Author's Note: Thanks for the review, Awed!
I did research on Bedlam common treatment of patients. Unfortunately, all of the things Mark states are based on true accounts.
I've been MiA for months because of health issues. I've been diagnosed with Tanya's health condition discussed in this chapter—in my right foot from a deep laceration and it's spread through the right side of my body. In present day, the disorder is known as Reflexive Sympathetic Dystrophy/Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. Some people have it so badly that they can't work and have to be on disability, and others commit suicide because the pain is considered the worst known pain known to man (nicknamed "suicide disease"). Even 200 years later, we still don't have a cure for it, or know why it happens to some people and not others.
"Tanya!" Mark's scream echoed through the woods less than a minute later.
"I'm in the stream!"
He called again seconds later.
"Here! In the water!"
His head appeared over the ledge that had to be at least fifteen feet up, with an eight-foot sharp drop. His eyes bugged as he leaned over to look down. "Are you hurt?!" he called over the babbling water.
"I can't tell if my ankle is sprained or broken."
He looked around the embankment, which offered no easier path down. Then he started scanning the ground, probably looking for some kind of makeshift rope. "I have to go tell Tiger and Brigands to get some men and ropes. Did you hit your head? I don't want you to faint and drown."
That was a chilling thought. "No, my head is alright."
"I'll be back in three minutes." Then he was gone.
Three? Then it dawned. Three minutes of drowning still gave time to try to restart her breathing before brain death.
Mark's screams, although distant, were mighty.
Something large barreled through the brush a minute later. Certainly bears didn't live around here, did they? A brief rush of panic.
"Tanya?! Tanya?!" The crashing grew louder, and so did Mark's voice.
"I'm fine!"
His head popped over the ledge. "Brigands is going to gather some men. Can you tell if you have internal bleeding?" he called as he did something.
Gently feeling her icy belly for distention, she looked up. "I don't think so, but I'm going numb from being cold."
The rumble of horse hooves trembled the water. Men's voices filled the air.
Theodore was the first to appear. "We'll get you out, Mrs. Johnson!" He threw a massive mound of thick ropes off his shoulder at Mark's feet.
Within minutes, nearly a dozen men stood at the ledge and were tying ropes around Mark. Apparently he deemed himself the rescuer. With such a rocky stream, walking on a fake leg would be dangerous.
Price's surgeon knelt and called, "Are you injured?"
"I don't k,know if my ankle is s,sprained or broken. I t,think I'm f,fine elsew,where." Shivers from the icy spring water and cool night air grew more intense.
"Hurry up! She's getting hypothermia!" The surgeon popped up and ran over to the men, gesturing something and pointing.
Mark looked down over his shoulder and scowled, apparently arguing with the man as others helped strap him in.
He propelled down the side, a little ungracefully at first as he tried to figure out how to do it with his fake leg. The men had made a harness around him, with three different ropes connecting him, apparently serving as backups in case one of the ropes broke.
A curse broke from his lips as he entered the waist-deep, icy water. "I'm in!" Then he carefully turned and tried to take a step. The stones must've rolled under his prosthetic foot that couldn't wrap around them to grip because he slipped and nearly went down. He looked at the twenty-foot distance to her, concern filling his eyes as she gasped from shivers. "Toss me your petticoat."
Blinking, she worked at getting it down beneath her skirt. She must be on some form of silt mound to not be in waist-deep water like Mark. The bad ankle was unstable, and there was no way to hop on one foot to get the petticoat off without risking spraining the other ankle. It meant having to sit and nearly submerge underwater.
"Tear it," he said as if reading her mind.
"It's t,too hard with it b,being wet. Why d,do you need i,it?"
"Because the only way to get to you is to walk on my hands to grip the rocks. If you need surgery on your ankle, I'm not slicing up my hands and leaving someone else to put you back together." In other words, he didn't trust Price's surgeon to have enough experience repairing an ankle, even if Mark stood over the man's shoulder barking directions.
But there was no sense in Mark getting hypothermia either. Or risking that her petticoat would be enough padding over these rocks. Twisting the petticoats around her hands, she drew a deep breath.
"No! You already have hypothermia!" he roared just as she went under.
With the sun down, it was complete blackness under the water, aside from looking up to see golden dots where the men held lanterns over the edge. So she headed in that direction, sliding and pinching fingers as rocks the size of her palms shifted and moved with her weight. She popped up a moment for more air, half way to Mark but a bit too far left.
"Goddammit, woman!" He struggled to take more steps.
She went back under and continued. Thankfully the cold numbed her hands too much to feel any cuts or fingers smash between rolling rocks.
A strong arm wrapped around her waist and hauled her up. He held her tight against his chest to support her weight. "Jesus Christ, I swear to God I'll spank you for pulling a stunt like that." He quickly took off a rope and tied it around her. Then he caught her left hand that trembled from cold. The pinkie finger sat at an odd angle. A foul string of words left his lips. "Is your hand numb?"
She nodded.
"You're losing circulation to it, so I have to set it right now." He carefully palpated and then held it on each side of the break. "Alright, I'm going to do it on four."
"Four? You a,always say t,three, but a,actually do it o,on two—Ow!"
He surveyed the realignment as best he could in the poor light. "Yes, but you know that, so I had to do it when you wouldn't tense up for it. I think color is returning. Are you alright?"
She nodded.
"I weigh more than you, so we need two ropes on me. I want you in my lap in case your rope breaks. Pull us up!" He held onto her tight.
When they reached the top of the drop off, but where the embankment was too steep for nearly ten more feet, he braced her in his lap and started walking up the wall. "Watch that your ankle isn't bumped," he grunted. His body trembled with the effort of walking while leaning so far back and supporting her weight.
There was a sudden jerk as the tension from her rope disappeared. A scream of fright escaped, dropping perhaps an inch into Mark's lap. He let go of the rope and wrapped his arms around tight as she nearly slipped through his grasp.
"Her rope broke!" one of the men screamed.
"It's alright! She's in his lap!" Theodore yelled. He laid down on his belly and held out a beefy arm as they approached. "It's my good arm. Hold onto her while I pull her hand to get you both up!"
She grabbed his meaty hand with both of hers and held on tight.
He pulled like it was lifting a small child, and Mark grabbed Theodore's wrist while keeping a strong hold on her.
Men grabbed and pulled her arms.
Once up on the embankment, men started untying Mark as he laid her down and checked for injuries. The surgeon knelt and surveyed her left hand in the lantern light. "Broken little finger and a dislocated thumb."
"Don't touch it," Mark snapped. "Let me finish checking if she has internal damage. Does this hurt? I can't tell if you're guarding or too cold."
"C,c,c…nnnn't f,f,f…" The painful cold robbed the ability to speak anymore.
"Shit. Is her thumb discolored? Brace her neck," he barked and carefully rolled her onto her side as the surgeon held her neck straight.
"Her limbs are blue from cold; I can't tell."
"Did you land on your back?"
She shook her head as best as possible amidst the shivering.
"Alright. I think your spine and ribs are fine. I need a horse that can carry both of us!" He rolled her onto her back.
Grandfather set a hand on Mark's shoulder. "Other horses aren't trained with your leg—"
"I need a horse!" he roared.
The surgeon looked at Mark. "She needs to get warmed up, and your leg is already bleeding from running. You need that prosthetic off, and a horse won't tolerate your uneven weight. You do her no good if you burst open a leg artery. We send her back with Tiger and I, and the men can carry you—"
"Get a goddamn horse big enough to carry us both—"
"I'll carry you." Theodore said. All eyes turned to him. "If you're on my back, I can walk at a normal pace. We get her home and warm so she's ready by the time we get there."
Mark looked at her, the thought of letting her out of his sight clearly distressing. "I'll be right behind you." Then he pressed a kiss to her brow and pulled off his shirt. "Everyone, turn away so I can get a dry shirt on her." He helped her sit up and put it on since the shaking prevented any kind of voluntary movement herself. Then he lifted her in his arms, trying to not groan with each step on his prosthetic, as he set her in one of the stronger men's laps on the horse. "Don't you dare let her fall."
"I won't, Doc." He held on tight and tucked a blanket around her.
"And don't jostle because we don't know if she has internal injuries."
"I'll keep her safe."
The hypothermia finally caused sleep to come.
"Give me my leg! Goddammit, she might need emergency surgery!"
Blinking through the haze of sleep, the clinic ceiling came into focus. The cold exam table pressed from behind, and heat from blankets warmed by a fire draped across the front.
Theodore stood beside the exam table with his big hand on a shoulder. He looked toward the door at the commotion.
"You already checked, and she's fine," Grandfather argued and shoved Mark onto a chair just a few feet away.
Price's surgeon knelt before Mark where the pant leg was rolled up. Bruising and blood covered the end of Hero.
"She could lose circulation to her foot!" he roared and tried to reach forward for his prosthetic on the floor behind the surgeon. Grandfather and Brigands grabbed his shoulders to hold him back into the chair.
"And you might be looking at another amputation yourself! Sit still for one minute!" the young surgeon shouted.
Everyone stared at the man. Mark's chest heaved like a raging bull as he glared, looking as if he considered outright beating the surgeon in order to get to his leg.
This seemed like a good time for a distraction. She slowly pushed herself up to a sit, and everyone looked over.
"Easy," Theodore said and set a supporting hand on her back.
A violent shiver returned as the blanket fell to her waist, but Theodore pulled it up and pulled another one off a hospital bed to wrap around her shoulders.
"What hurts?" Mark pounced.
"My hand and ankle." She looked down at the bandaged hand.
He tried to swat away the surgeon, but Brigands and Grandfather grabbed his upper arms. Mark seemed too distracted for the moment to notice. "Your thumb was reset and your finger splinted. Your ankle is too swollen to tell if it's broken, but you have normal reflex in it. Can you feel your toes?" He yanked his arms free and moved to get up, but they caught him again.
Theodore pulled back the blanket and lightly touched the tips of her toes.
"Yes, I feel it."
The blacksmith smiled. "I'm going to help restrain your stubborn husband. His leg might be worse than your ankle." Then he turned. "Tiger."
"I don't need restraining! Goddamn let me up to tend to her!" The moment that Grandfather let go to come trade places with Theodore, Mark broke free from Brigands and shoved the surgeon aside to snatch his leg. He whipped it on and took a step just in time for Theodore to step forward and sling an arm around Mark's chest to haul him into the chair.
