Dreams of the Red Phoenix (8 page)

A cry sounded from the parlor just then, and Shirley slipped
away from the other two and went in. Charles had correctly
placed the wounded young man on the sofa and propped up his
leg on pillows covered by a rag, but nothing more had been done
for the boy. He bit down on a stick to control the pain as blood
oozed through the tourniquet. Shirley noted that the color had
gone from his face, and his body sweated profusely.

Shirley returned to the hallway and interrupted Captain
Hsu and Lian. “Excuse me, but I will need bandages, Lian. And
boiled water, please. Also, retrieve my medical bag from the far
back of my bedroom closet. Captain, do you have any iodine or
other antiseptic to clean the wound?”

He stared at her blankly and did not reply.

“Something to disinfect a wound?” she repeated. “Your troops
must have basic first-aid supplies.”

“My troops have nothing. We manage the injured with poul
tices and other traditional remedies. We know nothing of West
ern medicine.”

Shirley placed her hands on her hips. “But you do know about
germs? How infections occur in dirty wounds? More often than
not, that is what kills a patient, not the initial injury.”

She glanced around at the beleaguered Chinese and straight
ened her spine. Everyone knew that the average peasant's hy
giene left something to be desired, but now, in this fearful time
when they had left their homes in great haste and traveled on
dusty roads for who knew how long, the bodily smells of the poor
around her bloomed with a frightening putridness. “I swear,” she
muttered as she shook her head, “I sometimes think that I'm liv
ing in the Middle Ages. Ignorance and filth abound! Imagine not
yet grasping the concept of germs.”

The captain straightened up, too. He spoke slowly, his voice
quiet and controlled. “Mrs. Carson, you are welcome to teach us
new things, but we have our own knowledge, too.”

His expression remained dignified as he spoke, and Shirley
immediately recognized a familiar pinched feeling that came
over her quite often here in China: she had once again been utter
ly wrong. She let her hands drop to her sides, and her gaze fell to
the hardwood floor as she recalled her husband admonishing her
at a similar moment.
My darling,
he had said,
the Tsar and Tsarina
were executed for behaving in a less imperious manner than you.

With her head bowed, she said, “I'm sorry, Captain. I apolo
gize for my rudeness. I'm sure that you and your troops are excel
lent at what you do and know a great deal.” She glanced at Lian.
“It's just that this is what I do. I am a nurse. At least I was trained
as one, though I haven't practiced in years.”

“Very good,” he said. “And useful.”

“I will get the bandages now,” Lian said and headed for the
stairs. Dao-Ming, who must have been hiding behind Lian's
back, scurried along after her.

Shirley didn't know what to say to the captain, nor did he
seem to know what to say to her. They stood in the milling crowd
in the hall for several endless moments as Shirley began to notice
that they were the same height. When she raised her chin, their
eyes met on the same plain. She wouldn't have registered such a
thing back home, but here in China, where the people were so
much shorter, this coincidence felt odd and almost intimate.

“Nurse Carson,” he finally said.

No one had called Shirley that since before she had come to
China. She wanted to argue with the captain and insist that he
call her Mrs. Carson instead, but she simply replied, “Yes?”

“We have injured from this morning's skirmish out on the plains
and I assume more to come. I would like to ask for your help.”

“I'm terribly sorry,” she began, “but I need to be with my son,
especially with all this going on.” She waved a hand at the cha
otic scene around them. “I can't go traipsing off to some military
camp up in the hills the way my husband apparently did.”

Captain Hsu stepped closer. “We go wherever the fight takes
us. As soon as the Japanese Imperial Army leaves this town,
which we have reason to believe will be quite soon, I will bring
my injured men to you here in your home. You will not have to
leave the mission.”

“But I have no bandages, no medicines, no beds. Nothing.
And I'm not a doctor. I can't be responsible for the care and treat
ment of an army. That's absurd.”

“Do not think of them as an army. With the Japanese here, my
men will not come to you in uniform but will look like everyone
else. The truth is, they are just country boys, the sons of farmers.
None of us has ever seen a doctor before. Whatever you do to
help us will be more than we have ever received. We just need
care and attention, not complicated medical procedures, though I
will see what supplies I can find. A mother's love would be a most
generous and needed gift to my boys. I am sure your husband
would approve.”

Shirley didn't know what to say. She was about to decline the
captain's request again when Charles called to her from the sec
ond floor.

“Mother, come quick,” he shouted.

She did not hesitate but hurried upstairs. “What is it, Charles?
Are you all right?” she called.

But when she reached the top step, her son looked perfectly
fine. He held a stack of towels and other supplies but managed to
grab her hand and pulled her into his bedroom. Lian was there
already, standing beside the window with several rolls of bandag
es limp in her hands. Dao-Ming clung to her side.

Charles stood close beside Shirley at the window; his large,
damp hand continued to grip hers. She placed her other palm
against the warm windowpane and pressed. When Charles was
young, they would sit on the window seat in the parlor on rainy
days and together trace raindrops with their fingertips. They'd
press their palms to the glass and leave ghostly prints, each trying
to catch the other's shadow before it faded. Now, through the
glass, her hand felt vibrations.

