A Place in Your Heart Page 7

  Squaring her shoulders, she raised her chin. “I only want to ask ye about moving Sergeant Baker closer to the stove.”

  “No.”

  “But there be a chill there, near the side door.”

  “No. I’m not switching his bed assignment. Give him an extra blanket.”

  “’Twould only be a simple changing o’ the number on his card.”

  “Are you trying to prove my point?”

  Her fingers itched to rub away the ache forming across her forehead. “The best interests of the patient be all I’m trying prove.”

  “You are a tease, Mrs. McBride. You look at me with want in your eyes, then push me away. And now, when I can’t stop thinking about kissing you, you try to manipulate me into changing a bed assignment.”

  Planting her hands on her hips she took one step closer. “Ye are an arrogant ass, Doctor Ellard. I do not manipulate ye. I be asking ye straight out, not going behind yer back. I be not the kind of woman to tease a man with waving fans and batting eyelashes. If I want to kiss ye, Doctor Ellard, I’ll grab ye by yer cravat and pull yer mouth down to mine.”

  He took a step toward her and leaned forward, his mouth close to her ear. “I don’t think so, Mrs. McBride.”

  Goose flesh rippled over her body.

  “Because if I ever see that hungry look in your big brown eyes again, my mouth will devour yours before your fingers have a chance to touch my cravat.” Then he spun on his heels and continued toward the door.

  Gracie rubbed the tickle from her ear wishing she had something to throw. She stomped her foot instead. And though she heard no laughter, she was certain the infuriating man was smiling.

  ****

  Charles lay staring at the rafters above his bed, or what would be the rafters if there’d been enough light to see them. While the dark suited his mood, if he had something to look at, he might have been able to block the picture he held in his mind of Gracie McBride dressed in lavender.

  That was the color he’d buy, if he ever had the right to purchase a dress for her. His mother had loved that color.

  “My dress isn’t purple, sweetie, it’s lavender like the lilacs outside the back door.” Except he couldn’t remember there ever being lilacs outside the back door.

  He’d only known Gracie a month, but the black she constantly wore was depressing.

  He’d watched her earlier, doggedly pushing Major Carlton’s chair across the wide street. Navigating around the green, now patched with snow, Gracie and the major continued toward the Smithsonian.

  They hadn’t been aware Charles had stood there at the corner of the fence, beside the tree, wrapped in the evening shadow. He’d held a cheroot in his fingers but hadn’t lit it until they were absorbed into the silhouette of the castle-like building.

  As he exhaled a stream of smoke, the faint lilt of feminine laughter drifted to his ears. Was it Gracie? Had the major said something clever? Charles had heard her laugh on the ward many times, but he’d never been the one to inspire it. All he managed to do was arouse her anger.

  He’d drawn on his cigar a few more times, until night shrouded the brick spires and his toes grew numb inside his boots. Then he’d turned and reluctantly walked to his quarters.

  Preparing himself for bed, images of Gracie McBride replayed behind his eyes, like the melody of a song he couldn’t forget. His eyes perceived his desk, his trunk, the small commode with the pitcher and basin, yet his mind still saw the way Gracie floated above the sidewalk, her bell-shaped crinoline hiding all movement of her lower limbs.

  Last week he’d caught a surprising glimpse of those limbs as she’d rolled around on the floor of the ward with that thieving attendant. Her legs had been encased in black wool stockings and tangled in layers of petticoats, but his eye had been drawn straight to her narrow ankles and the shapely curve of her calf. He’d never be able to erase that image, even if he wanted to, for beneath her serviceable charcoal dress, Gracie McBride had worn a red petticoat.

  Rolling onto his stomach, he tried to squash the growing ache in his groin, the growing ache in his heart. He gripped the pillow with both hands and asked himself why any of it mattered. In five days he’d be leaving for Falmouth.

  He certainly hadn’t endeared himself to her in any way over the past twenty-nine days, especially when he kissed her. She’d responded as though she wanted him, but that was where he’d made the mistake. She liked the way he’d claimed her mouth, brushed his lips against hers and caressed her tongue with his, but she’d made it clear she didn’t like the man who kissed her. Maybe if he could make her laugh, she would find him more tolerable.