Theodore knelt behind the chair and wrapped his giant arms around in a bear hug, easily immobilizing Mark.
"You're a fucking bastard!" Mark fought hard to wiggle loose, to no avail.
"Be still so we can fix you so you can fix her, Doc," Theodore said in his gentle bear voice.
Being restrained in a chair like that could remind him of Bedlam. "Mark," she said softly.
Brigands seemed to have the same thought because he walked over, lifted her into his arms, and then carried her over to Mark to set in his lap.
Mark stilled instantly and Theodore let go so Mark could hold onto her. That's all it took to subdue him.
He gingerly lifted her leg by the calf and surveyed the black and blue appendage. "Your toenails have normal color. Can you hold your leg up?" He felt the pulses in her foot. "They're good and strong. My guess is you have a severe sprain, not a break, but I don't want you walking on this until we get the swelling down to tell for certain. Hold onto my arm."
He moved his arm from around her back to her front so he had two hands. She held onto his bicep as he palpated.
"Stop, stop," she gasped.
"Alright." He slid the blanket over it and circled an arm around her back again. "Let me be so I can get her cleaned up and in bed," he ordered.
"You aren't walking anywhere on this," the surgeon said from where he and Grandfather knelt examining Hero.
"I think it'd be wise to put in stitches here," Grandfather said and pointed.
She shifted to put weight on her good foot and leaned down. "Oh, Mark." The end of Hero was swollen, bruised, and rubbed raw. All four men's hands were on her the instant she moved to kneel and see the wound better. And the ankle started to throb worse. And then burn. "This is a deep gash. I think open wound healing and packing have a lower risk of infection…Ow! Mark, I think something's tearing," she whimpered and grabbed her ankle. A pop sensation and then white-hot pain exploded right before unconsciousness hit.
"She's waking up," Mark said through the haze.
Blinking, the worried faces of the grandparents, Brigands, Mark, and the surgeon came into focus around a hospital bed.
"Do you need more pain med?" Mark picked up a bottle of laudanum.
"No," she rasped.
"Your Achilles tendon fully ruptured and balled up in your calf area. We got it down without having to cut all the way up to retrieve it, but you need to be in a brace or cast for three months, and then gradual exercises after that for a few months."
"But patients. We just got the clinic running again."
"You aren't to worry about work," he ordered. "I'll take care of it."
"But your leg—"
"I've worked while on crutches before." He gave a firm look. "This is a major injury, Tanya, and we have one chance to heal it correctly so you aren't crippled."
Brigands nodded over Mark's shoulder. "I've helped with patients before, mistress. I can fill in while you're out."
The surgeon added, "And Theodore said he'll make you a chair like Doc's to roll around when you do return to work. He and Doc figured out a brace already and everything."
Grandfather patted her hand. "There's a poultice that we used in the tribe to get swelling down fast that we've already put on your hand and ankle. You can't use crutches until that thumb is well healed so you don't dislocate it again. The blacksmith has a chair he can add wheels to so we can push you around in the meantime."
It was overwhelming to wake up from a sprain to at least half a year of healing from a major injury.
Mark took her good hand from where he sat on the edge of the bed, his eyes not leaving her face. "We need a minute."
Everyone said goodnight and left.
"I'm so sorry. This is my fault for being an arse today and—"
Pulling her hand free, she tried to sit up higher with only one hand and foot for leverage.
He instantly scooted closer and placed another pillow behind. And then pulled back at the last moment when he reached to hold her hand again.
"Are we both scared of each other right now?"
His brow furrowed as his eyes flew to hers. "You're scared of me? Tanya, I'd never physically hurt you, and I don't ever mean to emotionally—"
Tears burned behind her eyes as she forced a smile. "All day I was scared that you weren't talking to or looking at me because you resent me that much now."
Those black eyebrows shot up. "Resent you? No. There are moments since I told you…" He didn't seem able to even say it, "…when I need it to be just us and raw and make love. And then there are moments like last night and today when I'm so ashamed that I feel like it'd be less painful to burst into flames."
She nodded, more familiar with that depth of shame than he probably realized. "But, are you angry that I pressed you to talk about it?"
With a heavy sigh, he leaned his elbow on his good thigh and took her hand to spin her wedding ring. "I'm not angry with you, because I understand what you meant to do. But there are moments when I'm angry that I told you because…" He ran a hand through his hair. "It was all locked up in a box in the back of the closet where I didn't have to feel or think about it. And now it's running free and strikes without notice. God, Tanya," he said in a thick voice as a tear fell from his lashes to splash on his pants as he stared at her ring, "there are moments now when you touch me, all I see and hear are them doing it, and I'm too horrified to even tell you everything they did. I don't want to be in bed with you and then suddenly be hysterical. I needed to leave last night because I need you and the children to never see that, but I don't know how to get it all back in the box." He sniffled.
"Mark, look at me." She cupped his cheek. "Why do you need me to not see that? I do not expect you to always have the answers, to always be fearless, to never need me to help. We agreed that we would have a marriage of partnership. I've had moments when I've lost it, because trauma does that. But you're my best friend, and I know that you can see the ugly, dark rot that trauma put in me and you won't judge me or think any less of me. That rot, Mark, will only spread if it's kept hidden. You're my sun, and exposing that ugliness for you to see is what helped keep it from festering. It'll always be there, but it can't ever grow now because your sunlight killed its ability to spread. Instead of that trauma being a debilitating disease festering in me, it's just shaped me to be stronger."
She held his tear-filled eyes. "Mark, what happened in England doesn't mean that's going to happen here. No one can make me leave."
He shook his head. "They took you away," his voice broke on the last words and a tear fell. "You don't understand. If you or anyone knew—"
"I know. Shhh, Mark, I already know." She stroked his cheek and caught his hand when he pulled back.
Panic filled his eyes.
"You understood exactly what I needed when you did that first exam when I was pregnant. Your reaction after prison was too terrified and too extreme for just being abused with a jailer's baton. I didn't know if it happened in prison or in Bedlam, but I've known for years, sweetheart."
He shook his head and scooted back on the bed out of reach. But in the wrong direction to reach his crutches by the headboard. "You don't know anything. Stop it."
"The prison guards probably knew what goes on in Bedlam, and that's why they went after you." It hurt to tear open this festering wound in him and see the terror in his eyes, but it was the only way to help him heal. Such blasphemy would make the entire family an outcast and ruin their lives forever if it got out.
"Mark, I've known for nearly six years. I'm not ever going to leave you or tell a soul. But just like I needed to tell someone, you do too."
His hands locked hard around her upper arms. "Silence. Right. Now," he hissed, his neck red with fury.
She held his eyes. "I love you. When you took me in the library, I knew for certain. You needed to dominate, to feel in control and like a man. Not saying it doesn't mean what happened to you didn't actually occur. I see it slowly rotting you. I know it was done to you to break you, not because you wanted it. Probably repeatedly."
"So help me god, you will shut your mouth."
"Hitting me will make it disappear?" she said softly, knowing he wouldn't raise a hand.
Both of his hands tightened. "I wouldn't hit you and you know it," he hissed. "There are goddamn things that genteel women don't know about and you will fucking pretend to be one of them!"
That caused a sharp breath.
He paled the moment it came out, his own eyes wide with shock. "Tanya, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean that."
Clenching her teeth was the only way to stop her lower lip from quivering as a tear fell from each eye and cleared vision. With her good hand, she pulled his away, her own shaking.
"Tanya—"
Roughly brushing more tears, she looked away. "You need to go." Her hands wouldn't stop shaking. It was the first time he'd ever said she didn't measure up to Anna and he resented her for it.
"I didn't mean a word of it."
Her eyes lifted to his, not even caring anymore if he saw the tears rolling down. "You're choosing your pride over our marriage. You said you never had a temper until after Bedlam. Maybe it's the electrocutions or maybe it's pent-up rage from sexual abuse, but neither give you a right to cut me. Don't you ever speak to me like that in front of the children. When they're around, you don't have to touch me, but you'll pretend you can tolerate me. They won't think anything of me moving to an upstairs bedchamber to recover from surgery. Get out."
The man sat there, staring at her in shock.
She shoved off the sheets and swung her leg over the other side of the bed to hop to the door.
But he slid closer across the bed. Tears soaked his cheeks as he looked up. "I love you. You don't understand what they did. I couldn't handle you knowing, but I don't mean to hurt you. Tanya, I'm so sorry. I don't know how to fix us, but I can't tell you what they did." He sank to his knee and held handfuls of her chemise at her hip, weeping into her lap.
Setting a hand in his hair in surprise, she gave a soft stroke. It wasn't just the actual abuse, but fear of a repeat of the social rejection happening again—of her and the children being ripped away from him like in England.
"Mark, if I'm what you want, we'll figure out how to fix us."
"You're always what I want," he wept and lifted his head, his face drenched in tears. "I'm so sorry. I'm so screwed up, and I'm taking you down with me." He started to choke on his tears. "Y,you and the c,children deserve b,better and I'm so s,scared I can't give it—"
"Stop." She sniffled. "That's anxiety talking. You are not screwed up. Mark, this secret is a weight that is drowning you. You need to tell someone."
He bowed his head as he pressed a hand to his eyes and wept.
"Mark, I think there were several men involved."
His shoulders shook harder and he shook his head. But instinct said it was denial in a desperate attempt to what he thought was going to result in a ruined marriage if he admitted the truth.
"Sweetheart, you don't have to tell me details, but you need to know that I know more than you realize and I'm not going to leave you. If anyone ever found out, I will runaway with you to another country and start all over again if we have to. The children are resilient and will think it's an adventure. Look at me." She guided his face up. "I've known. I will never leave you, and I absolutely wouldn't leave you for being sexually abused. It does not make you less of a man or mean you prefer men. Sexual assault is taboo, but I know the world pretends it doesn't even happen to men. I think there are ramifications that I won't entirely understand that may be unique to a man, but I hope you'll tell me so I realize or can try to understand. But there are so many ramifications that are the same that I will understand.
"One thing I understand is you've reached that dark place of trying to keep it a secret, and all it's doing is causing rot. I wish I could put into words how much weight is just gone by being able to tell someone. The moment the doctor told me it was called 'rape' and I told him about it, there was so much weight lifted. And then telling you…Mark, you were so compassionate and supportive, even as my cranky bear. It was freeing. But it also was extremely hard to admit that such a terrible thing had happened. I had a belly to show for it, so I couldn't keep it a secret. But I understand why you don't want to say it. I also understand there's a stigma attached for men, but you're not homosexual, Mark. You're not less of a man for it. You're not weak because you couldn't stop them. You're still my wonderful husband whom I think walks on water."
