the shirt. Instead, she used the scissors to slice the sleeve open from below his shoulder to above his wrist. It was fine fabric, that she could tell, and she regretted having to cut it. But what disconcerted her more was his steady gaze; while she tried to focus all her attention on revealing the wound, she felt that he was studying her, from her green eyes to the dark brown ringlets of her hair, escaping, yet again, from under the white bonnet. She knew that she had begun to blush again, and though she would have liked to will the blood back down from her cheek, there was nothing she could do.
Once the shirtsleeve had fallen open, she was able to see that the flesh had been torn away, but the bullet did not appear to have penetrated the bone, or even the muscle very deeply. It was hard for her to know, as the hospital never saw wounds of that particular nature, and even when somewhat similar injuries did occur-one elderly lady had been accidentally pierced by a fireplace poker-the surgeon seldom if ever allowed a nurse to assist in any significant way.
“What do you think?” the lieutenant asked her. “Will I live to fight another day?”
Eleanor was not used to being spoken to in such a playful way, much less by a man to whom she was in such close proximity… and whose bloody arm was exposed. An arm that she, in fact, had been the one to expose.
Instead, she briskly turned to the bureau, removed a clean cotton rag and a bottle of carbolic acid, and began to daub at the wound. The blood had largely caked, and it came off in flakes, which she deposited in an enameled basin atop the bureau. As she did so, the wound was gradually more revealed to her, and she could see that the skin had been sufficiently broken that stitches would be required for it to knit properly together again.
“Yes,” she finally said, “you will live, but I hope not to fight again.” She fetched a fresh cloth. “You will need to see a proper surgeon, though.”
“Why?” He glanced down at his arm. “It doesn't look so bad to me.”
“The wound will need to be closed, and that will require stitches-the sooner, the better.”
He smiled, and though she knew he was ducking his head to try to catch her eye, she kept her gaze averted.
“Is tonight too soon?” he said.
“As I've said, at this hour there is no doctor here.”
“I meant you, Miss…?”
“Ames,” she said. “Nurse Eleanor Ames.”
“Can't you do it, Nurse Eleanor Ames?”
Eleanor was nonplussed. No one had ever suggested such a thing. A woman-even if she was a nurse- mending the bullet wound of a soldier, under no one's aegis but her own? She felt her face turn as scarlet as his uniform.
Lieutenant Copley laughed. “It's my arm, and if I believe you can do it, why shouldn't you?”
She glanced up, into his face, and saw a great, gleaming smile, tousled blond hair, and a fine, pale moustache-the kind you might see on a young man determined to make himself look older.
“But I'm only a nurse, and not yet done with my probationary training.”
“Ever sewn a garment?”
“Many times. But this is-”
“And could you do any worse than the regiment's surgeon, whose specialty is pulling teeth? At least, unlike our good Dr. Phillips, you're not drunk.” He touched her hand and said, in a conspiratorial tone, “You're not, are you?”
Despite herself, she had to smile. “No, I'm quite sober.”
“Then good. And we certainly don't want the wound festering all night.” He yanked the sleeve free from his wrist and bunched it up at his shoulder. “Now, what do you say we begin?”
Eleanor was utterly torn between her certainty that she was violating her responsibilities and a desire, growing every second, to do something that, in her heart, she felt that she could do. Regardless of the surgeons’ routine dismissals, she had seen enough of their handiwork-often cursorily done-to know that she could match it. But what would Miss Nightingale say if such a gross breach of medical protocol ever came to light?
As if he'd read her mind, the lieutenant said, “No one will ever know.”
“A Lancer's word is as good as his bond,” Rutherford called out from his chair, and Frenchie immediately gestured for him to lower his voice.
Sinclair waited expectantly, his arm bared, a half smile creasing his lips, and when Eleanor poured some water into the basin and began scrubbing her hands with a bar of lye soap, his smile broadened. He knew he had won.
Rutherford got up from his chair, withdrew a silver flask from under his pelisse, and held it out to Sinclair. When Eleanor saw it, she said, “We do have chloroform, and ether.” Which she was very hesitant about administering; this she had never done, and she feared the consequences of a misapplication.
But Rutherford said, “Pshaw! Brandy's the thing. Enough of it, and I've seen men sleep through a leg being taken off.”
Sinclair took the flask, tipped it toward his benefactor, then took a healthy swig.
“Again,” Rutherford said.
Sinclair did as instructed.
“There you go,” Rutherford said, patting him on the shoulder and turning toward Eleanor. “The patient awaits.”
She turned up the gas lamps in the wall sconces and began to withdraw from the bureau drawers the implements she would need-catgut and a sewing needle-then asked Sinclair to lie back on the table so that she could better see the wound. Her hands were shaking as she threaded the sutures through the needle, and Sinclair put out his own hand, on top of hers, and said, in a calming voice, “Steady.”
She swallowed and nodded twice, then continued, slowly and deliberately. She bent low to study the skin, then decided on a plan of action: She would begin at the bottom of the wound, where the skin was most separated, pinch it together, put the needle through, and then, as if completing a hem, stitch upward. It would take, she estimated, no more than eight to ten stitches… though she knew it would prove quite painful for the lieutenant. She would have to work as speedily as she could.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
He had thrown his other arm behind his head, and was resting as if he were lying on a riverbank in June. “Quite.”
She touched the needle to the skin and hesitated several seconds before she could bring herself to put it through. She felt his muscles flex, saw the arm go taut, but he didn't say a word. She knew that he was loath to appear anything but stoic in front of his companions… or, she suspected, in front of her. She drew the flap of skin from the other side closer, put the needle through that, too, and then, as if holding a pinch of salt between her fingers, held both together as the needle came back in the other direction. She had seen patients, in the midst of painful procedures, often look away, as if focusing on some idyllic, faraway vision, but his eyes, she could tell, were fixed- in that same way-upon her.
She drew the needle through again, and again, and again, and the wound gradually closed, until it was more of a puckered scar running several inches up his arm. When she had finished, she tied off the knot, but rather than biting it off, as she would have done with ordinary thread, she used the tailor's scissors to cut it short. Finally, she glanced up at his face; his forehead was gleaming with sweat, and the smile wavered on his lips, but he had not flinched.
“That should hold,” she said, turning to dispose of the leftover suture. She gently coated the skin with the carbolic acid once more, then took a clean bandage from the bureau and wrapped it tightly around the arm. “You may sit up, if you like.”
He took a deep breath, then, without leaning on his right arm for support, sat up. For a second, due to the effects of the surgery, the brandy, or both, he swayed from one side to the other, and Frenchie and Rutherford quickly stubbed out their cigars and came to steady him.
And that was how Miss Florence Nightingale found them.
She stood like a pillar of rectitude in a long, hooped skirt, with her black hair perfectly and severely parted down the middle, her pale hands crossed in front of her. Her dark eyes, under high uplifted brows, flitted from the soldiers, who appeared no doubt inebriated, to the night nurse, her bonnet askew, her hands wet with water and carbolic acid, then back again. It was as if she were trying to make sense of an elephant in her parlor.
