a stoppered bottle of disinfectant.
She had hoped she’d never need those supplies, but now here she was, panting from her run and staring down at a man whose ghastly pallor told her that he would die if she didn’t help him. Or maybe even if she did.
“Thanks for coming, Miss Hawthorne,” said Elijah Thornton, who was kneeling over the man, leaning on a blood-stained wad of cloth on the man’s left leg. “Mr. Gilbert accidentally gashed his leg with an ax. Obviously he’s lost a lot of blood,” he added, indicating the dark crimson puddle beneath the limb.
Alice took a deep breath, summoning the calm that had earned her a valued reputation with the doctors of Bellevue. She couldn’t help a victim if she succumbed to the vapors, after all. “Let me see the wound,” she said, carrying her bag over to the recumbent man.
“Very well, but I must warn you, each time I let up on the pressure, the blood starts flowing again,” Elijah cautioned her. Splotches of dark scarlet on his sleeves confirmed what he said.
She nodded and said, “Give me one minute, please, before you release the pressure.” She stared at the circle of gaping men and women around her. “Does anyone have a belt I can use? And a sturdy stick, or long-handled spoon, as well as a knife?”
Most of the men’s trousers were held up by suspenders, but finally a skinny man at the back of the circle made his way through the throng, one hand holding a belt, the other one holding up his trousers; another man furnished a wicked-looking knife from his boot. A woman—Alice recognized her as the deaconess who’d passed the collection sack this morning—stopped wailing and rummaged in a crate fastened to the nearby wagon, coming up with a long-handled spoon, which she held out to Alice.
Kneeling beside the man, Alice did her best to smile down at him. “Mr. Gilbert, I’m Miss Hawthorne, a nurse, and first we’re going to stop the bleeding with a tourniquet, so I can see your wound.”
Mr. Gilbert swallowed with difficulty, but his wide eyes were trusting as he gazed up at her. “Thank ya, Miss H-Hawthorne...I don’t wanna die. Please don’t let me bleed t’ death.”
“I won’t,” she assured him, hoping and praying it would prove to be the truth. Lack of hope could kill a man as quickly as blood loss.
Quickly and efficiently, she slit the trouser leg up the seam and pushed it back from the wound. “Reverend, if you would apply pressure once more?” Then, trying to remember everything about the safe use of tourniquets—taught to her by a surgeon at Bellevue, who’d once treated soldiers in the Civil War—Alice drew one end of the belt under his upper leg, fastened the buckle, then began to twist the belt until she could twist it no more. Finally she stuck the spoon handle into the small remaining loop. Her eyes sought Gideon, who’d remained nearby. “Please hold this loop twisted tight as I have it,” she instructed him. “Don’t let it go unless I tell you.”
He did so, keeping pale gray eyes trained on her.
“Now you can remove your hands,” she told Elijah, and he eased away from the victim with a sigh of relief.
“Can you hold that lantern directly over his leg, please, so I can see what we’re dealing with?” she asked another man who’d come into the circle, a man who looked so much like Elijah he had to be another of his brothers. Once the lantern light flickered over the temporary bandage, she gingerly lifted a corner of it and inspected the gash.
Thanks to the tourniquet, the blood flow had stopped, so she could see the wound on the inside of the left lower leg was about four inches long and at least an inch deep. It must have crossed a big blood vessel to have bled so much—not an artery, she thought, for the bleeding hadn’t been spurting when pressure was loosened, just a steady, continuing crimson stream.
“I’m going to have to stitch up the wound,” she told Gilbert and his wife. “It’s going to hurt some.”
He regarded her with eyes that were now calm. “You do whatever you have t’ do, Miss Hawthorne. I’m in the Lord’s hands as well as yours. Say, weren’t you the newcomer at chapel this mornin’?”
She pretended not to hear the question but directed those with lanterns to come closer and hold the lanterns as steady as they could. Then, after cleaning the wound with carbolic, she started stitching.
Conversation died down as the men watched her work until all Alice could hear was the steady inhale and exhale of her own breathing, and the pounding pulse in her ears.
* * *
An hour later, Elijah watched Alice straighten after putting what was left of her supplies in an oilskin bag. Mr. Gilbert slept inside his wagon, having been lifted there by some of the men. His wife, who’d been profuse with her gratitude, sat beside him. His color was better, and a clean white bandage was wrapped around his newly sutured leg. Those who had been standing around watching the drama began to disperse to their own campsites.
“Thank you, Miss Hawthorne,” Elijah said. “I am in awe of your ability.” The words were so inadequate. Without a murmur of disgust or shrinking from such an awful sight as the ax wound had been, this woman had saved a man’s life.
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said, her voice weary as she pushed back an errant curl that had strayed onto her perspiration-dampened forehead. “He could still develop septicemia—blood poisoning. What I wouldn’t have given for a handful of catgut ligatures, instead of boiled darning thread,” she said. “I’m glad now that I brought a jar of carbolic acid on my journey. There’s nothing better to cleanse a wound.”
“I thought we might have need of your skills but not so soon as it happened,” Elijah commented.
“Once a nurse, always a nurse,” she responded wryly.
“You met my brother Gideon, of course, but this is my other brother, Clint,” Elijah said, when both men joined them.
“It’s an honor to meet you, ma’am,” the man who’d held the lantern said, and beside him, the big man who’d summoned Alice rumbled an agreement.
Elijah saw Alice staring dazedly at the wagon and around the campsite, as if she’d forgotten where she was.
“Come on, it’s late,” he said gently, wondering if she was a bit in shock herself, now that the emergency had passed. “We’ll walk you back to your campsite.”
“No, I must stay. Mr. Gilbert has to be watched,” Alice protested. “His wife can’t do it—you saw that she was exhausted. If he moves around in his sleep too much, the wound could reopen and bleed again. Or he could develop fever—”
Elijah hadn’t thought about the need to watch Mr. Gilbert through the night, but it was plain Miss Hawthorne was dead on her feet and couldn’t do it. Her cheeks were pale, and her eyes showed the strain of the past hour or so.
“I’ll stay,” Elijah said, “and my brothers will walk you home. I’ve sat up with the sick before,” he added, when she opened her mouth with the obvious intent of objecting. “I’ll come fetch you if he worsens during the night, I promise.”
She stared at him, then her shoulders sagged in surrender and fatigue. “Now it’s my turn to thank you, Reverend Thornton,” she said. “I’ll check on him in the morning. I’ll have to keep an eye on him for several days and take the stitches out.”
“Please,