  A joke. He needed to think of a joke so funny it would bring a smile to her lips every time she remembered it, and cause her to think of him long after he was gone.

  He sighed and burrowed his face deeper into his pillow. The tension in his shoulders eased then returned as he searched futilely through his mental file drawer for an amusing anecdote. He must have heard a joke or two in his life, but he’d be damned if he could recall a single one.

  There had been a classmate at school who had found almost everything around him funny. Harry’s laughter was so contagious that even if Charles had been sprawled on his bed immersed in a book, he’d find himself snickering without even knowing why.

  There were no chuckles when Harry laughed, no hoots, or snorts, or giggles, just full-throated laughter which rose straight from his diaphragm to fill the room, or rooms, or the dormitory’s entire first floor and maybe even the second floor. It was deep and rumbling like a fog horn in a lighthouse or the blasting of a bugle. No, not a bugle, a trombone maybe.

  Wait—bugle? Bugle meant wounded.

  Charles blinked against the darkness. The trumpeting sound came again as the general ward master announced wounded at the steamboat landing.

  Damn, it wasn’t a dream. He shoved his face deeper into the warmth of his pillow. Would he ever get a full night’s sleep? The night surgeon and orderlies could deal with the latest arrivals. The new patients might not even be assigned to his wards. Except that his wards held the most empty beds and the most critical patients.

  He should at least get up and check. If it was nothing but dysentery and measles, he’d come right back.

  Shoving aside his covers, he rolled to his feet and without bothering to light a lamp, stepped into his trousers and boots by rote. He pulled his suspenders over his shoulders and headed outside. Cold air drove the sleep from his eyes while his long legs took him swiftly down the plank walk.

  An ambulance stood backed up behind Ward E. The horses stamped impatiently in their harnesses. The attendant jumped from his seat beside the driver and darted around the vehicle to open the back of the ambulance.

  The sour stench of urine and gangrenous flesh wafted out. The attendant turned his head away, gagged, and swung back to his duty as though fighting waves of nausea was an experience he’d dealt with countless times before.

  Charles grabbed the end of the closest stretcher and helped move the patient inside.

  They lowered him to the floor, and Charles hunkered down for his examination.

  A dark splotch covered one side of the thick bandage which wrapped around the man’s head.

  Charles’ heart began its frantic rhythm. He swallowed and tried to draw a deep breath. He could do this. This wasn’t Fredericksburg.

  The yellow stripe of cavalry traced the outside of the wounded soldier’s pant legs above his boots. Possibly a saber or pistol wound.

  Charles struggled against the image in his mind of a blood-soaked head, of blood pooling in a dark puddle on the cobblestones.

  Fabric whished, and in his periphery he caught a glimpse of black skirt as Gracie stepped close beside him. He raised his gaze to her face. He would focus on her. Not think about the head wound before him.

  She offered no smile as she stood poised with her pencil, new cards, and her memorandum book. She merely acknowledged him with a slight nod before she fell
back into the quiet efficiency that was Gracie McBride.

  The attendant and Micah set down a second wounded man.

  Gracie knelt beside him, checking the card pinned to his uniform.

  Lamp light flickered like gold in her auburn hair. Her single long braid traced the length of her spine from the top of her collar to the bow of her apron ties. No doubt she too had been sleeping. A fleeting image of her dressed in nightclothes, with that glorious red hair spilling across the white of her sheets and pillow, had him drawing a deep breath before turning his attention back to the head wound.

  “They told me at the steamboat landing,” the attendant offered, “that there was a cavalry skirmish on Tuesday at Kelly’s Ford. Reckon these fellows were too bad off to stay at Falmouth.” He pointed to the patient he’d just brought in.

  Charles nodded and leaned over the man who lay on the floor in front of him. “Bring that lantern closer,” he snapped to no one in particular. “And get me some clean bandages.”

