Chapter Fourteen
Jealousy is beneath him. An emotion for mortals with their too short lives and limited patience.
He feels anger and bitterness for the things he cannot have—the freedoms they refuse to give him—but never jealous.
And yet it’s there, poison laced fingers gripping his heart, when she mentions there’s another.
In that moment, he understands. She is the one thing he denies himself.
THE AMERICAN COLONIES
Anna doesn’t like the way things are changing.
She knew she wouldn’t. It’s why she convinced herself to cross the Atlantic to begin with—so she could see its beauty before it spoiled. She just didn’t comprehend how much ground she would have to cover—how big this “New World” really is—or how fast the colonization would spread.
So much blood, so many lives, have been lost over the last century.
The disease, the wars being fought between the native tribes and the foreigners from across the sea trying to settle on a land that isn’t theirs to claim.
For a century, Anna travels with no destination in mind.
She helps who she can and learns when she’s able.
She suspects she may never be as well versed with the local flora and treatments as she is across the sea, but with the help of some willing natives, Anna was able to learn some of the local remedies.
She worries it won’t be enough.
Tensions have been rising for years now, but she had tried to hold on to hope that things could be resolved peacefully. The last of those hopes sunk with the forty-some tons of tea at the bottom of Boston Harbor. She knew then it would lead to this: another war on already blood-soaked land.
It’s been centuries since she offered medical care to passing soldiers in France.
After her home was burned to the ground, she never dared offering anything other than midwifery.
It was too gut wrenching, watching years of work be swept away in an instant.
Too nerve racking, knowing all it would take is just one voice to accuse her of witchcraft to draw suspicion, and just one look at the patterns on her skin to condemn her.
This war is different.
If necessity is the mother of invention, Anna thinks desperation might be the father of change.
The Continental Congress doesn’t have the same resources as the crown and they certainly don’t have extra men to spare.
It is General Washington that requests funds to hire women to keep the camps running—laundry, food, nursing.
So, for the first time in centuries, Anna finds herself treating war wounds instead of delivering babes.
It is infinitely harder than what she experienced in France.
The conditions in the camps are terrible, and the lack of medical knowledge is painful.
Anna quickly discovers that she knows far more about remedies than even the doctors.
Most of her fellow nurses have no more medical knowledge than any other housewife—hired only because they were desperate for additional hands.
Many aren’t prepared for the blood and the gore that comes with the position, but they stay anyway.
Things are so destitute, so many families are forced to take whatever job they can to survive.
In a camp full of mothers and wives who have never seen war up close, Anna stands out like a goose among chickens.
In the first three days, they make her matron.
Anna wishes the title came with some respect from the physicians she works with, but she seems to make more enemies than friends.
Of the four surgeons working in their camp, only one actually considers her suggestions.
He shoots most of them down, of course, but he at least allows her the dignity of being heard.
At twenty-six, Frederick Thompson is the youngest surgeon in camp.
He is bright-eyed and bold, with a passion for medicine that the war has yet to dampen.
Anna knows it’s only a matter of time before his enthusiasm burns out and he’s left feeling as hopeless and hollow-hearted as the rest of them.
There’s only so much suffering one can witness before the screams and the faces blur together.
Only so much the heart can take, before it shuts down.
“Eliza!”
Anna looks up from her meal, the bowl of gruel already congealing, in time to see Dr. Thompson storming across camp—his eyes pinned directly on her.
Her lips purse, suspecting she knows exactly what he wishes to speak about.
Of all the surgeons, Thompson is the least quick to temper, but Anna supposes she may have found the line he won’t have her cross:
His pride.
“Perhaps you can explain to me why you told Lillian to leave maggots in my patient’s hand?” he snarls, the volume of his voice drawing curious eyes from around the camp.
Anna sighs, abandoning her meager rations and standing. “Mr. Smith has already lost two of his fingers. I thought the least we can do is save the rest of him.”
“How dare—”
She cuts off his tirade before he can start. “The amputation of his fingers is horribly infected. You refuse to let me treat with the herbal methods to combat it,” she snaps. “The maggots eat the dead flesh and leave the healthy behind. Unless you want to carve more of him away, you’ll leave them.”
