It didn’t.
It wouldn’t.
They continued to come: shattered, broken, maimed. So many with pieces gone, the missing parts of their bodies spattered somewhere out there in the mud and mire. Others torn, their flesh ripped by jagged pieces of flying metal. So many punctured with deformed lead that expanded and crushed bone, muscle, and artery.
He had become their last chance. Hope that they’d continue to draw breath, see their homes and families, hug their loved ones, fulfill even the simplest dream, or make love with a beautiful woman. All depended on Doc’s skill, as though he could conjure magic from his blood-thick fingers.
They have to see that I’m a fraud. That I’m failing them, one after another.
Something hit the wall with a loud crack, startling him from his near stupor.
“Bullet,” Mays muttered.
Doc cocked his head, surprised at the growing sound of the battle, amazed that he’d been able to completely ignore it. Artillery banged loudly. This was the close range of war: men shouting; the clatter of ramrods; gasping breath; the rattle of accoutrements; and the cocking of gun hammers.
“We might have to leave, Doc,” Clyde said.
“Can’t.” Doc bent down to his work. The man he worked on was raving through a gargling exhalation of sound. Something large had hit his head side-on, blowing away most of his lower jaw. Doc had cut away the shreds of cheek that would die anyway, had ligated the spurting arteries, and removed the bloodshot remains of the tongue.
Is this right? Does he even want to live this way?
Doc hesitated, weaving on his feet, kept blinking as he stared at the facial wreckage. It would only take a slip with the scalpel. Drive it down under the mastoid and sever the carotid artery. He glanced guiltily at Augustus Clyde. The man had fixed horrified eyes on Doc’s as if reading his thoughts.
Am I acting as an angel of mercy? Or am I some demon from hell, damning him to an endless humiliation and misery?
Clyde surprised him, however, when he asked, “Can’t leave? But Doc, our lines are folding up like a lady’s fan.”
Doc swallowed hard, setting his scalpel aside, trying to fill his lungs with the smoky air and find enough resolve to finish his surgery.
“John, we’ve got that yellow hospital flag out front. I don’t care how you do it, but make sure it’s up on the roof where the Federals can see it. He bent back to scraping clotted blood from the man’s mouth. “God knows, even that might not save us.”
Doc barely noticed the officer’s arrival in the doorway. A discharge of muskets just west of the house drowned out the man’s words.
“What was that?” He was finishing—as much as he could—with the jaw-shot patient.
“I said, sir, that you are ordered to evacuate!”
“Major, we can’t.” Doc gestured at the door. “Most of those men can’t be moved.”
“Those are my orders from General Beauregard.”
Doc stepped back from the table, yawned, rubbed his eyes, and watched as Clyde and Mays removed the hideously wounded man who still uttered his wavering vocalizations. The major’s face blanched, and he stepped back, a hand going to his stomach.
Doc could only stare dully as he tried to get his head around the problem. “If you have wagons, the superficial wounds and amputees can go.” He glanced at Mays. “Who’s next?”
“Did you hear me, sir? I ordered you to evacuate. You’re a regimental surgeon. I could order you shot.”
“Pistol’s on your hip, Major.” Even as he said it, Clyde and Mays were laying another bleeding man, a sergeant, on the table.
Doc wobbled his way back around the table to inspect the gunshot to the man’s groin. The major remained, as if fixed, his hand resting on the butt of his still-holstered revolver.
Doc never saw him leave.
“He was going to shoot you,” Clyde said woodenly, as if past caring. They were all tired enough that death would have been a relief.
Clyde worked his dry mouth as if to get up enough spit to swallow. “Some of the things you’ve done? Where did you learn to save things like that wounded jaw?”
“Nowhere.” He snorted his surprise. “It just had to be done. Thank the Lord they had us work on all those cadavers back in Boston. Some people think medicine need only be taught out of a book, you know.”
The sergeant on the table cried out, bucking, as Doc’s probe located the bullet. Small. A pistol ball. God, he’d learned to tell by the feel. When had that happened?
Did he dare try and take it out? The bladder had been punctured, hence the urine. Or did he leave it in, located as it was, beside the prostate?
He bent over the wincing sergeant. “It’s a pistol ball. I’m afraid I’ll do more harm removing it. Sergeant, we’re just going to bandage you, and give it some time to see if it heals.”
“Am I still going to work?” he asked, plaintively. “I mean, you know, with a woman?”
“I think so.”
The man’s expression softened, becoming almost beatific as he smiled. “Thank you, God. And I meant everything I told you in that prayer.”
Wagons and horses rattled their way into the yard, men calling orders. The evacuation.
And then they were gone, the musketry breaking with a fury. Two more bullets whacked into the log wall behind Doc.
“Don’t tense your leg, damn it!” he snarled at the young Shelby Gray he worked on. The private nodded, lifted his sleeve to his mouth, and bit down on it to keep from screaming.
When Doc had removed the bullet, thankfully without rupturing the femoral artery, he tossed it toward the pile in the corner, surprised to see blue-coated Federal soldiers peering in the door.
Even as he did, two Yankees carried a third, a captain, through the doorway, declaring, “We’ve got a wounded man here!”
“Put him on the table.” The leg was a mess of blood and broken bone just above the knee.
“Hope you don’t hold a grudge, Reb,” one of the Federals,
