Die Once Live Twice (13 page)

“You cheated!” Edward hollered and swung at Andrew, bringing the whole bar to surround the table. Edward knocked Andrew down, but was soon on the floor, in the hands of Andrew’s henchmen. Andrew rose to his knees, pointing a gun at Patrick. Out of the crowd, a red-haired woman pushed her way to Andrew and grabbed his gun hand. “Andy. Back off. I know this man. He doesn’t want trouble. He can afford the loss.”

Patrick watched the scene unfold in front of him with an open mouth and glazed eyes. He was still in his chair when the woman came over to him. “Hello, Patrick.”

“Patricia,” Patrick finally croaked. “I’m amazed. What in the hell are you doing in Bradford?”

Patricia laughed and turned to the crowd. “Everybody, get back to the bar and drink. Show’s over. Andy, give me a couple of minutes with this gentleman. Don’t go away now.”

Patricia led Patrick to a small room off to one side. “Welcome to my office. Make yourself comfortable.”

Patrick looked around, but there was only one chair. He didn’t want to stay long anyway. “I see that you’ve gone into business for yourself.”

“I own the two brothels on Main Street. Your money bought them! Andy is my personal customer.”

Patrick looked out to see Edward, Arthur, and Tommy staring at him in wonderment. “I—I should get back to my friends, but thank you for intervening there.” He turned as if to leave, but then turned back, fidgeting. “Patricia...Katherine told me...that...you were pregnant with my child. Do I have a child with you?”

Patricia smiled grimly. “No, Patrick. I was lying. I figured if I won you I would be pregnant shortly. I did love you, Patrick.” Patrick was looking at the floor and remained silent. “Well, Patrick, get out of here. I must go service Andy to quell his anger. I can get him to pay me that last pot. Once again, I’ll prosper by your mistakes.” She leaned over and kissed him fully on his lips.

Arthur came forward as Patrick walked slowly to the table. He grabbed Patrick’s arm. “Was that who I think it was?”

Patrick nodded. “Let’s get back to the hotel. We can never tell Katherine about this. Forget it happened, if you value my friendship in the slightest.”

On the fourth day of the hunt, a storm hit without warning. “Must have blown in from Buffalo,” said their guide, a man named Grady Middleton. Caught in the storm’s thick sheets of snow and powerful winds, the men were stuck near the top of Mount Alton, trying to work their horses down the mountain. After two of the horses fell and Arthur was thrown, Patrick yelled at Middleton, “We can’t make it. We need to find some shelter.”

Middleton nodded back over his shoulder to Patrick and shouted, “I know a hermit’s shack nearby. Follow me.” He yanked his horse’s bridle to the left.

As the men turned their horses toward Middleton, the two pack mules broke free and disappeared into the woods. “Damn you, Tommy,” Edward yelled. “Didn’t you tie them to your horse when the storm hit?”

“Let them go,” Patrick yelled. “We need to stay with Grady.”

Middleton led them to a small grove of trees that gave shelter from the wind. “Hobble the horses and rope them together,” he ordered and pointed. “Stack the saddles behind that tree.” When the horses were organized, Middleton lifted two bags of deer meat over his shoulder and pointed again, this time toward a ladder leading up a sheer dirt and stone hillside. The men strapped their saddle blankets to their backs and climbed up thirty rungs with snow blowing in their face, the wind fighting to blow them off the ladder.

As Middleton crawled off the top rung onto the deep snow covering the small plateau, a shot rang out. He fired three quick shots into the air. “That’s my signal. We’re safe now.” The hermit Middleton had mentioned, barely five feet tall with a dirty beard hanging to his waist, came out and waved them into his shack, which was no more than four wooden walls and a pitched roof without insulation. Wind whistled through cracks and wooden shutters across windows covered with oil paper, which barely kept the snow out. The men huddled around a pot-bellied stove in the center of the room. The hermit, dressed in a ragged shirt and trousers, topped by a leather vest lined with sheep’s wool, threw some more logs on a fireplace that provided little heat to the shack.

