Breath of Yesterday (The Curse Series) (13 page)

C
HAPTER
16

T
he muffled voices of the men bending over the sickbed plus the poor lighting in the tiny cottage only increased the notion of sickness and death. I stood in a corner, stiffening up and wishing I were somewhere else—or, more precisely, somewhere else in time.

“Have to do something. He’s running a fever and hasn’t been responsive since last night.”

There were animated gestures all around.

“Which is why we brought this woman here. She won’t dare let any harm come to Fingal—not if she values her own life,” Blair thundered, dragging me from my corner. The dark-headed Scot looked tired. His long hair covered his back in a limp, matted mess, and there were deep shadows around his eyes. “Now, go attend to him!” he commanded, shoving me toward the narrow, low-lying bed on which Fingal rested.

So this was Payton’s dad. He was big and strong with thinning white hair framing his face. His white beard lent his face something powerful and extraordinary, and it was easy to imagine him as the clan leader.

For how much longer, though? His skin had yellowed, and thick beads of sweat covered his forehead and upper lip. His closed eyelids twitched as though he were having a bad dream. A wide, blood-soaked strip of fabric covered the wound on his chest. The rest of his body lay hidden under a rough blanket.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Tell me what you need, and get to work!”

Blair looked at me expectantly, as if I could heal his dad by the sheer power of my thoughts alone. Yet I wasn’t even sure that he could be saved in a modern hospital. The dirt in and around the wound alone would probably cause an infection. Still, I had no choice but to tend to him. By the looks of it, I was the best chance he had right now. Poor guy.

I could feel the men’s eyes boring holes into my back, but I tried to direct all of my attention to Fingal. “Can we take him outside?” I asked. “If you want me to help him, I will need more light.” I swatted away a fly that kept landing on the blood-soaked bandage, and I wrinkled my nose at the sight of the rags full of dried blood covering the floor. “Besides, it would be best to clean his bedstead. He’ll never get well with all these bugs around,” I added, while Sean and Blair quickly set about getting the old man ready to be moved.

The bed was nothing more than a few planks of wood nailed together and attached to the wall. So the men simply first carried the kitchen table outside, and then Fingal, gently placing him on the tabletop.

Full of doubt, I stepped up to the table and looked into the faces of the men around me. I stopped on Payton’s face. To see the pain on it was terrible. He held his dad’s frail hand and nodded for me to get started.

“I need hot water. We need to wash out the wound.”

Ross immediately lit a fire and hung a kettle of water over it.

Nothing here reminded me of my favorite hospital drama,
Grey’s Anatomy,
and Ross didn’t exactly look like Dr. Avery, either. Regardless, here at this table I would have to summon all of the knowledge I’d acquired watching that show. Unfortunately, I really was Fingal’s best bet.

My fingers shook as I slowly lifted the blood-soaked strip of fabric, and I sure was glad that my patient was unconscious. With every inch that I lifted the bandage, I tore open the scab and reopened the wound. Biting my lip, I tried to focus and keep the damage to a minimum.

When I had finally removed the cloth, I was drenched in sweat. The arrow shaft protruding out at me made me feel sick to the stomach. The flesh around the point of entry was inflamed and oozing. I had to force myself not to turn away—and
not
to throw up. The arrow needed to be removed, that much was certain.

“How far in did the arrow go?” I asked, trying to ignore my queasy stomach. I thought maybe I should fess up now that I had passed out in biology class when we had to dissect a frog.

“Quite far in,” Sean said. “It would be easier to take out if it had gone clean through, but this way…”

“All right, do you have any alcohol? I have to disinfect the wound,” I said, trying to focus on the task. Shit, I was about to hurl—and I hadn’t even started.

The brothers stared at me as though I’d just asked for a drink.

Oh gosh! Of course they had never heard of germs and bacteria, and they’d probably never disinfected anything in their lives. I needed to keep it simple. “Do you have any whiskey?”

Immediately everyone’s face lit up, and Sean disappeared inside the cottage, emerging a moment later with a cup of the stuff.

I poured some of it into the wound, and Fingal winced. He was still unconscious. He thrashed around, groaning with pain, but didn’t come to.