He climbed up on the bed and eased her into his lap with her leg up, clinging to her tight.
She held him as he tucked her head under his chin.
Then his arms tightened as his chest rose and fell faster. "I love you so much. I understand if you won't want to make love anymore, but don't leave me," he begged.
"I won't ever leave you, Mark. And I don't want to stop making love." Tears welled as he started to tremble.
"Three," he wept.
She held tighter as her own tears fell.
"At once," he hiccuped. "I,in a s,straightjacket." And then he burst into gut-wrenching sobs.
"It's alright," she whispered over and over, stroking his hair. Up to three men at a time. And more than once. It was more horrifying than she realized as he went into the details.
When he finally finished, he whimpered, "I don't like men. I didn't want—"
"Shhh, my Mark." She sat up and held his soaked face between her hand and the wrist of her injured hand. "I know. And you need to remember that any kind of reaction you had was physiological, it doesn't mean you wanted it." She reached over on the nightstand and retrieved a fresh handkerchief to dry his tears. "I knew for years that a man at some point…"
A sad smile pulled as new tears burned and she rested her forehead to his when her face crumpled. "I understand now why it's so hard for you to say 'rape' when talking about what happened with Charles…. I knew that someone did that to you, but I didn't know if it was also in prison. And never once have I ever not wanted to kiss or touch you."
A soft sob collapsed his chest as he stroked her hair. "I'm so ashamed," he whispered. "I'm scared to go to sleep because I…" His voice broke. "I don't know that I can face you again."
Leaning back, she stroked his cheek to raise his eyes. "You have faced me every morning for nearly six years. I've known this whole time. Every day I love you more. Tomorrow I'll love you more. And tomorrow we get another chance to raise a family together and grow old together and make our marriage stronger. Don't you see it, Mark? Every time we fall and burn, we come up from the ashes so much stronger. Look at everything we've survived. We have that kind of love story that ballads and Shakespearean plays talk about. Don't try to put a limit on us when there is none."
He took the handkerchief and wiped her eyes. "How did I marry such a wise woman?" Then he stilled and held her gaze. "I didn't mean what I said about you not being genteel. And I wasn't avoiding you today because I resent you. I'm so sorry. If I hadn't been such an idiot, you wouldn't have left and hurt your leg, either."
"I should have spoken up. I know when you're upset that you clam up."
"I…um, if I'm boarish the next few days, it's because I'm trying to have the courage to face you. And once you're better…" His cheeks turned red. "If I can't perform marital duties, it's not because I don't want you."
She nodded. "It's going to take time for sexual interest to return. Maybe my leg was hurt for a reason to force us to go slow." She cracked a smile.
But he just sighed and looked at her bandaged ankle. Then he raised her hand to his lips. "I'll take care of you. Is the chloroform starting to wear off more now?"
"It is, but I'd rather try tree bark first."
He shook his head. "Not for a dislocated thumb, broken finger, and Achillies surgical repair. You'll need something stronger. I'll give a low dose of laudanum and we can increase it if you need." He slid out from under her.
"Does you leg hurt?"
"I had tree bark that's working well enough."
"Before we drug me up, I want to move to our bed."
He frowned and set the laudanum back down on the nightstand. "Everyone went home, and I can't carry you without my leg."
She pointed to his rolling surgery chair. "But I can use that."
That won the first smile from him in over a day. "Yes, Marchioness." He grabbed the crutches, sat, and used the crutches to help propel himself over. "Grab the laudanum."
At the threshold into the house, the chair caught. "Alright, I don't think your incision will like a hard bounce. Are you alright to stand for a moment?" He lifted and deposited her on the side of the doorframe. Then he stood on the crutches and shoved the chair over the lip before settling her in his lap again.
"You know, if we have a fire during the night, you won't be able to carry me and the children out. Maybe we should have someone sleep upstairs in the spare bedchamber."
He snorted and rolled into their room. "I'd throw all of you on my back and crawl out, if I had to."
"Mark, I'm serious."
"You're able bodied enough to slide out the window while I run upstairs to get the children. Theodore is making rope ladders that we can hang under their windows to escape from upstairs, if needed. I have everything under control, woman."
A laugh escaped. "I see that."
Once in bed, he sat up on her right side. "Maybe we should switch sides so I don't kick your leg during the night." Without waiting for a response, he pulled her over and then crawled over her, careful to not jostle the bed much.
Everything swayed as the laudanum started to take affect. "Marrrrk?" She patted her chest as her heart took off.
He set a hand to the pulse at her throat. "Shit. I gave far less than with your cesarian section. It must be the thyroid medicine reacting with it." He hobbled across the room and returned with his medical bag. His stethoscope pressed to her chest as she started panting trying to breathe fast enough.
"It's alright, sweetheart. It's just tachycardia. Let's give it a minute and see if it passes. No chest pain?"
She shook her head as he pulled out a pocket watch from his bag. And grabbed his arm as wheezing started.
"It's alright. Some epinephrine will take care of it," he said calmly but dumped the bag on the bed and snatched a syringe and bottle. Then he plunged the syringe into her thigh and injected before he loaded a syringe with something else. "Stay calm and it'll pass faster. That's a girl," he cooed and grabbed her arm, injecting something into a vein.
"It's…going…away," she panted as every muscle started to quiver.
"Good. Alright, I'm going to put hard pressure on your calf muscle so it doesn't tear the Achilles again while we wait for the epinephrine side effects to wear off." He took her leg in his lap and pressed hard to immobilize the spasms as much as possible.
"Oh god, Mark," she whimpered in pain as it tried to twitch and tear.
"Hold on, sweetheart. It's not enough movement to damage the surgery, but it's going to hurt." He ended up lifting her leg along his chest and wrapping his arms and hands around it tight. "The first few minutes will be the worst. Labor breathing so you don't tense it. In…and…out…in…"
He brushed her tears away a half hour later as he held her in bed with her calf muscle packed in hot rags and ankle wrapped in cold ones. "Oh sweetheart, why are you having all of these anaphylactic reactions lately? Alright, we'll stick to willow tree bark and a few breaths of chloroform if the pain gets bad to cause some numbness for a bit. I'm going to write to the thyroid surgeon and see if this is a possible interaction with the sheep thyroid, but I wouldn't think so because you had laudanum after your thyroid surgery. Let's not give Della laudanum until we know for certain."
By two in the morning, she shifted again.
He rolled over, mindful to not jostle the bed or bump her. "Does it still hurt too much to sleep?" His own stump throbbed yet, needing more than the tree bark, but laudanum with the addiction was out of the question.
"Am I keeping you awake? It burns."
"Burns?"
"It feels like someone is pressing it to the stove."
"What? Where?" He sat up and turned on the lantern.
The leg from knee to toe was swollen and bright red and hot. Oh god, no. Cellulitis was fatal. Stay calm. "I'm going to get Tiger and see if he has some kind of poultice."
Her eyes flew to his and her chin quivered. "It's too late to cut it off, isn't it?"
He ran a hand through his hair. "It's not possible. Cellulitis can't set in this badly, this fast. I'm going to get your grandfather and Price's surgeon."
"It can't be cellulitis. And even blowing on her skin sends her into tears. It has to be something else," Mark snapped from the end of the bed.
Grandfather finished putting on a poultice that would kill any bacteria. Price's surgeon sat in the corner flipping through a stack of medical books.
An hour later, she had enough chloroform to cause numbness throughout her body, finally not in tears from burning pain. He grabbed a medical journal and flipped through, joining Tiger on the floor.
"Here! Silas Weir Mitchell has an article submission." Grandfather said. "Soldiers in the Civil War here in America exhibited extreme pain after surgery, amputation, or severe injury. 'It is distinct from the early swelling due to the inflammation about the wound itself, although it may be masked by it for a time:nor is it merely a part of the general edema.'" He continued reading the rest of the article for another minute.
"And? What is it? How do we treat it?" Mark pressed.
But he looked up with regret in his eyes. "There is no treatment or cure. He states it's never been documented before."
He dropped his head in his hand. It cited crippling pain for life that often led to anxiousness, depression, and a person going to extreme measures to avoid triggering pain. Being in that kind of pain forever could drive someone to suicide. "Is his address listed in there?"
"Um…yes, here it is."
Snatching the journal, he grabbed the crutches and went to the office to write him.
The following weeks were awful, with Tanya in extreme pain every minute of the day, except when she'd get so bad that he'd give light sedation to offer at least a few minutes of relief. And now her lower leg was turning blue and ice cold all the time instead of red and hot.
He heaved in the washroom sink again. It'd been three months of sessions every day to try to desensitize her nerves. They never got through more than five minutes of more than blowing softly on her foot, submerging it in lukewarm water, or just setting a thin handkerchief on it before she'd be in tears and begging to stop.
After every session, it led to vomiting from causing her so much pain.
She pleaded for him to cut it off more times than he could count, but the surgeon from the journal said his experience was it resulted in continued pain in the phantom limb or actually spread the pain. The few minutes at a time when she could tolerate to be upright, she got around on crutches. The muscle atrophy alone was alarming and added to her pain at night. She barely slept and ate and couldn't even work more than an hour total in a day. His beautiful Tanya was gone, replaced by a shell of a body just fighting to stay alive. Her mind had begun to deteriorate from being in a constant fog of pain.
The children were frightened of her because the slightest bump or touch would cause tears or a cry of agony. Even in her exhausted confusion and memory loss, Tanya realized her children weren't around. She wasn't surviving without them. The journal surgeon said many patients with this mysterious neuropathy thought about or did commit suicide. And he began to fear that Tanya would soon join their ranks.
Brigands, Teresa, Lily, and Tiger were constant figures in the house. It was impossible to run the clinic, take care of the children and Tanya, cook, and clean all alone. Mealtimes had become solemn affairs, just holding a breath and hoping Tanya would make it through without pain or that the children would smile.
As he pulled her chair out, he banged his foot and pain zinged up his leg. "Ow! God bless it!"
Tanya frowned. "Isn't that your fake foot?"
"Yes, but sometimes when I stub my toe, I feel it…" Then he blinked and his eyes widened at her. "Phantom pain."