Grady gave a sack of deer meat to the hermit, who took it outside to a cave guarded by a large rock that prevented animals from digging their way inside. Grady emptied out the second sack and Arthur skewered the hindquarters of a young buck with a long metal spear he found by the fireplace. Grady stayed by the fire to turn the meat on the hermit’s makeshift spit. Edward, Tommy, and Arthur sat around the stove and Edward poured whiskey for each of them, Middleton and the hermit, who took his cup with a grunt and turned away.

“Does this hermit have a well?” Patrick asked Middleton as they stood by the fireplace. “I’m very thirsty.”

Grady pointed to the opposite wall. “Out there, round the back.”

Patrick pulled on his overcoat and his hat. “Be right back,” he said to his friends.

“Don’t get lost,” Edward teased.

“I’ll keep one hand on the wall of the house,” Patrick shot back.

Outside, the storm had not let up. Patrick rounded the corner of the house, leaning into the wind, and saw a small round stone well. When he got closer, he saw a pail on a rope covered by snow. Emptying the snow from the pail, he lowered it into the well, pulled it back up and had a long drink. He needed to urinate. There was an outhouse a few yards away, but it was not worth the walk. Opening his trousers, he turned the snow yellow. As he moved back toward the house he stopped and drank again from the pail. Comfortable now, he headed toward the warmth of the shack.

Two hours later, Edward, Tommy and Arthur were passed out from whiskey, sleeping on their saddle blankets. The hermit was asleep on his mattress. Grady and Patrick were finishing a cup of coffee in front of the fireplace. “Why don’t you drink whiskey?” Middleton asked.

“Haven’t had any since the war. I promised my wife I wouldn’t drink anymore.” Middleton nodded knowingly, bid Patrick good night, and the two lay down on their saddle blankets.

In the morning the storm was gone and the men rode down the mountain back into Bradford. That evening, while his friends returned to the Royal Flush Saloon, Patrick stayed in his hotel room. He wanted no risk of seeing Patricia. Besides, he wasn’t feeling good about this trip. He tried to sleep, but was too restless. He wanted to be home and in his bed with Katherine.

On the train ride home, however, Patrick began feeling worse. He did not leave his compartment even when the other three men played cards in the lounge car. He felt feverish, and wracked his brain to remember if he’d been bitten by something, an insect or an animal. Nothing came to mind, and as his body and brain became an inferno, he began to feel a sense of impending catastrophe.

Chapter Twelve

W
hen Patrick arrived home, Katherine was so startled by his appearance that she blurted out, “You look awful.”

“I feel awful,” Patrick replied. “Everything hurts. My head is throbbing, I’m hot, I’m sick to my stomach. All I want to do is go to bed.”

Katherine helped him undress and get into bed. He was like a rag doll, which particularly worried Katherine. She knew no one with more energy then her husband. She immediately sent Pollard to fetch Doctor Agnew and bring him to Patrick.

D. Hayes Agnew arrived within the hour, always most attentive to the Donovan family. Katherine had long ago forgotten her vilification of him when her mother was dying, for she had come to revere him for his care and attention to her grandfather during his illness and death, as well as his devoted concern about Patrick’s father when he was dying from his fractured hip.

Patrick told Agnew that he had a headache, his arms and legs felt weak and achy, and he had no appetite. When Agnew opened Patrick’s shirt, he saw red spots on his chest and abdomen. He placed his new thermometer, a six-inch long tube filled with mercury, under Patrick’s armpit and held it there for five minutes. This was a great improvement over the old thermometer, which was a foot long and needed to be held in place for twenty minutes. Patrick’s temperature was 103 degrees. Holding Patrick’s wrist, Agnew felt a slow pulse. Without any other examination, Agnew knew the diagnosis. Nearly a hundred thousand soldiers had died of this disease in the war, and it was a common infection among civilians, too.

Doctor Agnew straightened and gravely told Patrick and Katherine that Patrick had typhoid. “About one in three patients do not survive this disease.” Katherine gasped and put her hand to her mouth, and Agnew hurriedly added, “There’s no reason I can see that he shouldn’t recover, but he will be sick for two to three more weeks.”

