walked the distance in a few minutes. They were soon seated in one of the booths. The waitress asked them for a drink order. Jason hesitated, looking at Vickie.
“Have a whiskey,” Gramps suggested. “I sure intend to.”
Jason nodded. Vickie started to order iced tea, but watching her grandfather, she decided she could use something stronger herself and ordered a rum and Coke. Gramps asked Jason if he might just order for them all and Jason nodded politely. It was going to be a simple meal. Three T-bones, three baked potatoes and three great house Caesar salads. The waitress left them, and Vickie finally exploded, managing to do so in a whisper.
“Gramps, what is it?”
He sighed. He drummed his fingers on the table. Then his blue eyes set upon Jason and then her, and Jason again. “I thought I could find something in the books that would keep you from going back. For instance, maybe the history books would say you had just disappeared in the middle of the battle. And some brilliant doctor picked up your brother and he went on to live a long and happy life and survive the war and have a half-dozen children.”
“But that’s not what happened,” Jason said evenly.
Gramps shook his head unhappily.
“Well, what does happen?” Jason demanded.
Gramps sighed. “Your brother, John, had been in the middle of some medical training before the war started, right?”
Jason nodded. Vickie gasped. “How could you know that?”
“Vickie, you should know. The military tends to keep pretty good records. Even though a lot of the stuff pertaining to the Confederacy was lost, you forget, the Daughters of the Confederacy and all those veterans’ organizations were strong, even back then. This book was written by a Virginian war widow back in the 1890s. And it has a fair amount about a Colonel Tarkenton in it—and a John Tarkenton, too.”
“Gramps, please, get to the point!” Vickie insisted.
He still stared at the two of them a long moment, with Jason returning his stare. Gramps was very old and wrinkled and bald; Jason was in his prime, his tawny hair thick and rich, his face lines clean and striking.
Still, somehow, they looked very much alike at that moment.
“Your troops do very well in the battle, Jason. You lose only three men, and two are reported missing. Neither of them is your brother. He’s injured, but you get him to a field hospital and you stay with him. The surgeons want to take off his arm, but you don’t let them. His arm heals.”
Jason’s head was lowered. “Thank God,” he murmured.
He looked up. He realized that they were both staring at him, stricken.
“I always knew I had to go back!” he told Vickie softly.
“There’s more to it than that,” Gramps said wearily. “You save Lee’s life right before Gettysburg, battling it out with a sniper before he can get to the general. Everything could change if Lee died.”
“Maybe I can save others now—”
Gramps leaned toward him, shaking his head. “No,” he said slowly. “Don’t you see? You can’t try. You can’t change history. You can’t keep Stonewall alive, you can’t risk changing the outcome of the war in any way.”
“Then why the hell do you think this all happened?” Jason demanded suddenly, passionately. “Why should all this have happened, anyway? Maybe I am supposed to change the outcome. Maybe that’s why I’m here—”
“No. You’re here to save your brother.”
Jason fell silent, staring at Gramps. “What do you mean? If I hadn’t been away from him so long, I would have done much better saving him. I can only believe in you now because I’m so desperate to do so.”
Gramps tapped his fork against the table, then looked at Jason again.
“There’s a museum down in Petersburg. A pretty good little Civil War museum…. Anyway, the big battle at Petersburg is yet to come for you. It’s pretty close to the end there. But I always remember, there’s a little piece of sponge there. And there’s a comment that some of the Confederate surgeons knew ahead of the Yanks that it was dangerous to use the same sponges on different men. We know now, of course, that germs were spread that way, that half of those men died of diseases because of those dirty sponges. They didn’t really know that back then—they didn’t understand all that we do now about germs and bacteria and viruses. That’s the point.”
“What point!” Vickie cried out.
Jason was staring at Gramps. “I think I’ve got it now, sir. You think that I’m here so that I can go back and save John—so that he can go onward and start men on their road to discovery. With his injury, he’ll be sent home. And he’ll start to practice medicine—”
“And he’ll get others to start using clean sponges. And he’ll save any number of lives,” Gramps finished. “And his work will also start others on the road to discovery.” He hesitated a moment, then continued. “Dr. John Tarkenton is behind some of the first research done in the field.”
“Excuse me?”
They all turned. The waitress was there. “Drinks!” she said cheerfully.
Vickie didn’t wait for hers to be served. She plucked it off the waitress’s tray and took a deep swallow.
Her heart was pounding. She had known. She had known he was going back. He had said it again and again. But maybe she had believed like Gramps that there might have been a way to make him stay!
But they all knew it now. He had to go back. There was no hope. There were no choices.
Warm, strong fingers curled around Vickie’s beneath the table. His eyes were on hers. Dark, silver, intense.
She was searching lamely for something to say when they suddenly heard a strangled gasp. Then there was the loud—and close!—retort of a shotgun blast. All three of them spun around, as did the other dozen or so patrons remaining at the restaurant.
A tall, scar-faced man in a dirty brown leather jacket stood at the register, with a shotgun leveled at the pretty blond cashier.