His eyes, a deep brown, darken. “You are playing with this man’s life,” he hisses, pointing an accusatory finger between them. “These so-called cures you believe you know, are nothing but wives-tales and whimsy. There is no medical evidence—”
Anna’s spine straightens, her shoulders squared. “That you know of.”
For months, she’s been unable to give the wounded the kind of treatment they desperately need. For months, she’s been belittled and treated without the respect she’s earned. Quietly obeying orders has brought her nothing but guilt and nightmares, and she is done.
He leans away, mouth parted in disbelief. “Do you mean for me to believe that you, a mere woman, know more than a surgeon?”
Her voice remains steady. Confident. “Don’t remove the maggots, and I’ll leave that for you to decide.”
Thompson’s fair complexion reddens, his fury palpable. “You are dismissed.”
Anna steps toward him, into his space. “Lovely. In that case, I see no reason not to inform you that you are an arrogant fool and that your stubborn pride will continue to be the death of many more to come.” She scoffs, shaking her head. “I’m glad I won’t be here to see it.”
She turns on her heel, her heart beat drumming wildly in her ears and her anger running hot in her veins. A few of the nurses, the ones she has mentored the last month, call after her. Anna doesn’t stop.
They are calling for Eliza, the woman made camp matron, and she has already shed that skin, ready to step into the next as easily as anyone else casts aside ragged clothing for clean ones.
She supposes she has Khiran’s influence to thank for that.
It’s been a week since she was dismissed from her duties as matron.
A week of foraging the surrounding woods and making do with what she has.
She kept very little with her at the camp, but she at least had a few basics left from when she journeyed there.
It’s enough to ease the burden of being on her own.
She’s not sure where she wants to go.
There’s no doubt she could get hired on as a nurse for the opposing side, but she hardly thinks she’ll be treated any better. The pay would be substantially higher, but their respect would be just as lacking. Still, it would mean lives saved.
And more preventable lives lost.
Perhaps she will go back to midwifery—at least then she wouldn’t be under the thumb of a man who believes he knows better.
The sound of hoofbeats alerts her that someone’s coming. Anna frowns, knowing she’s far enough from the roads to prevent someone stumbling upon her makeshift camp. She glances at the small fire, the rabbit she caught fresh on the spit. They must have followed the smoke.
They’re almost certain to have no good intentions.
Anna stands, grabbing the knife she used to prepare her dinner, and goes behind one of the larger trees. There’s only one set of hooves and it’s at a pace no foot soldier could keep up with—a scout, perhaps. Whichever side they’re on, Anna doesn’t want to find herself weaponless and alone.
She presses her back flush against the trunk, bark digging into her skin through her shirt, and keeps the blade ready.
The hoofbeats slow to a stop, and Anna catches the distinct sound of its passenger dismounting.
Releasing a slow breath, she tips her head to peek through the leaves of a low hanging branch.
The man investigating her camp isn’t in military red, but there’s a musket strapped across his chest and a long brown coat over a hunting shirt. A soldier from the Continental Army, then. Anna shifts, wondering how long she has before he expands his search, when a twig snaps beneath her foot.
She flinches, the following silence as damning as a gunshot. Bringing her knife up, pulse drumming in her ears, she waits for the inevitable.
A rustling step, another beat of silence, and then, “Eliza?”
The name, the one she chose for herself, leaves him hesitantly. A question with a breath of hope. Anna recognizes his voice, but it isn’t until she steps around the tree and sees his face that she lowers the knife. “Dr. Thompson?”
His sigh is so deep, his shoulders and chest fall with the weight of his relief. “You insufferable woman. I’ve been searching for you every spare moment since you left. What were you thinking?”
Anna eyes him curiously. “You dismissed me.”
“I didn’t intend for you to actually leave. What kind of fool runs off into the woods alone in the middle of a war?” His gaze falls to the knife in her hands, her grip still tight on its handle. “You weren’t actually planning on using that, surely?”
“If I had to.”
Frederick looks even more perturbed by her admittance. “You’re not a killer, Eliza.”