The Vacant Chair (8 page)

“Apology accepted. Though I admit, I rather like the feel of your hands on me.” His eyes held a wicked gleam.

Her lips quirked in response. “You might not be in fighting form yet, but there’s nothing wrong with your sense of humor.”

“That’s good news. I’m going to need it when I go home to face my mother and adoring suitor,” he said wryly.

Brianna quickly finished her task and tucked the blankets back around him, unprepared to face the thought of him leaving yet.

Chapter Eight

Whatever she’d been fighting off for the past few days had finally caught up with her. By Monday morning, Brianna was feverish and achy. She hadn’t slept well last night, both from the fever and because she’d twisted on a rack of guilt that made her alternately blink back tears and stare at the ceiling.

When she’d received word three years ago that Caleb had been wounded in battle and lost an arm, she’d been terrified he would die before she found him. She remembered the night she arrived at the hospital so vividly.

The old courthouse sheltered the wounded and the dying, its lawns strewn with bandages, crammed with rows of haphazardly parked wagons. The reek hit her the moment she set foot on the lawn, blood and unwashed bodies combined with the foul mud that sucked at her shoes.

She quelled the urge to cover her nose and mouth with a handkerchief to blot out the stench of the horrible place, hardly able to believe they called it a hospital.

Oil lamps cast swaying shadows across the mournful ward. The conditions appalled her. How could anyone survive here, let alone recover? Her anxious eyes scanned each bed for Caleb. All around, men were missing arms and legs. One soldier had lost his eye and another’s jaw was gone, leaving a gaping mass of mangled flesh, his upper teeth and soft palate yawning wide open. She stared; she couldn’t help it. How was he still alive? Tear marks tracked his filthy face and she looked away, her heart squeezing. He couldn’t possibly survive that wound.

 “Brianna?”

She whirled about at the sound of his voice, weak as it was. His green eyes gave him away through the filth covering him. Mindless with relief, she rushed over and wrapped her arms around him, trying not to stare at the bloody bandages covering the stump at his shoulder where a muscular arm had been. She whispered his name like a prayer, covering his dirty face with desperate kisses.

He hugged her close with his one arm, and her throat tightened. “You’re really here.”

She squeezed him, burying her face against his neck. He was filthy, but she could still smell his special scent beneath the stale sweat. “Of course I am.”

“They took my arm,” he rasped weakly.

He was feverish and thirsty, had been lying there for God only knew how long without anyone washing him or seeing to his comfort. In that moment she’d made up her mind to nurse him back to health on her own.

She washed his face and throat and paused, faltering at the idea of seeing the amputation for the first time. 

“You don’t have to, Bree. I can do it.”

She saw the embarrassment in his face and realized she was making things worse by hesitating. “Don’t be silly. I’m not about to faint on you, I promise.” She helped him remove his nightshirt, revealing for the first time the bandages covering the stump. She glanced up at him. “Does it hurt?” she whispered, aching at the sheen of tears in his beautiful green eyes. Didn’t he know she’d love him even without all his limbs?

“Not so much anymore.”

She studied the shoulder for another moment. “Should I clean it?”

He took a breath that seemed a little labored then let it out slowly. “You can, but it makes my arm itch something awful.”

“It makes your arm itch?” she repeated, frowning at his one whole arm. How could washing the right shoulder make the left one itch?

“Not that one. This one.” He nodded toward the stump, and when he spoke again his voice was unsteady. “Sometimes I can feel the arm as if it’s still there. The doctors tell me it’s normal.”

She’d had a lot to learn back then. She’d observed the nurses at work, pestered them with questions, and sometimes followed the doctors during their rounds. One of the surgeons became intrigued by her interest and loaned her his medical texts. In every spare moment, she devoured the books, reading everything she could find about the anatomy of the arm and shoulder, what exactly had been involved in the amputation, how to care for the amputation site and which complications could develop. Including pneumonia.