“Not another word!” he shouted out over the clientele. “Not a sound from one of you, or the idiot queen here—” he caught the girl behind the register by her hair, causing her to shriek again as he dragged her out before him “—gets it, ladies and gents, right in the head. Brains and blood all over your dinners, folks, so just stay still. Real still.”
They were still. Everyone in the restaurant.
Everyone but Jason. Vickie could feel the tension in his body.
She squeezed his fingers, sending him a silent message. Don’t!
Then someone let out a terrified little gasp and the man spun around, throwing the pretty young cashier forward as he did so. She tripped, and he slapped her hard across the head. “I just came in because I needed a little quick cash. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt, but I’ll do whatever I have to. Understand me? Don’t make me kill you, girlie.”
Vickie felt the horror constricting her throat. The girl didn’t mean to be giving him any trouble—she was just so scared silly that she couldn’t stand properly. He started to pull her and she fell again. He swung the shotgun around, ready to knock her across the temple with it. Vickie forgot that she had been willing Jason to silence. He was bounding up, but she barely noticed him because she hadn’t been able to keep still herself. She had somehow heard an imaginary sound in the back of her head, a cracking sound, the sound they would have heard if the man had managed to send the butt of his shotgun crashing against the girl’s head.
Victoria screamed out, “No!”
The man paused. The shotgun started to level at her. He shoved the blonde away. “No? Fine, then you can get over here and get the money out of the register.”
Everything happened so fast then. The blonde fell against the front counter. The thief crossed the few feet to their table and was reaching for Vickie. Gramps was up.
But Jason was behind her.
And before the man could close his fingers around her wrist, Jason w
as around her, flying at the thief, thrusting her far behind him, to safety.
He slammed against the man.
She heard the sharp retort of the gun once again. Jason and the thief fell hard to the floor together, rolling toward the front door of the restaurant.
She screamed, starting to leap for them, but Gramps was pulling her back. “Wait, Vickie, wait! Let me see—”
“No, no!”
He was moving! Jason was moving. Straddled over the thug, Jason delivered a solid punch to the man’s left cheek, and then the right. In the center of the floor, in front of the sobbing cashier, the robber was stone-cold unconscious and Jason was trying to scramble to his feet.
Vickie heard the scream of a siren.
Then she heard a burst of applause. The men, the women, the children, all the people in the restaurant, the clients, the help, everyone was clapping.
Jason turned around, smiling sheepishly. His eyes immediately sought out Vickie. He started to walk toward her. “That awful screeching sound means that the law is on the way, right?”
“Right—” she started to say.
But even as she spoke, he suddenly pitched forward, falling against her.
Blood stained the tailored shirt she had given him to wear. It seeped onto her pink knit, into her hands as she clasped him.
“Gramps!” she shrieked.
And then Jason’s weight dragged her down to the floor. She cradled his head against her, smoothing back his bloodied hair.
She cried out his name, and then began to sob it.
Over, and over, and over again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The waiting was a nightmare.
They wouldn’t let her in, not once the ambulance reached the hospital.
Then, of course, there was that horror that probably would have been as shocking to Jason as the stark white hospital walls and the emergency room staff and the heart monitor and everything else—
Paperwork. Jason might well be astounded to realize that people just didn’t let you into hospitals anymore, not without insurance, not without pages and pages of information.
She and Gramps just stared at each other at first, then he nudged his leg against hers. “You’ve got the card, Vickie. Give the nice lady the card.”
Vickie just stared at him for a moment. She was feeling so horribly numb to begin with. She felt like bursting into tears, like melting into the floor. He had left a war, to be shot in an armed-robbery attempt.
It didn’t seem just.
She had fallen in love with him.
And now she was losing him. Not because of the wicked violence of the tunnel, or the war. Because of her world.
She was going to lose him no matter what.
Not this way.
“The card, Victoria!”
The only insurance card she had was in Brad’s name. She’d never bothered to change the name. “Give the lady Brad’s card, Vickie, come on now.”
She drew the card out of her wallet and handed it to the emergency room clerk. The woman was being very patient, and understanding.
“That’s fine,” the woman said. “I’ll just take all the information off this and return it to you in the waiting room over there. I’m sure the doctor will be right out.”
There were cops crawling around then, too. There were a few minutes when the waiting was broken up by the questions that were fired her way. They were easy to answer. The whole thing had happened in just a matter of minutes. She just had to remember to keep calling Jason Brad, just in case someone from inside the hospital was listening. And then she had to hope that no one she knew came in at that moment, and blew the whole thing. She’d given them Brad’s card, so it was assumed now that she was Jason’s wife.
“How are we ever going to get out of this?” she asked Gramps.
He shrugged. “Does it matter? As long as we got him admitted?”
She shook her head. She still felt so numb. Then a man clad in white walked out into the waiting room, obviously looking for someone.
She gasped, recognizing the man.
He was very tall and ebony black, a handsome man with striking, strong features. His height had always compelled attention.
He certainly had Vickie’s card now.
