Drawing Blood (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Abigail

She was listening at the door of her shelter as the footsteps stopped upstairs. Her heart was in her throat and she was at a loss as to what to do next. This was the first time someone had entered her house not knowing she was there.

She knew it wasn’t Phillipe, or Bossong, or even one of the neighbours. So who the hell was it?

When the sounds stopped she had to assume they’d gone to sleep. She could just stay underground for quite a while, there was food and a bed and a second escape route if she needed it. But it was killing her that someone was in her house.

This is another example of a time when you should listen to what your father told you
, she reminded herself.
Like not taking one side or the other, remember?

About an hour passed. She figured she’d sneak upstairs but she’d bring her father’s Winchester hunting rifle with her.

She eased the shelves open and didn’t make a peep as she crept through the kitchen. She could smell smoke, so her guest must have made a fire in the living room-turned bedroom. She kept the muzzle pointed downward as she made for the pocket doors, which were open. The gold light of a fire spilled across the wooden floor of the dining room. She peered around the trim work and saw two forms on the bed. She crept around to the far side, seeing that one man was holding the other like a sick child. Even in this light she could see that the man on the far side wasn’t well. His skin was damp and he twitched in his sleep, likely from fever dreams, which meant he was primed for an infection which also meant he was really hurt.

She used the rifle to pull the blanket down a bit. The injured man’s shoulder had a badge on it.
Canada
was all it read.

Abigail blinked a couple times, but it didn’t change. She had two Canadian soldiers in her house.

She put the rifle down in the corner, and reached out to touch the shoulder of the man holding his friend. He didn’t react. She shook him slightly, and that got a reaction.

He was out of bed like a shot, and her arm was twisted behind her painfully, her face to the wall.

She had cried out, and after a moment he mumbled, “Sorry,” before letting her go.

She darted to the foot of the bed as he sunk down to the edge. The man ran a hand over his hair, then rubbed his eyes. He was slight of frame, shoulders no wider than hers. Best she could tell, his face was long. Skin was pale. And his hair as red as the fire.

“Do you mind if I turn on the lights? The neighbours know I live here.”

He nodded. She saw it in silhouette.

She turned on the lamp in the corner her mother used to read by. The conscious one covered his eyes, moaning. Then he tried opening them. He shook his head, holding his temple. That’s when he looked up at her.

Abigail had never been less scared of a man in her life. He was slight, his skin very white and pale. His limbs were long, and his undershirt showed that he may have been strong once but he was underfed. His face was plain, pale like the rest of him. His hair was bright red and his eyes were green, maybe blue. Everything about his expression was pleasant, unintimidating, friendly and kind.

She found herself smiling even though he’d just nearly broken her arm not thirty seconds ago.

“I’m Abigail,” she offered, hesitating before offering her hand.

He looked at her hand, surprised. Then he looked up at her and smiled. She stopped breathing.

Good lord, what a lovely smile
, she thought. It poured life in to those eyes, perked his face right up. He no longer looked long and drawn.
He’s … he’s beautiful.

He took her hand, and it was warm. “I’m Elliot Murphy,” he replied, getting to his feet. “I’m so sorry to burst in on you. The house looked abandoned; I walked around to make sure. I’m sorry, I must have missed a room somewhere.”

She nodded to the other man. “What happened?”

Elliot’s face fell. “He’s my friend. One of the men in my company. He … he saved my life. He’s hurt.”

She circled the bed, pulling back the blanket and wincing immediately. She could almost smell the infection.

“There’s a lamp in the other room. Unplug it and bring it in here,” she instructed, moving the floor lamp closer to the bed. She pushed the man on to his back and he moaned as she unbuttoned his shirt. By the time Elliot was back in the room and plugging in the lamp she had his friend back on his side and was easing the sleeve down his arm. He was thin, too; the shirt and trousers had been assigned to him before he’d lost a lot of weight. Elliot helped her undress him, cutting away the bandages he’d applied, apologizing the whole time.

“I should have known it would get infected. But I was so tired. And I’ve been feeling sick since I woke up.”

“Tell me what happened,” she said as she peered down in to the bullet wound in the injured man’s right shoulder.

“There were tanks. We were running. He must have been shot while he was running behind me. He pushed me to the side at the last minute – I think a mortar went off. It got his leg. I was checking on him when a tree came down. It hit me across the head, knocked me out.”

She looked up at him in surprise. “You were unconscious?”

He nodded, watching the other man’s face as she poked and prodded him. “Yeah. Almost the whole day. He saved me. The bastard.”

She turned her inspection down to his leg. The skin was ripped apart, but it was nothing stitches couldn’t fix. The wound was seeping, trying to clean itself. “I think you’ve got a concussion. You should try to stay awake for a while.”

“Really?”

“Yes. But let’s fix him up first.”

Elliot nodded. “What should I do?”

She looked down at the man, realizing he was younger than Elliot, younger than her. And yet the lines on his face had deepened to make him looked prematurely older. He was still startlingly handsome, even pale and drawn like this.

“He’s filthy,” she realized. “Do you think you could get him up to the bathroom and bathe him?”

“You have hot water?”

“For the moment, yes.”

“I can carry him.”

“I have medical supplies. You take him upstairs and I’ll be right up.”

“Abigail?”

She turned back in the doorway. “Yes?”

“Are you a nurse?”

She smiled. “Actually, I am. Yes.”

He smiled again. “It’s lucky we found you, isn’t it?”

She left without replying, starting to boil some water before disappearing down to the cellar. She heard the man carrying his friend up the stairs with some grunting and mumbled curses. She grabbed bandages, morphine, iodine, sulfanilamide, surgical needle and thread.