Caleb had begun to fade, the telltale rattling cough filling her with terror. One night a doctor confirmed her worst fear—her husband had pneumonia and was not expected to recover. Brianna did everything in her power to pull him back from the brink.

 
You will not die. I will not let you.

The night before he died, he’d been lucid enough to hold her hand and speak to her, though the effort cost him what little strength he had left. “Bree…have to…let me go.” His overly hot fingers squeezed hers for emphasis. “Promise me…”

He asked the impossible. She’d clung to him, willing him to absorb the strength from her body, begging God to take her instead. 

Caleb palmed the back of her head, and she turned into the unnatural heat of his fevered body. Memorizing the imprint of his flesh and bones against her.

She stayed like that into the night, whispering her love for him whenever he opened his eyes, fighting death’s pull to be near her. Yet hour by hour, he slipped further away.

Just before dawn, his lids flickered open and he stared up at her through glassy eyes.

“I love you, Caleb,” she whispered, caressing his face while the wheezing shuddered through him. His mouth twitched in his attempt at a smile and he clasped her hand, the movement feeble.
I love you too
, it said, as clearly as if he had spoken. Then his green eyes closed for the last time. As the final, terrible gasps rattled through him, she felt like she was suffocating with him.
Please stop his suffering,
she prayed
. Please, I beg you.

She gathered him close and cradled his ravaged body, pressing her wet cheek against his. “I love you.” Brianna knew he was only holding on because she wasn’t ready to release him. She drew all her strength inward. The pain burned like a hot coal beneath her sternum. She forced the words out, silently choking on each one. “It’s all right to let go now. I’m here, and I won’t leave you.”

And as if he’d been waiting for her permission, he’d slipped away from his earthly suffering, secure in the comfort of her arms.

Surfacing from the painful memory with a ragged breath, Brianna dragged herself out of bed to wash and dress. Her skin ached, the delicate cotton of her chemise seeming rough against her body. Her muscles felt stiff and sore. She stepped outside to find the sky was still a rich indigo, the mysterious color of those hours between deepest night and the first hint of dawn as she left her boardinghouse.

All night she’d thought about Caleb’s quiet, solid presence, always near should she need him. Holding her so tightly she couldn’t breathe after she’d fallen out of the tree he’d dared her to climb when she was a love-struck girl of twelve and broken her arm, the concern on his face worth every second of the pain. Caleb smiling at her in the moonlight that filtered through the trees above her parents’ veranda before he’d kissed her for the first time on her sixteenth birthday. Their wedding night and the awkwardness they had banished with laughter; the way her heart had turned over in her chest when she’d woken beside him the next morning as dawn gilded his body with brushstrokes of gold.

But most of all she remembered that haunted expression in his eyes, terrified but mustering a brave front for her, holding her with his remaining strength.

Promise me…

Part of her was terrified of fulfilling that promise, because it meant she was moving on. She’d been frozen and numb for so long, until Justin had come into her life and thawed the ice encasing her heart. Now that he had, she felt everything more acutely than she had in a long time and it hurt so much she didn’t want to face it.

Where the footpath met the main road, fresh wheel ruts and hoof prints indicated the hospital must have received more wounded overnight. She quickened her pace, her aches and pains subsiding under a rush of adrenaline. A rumbling groan reached her ears at last, only audible from this distance if made by a large group of men. She hurried the rest of the way, and the sight awaiting her when she arrived tore a gasp from her throat.

Men were strewn everywhere around the hospital, on the grass, in wagons. The angel of death had been at work again, and the harvest he had reaped spread across the grounds in a writhing blue carpet.

Brianna rushed through the mass of tents, shocked by the level of chaos. So many soldiers packed the grounds that the wards were indistinguishable. Doctors worked in groups, performing amputations in the open in front of their horrified audience.

Heart clattering against her ribs, she raced to gather supplies and went to work even though she ached all over, her body chilled one moment and burning the next. Climbing to her feet beside her first patient, the world spun and she had to steady herself. She raised a shaky hand to her forehead, took a few breaths.