“Hold on to him, or else he will fall off!” I yelled while trying to keep Fingal from falling. The strain had caused my hair to fall into my face, and I blew it out of my eyes. I could tell that Sean and Payton felt the tension, too, but they motioned for me to continue.

“What are you waiting for? Get started already!” Blair barked.

“I am starting, but I can’t promise that I won’t cause him any more harm.”

Blair grabbed me by the shoulders, and I flinched under his iron grip.

“Don’t you dare!” he hissed, tightening his hold as I resisted.

“Ow! You’re crazy! Let go!” I shrieked.

A moment later my head exploded in pain, and all the air was squeezed from my lungs as I hit the ground. I tasted blood, and my cheek burned like hell. Feeling woozy, I patted down my face and made a pathetic attempt at sitting up. A kilt was swinging right in front of my nose, and a pair of muscular calves blocked my field of vision.

“
Seas!
Leave her alone, Blair! Touch her one more time, and—” Payton descended angrily on his brother. He had protectively planted himself in front of me with his fists on his hips.

“And what, Payton? If this peasant woman thinks she can get out of helping us, then she is mistaken,” the oldest said in a dark and threatening voice.

“Look at the girl, Blair. She
will
help us.”

The adrenaline coursing through my veins gave me the strength to get up and face this god-awful task.

“I will, of course, do my best, but I can’t work miracles. If I could, I certainly wouldn’t be here right now. The arrow has to come out—otherwise the wound will get infected. But maybe it’s sealing a damaged blood vessel, in which case Fingal could bleed to death if I pull it out.”

I couldn’t say for sure if that was a real risk, but I had seen that situation on TV. Too bad for Fingal that his life depended on me. Me, who had acquired all of her medical knowledge from a television series.

I scrambled back to my feet. All eyes were on me. My lower jaw still stung from the mighty slap I had received. Dammit, it really hurt! I still couldn’t see clearly. Luckily, Payton reached out a hand to help me up. Nobody had ever hit me like that before in my life—all right, maybe Ross when he punched me that first day. The longer I thought about it, the less I wanted to know what lay ahead of me in the coming days.

With all the dignity I could muster, I tried to block out Blair’s hostile presence. Not that long ago this imposing Scotsman had fought right by my side. Was it wrong to refer to something that would happen in the very distant future as having happened not that long ago? All this dwelling on our highly unusual circumstance wasn’t getting me anywhere, though. In the here and now, Blair and I weren’t exactly the best of friends. And the burning handprint on my cheek only strengthened that impression. I wasn’t sure whether Payton’s hand on my back was there to support and protect me or whether he wanted to direct me back to the patient. Whichever it was, his touch was comforting.

I finally pushed my confusing thoughts aside, gathered all of my courage, grabbed ahold of the arrow, and tried to pull it out of Fingal’s chest at a right angle—as carefully and evenly as possible.

Shit, it was in deep! I’d never have thought that someone with such a long piece of wood sticking out of his chest could even survive for that long. Dried blood covered the arrow shaft, and I was woozy again. I felt a droplet of sweat run down my cheek, and with every beat of my heart there seemed to be ever more blood spurting from Fingal’s chest. My stomach tightened.

I had pulled a good bit of the shaft out already, but still I couldn’t see the arrowhead. More and more blood ran over my trembling fingers and oozed onto the table. Sweat seeped into my eyes, and I tried to blink.

“You’re doing great. Take your time,” somebody mumbled beside me. I hadn’t noticed him before because I was so absorbed in my work.

I briefly glanced at the newcomer and swallowed hard. Right away I recognized who it was.

“Honestly, Kyle was the handsomest of us all. He was pretty cute even as a baby, and he just got better looking with every year.”

Payton’s words from a different era echoed inside my head as I looked into his younger brother’s face. Kyle McLean. The sixteen-year-old who would pay for Nathaira Stuart’s plan with his life. He resembled Payton, but his features were softer, smoother. He was truly beautiful, and he would become an even more beautiful man once he lost those final traces of childhood.

But that would never happen. He would not grow up to be a man. It was his destiny to die by Nathaira’s hand. Soon.