Tiger frowned from across the table. "I hope you aren't regrowing a foot."
"No, the brain is conditioned to a certain stimuli causes a certain feeling. Her brain thinks she's having pain to stimuli that aren't painful. Her body is reacting to that pain!"
Brigands's eyebrows rose. "We know that."
"No! Her nervous system is in overdrive and won't shut off! It explains why she's having anaphylactic reactions to almost every pain med we throw at her! We have to figure out how to reset her nervous system! And the nervous system is tied to cognition! It explains all of her symptoms!" He shoved both of his hands through his hair.
"Isn't that what we've been trying with the desensitization of my foot?" Tanya frowned up at him.
"Somewhat. We have to figure out how to make your brain think your left foot is your right so it learns movement and stimulation don't cause pain."
Mark sat in the corner of the clinic at his desk pouring over more medical journals a couple weeks later. He looked up and pulled off his reading glasses upon hearing the click of her crutches. "Sweetheart, what are you doing up?" The man shot up from his chair and hurried over.
Brigands kept a hand on her shoulder, a reminder to have courage through the pain. "She wants to show you something."
"You should've sent for me." He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped her damp brow from the pain of just coming across the house to him.
"It won't get better if I baby it," she panted. The raw burn from not having the foot elevated made it hard to even speak.
Brigands took the crutches and set them against the wall.
"Tanya," Mark warned and grabbed her waist to take her weight.
"No," she panted.
Brigands took her elbows and eased himself between her and Mark. "Ready?"
"What the hell are you doing?" Mark snapped and stepped forward to stop Brigands.
"Just wait," she panted as Brigands lifted the skirts high enough to see her feet, the one already quite blue again. She slowly set it to touch the ground.
"Breathe," Brigands reminded and then lifted the other side of the skirt to look at her good foot. "Focus." He slowly knelt, moving her hands to brace on his shoulders. "Touch." He traced his finger down her good foot. "Close."
She closed her eyes.
"Touch." As in all week, he didn't say if he was truly touching the bad foot or not.
"Open."
She looked at her good foot.
"Touch." He touched it again.
Grandmama came in with a smile and knelt on the right side. "Rock," Brigands said. He stood and grabbed her elbows, keeping only her good foot visible.
She rocked onto her good foot and then leaned into him without putting weight on her bad foot as Grandmother reached under and gave gentle strokes on the calf. Rocking back and forth, looking only at the good foot.
A curse escaped Mark. He leaned down and looked at her bad foot. "Your foot is touching the ground," he breathed in shock.
"Tanya had an idea that if the brain can't see the injury and there's sensation to help interrupt the pain signals, like stroking her leg, it will help teach the brain that walking doesn't hurt," Grandmama explained.
Sweat dripped down. "It's getting worse," she gasped.
Mark instantly scooped her up and angled his arm to elevate the bad foot. "Look at you, my lady love!" He pressed a kiss to her hair and grinned like a fool. "Oh, my princess, we'll get you better."
A week later, she entered the clinic at dusk, able to tolerate being upright for five minutes but unable to bear weight on the foot yet without excruciating pain. "Mark, you missed dinner."
He sat at the desk looking at a medical textbook. "Just a minute."
Something long and skinny laid on the surgery table under a sheet. Lifting it up, a shriek escaped to see a severed leg.
His head popped up. "Oh, yes, there's a leg under there."
"What are you doing with it?!"
The man returned to reading. "Dissecting to figure out where the nerves are. One of the lumberyard workers cut it off on the saw, and it was too chewed up to reattach. I wonder if an anesthetic injection to the nerve directly could help with your pain. My only question is if a woman's nerve could be in a slightly different location. I've had access to ample male legs here, but I can't exactly go chop off one of the wives' legs," he sighed, as if disappointed. He turned a page. "I've written to the university to see if I can have some from their cadaver lab."
"Ew, Mark, this is barbaric."
He frowned and looked up. "It's figuring out how to treat you. I'm not going to experiment on you. I have a man who is having nerve pain from a leg injury he had five years ago. He agreed to try a nerve block. If it's successful, I'm going to try it on others and then find some of these Civil War soldiers who have this neuropathy that you have. My hope is maybe there are some women who were caught in war zones that have it to try it on them, too."
Sitting on the bed and elevating her foot, she stared at him. "Mark, these are human beings, not science rats."
The man finally set down the book. "We've had this discussion before that much of what we do is experimentation. I'm doing as much testing as I can on cadavers. I have no idea how this neuropathy occurs, because it shows up in some people but not others with the exact same injury. I can't replicate it in lab mice—we don't use rats. The people I'll try it on have excruciating pain and nothing else has helped. I can't exactly make them much worse. I understand what you're saying, but this is the most ethical path I can figure out. If you have better ideas, tell me. But I'm not going to sit by and watch you be in debilitating pain the rest of your life. Right now, your life consists of trying to not faint from pain every moment of the day, you aren't sleeping, and your cognitive function is severely impaired most days—that's not a life that I accept for my wife."
He walked over and carefully sat on the other side of the bed as he took her hand. "You didn't give up when my knee was causing debilitating pain, and I have a much better quality of life now. I'm going to figure out how to fix this for you."
Holding his hand tight, she met his eyes and swallowed hard. "If this can't be fixed—"
Mark scooted closer and repositioned his fake leg before cradling her face in his hands. "I'm going to keep writing to every doctor who publishes anything in a medical journal. But if this can't be cured, I'm going to figure out how to make it better. You aren't going to live your life like this. I need you to promise me something. This Dr. Mitchell who has seen this issue says many patients want to or do commit suicide. I need you to promise me that you'll tell me or your grandparents or someone if you start having trouble with depression. There's no shame in it, and this kind of pain all the time is a lot to handle." He gently wiped her brow with his handkerchief. "What can I do to help right now?"
She shook her head and slowly leaned over to bury her face against his chest. "It feels like it's on fire all the time. Just test a nerve block on me," she wept. The physical and emotional weariness from months of this intense pain were getting hard to bear.
He gathered her close. "You're going to get through this, sweetheart. This week I'll test it on some people. I'll move through testing as fast as I can. In the meantime, I've been working with your grandfather to try some topical creams that we think will provide some numbness and hopefully help. The last titration we tried was too strong and put my foot completely to sleep for four hours."
Sitting up, she gaped at him. "You're testing on yourself?!"
The man shrugged. "They're harmless ingredients, just a more potent version of a Native American medicine your grandfather knows."
"Mark!"
"Stop screeching, woman. Your grandfather is testing them, too, and Lily volunteered to be our female test subject."
"What?! How do you know a more potent titration won't kill someone?!"
He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I've researched the chemistry of it and run calculations. I'm not going to risk killing myself or my in-laws. Would you stop screeching? I have a headache."
"Probably from your experimental poison!"
When he dropped his hand and gave her a dry look, she glared.
Grandfather popped in just at that moment. "It's working! I don't feel—oh." He spotted her and disappeared.
"She just found out," Mark called.
When Grandfather returned, he walked in, tripping slightly. "This one is much closer. A little too strong yet because I have no idea where my foot is." He grinned. "Let's cut it by ten percent."
"No!" She looked to Mark and then back to Grandfather. "You two are idiots! You could give yourselves heart attacks for all we know!"
A deep frown wrinkled Grandfather's weathered face. "I say it's rather ingenious. We could sell this to everyone."
"Exactly why we shouldn't," Mark cut in. "People would use this instead of seeing a surgeon for a legitimate problem."
"Ah. True. White men aren't that intelligent." A glint twinkled in his eye.
"More intelligent than old Natives," Mark retorted without any sting.
She blinked between the two of them.
Grandfather hobbled over with a hearty laugh and grabbed Mark by the shoulders from the side of the bed, giving him a small shake. "Sorry ass youngin'."
Apparently their time in the lab together had resulted in some male bonding.
Mark cracked a smile. "Anyways, I'll test today's batch since your foot is useless for the next few hours."
Her jaw dropped. "How is putting a numbing cream on your only foot a good idea?!"
Grandfather snorted and clapped Mark on the back. "Didn't tell her about your first test, did you?"
"You're welcome to leave, old man," he growled when she looked at him expectantly. When her eyebrow rose, he mumbled, "I had no idea it was so strong that putting it on my foot could make my entire leg numb. In my defense, Tiger and Brigands were there to help so I wouldn't bang my stump if I fell."
"I get hurt and everything falls apart." She rubbed her thigh to try to calm the pain in the foot. "At least it sounds like the women have kept some sense, for the most part."
Mark grew solemn. "Let's take you back to bed. You're growing pale again." He stood and then picked her up.
A week later, he sat at the end of the bed, patiently helping with leg exercises to strengthen the wasted muscles. His cream significantly lessened the pain so she was able to be out of bed all day, with the help of crutches and sitting breaks every ten minutes, and to get more sleep at night.
"Mark?" She stroked Hero to help decrease the swelling from him being on his feet for hours with an emergency surgery.
"Hm?" He gently palpated the Achilles tendon as he held her leg in his lap.
"Would a cream like this have helped your knee?"
His eyes flew up and brimmed with concern. "No, sweetheart. It had structural damage. Even if we could've taken away the pain, it still would've kept giving out and swelling and causing trouble. You didn't make a mistake by not stopping the professor from amputating."
"But what if I'd done more research? Maybe there's a surgery—"
He set a hand over hers on Hero. "Tanya, I don't regret having the amputation or wonder 'what if'. Yes, it's frustrating sometimes to not be able to just pop out of bed or be careful how much I'm on my feet to avoid ulcers, but the quality of life is so much better even just having a knee that works." Then he cracked a smile. "And Charles thinks I'm amazing and invincible because I'm part machine."
A laugh burst out. "And I'm sure you corrected him that having a metal leg doesn't make you invincible."
"I'll get around to it. In twenty years." He winked.
Her heart took off just as fast as the first time he'd winked at her years ago. Holding his eyes, she bit her lip for a moment.
"Tell me. You do that when you're uncertain what to say." He eased his palm against the sole of her foot and started the gentle stretches to get the Achilles back in shape and the rest of the leg muscles to follow.
A soft hiss as the nerves zinged electric shocks.
Mark stilled and applied slightly firmer pressure. "Better?"
For some reason, lighter touch caused worse pain. She nodded. "I know we haven't even had a chance to talk about the marriage bed for the past three months, but I think when I have a good day with your medicine, if we're careful, we could try when you want."