“See them out there,” Charles said. “Aren't they awful?”

The thudding footfalls of Japanese soldiers shook the win
dowpane as they marched in unison on the dirt road outside the
missionary compound. Before them staggered a line of Chinese
men, most in tan Nationalist uniforms but some in peasant cloth
ing, all with their hands and feet in iron chains. The Japanese sol
diers lined the prisoners beside a ditch at a bend in the road that
the Americans passed every time they went to and from market.
The Japanese then took their positions, and Shirley couldn't tell
which one gave the signal, but suddenly a staggering of sharp
retorts sounded as a half-dozen rifles fired in quick succession.
The Chinese fell, their bodies splayed in awkward positions on
the ground. A cloud of yellow dust rose around them and filtered
down onto their bodies, sticking where the blood quickly pooled.
Then the Japanese soldiers sauntered forward, no longer in for
mation, and kicked the Chinese the rest of the way into the ditch.

A high-pitched moan like that of a wounded cat issued from
Dao-Ming. Lian patted her back and cooed reassuring words to
calm her sorrow. Or perhaps it wasn't sorrow the strange girl
expressed but anger, for suddenly Lian had to block her from
charging out of the room and down the stairs. Dao-Ming had
certainly gotten larger since Shirley had last taken notice and
was a more determined creature than she had realized. The girl's
pink cheeks became streaked with tears shed from piercing eyes,
but a surprising fearlessness caused her arms to flail as her voice
mounted into an uncontrolled, vengeful howl.

The Japanese fishmonger's family appeared at the threshold
of Charles's room and bowed their heads out of respect. Old
Tupan Feng pushed past them, his complexion scarlet and his
sword raised.

“We will fight the enemy!” he announced.

“Go back to sleep, Old One,” Lian said. “We don't need your
help. We need only the skilled and the brave. We need only the
good.”

Charles squeezed Shirley's fingers harder and muttered,
“Can't we do something about this, Mother? Really, we must.”

Shirley didn't answer but looked across to Lian in reply.

T
he needle remained steady in Shirley's hand while Lian's
thick, callused fingers on the young man's chest assured the
success of the procedure. Very few people would not follow Li
an's instructions when she spoke in that firm yet reassuring voice.
Shirley was able to concentrate on suturing the wound and left
communication with the patient to her maid.

Nursing had never been right for Shirley. Offering solicitous
or comforting words didn't come naturally, though she had risen
to the occasion when the young Reverend Caleb Carson with a
badly broken arm had been wheeled into the hospital where she
was working. He had tumbled from a ladder while placing the
shiny star atop a massive fir tree on the seminary campus. A more
emblematic accident could not have befallen a more charming
and handsome gentleman, who quickly became her guardian an
gel. He had careened into Shirley's life on Christmas Eve, and
she had tried to live up to his example of headlong goodness ever
since. She tied off the thread now and tried to picture her hus
band's proud, though queasy, expression. Charles had inherited
not only his red hair but also his squeamishness from his father.

“Now we clean it again,” Shirley explained to Lian.

The older woman bent closer as Shirley doused the area with
Mercurochrome. Charles hovered over his mother's shoulder and
seemed as eager and jittery as ever, but to his credit, he had re
mained quiet while the delicate work was being done and hadn't
distracted her.

“Good going, Mother,” he said as she stood and wiped blood
from her hands onto her apron, causing a tremor of disgust
through him. “I had no idea you could do that.”

“There's much a son never knows about his mother,” Shirley
said with a raised eyebrow, unable to hide how pleased she was
with herself. “You can handle the bandaging?” she asked Lian.

Her maid, now her Number One Assistant, nodded. Dao-
Ming, at her side, helped collect the rags that had sopped up the
blood. They would need to reuse them, Shirley realized. Without
proper supplies, they would have to be frugal and clever. She de
cided not to dwell on the difficulties ahead but instead was grate
ful that this one young man appeared in better shape than when
he had hobbled through the front door.

Then she gazed around at the crowded parlor, the packed din
ing room and front hall, and grasped that each person here needed
something—food, water, or medical attention. An ancient grand
father who had been carried in on a stretcher had since died. There
must have been three hundred people in her home, each with his
or her own story of hardship. Shirley pushed aside the muslin cur
tain from a front window and guessed that there had to be several
thousand more Chinese out in the courtyard.

“Mrs. Carson?” a familiar, tentative voice asked.

Shirley turned to greet Reverend Richard Wells, the head of
the mission.

“I wanted to check on how you are doing,” he said. “Very
good of you to open your doors to all these people.”

“Not at all,” she said as she tried to contain a curl fallen from
her bun.

When Shirley had risen that day, she had decided to finally
set aside her mourning garb and instead put on a delicate lace
outfit in anticipation of her planned tea with Kathryn. With
all the subsequent commotion, the date with her friend was
now out of the question, but she was glad nonetheless to have
accidentally dressed appropriately to receive the Reverend.
Normally she would like to have drawn a comb through her
hair or freshened up her lipstick before a visitor arrived, but
she was starting to grasp that such concerns were a thing of
the past.