“Keep going, woman! Get it done already!” Blair’s angry voice pulled me back into the present.
This
present. I smiled at Kyle, thanking him for his encouragement, and focused all of my attention back on Fingal.

Finally, I spotted the metal tip and slowly, carefully removed it from the wound. The men around the table inhaled deeply as I handed over the sharp, metallic culprit. Again I poured whiskey into the wound canal, and this time it took the strength of several men to hold Fingal down on the table. The alcohol had to burn terribly inside the deep wound, but I had no choice. Luckily, no artery seemed to have been damaged, because the blood flow started slowing down. I imagined that Fingal would have died already had one of his vital organs been hurt, and so I assumed that the biggest threat right now was an infection.

“I want to keep the wound as clean as possible,” I explained. “We’ll need clean rags.”

Immediately someone handed me assorted rags and strips of fabric, but none of them seemed suitable.

“No, I need to boil them first. Is the water hot enough?”

Following Payton’s nod, I took the cleanest-looking pieces of cloth and tore them into wide strips. Then I remembered something my mother had told me when I’d handed her a bunch of yellow yarrow during one of our camping trips. She’d said:

“Back in the old days, they used to make an infusion of ferns and yarrow to wash out wounds. Can you imagine?” Then she had told me to lick my fingers, and when I did and pulled a disgusted face, she had laughed. Those were the bitter compounds, she explained, to which yarrow owed its anti-inflammatory and healing properties.

I probably would have forgotten all about it if I hadn’t been reminded of that unpleasant bitter taste every time I spotted the little yellow flowers by the side of the road.

“If we could find some ferns or yarrow, I think it would be good to boil them together with the rags,” I thought aloud while adding the makeshift bandages to the boiling kettle.

“Medicinal plants? That’s no problem. We can send McRae out later to collect some. He knows every single blade of grass out here on his pastures. You’ll have to change the bandages regularly anyway, right?”

“Right. I’ll make an herbal infusion later, then. In the meantime, I will clean his wound as best I can.”

While unrolling the piping-hot strips of fabric and pressing them into the wound canal, I burned my fingers pretty badly. Carefully, I cleaned around the edge of the wound and dabbed off the dried, caked blood. Payton stood opposite me, passing me the boiled, sterile rags and observing my every move. Kyle, standing beside me, took the bloodied, dirty pieces of cloth I handed to him.

I had done my best. It wasn’t much, but I didn’t know what else I could do for Fingal. Relieved, I took a step back and put my hands on my hips.

“Done. Now to bandage him up. His body will have to do the rest.”

Together Payton and Kyle lifted Fingal’s upper body so that I could wrap the long fabric strips around his chest. This turned out to be harder than I expected, because the strips were wet and kept slipping through my fingers. After what felt like an eternity, I finally managed to tie it all up in a knot. I looked at what I had accomplished and felt satisfied.

My mother, a nurse at Milford Hospital, would throw up her hands in horror at seeing this, but I was pretty proud of myself. At least my patient was still breathing.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up. It was Kyle, and he was smiling at me.

“Aye, you’ve done well.”

His honest, open smile made me light up, and my fingers finally stopped shaking.

“Thank you. I—”

He cut me off by thrusting a silver flask into my hands.

“There! Drink—you deserve it.”

I sniffed the opening of the bottle and was met by the overpowering fumes of alcohol. Carefully, I took a small sip. The whiskey burned its way down my throat. My eyes welled up, but the alcohol immediately kindled a warm and comforting fire in my belly. With Kyle smiling his encouragement, I took another sip. After all the stress of the past few hours, I enjoyed suddenly feeling pleasantly light-headed. I breathed in the clear, crisp air and closed my eyes for just a moment before being rudely jostled back to reality.

I clumsily stumbled to the side. I was apparently invisible to Blair, who had bumped into me while he and Sean carried Fingal back into the stuffy little cottage. The responsibility that these Scots had bestowed upon me left me no choice but to follow them inside. I checked the bandage to make sure it was holding firmly. Then I felt Fingal’s forehead.

The arrow had been stuck in him for too long, contaminating the wound. Payton’s dad was already running a fever, and I prayed that his body temperature wouldn’t rise any further.