She’d never gone on to medical school, but she and Sam Dooley had taken a number of courses together in their very first year of college. She had known that he had gone on staff here, but had just forgotten about it completely.
Now, of course, his eyes found her. And he stared at her hard. “Vickie. May I speak with you now?”
She leapt up and stared at Gramps. He started to rise, to come with her.
No, whatever it was, she could handle it, she could handle it. And maybe Gramps couldn’t….
“I’m all right!” she promised quickly.
She rushed over to Sam Dooley. He nodded gravely to her grandfather, opening a door that led into a hallway with doors on either side.
He leaned back against a wall, a chart in his hands, suspicion in his eyes.
“Vickie,” he said softly. Then, “Just what is going on here?”
She shook her head, her lips very dry. “Sam, how is he? Please, how is he? Oh, my God, he’s not—”
“He’s fine.”
“He’s what?”
“He’s fine. The bullet grazed his head, nothing more. There was a ton of blood because of where it struck. Of course, there’s always the danger of concussion, but really, he could probably walk right out of here tonight. I think it’s better that he stay for observation, so I’m keeping him. But you can see him.”
She started to turn, seeking a direction in which to go. Sam clamped a heavy hand down on her shoulder.
“Who is he, Vickie? He isn’t Brad Ahearn, I know that.”
She inhaled swiftly. “I had to use Brad’s card—”
“To get him in here. I understand that.”
“He’s just a friend. I really don’t—I don’t know a great deal about his past. But I do know that he’s a good man. He probably saved that little cashier’s life. Sam, please, I wish I could explain—”
“It’s like he walked out of another world.”
“What?” Vickie gasped.
Sam kept watching her very curiously. “Well, for one, at first he kept asking me for the real doctor. I told him I was the real doctor. Then he looked right at me and exclaimed, ‘A darkie is a real doctor?’ Well, now, Vickie, I always have been bright enough to know that I’m a black man, but in all my days, no one has ever called me a darkie before. Now, more than that, Vickie. The man in there is scarred. As if he’d been hit with something like a saber a number of times! Now, you put that with the way that he’s talking, and gawking at everything, and you have one strange man!”
She stared at him blankly for a minute. “Sam, he—he was just shot in the head. He’s probably not feeling quite right.”
“Hmm…Is that it? Vickie, who is he really?”
She sighed. “If I told you, Sam, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me.”
Oh, yes. Try him. She bit into her lower lip. She met his dark gaze. “He’s a real Civil War soldier, Sam. He stumbled into our world by some strange connection through time. Gramps seems to think that the reenactment has something to do with it.”
She got the exact response she had expected—sheer incredulity. He stared at her, speechless at last.
“I told you that you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Have you told this to anyone else?” he said dryly.
“Just my grandfather.”
Sam threw his hands up. “I give up!”
She caught his hand, holding it as she stared up at him imploringly. “Sam, please, I’m begging, keep quiet about him. He’s going to have enough difficulty dealing with the police, with the media. Please—”
“He’s not some kind of fugitive or criminal, is he, Vickie? That’s not why he’s been all cut up, is it?”
“No!” she crie
d quickly. “Sam, I swear to you, he’s a good man. Please, just keep quiet. I beg you.”
“I’m not sure it’s ethical.”
She shook her head wildly. “Sam! He saved a life. On my honor, I swear he’s no criminal.”
“He just stepped out of the Civil War to check out the reenactments, right? Is that it?”
“Sam—”
He freed his hand from her grasp and wagged a finger under her nose. “All right, Vickie. I won’t say a word. For all I know, he might be another Brad Ahearn. I’ll keep quiet—just so long as you get your fellow in there to quit calling me ‘boy.’ That’s what he went to after ‘darkie.’” He threw his hands up in the air again. “Eight years of school, two years in a residency. And all I get is ‘boy’!”
“Dr. Dooley, I think you’re wonderful!” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll get him into line. I promise. Where is he?”
“Upstairs. Room 306. You better go quick and tell him what his name is supposed to be. The police want to question him.”
Vickie thanked him again and fled to the elevator. In seconds, she was hurrying down a hallway to his room. Jason was sitting up in bed, hair tousled, eyes a bit wild, clad in a washed-out hospital gown. There was a bandage against his left temple, but nothing more.
“What is this damn thing?” he asked her irritably, plucking at the material of the gown. “There’s no back to it! I feel…naked!”
She smiled. He was fine. He was really fine. She hurried to him and threw her arms around him, kissing him warmly. She drew away, arms still around him. “It’s a hospital gown. And you have to wear it or else really be naked until I get a chance to run home and get you something else. Oh, God, Jason! You’re all right!”
He heard the trembling in her voice and took her very tenderly into his arms again. “I’m fine. Just fine. I’m sorry you had such a scare. I must have blacked out just a shade there. But it’s just a scratch. I’ve been injured much worse before.”
She’d known that. She’d seen all the scars that had awakened Sam Dooley’s keen interest.
“You saved my life,” she told him.
The Last Cavalier Page 12