When Patrick described his trip to Agnew, the doctor became convinced that the hermit’s well water was the cause of Patrick’s infection. The nearby outhouse no doubt hosted infected feces, and bacteria had traveled through underground water to the well. The hermit probably carried the Salmonella typhi bacteria. Aware of Pasteur’s recent discovery of germs, Agnew made it a point to study bacteria himself and had seen the typhoid bacteria in a microscope.

Patrick had swallowed a billion bacteria with every drink from the pail. By now they had multiplied in his body to two trillion germs that were waging war in every one of Patrick’s organs. With typhoid the damage was particularly in the gastrointestinal tract. Agnew had seen white blood cells engulf bacteria in his microscope, and the scientists believed that they attacked the cell wall and caused the bacteria to implode. The strength of Patrick’s immune system compared to the strength and number of bacteria would determine the winner of this war.

Agnew spelled out the treatment for Patrick. Patrick’s temperature would rise every afternoon to as high as 104 or 105 degrees. The room must be cooled to around sixty degrees. Patrick was to be immersed in a cold bath to his neck every three hours. To minimize his dehydration, Emma or Katherine would need to continuously give him water. His stomach would be fragile, so he was to be fed broth and soft light foods.

“He’s likely to become disoriented and even somewhat incoherent,” Agnew said to Katherine. “Since he will become incontinent, skin care is critical. Pollard should turn him every hour, or bed sores will develop and then all could be lost. His teeth may chatter and he may shiver from the high temperature, but he must be put in the bath anyway. Every three hours. After the bath, give him a small glass of cognac.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Pollard interrupted, “but Mr. Patrick doesn’t drink any type of whiskey. He promised Mrs. Katherine.”

Agnew thought to himself that was a shame. If Patrick drank whiskey he would not have gone out to the well. “I know of his vow, Pollard.” Agnew explained that cognac was not a whiskey. “It is medicine. A restorative for his apathy that is absolutely necessary.” Pollard nodded dubiously.

Katherine sat numb as she listened to all these instructions, writing them on her notepad. Her sense of foreboding was so strong she could only nod her acknowledgement to Doctor Agnew.

Agnew turned to Emma. “Patrick’s gums may turn black and his breath foul. His mouth has to be cleaned regularly with moist linen cloths. After you clean his mouth, give him this.” Agnew handed her a bottle of liquid, a mixture of iodine, potassium iodide, quinine, and aspirin. “Iodine will kill bacteria in the bowel, quinine will ease the muscle ache and aspirin will lower his temperature,” he explained.

Finally, Agnew lectured the entire room that Patrick would develop diarrhea. He would have six to eight stools a day which were putrid and the color of pea soup. The stools were full of germs, so everyone should wash with soap and alcohol after changing the bedding or handling Patrick. The bedding and his soiled bedclothes were to be burned.

After prescribing Patrick’s care, Agnew spent several minutes comforting Katherine and Patrick, trying to give them hope that Patrick would survive. He assured them he would return daily.

During the first few days home, Patrick was quite good in the mornings, able to chat with Katherine and even take short walks with her. Patrick could bathe himself in the cold water. Katherine would bring the boys to visit him in the morning and after their visit Emma would bathe them thoroughly. Although the estate was quarantined, Edward came by twice to visit, as did Arthur. In the afternoons, Patrick’s mind was edgy, and his fever rose to 102 degrees and beyond. When that happened, his dizziness confined him to bed. Katherine was certain this would pass.

The second week was dreadful. All of Doctor Agnew’s predictions came true. Patrick often lapsed into a stupor, and when awake he was delusional. His gums blackened and he developed diarrhea and incontinence. The whole house smelled foul. Pollard now carried him to the bath. Katherine and Emma forced fluids and his medicine into his throat. Katherine’s optimism turned to doubt and now she pleaded with God for this to pass. She kept reminding herself that Patrick’s body had fought off infection with his war injury and hoped that his body would prevail again.