His eyes zeroed in on her foot—a little too concentrated, as if he wanted to avoid the topic. "I've been so preoccupied with your foot and work and everything, that I haven't thought about our conversation much." He slowly pressed forward to stretch the Achilles another few degrees. Then he released and did it again.
She blinked. "I'm uncertain what that means. I'm not saying that we should try in the next few months, just that if you think you need to wait because of my foot, I think we can make it work now."
A deep sigh, but still no eye contact. "Honestly, I don't want you hurt, but it was a little bit of a relief to have sex completely off the table for a while."
With no idea how to interpret that comment, keeping silent seemed like the best solution.
He frowned and dropped his shoulders before finally looking at her. "That didn't come out right. I mean that..." He eased her foot down on the bed and started massaging the wasted calf muscle that often cramped. His face turned red. "I think you're phenomenally beautiful, but, um, I think it's the anxiety of knowing that you, uh, know certain things—" he stuttered, so obviously nervous.
She set a hand over his. "You're having trouble performing. Honey, that's nothing to be embarrassed about. I expected that it might take us some time to figure out how to get there again. I don't know what it's like to have desire be that obvious, but I imagine it adds pressure on top of an already stressful situation. When I say I'm ready to make love whenever you are, I expect it to be kissing and touching, not actual intercourse. I suspect that's going to take some time and working up toward it."
A hand ran through his hair in distress. "It never even occurs to me to think about him when I'm making love to you, but I'm so afraid that you'll think about them and be disgusted." Tears welled in his eyes as he ran his hands over his face. "Because I'm so disgusted. Before, I could just pretend it was a bad dream and didn't happen, but I can't anymore. I'm scared to even kiss you because my mouth has..." He pressed his hand to his eyes and tried to calm down.
"Whoa, Mark," she leaned forward and held his wrists. "These are your fears. I had the same thoughts about me when we were intimate."
"You did?" He sniffled and dropped his hand.
"I did. You didn't think about him, and I'm not going to think about them. I don't think about Anna when we make love, and they're no different."
"But they're men. Tanya..." His face crumpled.
"Mark, this is your fear. Don't project it onto me. I understand why you're worried about this, but you have to remember that it's not something I worry or think about. It took months before I stopped being afraid that you'd think about him each time, and sometimes the thought still fleets through my mind. But you having that fear and saying I have those thoughts about you are two separate things."
"You still worry if I think that about you? No." He scooted closer and wrapped his good leg around to hold her in his lap. "I could give a rat's arse about that fucking bastard. And I don't ever want you to think I don't want to make love or don't desire you because of him—it's just me trying to deal with this."
She wrapped her arms around him and smiled. "Mark, you're such a bear. You growl and rumble when we're talking about you, but you turn into a chatterbox and my cuddle bear when we're talking about nearly the same with me."
He growled deep in his chest. "Because I need to make sure my lady love is happy."
"Well then, small steps. What would make me happy is to help you be deliriously happy in all things. So, I say we start with only pajama bottoms in bed, no more nightshirt."
"Does that include you?" Laughter lightened his voice.
She sat up and pulled off her nightdress.
The man blinked.
Her hands stilled on his nightshirt hem. "May I take it off? I won't touch."
A small nod, but he tensed.
As she pulled it up, he raised his arms and sat as still as a rabbit as she tossed it in the chair with her nightdress. "Now, be still so I don't bump my leg." She moved to the edge of the bed and reached for the crutches.
"What are you doing?"
"I have to go get you pants."
"Stay in bed. I can get them." But he didn't move.
Then it dawned that he was uncomfortable being naked, so she carefully positioned her leg and laid down on her side under the covers and presented her back to him.
The bed flexed as he got up and then his crutches clicked across the room. When he laid down a minute later, his breath caressed her neck, but he didn't touch.
She reached behind and caught his hand, wrapping it around her middle. "Cuddle me."
"But your leg—"
"Is propped up on two pillows, and you don't even have a right leg to accidentally throw over me and kick. You haven't cuddled me in three months." She sensed him about to open his mouth. "No, I don't want clothes on. Me being naked makes you less vulnerable in pajama bottoms. I'm your wife and trust you with my body."
He was so still and silent that it seemed like he'd fallen asleep.
"Is it alright if I touch you?" His deep voice broke the silence.
"You can do whatever you wish. You don't need to ask."
The bed flexed at her shoulder like he raised up onto his elbow. "I want to help you sleep," he whispered and then gave a light kiss under her ear as his hand opened to splay over her belly.
A soft sigh of contentment. It felt like years since he'd kissed.
That reaction seemed to encourage him. He trailed three kisses down to her shoulder and stroked the underside of her breast.
Her fingers reached up and buried in his hair as her heartbeat quickened.
"Goodnight, sweetheart," he whispered and pressed a final kiss to her neck as he laid down.
Her eyes flew open as his head moved away and his hand returned to rest over her belly.
His chest didn't even touch her back anymore.
Swallowing down the surprise at the sudden ending, she drew deep breaths to try to stop her racing heart.
"Tanya?"
"Hm?"
"Were you expecting more? I didn't mean to imply—"
"No." It came out too quickly. And it was harder than expected to not take his disinterest personally.
His hand moved up to rest over her heart that was still slowing down. "I'm sorry."
"There's nothing to be sorry for." She eased his hand back down to her belly. "Goodnight, Mark." Sleep would be hard to come by tonight now.
"Alright, I know you well enough to realize you're hurt." He leaned up on his elbow and plowed forward. "I can't hear your little noises since the brain fever," he blurted. "I started getting in my head and thinking your silence meant you didn't like me touching you. Were you making noises?"
A grin broke free and she looked over her shoulder. "I was making a lot of noises because you haven't touched me in so long."
"Screw this. I have no idea if I'm going to be able to have sex, but I'm pleasuring you one way or another before this damn monster gets any bigger in my head." He yanked off his pants before lying back down. "We're going to use words and be blunt because we're going to end up in heartache if we try mind reading tonight." He wiggled in tight to her back.
"Yes, Mark," she grinned. "I should scream for you?"
"You'll do a hell of a lot of screaming for me, just don't wake the children. Tell me if I'm bouncing your leg too much. Goddammit, I'm as frigid as a monk, but I want you so much."
His hand dove down, eliciting many loud noises from her without a problem.
"I'm sorry," he said minutes later and pulled his hips away.
"You don't need to apologize. That was a lot for our first time." She eased onto her back to look up as he raised onto his elbow.
As his hand traced the lines of her body, muscles automatically tensed when he reached the deformed breast. Those blue eyes darted to hers and his hand stopped. "Do you not want me to touch it?"
She looked away. "I just hate how ugly it is. It hardly looks like a breast."
"Tanya, I understand why you feel that way, but I think it's more beautiful than your other breast because you survived an assault and a soldier attack. This nourished my children. It's visible evidence of your strength." His hand cupped and thumb stroked the pit where there wasn't enough to hold. "I want to kiss and caress this breast most, but I worry it would make you self-conscious. I don't know how to say it without sounding twisted, but although this other breast is feminine and beautiful, it's this one that melts me and makes me want to make love to you." He leaned down and kissed and massaged and made love to it until even the damaged nerves responded to the pleasure.
"Mark," she breathed and softly fisted a handful of his hair, "touch it more often. The past three years since the soldiers, I don't like you seeing it."
"I'm sorry I couldn't fix it." Then his head popped up and he palpated. "It feels like a lot of adhesions here to your rib. Does it hurt to raise your arm?"
"Only when I reach for something high in the kitchen it pulls and stops my arm."
The man scowled. "You should've told me. We're going to massage this every night and break up those adhesions." He pecked a kiss and lifted his head, offering a smile as he gave a deep massage.
It triggered a shy smile in response. "I love you."
"I love you, too. So much." Then he pressed a kiss to her lips, not even seeming aware that his body had begun to respond to her nakedness minutes ago.
"Pa?" Charles's grown hands gently touched her toes.
"Yes, son?" Mark stepped over and bowed his head next to Charles's as they looked at the bottom of her foot, readjusting his glasses.
"There are small red bruises all over. Is that from the improper vasodilation during summer?"
Mark smiled. "Yes, that's the result of the neuralgia causing improper vascular function of the microvessels."
Charles looked up in concern. "Is doesn't hurt?"
She shook her head and tucked back a stray gray strand of hair that had fallen loose from her hairbun. "If it does, the burning masks it."
"What do you propose we do about that wound?" Mark seemed to eat up practicing medicine with his son. Although the leg neuralgia had improved over the years, it still prevented working long days at the clinic.
"Stitch," Della said from where she studied at Mark's desk.
Charles rolled his eyes. "I'll stitch your mouth shut if you don't stop interrupting, sis."
Della just grinned and then walked over with her textbook. "Mama? I can't figure out this one."
It'd become apparent that Della had writing and reading problems from birth complications. Mark had been able to find a doctor who specialized in speech impairments and had hired him for two weeks twice a year to come teach her and Mark how to continue Della's progress. The young woman was smart as a whip, and no one would know by her speech that she had impairments.
"Let's sound it out. Th…e…o…"
"Theolgy?" Della frowned, realizing that wasn't correct.
"Remember what o-l-o-g-y sounds like?" Charles asked, inspecting the gash where she'd tripped over the bucket of coal in the kitchen.
"Oh! Theology!" The eighteen-year-old girl bounced back to the desk.
Charles glanced up and locked eyes for a moment. "Did you talk to the teacher?" he asked quietly, protective of his younger sister.
She nodded. "If Della can get a 'C' on her reading and writing exams, she can graduate from the schoolroom."
He glanced at Mark. Charles had graduated the schoolroom two years early and been the youngest student to ever attend medical university. At twenty-one, he was now practicing medicine with Mark.
"What about this foot?" Mark asked, but glanced over Charles's head to look at her with worry about Della, too. Even with all of them tutoring Della, she still failed reading and writing classes and had taken summer school three times in order to avoid repeating grades.
That evening in bed, Mark checked the sutures and then laid down with a sigh. "I don't think her grades are good enough to get into any university. She just needs professors who will give her oral exams." He tucked his arm behind his head and used the other to tuck her close against his side. "She's going to be so upset."
"Many women don't go to university. She doesn't even know what she'd want as a job. She's always wanted to be a mother, and that may be enough to make her happy."
