Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Doc Burnett withdrew his hand from the patient’s forehead and sat back. It was late afternoon, and the fever that had started yesterday was worsening. He needed to act soon, or this woman would surely die.
Doc pulled open his valise on the odd chance he’d missed something. It was a waste of time. He knew perfectly well what he’d brought, and the bottles he carried in the bag were sitting on the floor beside the bed. He picked up each one, hopeful there was a drop left. They were empty.
This old, abandoned mining camp the road agents were using as a hideout lacked the provisions that he’d need if he were to save this woman’s life. Still, he wasn’t about to do nothing while she suffered an increasingly unpleasant end.
He had spent too many years watching men die because the battlefield gave him too little time, too little light, and too little hope. He would not simply sit beside this woman and surrender her to infection because a gang of thieves had dragged him into the mountains without the proper instruments.
Since Doc arrived three days ago, the outlaw called Lucas had been the one who spent the most time in here, watching him. He’d made no mention to the young man of the fisher that came calling yesterday. There was no point in doing so, and the animal hadn’t made another appearance, anyway.
Through the window and open door, Doc could hear the others, though their conversation was often just a dull blur in the background of his mind. Even so, he had learned a few things.
He couldn’t quite determine the exact number of men in the gang, but they were using one or two of the other shacks for sleeping.
They seemed to argue almost all the time—about the food, the remoteness of the camp, the quality of one horse over another, the boredom of waiting, the lack of women.
None of them liked taking a turn going out and watching the trail for unwanted visitors.
That task seemed to have begun after the appearance of the traveler who was shot dead the night Doc got here.
The lean one, Lucas, was something of a lone wolf. He didn’t take a turn standing guard, which made Doc think he was in charge. He didn’t appear to give the others orders, even though they often called him outside to get his input on something they were arguing about.
But if he was their leader, his hold on them was not a strong one. Silent and morose, he lacked the bullying bravado one would expect of an outlaw leader. Mostly, he just sat on a crate in the corner of the shack, watching Doc and the patient while the others spent their time elsewhere.
It seemed to him that the young gunslinger showed more concern about the condition of the ransom victim than any of the other road agents. He guessed that Lucas may have been the one who shot her.
Guilt, Doc had learned long ago, could look a great deal like vigilance.
Doc took the bottle of morphine out of his bag and inspected the few drops that were left. The woman moaned in pain, but he placed the precious bottle back in the bag instead of administering a dose. He had to stretch what was left.
Half an hour ago, he’d had Lucas replace the water in the tin bowl he carried in his valise. He dipped the wet cloth he was using as a compress into the bowl and wrung it out. Patting it over her face, he wiped away the beads of sweat standing out on her heated skin.
She had a familiar face, though he was fairly sure she wasn’t someone from Elkhorn. She had fine symmetry to her features. A high forehead beneath thick, auburn hair. A straight nose between high cheekbones. Thin, pallid lips, slightly parted as she took shallow breaths.
Though she was probably in her forties, she had not gained the weight often added in one’s middle years. Her eyes, when she’d opened them, were deep brown.
Before being shot, she had to be enjoying general good health, otherwise she couldn’t stand the extreme strain on her system now. She’d need every ounce of her strength to pull through.
Rinsing and wringing out the excess water from the compress again, Doc laid it across her fevered forehead.
Her eyelashes fluttered, her lips moved, and another moan escaped her throat. She was fighting a battle while she slept.
Carefully pulling back the collar of the dress, he lifted the dressing away from the wound. The flesh around the incision he’d made when he dug out the bullet was gray and shot through with red. The wound itself was oozing, and the fluid emitted a faintly fetid smell.
He had seen that look before. Too many times. It brought back the old army hospitals with their rows of cots, the sour smell of infection, and the terrible knowledge that a man—or woman—could survive the bullet and still be taken by the horrors that followed.
He called Lucas and waited until the young man came over.
“Do you see this pus?”
The road agent nodded. “What of it?”
“This fluid would be classified as vile, as opposed to laudable.”
Lucas was staring at the woman’s face, rather than at the damage he’d inflicted. His eyes flicked back to Doc.
“I ain’t no sawbones. Speak English.”