Definitely ill, but it didn’t matter. The men were suffering much more than she was and they needed help.

She worked with the wounded until late evening. When she’d done all she could for the men placed in her care, she went to check on Tim and found him sitting up in his bed reading, most comfortable in that position since the blood and mucus didn’t clog his lungs as much. His breathing had worsened some since the last time she’d seen him, but his smile was as cheery as ever. 

Outside in the enveloping twilight, exhaustion crept in with its heavy cloak, pulling her down like a weight. She shivered and placed a hand to her cheek, knew it must be raging hot. Just the fever then, she reasoned. The fever was making her weak.

This was no time to get sick. The staff had enough patients to look after. If she worsened to the point where she couldn’t do her work, she’d go home.

Walking across the grounds, a hollow emptiness filled her. Maybe her illness and intensifying feelings for Captain Thompson were to blame, but it had been a long, long time since she’d felt this alone.

Overhead, stars winked in the purpling sky. Tendrils of mist swirled on the grass and spilled into the hollows, pooling in puddles. Crickets sang, their chirps blending with the bass notes of male voices and coughs. She strode past wagons filled with severed limbs and dead bodies, a burial detail as it passed by on its way to the cemetery.

Tonight her ability to stay detached was gone. It was so hard to watch men she had nursed slip away before her eyes, though she’d learned long ago how to remove herself emotionally from it. It was the only way she could do this sort of work. Now it felt as if a giant fist was closing around her heart, squeezing, its grip ever tightening. Obviously her protective shell wasn’t as thick as it needed to be, and her emotional distance from her patients wasn’t great enough.

Especially when it came to one man in particular. She sighed, fighting an overwhelming urge to see him in spite of the inappropriate things he’d said to her. Despite her growing feelings for him.

But oh, how she would have loved for him to gather her up in his strong arms and hold her right now. Something twisted in her chest at the thought.

Without conscious thought she began walking to his tent. Standing outside it, she hesitated. What was she
doing?
The last thing she needed was to encourage whatever attraction existed between them. Nothing good could ever come from it. He’d be going home soon. She’d already had her heart broken when Caleb died. Did she want more pain when Captain Thompson left?

Standing outside in the dew-dampened grass, she had to admit he was worth the pain. She shivered, longing to go to him. Her heart slowed, throbbing hard in her chest. God help her, but -she needed him. Craved him with a power that frightened her.

Go to him.

The thought was so clear and commanding that she obeyed.

On the top step, she peered in. He was propped up, watching the flap like he’d been expecting her. The other beds were empty.

She swallowed. They might never have this kind of privacy again.

Brianna wrapped her arms around her ribs and took a step forward.

 His gaze tracked her, filled with warmth and the same longing she felt. “Hello,” he said in that deep voice that made her belly curl.

“Hello.” She retreated into her nursing role. “How are you feeling? Any new bleeding?”

“No, and the pain’s a bit better today. I can even sit up and turn over without help now.”

She reached out and eased the placket of his nightshirt open to check the bandages on his ribs, relieved to find them clean. “Are you hungry at all?”

“No, I ate earlier.” A heartbeat passed before he spoke again. His gaze probed hers, intimate enough to send a bolt of heat through her. “I was afraid you weren’t coming back because of all the new wounded. And because of what I said the other day.”

She averted her eyes. “Not at all.”

“To think I waited around here all day for the chance to see you,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. When she didn’t so much as smile in response, he frowned and tilted his head, regarding her with growing concern. His gaze narrowed on her cheeks, then flicked up to meet her eyes. “Are you all right?”

Oh, his voice. Low and smooth as velvet. She shook herself. “I’m a little tired, is all.” The fatigue pulled at her, more shivers passing over her chilled skin. She glanced at the stool beside the bed and gathered her nerve. “May I sit with you for a while?”