"And what if no one is good enough for her? She shouldn't need to rely on a man to be happy."
She cracked a smile. "There is Theodore's nephew who works at the lumberyard. He seems like a nice boy and is smitten with her."
He snorted. "And have Theodore crawling around here more than he does already? If I dropped dead, that man would stand on my body to wed you, not even waiting til I'd been put in the ground," he growled.
A laugh broke the silence. "I love only you. He's around because Della is best friends with his daughter."
"All the more reason why he'd snatch you up," he rumbled.
"Oh, my cuddle bear, do you need reminding of whom I love? You'll have to do all the work."
He growled and rolled onto her. "I need a lot of reminding, woman."
"Yes, Mark," she grinned and opened her arms.
"And be loud enough that I can hear you," he ordered. "But not so loud that the children hear."
"No, Mark."
He gave a swat on her hip. "Don't sass me."
Her giggles turned into moans.
A hard knock on the door. "Really?! Pa, there's an emergency at the clinic. Broken leg."
Mark froze. "I'll be right there. Go ahead and start."
Covering her face, she couldn't stop a giggle.
"If this turns into another streak of the world stopping us from being intimate for weeks again, I'm going to lose it," he muttered and started rocking.
"Mark!"
"He already knows we're having sex. If I have to go face him, I'm earning my shame, wife," he panted.
When he didn't return after a half hour, she limped into the clinic to find them in the middle of surgery.
Charles didn't look up, but his face turned bright red. Mark bit his lip trying to not smile.
"Oh, for heaven sakes, a girl will turn your head one day, Charles, and you'll have a wife." She walked up to the table to see what they were doing.
"I'm building my own house. As far as I'm concerned, you've been a nun since Della was conceived," he scolded, keeping his eyes on the surgery.
A laugh burst out and she glanced at Mark, who was a red as Charles. But he gave a naughty grin.
"Ma, we need more clamps."
Mark cleared his throat pointedly.
Charles sighed. "Ma, would you please bring more clamps that we need?"
"Better," Mark said. "Just because she doesn't work in here full time anymore doesn't mean she couldn't do surgery in circles around you."
But she spun on her heel and went over to the sink to wash. Even fifteen years later, it was still hard to accept that her leg pain and swelling prevented going on calls with Mark or working a full day. And all of the walking at medical university ruled out ever becoming a surgeon. She fetched the clamps and set them on the surgical tray.
Mark glanced up when she stepped back. "You have twenty years of experience, Tanya. You can sit for the medical exam," he said, as if reading her mind. "We can get a room at an inn nearby and go a couple days before so your leg has time to calm down from traveling. You could easily pass the license exam."
A sad smile tugged. "And ruin a thriving practice by having a female surgeon join?"
Charles scowled. "Who else are they going to see within fifteen miles? Ma, the town knows you. They wouldn't not come."
"No, angle it down. Now screw the bone back in place," she corrected Charles and pointed. "Right there where it'll least impair the marrow. Yes."
"See? Who wouldn't want you as a surgeon?" Mark grinned. "Tanya, come over here. The femur is shattered. I think we might need to amputate the entire leg."
She cocked an eyebrow.
He glanced up. "I'm serious. I'm not stroking your ego; I need your brain. Charles and I can't figure out how we can repair it."
So she went around the table to look at it with him. "May I?" When he handed over the tools and traded places, she started mapping together the fragments. "These are too small to screw in and don't offer value." She set some pieces aside. "Here. Take a screw from up here, catch these four pieces with it, then go in from the back to catch these."
"But—"
"I know, we risk rubbing the nerve, but if you anchor the muscle over the screw and then remove this screw in six weeks before he starts walking, it won't be a problem. Take this one..." When she finished explaining, she looked up.
Charles stared. "Where did you learn that?"
Mark grinned. "Your mother doesn't learn medicine, Charles; she teaches it. Damn, that's some fine work. Get your mother a chair, Charles. Tanya, help me put this leg back together."
She frowned when Charles had to contaminate himself and scrub back in.
Mark whispered, "Never hurts to teach a man some humility." Then he winked and stepped around to the other side of the table to assist her.
When she looked up an hour later, Mark was limping over with his own surgery chair to get his leg up. "You know you're not supposed to stand for surgeries, Mark."
"So spank me. Sometimes I want to stand for a bit."
"Sometimes you want to pretend you have a normal leg," Charles added, finished with his part of surgery and watching her now. "Why are you going in from that angle?" He pointed. The young man was full of questions the next hour. Then he finally said, "Why haven't you ever taught me procedures? You always leave or let Father do it. I thought you just didn't know them."
"Because your father was a university professor and has been practicing for thirty years." She carefully anchored in the muscle over the screw.
"But, you're good. Even better than Father at some procedures."
"You know the gold standard for a punctured lung repair?" Mark asked.
Charles nodded. "The one that is saving lives when before people died."
"Your mother invented that." Pride glowed in Mark's voice.
"What?! Ma, why haven't you told me this?!"
She shrugged.
"No, you need to go take the exam! I was barely six when you hurt your leg. I don't remember you practicing with Father, and I've been away at university for four years. Whenever I got home from the schoolroom, you were in the house resting your leg. That was because you were here all morning and afternoon being a surgeon, weren't you?"
"See? Tanya, Charles isn't here to replace you. She's hardly stepped foot in the clinic since you graduated and came back home last month."
Charles leaned down to appear in peripheral vision. "Ma, I'm the new one. I should be fetching you tools. Who gets two parents who are surgeons to learn from?"
"Hush, you two. There are two university-trained surgeons here to handle patients now. I never even finished the schoolroom. That's enough." She set down the tools and stood. "Charles, practice your sutures and close him up." Then she went to the sink to wash.
"Tanya, I miss working with you." Mark stood shoulder to shoulder and started washing, too. "I miss being with you all day and watching you invent medicine. I like working with Charles, but it's not the same," he said quietly.
She glanced up. He looked genuinely sad. "This isn't a pity offer?"
"No. I wouldn't do that to you."
She nodded. "I'm miserable just puttering around the house."
He grinned and pressed a kiss to her hair. "I'm miserable with you gone, too."
The next day, Charles frowned when she entered the clinic using Mark's cane. Then his eyes bugged when he spotted her bare foot so red. "Ma, are you infected?" He rushed over and easily scooped her up being nearly Mark's size. Then he set her on the exam table.
"What? Charles, set me down! No, it's just from the neuropathy and injury. Your father checked it this morning already."
Mark walked into the clinic at that moment and grinned. "Finally another set of lungs to argue with you." Then he looked at Charles. "I told her to stay off that foot because the sutures are straining with the swelling as it is. Adding edema by being on it today will tear them."
Charles grabbed the rolling chair that Theodore had made for her years ago to help with her leg. Then he set her in it.
"I am not a doll for you two to just toss where you want!"
Both Charles and Mark stood before her with their arms crossed over their chests. "We're both bigger than you, Mother."
Her eyebrows rose.
Mark snickered. "Oh, son, you've been away at university for too long. Everyone in the house towers over her, even your grandparents at their old age, but she's the boss."
"Best you remember that," she snapped and gave Charles a gentle wack on his thigh using the cane.
He offered that boyish grin. "Yes, ma'am. Stay in that chair. Doctors' orders."
Mark clapped Charles on the shoulder. "Thank god. It'll take two of us to handle her the next few days."
Just then, the door burst open with the first patient of the day.
"Mother! Sit!" Charles barked during a severed femoral artery repair hours later.
She leaned forward to clamp the artery with her fingers as it squirted. "I'll sit when he's not bleeding out. Mark, how is his chest?"
"I'm just about done with the clamps. Charles, take this one off and help your mother."
He did. "Stitch the artery?"
"No, stop the transfusion from your father. He's looking pale."
And back and forth the chaos went for the next ten minutes. Charles looked like a wide-eyed deer when she finally looked up once the bleeding was under control. "Keep your head. Do you want the leg or chest?"
"Um, maybe leg," he said nervously.
"Chest," Mark ordered. "I'm too dizzy." He stepped back and sank to the floor to lie down, drawing deep breaths like he was nauseous.
"Mom?" Charles hadn't called her that in over ten years.
"Mark, are you fine?" She limped over to take Mark's chair at the chest.
"Yeah," he breathed.
"Charles, finish stitching the leg shut and then come here."
Minutes later, Charles moved closer. "You placed a chest tube for pneumothorax? Is that a purse string stitch keeping it in place?"
"Yes. Now this here," she leaned a little closer and stitched very slowly, "is where you have to be careful to not go too deep when repairing a lung puncture."
"Lung puncture?" Mark asked from the floor.
"I found a leak that is a fresh wound. You started to black out, didn't you? I think your tool hit his lung," she said absently.
Mark cursed.
"Always watch your father. He tends to over-transfuse himself and you have to stop him."
"I've always been fine doing it this long," he protested.
"And you haven't always been in your early fifties."
"We weren't talking about that, were we, woman?" he snapped.
Charles cleared his throat trying to not laugh.
"It's a fact, Mark. I'm in my fifties now, too. At least we get old together."
"You aren't old, Ma." Charles turned his head and kissed her cheek before resuming watching her work. "Pa...I wish I had better news for you."
"Hey!"
Charles laughed. "What do you want me to do, Ma?"
"Take over. I have the worst of the hole sutured. You should practice on the rest while I reinflate his lung."
After watching Charles for a moment, she washed and then knelt beside Mark to feel his pulse.
"Leave me alone," he growled and pushed himself up.
"Mark, take it slow." She got up just in time to grab his arm as he started to collapse. "Charles!"
Charles spun around just in time to catch him. They both went down together.
"Are you hurt?" She grabbed Mark's dead weight to roll him off Charles.
"No," Charles gasped. "Pa's heavier than I thought. I protected his head." He got up when she rolled Mark to the side.
"Mark?" She patted his cheek and felt his pulse.
"He's out cold. Let's get him on a bed. Can you lift with your leg?"
"Yes. Let me get his prosthetic off. We don't need the extra weight, and he doesn't need to be mobile." She struggled to carry him by the leg while Charles hauled his upper half. "I think I'm glad now that you spent the summers doing blacksmith work."
He laughed and wiped his brow with his sleeve. "Alright, I'm going to wash and finish surgery. Are you good to start a transfusion on him? Only do a half pint. I'll be over in a bit to give some."