“Laudable pus is considered a sign that the wound should heal. It means that nature is putting up a bold fight against infection. It isn’t festering.”
“But…?”
“But that’s not what we’re looking at.”
The young man’s eyes were troubled, and a pair of furrowed lines creased his brow. “What are we looking at?”
“This fluid is watery and tinged with blood. You can see it if you look closely. And there’s a hint of a foul smell that is going to get worse,” Doc told him. “If that wound has not already become malignant, it will be soon. And that will kill her.”
“So you’re saying she’s a goner?” The outlaw’s voice had taken on a steely edge.
“Not necessarily.”
Lucas stood up straight. “All right. You’re a doctor. Fix her.”
“To fix her, I have to open the wound again.”
“But you said you took the bullet out already.”
“There may be something else in there that is causing it to fester.”
“Why the blazes didn’t you take it out the first time?”
Doc heard the anger in the outlaw’s voice, but he was feeling his own temper heat up.
“It was an emergency situation. I extracted the bullet that I saw, using what I had.”
“What you had?” Lucas snapped. There was murder in his eyes. “You had your damn bag with you. What else did you need?”
“My surgical instruments.”
In one motion the outlaw picked up Doc Burnett’s bag and dumped the contents on the floor. Scissors and clamps and tweezers, two scalpels, and a saw clattered out. Doc quickly snatched up the bottle of morphine, relieved that it didn’t break.
“What are these, then?”
“Not what I need, imbecile,” Doc barked back at him. “You don’t use a bullwhip to cut your bread, do you? I need different tools, depending on the surgery I need to perform.”
“Why didn’t you bring what you needed when you left Elkhorn?”
“I don’t carry all of my surgical instruments every time I’m called out.”
Doc picked up his things one by one, piling them on a cloth under the cot. The instruments glinted in the light, reminding him that he could inflict a mortal wound on this outlaw with half of them.
The thought came and went swiftly, but it shamed him, nonetheless. He was not a soldier. He was not there to kill. He was there to keep this woman alive if God granted him the means.
He softened his tone. “When that fellow came to me, he told me there’d been an accident. He said nothing about any bullet wound. I rode up here with the medicines that were in my bag. But I had no way of knowing what I was facing, who I was seeing, or what the injuries were.”
Lucas ran a hand down his face, glanced at the woman, and then turned his glare back at Doc.
The woman groaned, and her pain was evident. Doc wasn’t surprised. He’d had to cut back the amount of laudanum he was giving her to make the medicine last longer. Lucas’s attention focused on her face again.
“I am trying to save her life.”
“Are you?”
“I am a doctor. That’s my job.” Doc’s voice was sharp, his eyes reprimanding as he glared at Lucas.
And perhaps it was more than his job. Perhaps, in this miserable shack, with death waiting so close, it was the only thing still anchoring him to the man he wanted to be.
The young man let out a frustrated breath. “If you cut her open again, what do you think you’ll find in there?”
Doc shook his head. He was glad to be past the outlaw’s temper.
“Hard to tell. There may be shreds of her clothing that were embedded when the bullet entered the body. There may be dead skin that is putrefying inside the wound. There could be a tiny fragment of bone. In any case, the bullet that I dug out was complete. There were no pieces that broke off. But for all I know, there could possibly be another bullet in there. I won’t know until I’m in there. ”
Wound infections were always a serious problem.
During the war, he and other doctors working close to the battle lines were constantly improving operating protocol and sharing successful techniques with one another.
Despite what the newspapers printed, the first choice of the surgeon, notwithstanding the overwhelming and horrific conditions of the battlefield, was not amputation.
But in trying to save a limb, infections were unavoidable.
Doc Burnett could only speak for himself, but by the war’s end, his standard procedure was to cut away dead tissue and inject the wound margins with bromine—while the patient was under anesthesia, if possible.
He’d then pack the wound with a bromine-soaked dressing and isolate his patients in a separate tent with their own bandage supply.
Doc’s assistants dressed the wounds, and he insisted that they wash their hands in chlorinated soda between patients.
He’d learned a great deal in those bloody days, but he hadn’t had the luxury of applying any of that knowledge here.
Not properly. Not yet.
“Then cut her. Do what you have to do.”
“I can’t.”