She poured the boiling water over the needle, leaving it sit in a clean cup as she followed the sound of rushing water up the stairs. She knocked on the door.

“Oh – just a minute.” Pause. “Come in.”

She entered the room, closing the door behind her to keep the heat in. She took her sweater off immediately. It was warm and humid in the room already.

She approached the tub where Elliot was turning off the water. He had spread a hand towel over his friend’s hips for modesty and also used the hand-held shower head to rinse the dirt off, putting it back in its cradle as the tub filled. She could tell by the dirty hand print on it. Now his friend was sitting in warm, clean water. Elliot squeezed against the wall at the head of the tub to hold the man up, leaving her the open side of the tub to kneel at. He even made sure his friend was lined up so his injuries were on the same side as her.

There was not much she could do about the bullet wound. It had stopped bleeding and it looked like it might heal up just fine. She took the needle from the hot water, threaded it, and put a few stitches on the entry and exit wound to make sure it stayed closed.

“Elliot,” she said evenly as she worked. “There’s a bottle of vodka by the piano downstairs. Go get it for me.”

Without a word he did as told. He was returning as she finished the final stitch on his friend’s chest. He held the bottle out to her, and she filled the cap then poured some of the alcohol to the front and back of the wound.

Next it was his thigh. It was an awkward wound to work on. She held his leg with one hand, and probed the wound with the fingers of her other hand. If he hadn’t been unconscious it would have been terribly unpleasant. The tear started bleeding again, but she had to be sure she wasn’t stitching up shrapnel in his leg. It did no good to lock the cause of an infection in the flesh you were hoping to save.

She found a tiny scrap of metal inside, pulled it free and dropped it in the cup of boiled water, for lack of a better place to put it. The whole time she worked Elliot was there, holding his friend’s head out the water, watching her without expression and those steady eyes.

“There’s some tearing of the muscle,” she noted. “A doctor might stitch that, but if it closes over I’d have to go back in and pull them out later. I’ll stitch the skin closed, but we have to make sure he stays off this leg and keep it bandaged tight – that might help the muscle hold together.”

Elliot nodded, still incredibly calm and quiet as she set to work stitching up the leg. When that was closed, about twelve stitches later, she poured more vodka over it. The bathwater was crimson with blood, but both wounds stopped bleeding. Elliot pulled the plug to drain the water and offered to give him one last rinse before taking him out of the tub again.

Abigail moved the bandages to her bedroom, leaving them on the dresser. She went to her parent’s bedroom and took a pair of her father’s pajamas and a robe from his wardrobe.

Elliot had wrapped the patient in a towel and was about to head back down the stairs. “Elliot, put him in here. Don’t move him around too much.”

They settled him on to her mattress, leaving the towel on. She dusted the wound in his thigh with sulfanilamide, fixed a clean bandage to his leg, and then tied it in place with gauze. Elliot eased him in to her father’s robe, then covered him with sheets and a clean quilt from the linen closet before pulling the damp towel out from under him.

They stood looking down at him, shoulder to shoulder. “He’s starting to look pinker,” Elliot noticed.

“Likely from the hot water.” She took her father’s pajamas from the top of her dresser and handed them to Elliot. “Your turn for a bath. You’ll enjoy it.”

That smile hit her again, and without comment he took the pajamas and left the bedroom. She turned off the overhead light and turned on the lamp on her night stand instead. She tossed her clothes off the arm chair in the corner, and dragged it closer to the bed to watch her patient. His breathing was steady and even. It was so comforting to have breathing like that in the room with her. Between that and the water running in the next room, she dozed off.

“Abigail?” Elliot’s voice woke her, maybe ten minutes later.

“Yeah?” She came awake quickly, sitting up.

“If you sit with him, I’ll watch the main floor. Since I’m not supposed to sleep.”

She focused on him as she yawned. The pajama bottoms were short on him. He hadn’t buttoned the top.  His wet hair stuck to his head but still looked red in colour. She realized she was staring at him.

“Ummm … sure.”

“And I was wondering … could I use your wringer tub downstairs? Just to clean our clothes – it would be pretty close to heaven to have a clean uniform.”

She smiled. “You do laundry?”

He brushed a hand over his hair, smiling back at her. It left his hair sticking up in all directions. “The first time I told my wife I didn’t know how to do laundry she quickly rectified the situation.”

“Go ahead. The soap’s in the cupboard back by the kitchen door.”

“Thank you. And … try to get some sleep.”

Then he was gone. Abigail turned back to her patient, making herself stop smiling. She must be more tired than she thought.

Her patient was breathing softly, every now and then he would frown and his head would twitch slightly. He was a brand of handsome that was boyish more than masculine, she decided, even with the scruff of beard. It didn’t age him in the slightest. She guessed he was 23 or 24. That would have made him … well, barely an adult when the war started.

Just as she was easing back in to the chair his back jacked off the bed, and he started panting, like most people would during severe panic; like she had done herself earlier that day. His eyes were still closed, but now they were squeezed tight like he was fighting to wake up. She stood, reaching out to grab his right hand so he didn’t aggravate the bullet wound in that shoulder, and she pressed her right hand to his forehead, just to keep him from thrashing.

At her touch he tried to pull away then stopped. Completely calmed, his head fell to the side in sleep, his breathing returned to normal in a matter of seconds. His hand gripped hers tight. She tried to pry his fingers off of hers, but it was no use. The more she fought, the closer he got to another fit.

She waited for him to calm again, then she did something stupid. She left her hand where it was and climbed up on to the bed. He was limp as she sat him upright, piling the pillows up against the headboard. Then she sat behind him, easing his back against her chest. When she was settled and had him cradled against her he actually sighed in his sleep.