"Yes. Let me know if you need help." She fetched supplies and elevated her leg on the bed. "Let's hope no other major surgeries come in today. I think we can count your father out for the rest of the day."
"Maybe tomorrow, too." He worked intently for a few minutes.
Mark stirred and then slowly blinked.
"There's my bear. Your color is a little better. How are you feeling?" She felt his brow that wasn't as clammy.
He squeezed his eyes shut. "The room is spinning."
"I imagine so. I think you gave nearly two-and-one-half pints."
He moved his arm, but she grabbed it to stop the transfusion from pulling out. His eye cracked open. "Dammit, Tanya, take it out."
"You shouldn't do stupid things like bleed yourself dry."
His other hand pressed to his head like he had a headache. "Woman. If I move, I'm going to heave on you. Take it out."
"Do you two always argue like this at work?" Charles sounded amused.
"It wouldn't be so, if your father would be a good man and just listen to me." She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his cheek.
And the transfusion tube was out of her arm and in Mark's hand when she leaned back. A deep gasp. "You wretched man! Charles, come trade places."
"No!" Mark barked and then grabbed his head again.
She took the tubing apart. "Serves you right to have to get poked again." Then her voice softened to the tone reserved for serious moments when she needed him to not argue. "You're having tachycardia from it. You'll let me make sure my husband is alright."
He held her eyes for a moment and remained quiet.
As she traded places with Charles, Mark remained complacent, but warned his son he could only transfuse himself for three minutes.
The wise young man got Mark distracted with conversation and made it to five minutes before Mark noticed.
Minutes later, female hands passed fresh dressings over the surgery table to bandage the patient.
She looked up at Della. "When did you get home from school?"
"Just now." The girl beamed. "I passed!"
"Of course you did! Oh! I'm covered in blood!"
Della laughed and walked around the table. "Mama, you're always covered in blood." She hugged from behind.
"Oh, baby girl, I'm so proud!"
"Are you going to come work with us?" Charles grinned, knowing Della didn't favor blood.
"Yes, and I'll practice on you." Then Della frowned. "Is Papa ill?"
She glanced up to find Mark asleep.
"Overtransfused himself again," Charles sighed and walked across the room. Then he hugged his little sister and spun her in a circle. "So, what are we going to do with a graduate?"
Just then, two men barged in with a man who'd been kicked in the head by a horse.
Without a word, Della and Charles grabbed the chest surgery patient and moved him to the bed and began grabbing fresh supplies.
It was good to be back at work.
"Sweetheart," Mark said and shook her shoulder.
Blinking, she rubbed her eyes. It was still night. "I had a dream and it seemed so real. Did I wake you?"
"No, I'm waking you up because there was an explosion at the railroad with the dynamite a mile north." He pulled on his prosthesis. "They're fetching all the surgeons in the area. They estimate fifty men are injured. I may not be back for a couple days. I'll send your grandparents over—"
She sat up quickly and swung her legs over the side of the bed. "Alright. I'll get the horse ready."
He whipped on clothes. "No, just stay in bed—"
"I'm not coming?"
He blinked. "You can't travel that far with your leg, much less be on your feet all day."
Grabbing the can of salve that Grandfather and Mark had made, she put more on her foot quickly. "Neither can you. The more hands, the sooner you can come home." Then she popped up and pulled on a dress.
"Tanya—"
"No. Before my foot got hurt, you would've asked me. I'm coming." She swept her hair up in a bun and then pocketed the foot cream. "Are you ready yet?"
"Sweetheart, you can't."
She swept out of the room, trying to hide the limp. "I'm going to get my grandparents to watch the children," she called quietly over her shoulder.
A curse followed and then heavy footsteps.
The shared horseback ride left her clutching Mark by the time they arrived. "Goddammit, Tanya, you need to rest." He swung down and then reached up for her. The agonized screams made it hard to hear Mark.
"I just need more salve on my foot. Go get started."
He grabbed his bag and hesitated for a moment.
"Go!"
Mark hurried to where some men yelled for a surgeon, with one last glance over his shoulder.
More salve helped take the burning down to a mild throb. Then she grabbed the second medical bag and headed in the opposite direction where other men were laid out in bloody rows and yelling for help.
"Are you a doctor?" one man asked, every inch of him covered in dirt and blood but moving just fine.
"A nurse. My husband is a surgeon working on some other men. Where do you need me?"
"Right here. We're organizing them into missing limbs over here, the dead over there, and belly and head wounds over by your husband. Are you good with a needle?"
A bitter smile tugged. "A bone saw, cautery poker, and a scalpel, too. Do we have fresh water to clean tools between patients?"
"No, ma'am, just what you brought with you. We're putting together campfires to bring water from the river to boil in cauldrons, but it's going to be a bit before those are set up."
She kept following him to the men laid out. It was chaos everywhere. At least a dozen men had missing limbs, and she appeared to be the only one over here who knew what to do. "Every able-bodied man over here, take off your belts and cinch them tight just above the missing limbs!" she ordered and then dropped to her knees at the first patient. "Our first job is to keep them from bleeding out before I get to them!"
"There ain't no such thing as a woman doc!" one of the men carrying the wounded called. "We need surgeons, not a dressmaker!"
Grabbing tools out of the bag, she didn't even bother looking up. "I'm a nurse at a lumberyard. Get your belts off now and on those limbs!" she shouted over the screaming, having no patience or time to be questioned.
As she began moving from patient to patient to get them stabilized while awaiting surgery, more and more able-bodied men came over to help and follow directions. Soon, a process was established to maximize her efficiency and prevent most of the men from bleeding to death.
"Go!" she snapped and popped up to move to cauterize the next patient. Two men followed, bringing her supplies and a fresh, red-hot poker. Screams worsened as she singed flesh to stop the worst of the bleeds. Then she started over rounding to patients with the next step of amputation.
"Christ, you've only lost two patients and have a regular hospital running here," a deep voice said in an English accent.
She glanced up, her ears ringing from all the screaming, and met Mark's eyes as he knelt across the patient from her, his clothes soaked in blood. His face looked as aged the past few hours as she felt.
"Go get a drink of water. I have this." He eased the bone saw from her hands as she sat ready to do her eleventh amputation and men held the screaming patient down.
Somehow, he knew.
So she got up and walked straight to the woods just a few feet away. And heaved over and over from the horror of mutilating men while they were fully conscious.
The mental and emotional fatigue turned into physical. Her hands shook from spending hours locked around a saw severing bones. Then it dawned as she looked down that her clothes were as soaked in blood as Mark's, her face probably as splattered as his.
A hand touched her shoulder. She looked up from where she knelt in the grass, too exhausted to move.
"Fresh water." A man about her own age, covered in blood, handed over a tin cup. "Ye need it."
"Thank you." She took a sip and moved to get up, but every muscle screamed in pain from being hunched over patients all night.
He caught her arm and tugged. "Be a lot ta take in," he said in a strange accent. "Ye did a fine bit o' work there. I be Doc O'Brien. Arrived right before ye did and worked on t' belly wounds w' yer husband. He said ta go help ye, but then we saw ye had every one o' these lads right in line and doin' yer orders," he chuckled. "I'd better get back to it." He gave a nod and headed over to the amputation area.
Taking another deep breath, she returned to the nightmare.
It proved easier to handle the gore with Mark closer.
"Be ready to clamp as soon as I let go," he called over the screaming. He glanced up.
The world stilled for an instant as he locked gazes. It was as if he offered invisible strength and set it in her heart. "Don't think, just do, sweetheart," his lips said without any sound. That one look said he remembered what it felt like to witness such massive horrors in his time as a battlefield surgeon. And that one look said he was here to guide her through the trauma.
"Easy," a deep voice said and eased the needle and thread from her shaking hands as a result of the patient sobbing from pain and having his arm amputated the rest of the way. Mark took over suturing, so she turned around to move onto the next patient. "Take his other hand," Mark said quietly near her ear as he worked.
Swallowing hard, she caught his eye for a moment. It was as if he sensed her hesitation, her fear of making this seem more real. When he nodded, she slowly took the man's bloody hand.
"What's your name?" Mark calmly asked the man.
"P,Paul."
"Paul, I'm sorry we couldn't save your arm. This is my wife, Tanya, and she works with me at a lumberyard. That means we've seen a lot of amputations. She's the best. I'm done suturing this," he said as he put in the last stitch. "She's going to help you walk over to that wagon where they're taking all the stable patients to hospitals. She's going to teach you what you need to do the next few days for this wound."
The man shook his head. "With no arm, I can't work. I'm better off dead—"
Mark used a bucket of fresh water, the best method to clean in these terrible conditions, and washed his hands to move on to the next patient. "My leg was cut off above the knee, and I thought the same thing. You're going to get up and take a step, and then another. And you're going to use this time for healing to think about everything you can do and everything you want to do. Do you know what my wife said when I was sobbing from my amputation? The only limitations are the ones you let people put on you. I bet she's going to tell you the same thing. Trust me, she's the one you want to help you get up off the ground because you literally have nowhere to go from here but up."
Something in Paul's face changed and his tears came a little slower. When she offered a brave smile, he held out his hand for help up.
When she returned to Mark just minutes later, he was amputating a foot off an unconscious man. She knelt across from him and started washing her hands as best as possible with plain water. There was a renewed sense of strength. Unable to look at him without risking tears, she quietly asked, "How did you know?"
"You're my heart, Tanya. You needed a moment of humanity, of being able to help the soul when all we can do today is damage bodies. And he needed light in his moment of darkness."
She glanced up, but his gaze remained focused on his delicate work. "I love you." Then she reached in with a probe to move a tendon to give him a better view.
A smile touched his lips as he continued working. "I love you, too. I know today is going to be a lot to process, but I'd have no one else by my side."
Before she could reply, a group of four men came charging up on horses. "We 'ave chloroform an' laudanum from t' university!" Dr. O'Brien called.
Mark glanced up at her with a grin. "Sweetheart, our day just got a whole lot better."
The silence was wonderful, with no more patients conscious for surgery and in less pain before and after with the laudanum.
"Right here. It's a beautiful example of a torn rotator cuff. I think we can save this arm." Mark got up from assessing another patient, figuring out who was most urgent. Then he limped over to where she knelt beside a man. "What do you think?"
"Fractured hip, possibly. He had a burn and was losing circulation in his leg, so I did a faciotomy. He has a pulse in his foot again." She lifted a clean bandage to show the long slice up the man's poor calf.