  A whish of fabric and a small white hand held the light close.

  His hands visibly shaking, he clenched them into fists and glanced at Gracie.

  She met his gaze and gave him a slight nod.

  Encouraged, he knelt and carefully untied the end of the thick dressing then slowly unwound the cloth from the patient’s head. His pulse raced and a crushing weight pressed against his chest.

  Gracie gasped.

  He struggled to breathe.

  Wide laceration across the scalp, skull fractured—

  Though it was dark, tiny white spots like stars on a summer night filled his vision. He squeezed his eyes tight for a moment and gave his head a shake. Focus.

  —depressed area approximately two by two—

  He struggled to breath. Each breath was like trying to draw air through a pillow.

  —bone splintered, brain matter exposed.

  The ward tilted. Instinctively, he put his hand out to steady himself. The world spun crazily. Sweat dampened his clammy forehead.

  Not now!

  A hand pressed down on his shoulder.

  “Doctor Ellard? What’s wrong? Are ye all right?”

  The hand slid lower, following the length of his spine, rubbing up and down between his scapulae. He closed his eyes and concentrated on that hand, Gracie’s hand, moving up and down, up and down. The warmth of her palm, heated his tense muscles through the linen of his shirt. He tried to match his breathing to the movement. Gradually, his brain focused on her words.

  “If there is naught to be done for the poor soul, let me rewrap the wound with a fresh bandage.”

  What was wrong with him? He was a surgeon. He was in charge. He was supposed to have the answers. How could he ever open his eyes and face her?

  He shrugged away from the comfort of her hand.

  “Are ye better now, doctor?”

  Ignoring her, he drew a deep breath and wiped his damp palms down the front of his thighs. He focused his attention on the brain injury before him.

  The surgeons at Falmouth evidently decided the delicate removal of shattered bone would be best performed in a hospital. Aside from making this patient comfortable, there was nothing more Charles could do. Not without a repeat of the fiasco at Fredericksburg.

  An orderly returned holding clean white bandages. Though it felt like an eternity as he’d struggled to breathe, evidently not much time had passed. Had anyone besides Gracie noticed his silent struggle?

  Charles accepted the width of rolled cotton from the orderly.

  Gracie touched his arm and held out her hand.

  Without meeting her gaze, he passed it all to Gracie.

  If the patient was still alive later, he’d take him to the surgery and check for any bone fragments and hair the field surgeon might have missed.

  “Be careful with this man,” he told the attendants. “When Mrs. McBride has finished, cut off this filthy uniform and put him to bed, down on the end, behind the curtain. And mind his head. Then find Major Greene. Have him take a look and decide what’s to be done.”

  “Can ye not tr—”

  “No.”

  He moved to the next stretcher leaving the head wound to Gracie’s care.

  Aside from his previous attack at Fredericksburg, it had been years since he’d experienced an episode so debilitating.

  He’d been slow to mature, and the other boys at school taunted him mercilessly for his youthful voice and his lack of body hair. To avoid confrontations, he bathed early in the morning and always used the dormitory’s back staircase to and from classes. Returning late from the library one evening, he’d found Randall Graham crumpled at the bottom, his head and face covered in blood from a skull fracture.

  Charles had been so overwhelmed and unable to breathe from a nervous attack he’d been powerless to even call for help. Another student had come upon them and summoned aid.

  The incident hadn’t improved his relationship with the other boys, and like Fredericksburg the episode only served to generate whispers behind his back.

  Shaking off the unpleasant memories, he focused on the patient.

  Carefully he pulled back the soldier’s bloody coat and shirt, revealing a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around the soldier’s abdomen. The sour bite of sweat and urine filled Charles’ nose, and he frowned. Unconscious. High fever.

  Air had stiffened the cloth so that Charles was hesitant to pull it off, knowing he’d start the wound bleeding again.

  “Scissors.”

  As if speaking the word conjured the instrument, they appeared in front of him inside a pool of lantern light. Without a thought to their appearance, he accepted them from the outstretched hand and snipped away pieces of bloody bandage, which disappeared before he had a chance to toss them aside.

