Henry Caldwell appeared at his side, his arm wrapped in a bandage. “How can I help?”
Adam grabbed his friend’s wrist. “You’re hurt.”
“Just a scratch.” Henry shook him off. “There’s many far worse. Where do you want them?”
Adam thought quickly. “Let’s open up the store. Mr. Jorgensen won’t mind. Jesse?”
His nephew nodded and opened the door adjoining the office to the mercantile, holding it wide.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please.” Adam raised his voice above the clamor. “Wait in the store, and I will see you one at a time, the most urgent cases first. You may enter through this door or go around outside. You, ma’am,” he said to the woman with the bleeding girl, “stay here, and anyone else who is bleeding heavily or suspects internal damage.” He wasn’t sure how they would know, but he had to start somewhere.
With Henry and Jesse’s help, they got the murmuring crowd moving, slow as a herd of reluctant cattle.
Adam lifted the young girl with the injured leg to his examining table. She was probably about eight years old, and she shrieked as he moved her. He pushed her calico skirt aside and started to unwind the clumsy, blood-soaked bandage.
“She got caught under a falling beam.” The mother twisted her hands, her voice choked. “The bone is broken. It’s awful.”
Adam removed the bandage and swallowed. Indeed, cracked white bone poked through the gash in the girl’s shin. A compound fracture, and bleeding heavily.
“We’ve got to stop the bleeding first. Jesse, bandages.” He grabbed the cloths from his nephew and pressed them to the wound. The little girl screamed again, then sobbed, her hands grasping for her mother.
“I’m sorry, child.” The pain would be horrific. He needed to give her some laudanum before trying to set the bone. “Jesse, do you know where the laudanum is?”
“I d-don’t know.” Jesse crossed to the cupboard and opened it, staring inside.
“Which shelf is it on?” Henry limped over to help him.
“The top, I think.” Adam squinted, trying to picture his cupboard. “A small brown bottle.”
“This?” Henry held out a brown glass vial.
“No, that’s quinine.” He couldn’t let up the pressure on the girl’s leg. She’d bleed to death before they could set her leg.
“Let me look.” A quiet feminine voice entered the conversation. Forsythia Nielsen hurried past him, unwinding a scarf from her head as she went. “It’s laudanum you need?”
“Yes.” Relief expanded in his chest. Oh, Forsythia, you knew I needed you.
Gently she pushed past Henry and Jesse to the cabinet, then moved to Adam’s side with the correct bottle in hand. “How many drops?”
“Try ten to start.”
“Here you are, dear one.” Forsythia laid a hand on the little girl’s shaking shoulder. “Open your mouth. That’s it. This will help.” She dispensed the dosage, and the child lay back, still trembling but quieted by Forsythia’s touch.
Forsythia set the bottle aside and took off her coat. “An open break, then?”
“Yes.” Adam checked beneath the cloth he’d been pressing. “The bleeding’s slowing a little. As soon as the laudanum takes effect, we need to set her leg.” He glanced around. “Henry, can you go into the store and get a tally of who is here and what their injuries are? I need to know who needs care most urgently.”
Caldwell nodded and disappeared through the door, relief on his face.
Good. His friend excelled at organization and managing people, but clearly not so much with medicine.
The little girl’s eyelids fluttered, the pain relaxing from her face.
“Jesse, I’ll need you to help hold her leg.”
His nephew stepped near. “S-sorry I c-couldn’t find the laudanum.” His face twisted in regret.
“That’s all right.” Adam smiled and shifted the child’s leg into position. “Perhaps I should just make Miss Nielsen my official nurse. Forsythia, you hold her shoulders. Jesse, I need all your weight across her ankles.” He glanced at the child’s mother. “Ma’am, you may not want to watch this.”
With a shudder, the woman turned away.
“Ready?” At his assistants’ nods, Adam clenched his jaw and pulled. A horrible grating sound, then a click. Despite the laudanum, the little girl tensed and cried out.
“There.” He released a breath. This was never a doctor’s favorite chore, but the bone had been set back into place. “Now we just need to close the wound.”
Forsythia was already gathering his suturing supplies. How did she even know where they were? Adam sent Jesse to monitor the front door, where more patients were already assembled, then started cleaning and stitching the little girl’s leg back together.
Henry Caldwell stepped back in from the store. “We’ve got an older man who got caught under the saloon when it collapsed. He doesn’t say much, but his chest—” The attorney shook his head. “It doesn’t look good. Otherwise, some possible broken arms and head injuries. The rest seem mostly minor.”
“Thank you.” Adam tied off the stitching. “Jesse, help bring in that older man.”
Jesse and another young man hauled in a wizened little man who must have been out in these parts long before most settlers arrived. He wore a bulky coat and an uncomplaining expression, which was probably why Adam hadn’t noticed him earlier. But when he got the coat off and opened up the old man’s shirt, Adam drew a sharp breath. Deep bruises and lacerations covered his chest.
“It’s bad, ain’t it?” The older man gave a resigned sigh and winced at the effort. “Well, I had a good life.”
Forsythia met Adam’s gaze over the man’s head, her eyes anxious.
Adam set his stethoscope in his ears and listened to the man’s lungs, then gently palpitated his ribs.
“Yow,” the man yelped. “If a man’s gotta go, let him go easy.”
“I wouldn’t set your affairs in order just yet.” Adam removed his earpieces and smiled. “You’ve got some cracked ribs, which will make breathing painful for some time, I’m afraid. But as best I can tell, your lungs are intact.”
The old man blinked up at him. “You mean
