Ada couldn’t stifle the laugh. “Yes, Dr. Waxler is up with the birds.”
“If there are any left to be found,” the man concluded. “I appreciate the care for my injury, though as much as you all want to view it, perhaps leaving it uncovered would be more beneficial.”
She stopped and frowned. The mischief in his eyes danced to a tune she didn’t hear but it made her give him a smile. “Perhaps, though covered it should fare better. I want to inspect it and see.” She pulled the used linen off.
“See what, whoa!” He managed to move the limb out of her reach. “Just what are you doing?”
Her grin widened. With a twinkle of her own, she exposed the feather she’d scratched across the ball of his foot, pleased he felt it enough to withdraw it. “Excellent. You felt that?”
“Of course,” he snapped, trying to move it again. “It tickled. I wasn’t aware you Yankees were made to repair us only to torture us in return.”
“Hardly. You are too quick to assume,” she stated, now peering at the stitched incision at his ankle. “It held and I see little swelling. You can move it, so all appears good.”
“It stings.”
“Yes, well bullet wounds do that, I hear.” She dipped her sponge into the basin of water near the foot of the bed and wiped the area gently. “What is your name, sir?”
“Does it matter?”
“To me, it does. Makes our conversation a little more comfortable.”
He snorted. “Corporal Francois Fontaine, 9th Louisiana Company.”
The man to his right muttered something she couldn’t hear. It slightly irritated her but now wasn’t the time to teach these Southerners etiquette. “Your friend found that amusing.”
“Oh, Wiggins finds many things humorous.” As she tucked the end of the bandage into the wrapping, Francois leaned forward. “I will walk again, right?”
Ada swallowed. “Yes, given time. Rest. We will try moving you later, to see how you fare.” She quickly tried to hide the fear in her voice as she re-wrapped it. The surgery was correct, she was sure at the time. She’d cleaned it, stitched the rivet in his skin shut and carefully set the ankle and foot in line, as nature would have it, so if it was fractured, it’d mend. Only time and rest would tell. Problem was, he was the enemy, now a prisoner and maimed. She could only pray he’d heal.
“Get some rest, Corporal. I’ll check on you later.” And she whirled out of the room, the demons of failure chasing her.
Francois watched her run from him and instantly became agitated. This nurse, a woman way too pretty to be stuck in a building of sick and wounded men, ran from him. He’d never had a darling dash away like that. He growled.
Wiggins started to laugh.
“I fail to see what is so damn funny.” Francois twisted to see his fellow Tiger but the move jostled his leg, sending a myriad of pain from his ankle.
“You.” Wiggins maneuvered himself to a seating position, despite the useless arm, still slung around his neck. “I saw you eying that nurse. Not sure which is worse. You or her gawking over the other.”
“I do not ‘gawk’ at ladies,” Francois snarled. Though the woman in question could provoke that, even in her dark brown dress, her hair pulled back with no adornments of any type on her person. She was attempting to look severe and plain, and was doing a damn good job at it too, if it weren’t for her smile.
“If’n you ain’t, I still declare she got her bonnet, as it were, set for ye.”
Francois took a look at himself in the mirror that was across the room. He frowned. A mirror here was an odd article to be found but a quick survey of the room, with its papered walls of Greek monuments and the white wainscoting, with the windows pristine but lacking drapery, he’d guess this was the dining room. The window dressings, he now noticed, were all over the room in different areas, like the set he saw folded under his injured leg. He doubted the Union had olive green silk blankets for their men. His neck bristled at the looting of the house and the damage that would remain, like the stains he saw on the wooden floor planks, darkened with blood.
He returned to his image in the mounted looking glass. His cheek was bruised, with another one on his exposed left shoulder and his hair was tousled in the most unbecoming way, as if he’d had a busy night with LaJoyce…The bandaged foot looked large and it made him wonder if it was just swollen or over-wrapped. He raised himself further, to bend over and check but the move made the leg flare again and he groaned in frustration.
“Damn! We’re here, imprisoned as it were, and I don’t even remember how this came to be.”
Wiggins sighed. “The Yanks made a massive move forward, more than we anticipated on our part. Marse Lee dun thought they’d be over yonder. If they did there as well, I’ve no idea, but we tried to hold our own.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t pretty. At one point in the retreat, we jumped over that ridge to make it out from their rifles, but, if I recall right, the rocks slipped from all the rain that’d come through. I barely made it but got hit, and by the time I managed to get up, done have a whole regiment of Yanks pointing their guns at me.” He exhaled. “You slipped on them rocks and I heard you hit the ground as they started firing. When you saw them upon us, you reached for your gun but that Yank done hit you with the butt of his and that was all for you.”
Francois’s faulty memory of that battle flittered through his mind. Now, at least, he knew where the bruise on his face was from and the throb in his temple. “We’re not in a good position.” He
