“Who is this and what is wrong with her?” Mrs. O’Neal asked as she stepped back and let them in.
“Emily Stanton and she has a bad wound in her leg,” Iain answered. “Bullet is still in there, I am thinking.”
“Follow me.”
He did not argue but strode right behind her as she headed up the stairs. She turned into the small room that just had a bed and a single small table next to it. It was their sick room. Mrs. O’Neal had long ago designated it so. Even though it was on the second floor she had felt it was necessary for such a full house and, she had insisted, one so full of males who were always getting themselves injured. Iain was proud of how rarely it was used and he set Emily on the bed after Mrs. O’Neal covered it with several old blankets.
“Get me a bucket of hot water, boy,” she ordered. “I will be needing it to clean this mess and wash out the wound once I get that cursed bullet out.” She felt Emily’s forehead. “Fever is building. That poison is already doing its nasty work.”
Iain hurried down to the kitchen to do what she asked. As he waited for the water to heat, thankful one of his brothers had already put some on the stove, he watched Robbie walking Neddy around showing him everything and introducing him to everyone. Only Mrs. O’Neal’s daughter, Maeve, could be considered a child at just ten years of age. Her sons, Donald and Rory, were already close to Robbie’s age and steady workers. His own brothers were all grown. It was going to be hard on the boy. He would have to have a word with his brothers to make certain they understood the need to be patient with the child. Then he watched Donald and Rory take the boy over to meet their dog who had just had puppies and decided he probably did not have to worry. Sadly, all of them understood how it was for a child to lose family and everyone of them knew to keep a close watch over the younger ones.
Taking the water upstairs he nearly backed right out of the room again after stepping inside because Mrs. O’Neal was just pulling a sheet over a very naked Emily. He swallowed hard and set the bucket down near the bed. Iain suspected it would not be easy to banish the image of a naked Emily from his mind but he intended to do his best to accomplish that. Even with the glaring ugliness of her wounds, her body was one that would stick in a man’s mind. He told himself he had imagined the ivory perfection of her breasts but feared the image of them would definitely linger in his mind.
“Is it bad?” he asked.
“Fear so. I am praying we are in time to clean out the poison those bloody things leave in a body. She is a small lass and that worries me, but then the small ones can fool a body with their strength. I will need you to hold her down and don’t you fret about leaving any bruises on her. Better a few bruises than what could happen with the knife I will be digging around her.”
“She is unconscious.”
“That she is. But even the unconscious ones can still feel pain and I will be trying to dig something out of her.” She pulled a sharp, thin knife out of a drawer in the chest where she kept what she liked to call her doctoring tools. “Even the ones you think are out as cold as a body can be and still live will let out a scream or start to thrash. So pin her down hard, son. I need her to be as still as you can hold her. Arms and legs.”
Iain stiffened his backbone and studied Emily for a moment to try to decide what would be the best way to do what Mrs. O’Neal wanted him to do. Then he took a deep breath and climbed onto the bed, straddling Emily and securing both her arms and her legs. He nodded and then fixed his gaze on Emily’s face as Mrs. O’Neal pulled the sheet out of the way and started to work.
Emily proved to be very strong even though she never opened her eyes. It took all his concentration to keep her from moving. He closed his ears to her cries and moans, fixing all his efforts on keeping her from moving away from the pain Mrs. O’Neal had to inflict. It was not until he heard something dropped into a bowl that he realized he had closed his eyes, unwilling to see the agony on her face. He opened them to see Mrs. O’Neal threading a needle to stitch up the wound.
“Ye got the bullet out.”
“I did. All of it. Cleaned the wound, too. So all I need to do now is stitch the hole up.” She grabbed a rag from the pile she had placed on the little table and wiped the sweat from his face. “You will have to keep her still just a bit longer.”
“She didnae wake up when ye dug the bullet out of her. Cannae see why the stitching would wake her now. That doesnae hurt nearly as much as the other.”
“At times they get close to being awake when you do some work on them so there is no trusting that they will continue to remain quiet.”
He resettled himself so that his hold on her was not as tight as it had been. Emily looked nearly gray and he felt the tickle of concern, but let his faith in Mrs. O’Neal help him push it aside. Iain cursed himself for not noticing the second wound sooner, then told himself it would not have mattered. She still would have had to travel to his home so this could be done, and done by someone who knew what they were doing.
“Did ye look at the wound in her arm?” He tightened his hold on Emily when the first stab of the needle Mrs. O’Neal used made Emily flinch.
“I did,” answered Mrs. O’Neal. “Nothing needed there. I put in a few stitches just to hold the edges of the wound together. It was more of a scrape than a hit. Deep enough but not as bad as the one on her leg. Thinking the bullet burned her good.”
By the time Mrs. O’Neal was done and Iain climbed off the bed, he felt as if he had been through a long, hard battle. He moved to pick up Emily’s clothes. Yet again he wondered how he had missed the fact that she had been bleeding. Her skirt and petticoat were soaked with blood. Her stockings and pantaloons were in equally bad shape and he hoped that, in all that stuff they had brought from her sister’s cabin, there would be something for her to wear.
“How did she get shot, Iain?” asked Mrs. O’Neal as she tugged a clean nightgown onto Emily’s limp form.
“Her sister and brother-in-law were both killed. Some men attacked them. Burned the cabin, too.”
“Ah, poor child. So, she is all alone now with no place to go.”
Iain ignored the glint in Mrs. O’Neal’s eyes, all too aware of the woman’s love of matchmaking. “Her nephew survived. She got him to safety. We stripped the place of everything that wasnae burnt and brought it with us. Got two cart horses, a wagon, and a decent but small plowshare. A lot of household goods and food, too.”
“Good. No sense in leaving it for others or, worse, to rot. Buried them people, I hope.” Mrs. O’Neal started to collect up all the bloody rags scattered at her feet and shove them into a bucket.
“Only one grave, I fear. Put the pair in together and buried them that way. Marked it.”
“Good. Might be that the lad will wish to go back and visit. How old is he?”
Iain shrugged. “Three?”
“Oh, sweet Jesus, a babe.” She looked down at Emily and patted her arm. “We will watch him close for you, lass. I hope he has a true fondness for this one,” she added, and glanced at Iain.
