17
Kevin’s consciousness returned in a few grim flashes, each lanced by pain. The first flash he feared was a mirage. Hester Lear, the former Charlotte militia he had helped settle in Overpass, appeared directly above his head. She called something to people he could not see, then consciousness swam away with the cool creek waters. The second flash was much worse. He woke to a tearing sound combined with a searing, white-hot burst. He screamed, or wanted to, but he only heard a high-pitched whine and had to assume it was his.
“Easy, man, easy.” Caleb’s face hovered above him. “Zeke has to peel away your trouser and apply a field dressing. We’ve got to stop the bleeding.”
None of the words made sense. Zeke was with Caleb and Hester was in Charlotte. The only item strong enough to defy the pain was his thirst. He tried to ask for water, but he was already gone.
Even so, the next time he rose to awareness, the nozzle of a water skin was fit between his teeth. “Drink, Kevin. That’s it—no, easy, slow down, you’ll choke.”
He drank and coughed and drank and gasped until the effort drained him and the blackness swallowed him whole.
When he next awoke, the world bumped and blurred and he saw everything from a slanted perspective. None of his limbs worked. Then something jostled his leg, and the pain cleared his vision. He realized he was lashed to the hind quarters of a horse, behind the saddle, slumped forward with his arms tied around the rider. The man in the saddle was small and lean and incredibly strong. He grunted with the strain of taking Kevin’s weight. The horse’s flanks were lathered.
Kevin heard a woman call out, “Time to shift.”
“Another mile,” the man gasped.
“Zeke, your horse is about done.”
“His leg is leaking. The bandage is soaked through. If we don’t get him . . .”
Kevin wanted to tell them to slow down, the thumping motion banged his leg. He thought they might like to know his leg didn’t hurt so bad anymore. But he did not have the strength to keep his eyelids open, much less shape the words. This time the blackness seemed to welcome him home.
Kevin’s dreams were tiny shards, so slippery they came and went in sparks of light and pain. Then he awoke, and he was certain of two things. First, that he was truly back. Second, that he was going to make it. The feeling was so exquisite he sighed noisily.
“Well, well. Now you choose to wake. After we have struggled to shift you onto the bed and before I am finished with my work. Which means you are both stubborn and foolish!”
His leg throbbed noisily, but his thirst was stronger. Kevin took that as a good sign. He pried his dry lips apart and whispered his first word in eons. “Water.”
“Yes, yes. Of course.” The man slipped a glass straw between his lips. As Kevin drank, what he saw registered clearly. The man’s black hair was flecked with silver, as was his trimmed beard. His dark eyes were warm and sparked by intelligence and something else—humor perhaps. “Slow, slow, there is no rush. You are safe.”
When Kevin sucked out the last drop, the doctor took back the glass and lifted a pitcher. As he did so, Kevin saw his hands and forearms were streaked with blood. When the doctor fitted the straw back into place, he saw the direction of Kevin’s gaze and said, “Be glad you had any blood left to stain me with.”
He drank until he could not swallow again, then shifted his head and asked, “My friends?”
“Such questions I hear from my patients when they wake. Yesterday I bring a man back from the brink of death and what does he ask? Where is his dog. How I am supposed to know about an animal? But I tell him the beast is fine. He sleeps again. Two hours he sleeps. Because he hears some hairy object is safe.” He moved out of Kevin’s line of sight. “You, it is friends. This I can answer. Your friends, they are exhausted. The small one, he must be made of iron. Now he is stretched out on my floor. I would think he is dead, but he is snoring. And in all my medical training, never have I heard of a corpse who can snore. At least, not so loudly as this one.”
Kevin recalled hearing about a new doctor who had set up shop in Overpass. The man’s name escaped him, but he remembered that someone had pointed him out as a genuine curiosity. He had come as part of a group of Orthodox Jewish refugees, driven from somewhere north. The man’s heritage was not what made him curious, however. It was the fact that everyone he had treated spoke of him in glowing terms. A doctor who healed, they said. What was more, a doctor who cared.
Kevin doubted the man could recognize him. He had always volunteered for the more dangerous boundary regions, both because he liked the challenge of solitude and because it brought him into contact with the most vulnerable of refugees. People who feared even the relative safety of Overpass. People who would perish if he could not help.
The doctor broke into his thoughts by asking, “Where is your home, young man?”
“Catawba enclave.”
“A good enough place by all accounts.” He continued to work below the rim of Kevin’s vision, tugging gently on his flesh. “I would go there. For my children. But my wife . . .”
Kevin spoke because he sensed it was expected of him. “Catawba is very different from here.”
“That I believe. And why is that? Because they grow them big in Catawba! That is the only reason I am working with needle and thread, and not a saw. Because of how they grow you men in Catawba! The muscle of your leg saved your foot, young man. And what muscle there is! Do the Catawba women also grow such muscle?”
“Of course not. And not all the men either. I knew this already. The small man snoring on my floor is testimony, yes? My teachers would be ashamed of such a question.” He tugged and snipped and tugged and snipped. “You are a trader, yes?”
“My friends are. I am . . . a guard.”
“A worthy profession in such times as these. The man with your wagon came in earlier. He rode much slower than the little one who snores in my other room. He said to tell you that Gus was helping to settle them in. That is another good man, the sheriff. What is it you bring to sell?”
“Corn whiskey. Brandy.”
“So much business you bring me! I should treat you for free. But my wife . . .” He stitched and tugged and snipped again. “And so I remain, and one patient comes in with a head wound. Don’t drink the whiskey, I tell him. And if you must drink, don’t fight. And if you must fight, bring silver!”
The doctor moved into his vision and glowered. “You and your friends, you have silver, yes?”
“We have applejack.”
“Humph. Yes. All right. But don’t tell my wife. Now you must turn over. No, no, wait, let me help. Good. Such a mangling that trap gave your leg. Thank goodness you are muscled and not skinny like your snoring friend. Where was I?”
“Silver.”
“No, no, no. Business! You really must pay better attention. The man leaves and a woman comes in, she tells me, ‘Oh, oh, my liver, like a balloon it is swollen.’ I say stop drinking the alcoholic beverage for a month. Eat no fat, no butter, no meat, no salt. Fruit and nut and dark bread only. Drink nothing but water. She returns a month later. ‘Doctor, you’re a miracle worker! Look at me, I’m fine!’ I say, ‘No, your body is the worker of miracles.’” He tapped Kevin’s thigh with a bloody finger. “Just as yours better be, my muscular young friend, if you ever want to walk without a limp.”
“I won’t lose my leg?”
“Who can say? You must lie and rest. Soon you will walk with the cane I shall give you. After that, who knows what can happen. You could be shot! And then what? You lose more than your leg, that’s what! But from this injury, no, I think your leg will stay where it belongs. And so much leg there is here!”
The pain came and went in waves timed to the doctor’s needle. But it was bearable now, almost comforting. And this time, when the darkness returned, Kevin greeted it as he would a familiar friend.