  Carefully, he pulled back the rigid cloth to reveal a small entry hole a few inches to the left of the man’s navel. The lantern light moved closer, illuminating the soldier’s abdomen. Peering close, Charles inspected the entry wound.

  Taking hold of the man’s hip and shoulder, Charles rolled the man onto his side.

  Gracie shifted around and tugged the man’s coat, vest, and shirt up, holding them while Charles cut away the rest of the wrapping.

  Carefully, he lifted off a palm-sized patch of bloodied linen which covered another small hole in the lower back. Thin watery discharge oozed from the wound, and Charles’ nostrils flared in response to the foul coppery odor.

  A simple in and out, probably the round ball of a horse soldier’s pistol. If there hadn’t been too much damage to the internal organs, the man might make it. Abdominal wounds from a round ball, rather than the conical ball, had a greater chance of survival.

  But something nagged at him. He stared at the small wound and rather than rebandage, he leaned closer. Without the brightness of daylight, it was difficult even if he’d known what he was looking for.

  A swath of lantern light suddenly bathed the area. Frowning, he stared at the wound and sniffed. Gunpowder, not necrotic tissue, discolored the rim of the tiny hole. And like the opposite wound, the edge of the skin was inverted. The skin of an exit wound would be flared out, the hole larger.

  Damn it, had the surgeon at Falmouth looked for two bullets or had he just assumed an in-and-out, bandaged the man, and sent him on his way? Charles eased the patient onto his back. Just to be certain, he checked the size of the wound in the front to be certain it was also an entry wound.

  “This man needs to get to surgery.” He straightened, and his gaze fell to Gracie, holding the lantern. The yellow up-light deepened the shadows beneath her eyes and created a ghostly cast to her face. This was why women didn’t belong here. They were suited for the task of caring for a family and home, not an entire army.

  “Don’t come to the ward tomorrow,” he said. “Take the day off.”

  She met his gaze as he stood. Shoulders back, she drew a breath as if to speak, but he cut off any possible argument.

  “Sleep late, go sho
pping for bows and ribbons, before this place crushes your delicate nature.”

  A bright pink blush swept across her cheeks.

  Error, the small voice inside his head warned.

  She planted her fist on her hip then drew herself up so that if he hugged her, his chin would rest nicely on her head.

  “My nature be no more delicate than yers, Doctor Ellard. Me family come from famine to carve out a new life in this country. As a young lass, I worked for me wages, and I’ll not have you treat me like a spoiled society miss. Ye’d be further along in this life, Doctor Ellard, if you spent less o’yer time with silly girls and more of it with real women.”

  He’d done it again. Made her mad, when all he wanted was to protect her from becoming fatigued, from letting this place destroy her passion for life, from becoming as damaged as he. Once again, he asked himself why her opinion of him mattered. He didn’t care what anyone else thought of him, why her?

  “Suit yourself, Mrs. McBride,” he said then turned away and headed to the surgery. As he walked, he wondered if any of the booksellers in Washington carried a book about jokes.

  Chapter Five

  Gracie hated to admit it, but Doctor Ellard had been right in recommending a day away from the hospital, although it probably wouldn’t hurt for him to follow his own advice. He always seemed so confident, so in control of every aspect of his life, it had thrown her off balance to see him nearly faint last night.

  The head wound had been horrific, and she’d nearly lost her dinner when the bandage had been removed. But to see Doctor Ellard so vulnerable had shaken her sensibilities more than the sight of the actual brain.

  She tried not to think about him or the hospital as she and Sister Mary walked to the capital to listen to the debates in Congress. Later they perused the overflowing shelves of a small book seller’s shop before eating dinner in a restaurant.

  Gracie was reluctant to let Sister Mary pay, but her friend insisted. Her parish had sent the money for Mary’s personal use to supplement the forty cents a day the army paid them to administer to the sick and wounded. No one would mind if Gracie used some of it to purchase a bar of scented soap, a tin of toothpowder, and a jar of honey for her tea.