Mark grinned. "Christ, you're good. O'Brien!" he called to the surgeon a couple rows down. "This one is yours. Leg faciotomy for a burn done by my genius wife. Stable til you get to him."
He man smiled and nodded.
Then Mark took her hand and led to the next set of patients.
While she was finishing cauterizing a missing leg, Mark called from patients two rows back. He moved quickly grabbing tools.
As soon as the bleeding was stable, she hurried over. The large man clutched his chest and panted, holding his badly burned arm to his chest.
"Myocardia infarction? I need you to see what you hear with the stethoscope. He says his chest hurts more than his arm." He dug out nitroglycerin.
She set the bell to his chest and then caught Mark's hand. "Wait…no breath sounds on the left. Sir, did anything hit your chest or did you fall?"
He nodded, his skin turning blue.
"Thoracotomy," she said at the same moment as Mark.
Just as the man went unconscious, Mark handed her the scalpel to put in a chest tube. "It's your invention," he grinned and pulled the supplies out of his bag.
When she finished suturing the tube in place, she sat back with a sigh of relief. Mark grinned at something behind her.
Three surgeons stared. "That's T. Johnson's method. How did you do it so perfectly?"
"I would expect T. Johnson can do her own method perfectly," Mark bragged.
The blood rushed from her head as she stared at Mark in horror. He'd ruin his reputation by having a woman—
Ten questions exploded from the surgeons' lips about the procedure.
Mark cleared his throat. "Doctors, we have a dozen patients left. She can take questions later."
O'Brien's eyes shined. "If you have another chest tube placement, would you call me over to watch?"
With a glance at Mark, she nodded.
Mark scowled as he resumed working on the patient. "I didn't expect three marriage proposals."
She laughed. "Far from it. They're men, Mark. They'll pick my brain and then resume pretending I don't exist."
His eyebrow rose as he glared from beneath his brow. "That O'Brien bastard has been watching you all night. Every time you do another procedure, the arse looks more smitten," he muttered. "You're working with me the rest of the day. Best to remind the rake you're my woman."
"Oh, I'm your 'woman' now?" She bandaged the chest tube to keep dust out.
"We aren't debating semantics," he snapped and packed up his bag to move on to the next patient. Then he helped her up and leaned in for a kiss.
She pulled her head back to find him scowling. "Dr. Debonairo," she said so softly that he'd have to lipread. "Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps men are interested in my skills? I'm not a possession."
"You know what I mean," he growled, still keeping his lips inches away as he held her eyes. "You enjoy seeing me want to punch them."
Her eyebrows rose. "On the contrary, Dr. Johnson," she said loud enough for him to detect the irritation in her tone, "I enjoy seeing you reminded to not take me for granted; I resent being fought over like I'm a toy simply because I'm a woman." Then she spun away and walked over to the next patient.
Mark was silent for the next two patients, his gaze dark often shifting between her and the other surgeons. He seemed to have some kind of internal debate. Then he finally broke the silence in the middle of the a surgery.
"It's not fighting over you," he snapped, his movements a little more wrought with irritation. "You know your mind excites me more than anything. Have you ever noticed how many men are interested in you, even more so after learning of your intellect? It's rare to find a woman not afraid to challenge a man's knowledge, much less singlehandedly improve medical practices. So, perhaps, I don't enjoy them sniffing around you." He dropped a tool into the bowl of water unnecessarily hard.
"In other words, as long as I only speak to females, it's fine. And how many females are there in medicine for me to talk to? Most of the men in the lumberyard are young and unwed, and the wives who are there shun me for being unorthodox. So, who exactly is it I may speak to, master?" It was a low jab to refer to the slave ownership papers, but nerves were wound tight and exhaustion had set in hours ago. This was an unwanted addition to the stress.
He glared, not breaking eye contact for a moment as he worked. "Don't pull that card," he snarled in a low voice. "I'm trying. You're beautiful, intelligent, and a damn good surgeon. So sometimes I get jealous because I don't have a leg, make low wages, caused our daughter to have health problems…" He bit his tongue and finally spat, "I know you're the last person on earth to ever be unfaithful, but when renowned surgeons or successful men come sniffing around, I get stressed that you wish things were different." He pulled his hands out of the patient and plopped the detached, damaged spleen on the ground.
The fire inside died and it suddenly made sense. "Because you think our conversation from a few months ago changes things," she said quietly, referring to the Bedlam abuse.
His eyes instantly dropped to where he placed sutures.
"I will not give you false claims of love out of pity." She handed him a new needle and thread when his snapped, but he still struggled to meet her eyes. "I've known for years that something like that occurred, and it doesn't change anything. I wish that hadn't happened those years ago, but I don't ever wish things were different with us. I love working with you and our children—exactly as they both are. I spent my whole life being told I was stupid and worthless."
His eyes flew up in concern at that.
"So if I show interest when someone is talking to me, especially when it's a surgeon asking me questions, it's because I like that I'm seen for my brain and not my gender. You don't need to worry."
He released a deep sigh and nodded.
When he leaned over the patient more for a better view, she leaned in, too, and whispered loud enough for him to hear, "And you always please me in bed."
A smile cracked through and he glanced at her, a small blush rising in his cheeks. "I'm sorry for being an idiot."
She kissed his cheek. "Not an idiot, just a man. That's why I'm here."
He chuckled.
He resumed teaching her many things about battlefield medicine. But by the afternoon, they walked over to one of the last patients where all three surgeons stood.
"Trouble?" Mark asked, drying his hands on the only semi-clean towel left on the premises.
Her stomach dropped as she stepped up next to Mark. The man had one leg missing at the knee, both of his arms barely attached, and his other leg blue.
"Gave 'm laudanum," Dr. O'Brien said. Thankfully the poor man seemed to be unconscious.
"Every limb needs to go," one of the surgeons said.
"No," Mark replied and worked down onto his knee. He inspected the arms and blue leg. "His arms have enough circulation to be viable. Tanya, what can you do with the arms? The leg has to go."
Kneeling beside him, she gently maneuvered the limbs. "The left can be saved, but he might not have much use of it at all. The right is a wildcard—I think the nerve is severed, along with several tendons. His leg...we start there and graft a vein," she whispered so no one would hear her disagree with a surgeon's diagnosis. She pressed in the wound and the leg slowly began to regain some color.
His eyebrow rose and he leaned in for a closer look. "It's risky, but if it doesn't work, he loses the leg anyways." Then he raised his voice. "Good catch. We'll graft a vein."Graft a vein? How do you propose that?" one of the surgeons asked.
He started to prep while she explained and Dr. O'Brien and another surgeon washed to start working on the arms.
Half way through surgery, burning pain swept up from toes to knee in her bad foot. The intensity made it difficult to do anything but breathe through the pain.
"Tanya?" Mark's voice came through distant as it wafted through the fog of pain.
Bowing her head and squeezing her eyes shut didn't make it easier to bear. The tools fell from her hands, and she nearly doubled over in pain. "Finish," she gasped and leaned back on shaking hands to drag herself backwards through the grass out of the way so Mark could take her place.
"Ta—"
"Do it," she panted and took off the shoe under the skirts. For some reason, the shoe was suddenly unbearably painful.
"Mrs. Johnson?" Dr. O'Brien looked up in concern from where he still worked on the man's arm.
She just shook her head, washed her hands, and crawled on her knees back to Mark's side.
He didn't say anything, but he kept glancing over in concern.
"This is the last patient, sweetheart."
Tanya looked around.
Sunset. It'd been nearly twenty-four hours of amputation after amputation. Many of the patients were gone, having been loaded into wagons and taken to clinics and hospitals.
Dr. O'Brien knelt with a bucket of water next to Tanya. "Wash. Ye had to have done in yer hands."
She just raised her head up to meet his eyes and stared, clearly too exhausted to comprehend anything anymore.
The red-haired man cracked a smile and guided her bloody hands into the water.
A cry of pain.
He glanced up from suturing a leg.
Dr. O'Brien reached into the bucket with a bar of soap and began to wash her hands.
"How bad?" he demanded to know.
The doctor rinsed her hands in a second bucket of clean water and surveyed them. "Blisters, but nothin' open enough to have exposed her ta disease." Then he grabbed a bottle of whiskey and glanced from beneath his strong brow. "Ye have a fresh scalpel, Johnson? She has a nasty blood blister that needs sanitary lancing. Tis a wonder she didn't burst it."
A massive red blister covered all four joints of one palm.
"Trade places with me," he commanded and got up.
He steadied her shaking hand by the wrist, his own still covered in blood. "Tanya," he sighed. "Let me see how clean we can get out here, and I'll drain it with a syringe. That has to be painful."
The poor woman breathed a soft sigh of relief as he drained the blood blister.
"You aren't to touch any more blood so you don't catch disease with this." He wrapped her hand with the one bandage he'd kept hidden and clean in his bag in case she got injured.
"How's your leg holding up?" Pain squinted her eyes.
A smile tugged. "It's seen better days with all the getting up and down off the ground, but it'll hold up for the ride home." Then the smile faded as his eye dropped to the toe of her shoe peeking out from under her dress. "You?"
"Ready to go home," was all she said.
But when he got up and offered a hand, her brow furrowed and she clutched a bit too hard.
"You're in pain." He wrapped an arm around her waist to take some of her weight.
"No—"
But when he leaned forward and met her eyes, she silenced. "Wait here. Let me go get the horse and bring him to you."
As he headed away toward where the horse was tied with the handful of others left with the few surgeons remaining, Dr. O'Brien got up from the last amputation patient who was being transported and walked toward Tanya. Picking up the pace, he limped a bit faster. That vermin had been staring at her nearly all day.
Devil Debonairo approached on the massive gypsy horse, his look dark enough to send any man screaming. That was his jealous glare. And it shot bullets at Dr. O'Brien, who offered his arm for support while she waited for Mark. A blush crept up a glance up at Mark from beneath her lashes. There was something very pleasing about the fact that even after years of marriage, he wanted to ensure men still knew she was his.
Dr. O'Brien didn't even notice Mark practically pull the horse up to his back. "It's—"
"Wife, let's go home," Mark growled.
A smile tugged. He never addressed her as 'wife' in public.
When Dr.O'Brien took her hand to help take the few steps closer, Mark nudged the horse forward, forcing Dr. O'Brien to step aside. Then Mark held down his hand.
