Of Parchment and Saltwater

Chapter 15

     "Major Tallmadge! Louisa! Are you there?"
     I jolted awake at the sound of someone at the door and stretched quietly. Benjamin and I had played chess in the parlor almost all night, trying to do something to avoid the nightmares that haunted both of us. Moonlight shone through the curtains.
     Ben was across the table from me, his head on the chessboard with a black pawn entangled in his tousled hair as he slept.
     Pulling a shawl tightly around my shoulders, I quietly opened the door to find William at the door, breathing hard.
     "What is the matter?" I whispered as I came onto the porch with him and closed the door behind me, hoping to let Benjamin sleep while he had the chance.
     "My little sister Jane!" He panted, "You've got to come help her; I don't know what to do! She was playing with the horses as I was feeding them and the barn door slammed shut in the wind, Louisa. Please, I need your help!"
I furrowed my eyebrows and took him by the shoulders urgently. "What happened to her, Will? I don't understand."
He broke down into tears and sobbed, "The horse trampled her, Lou. Her head is bleeding real bad and she can't breathe well or move her arm. I'm so scared, Louisa...I was responsible for her while the rest of my family was in Hartford!"
I motioned for him to follow me inside and hurried upstairs to grab my medical bag and a pair of shoes. When I came back down, Benjamin was leaning heavily against the banister, a worried expression on his face.
"What's going on?"
"Jane has been trampled by a horse. I'm going over right now; will you get dressed and come as quickly as you can?"
He sprang into action, limping up the stairs as quickly as his healing legs would carry him. I was suddenly grateful for the tedious hours we'd spent in the past week, working on improving his ability to walk.
"Lou, don't go yet!" He called before I followed William out the door, "Get my horse ready...I'm going to come with you."
I nodded and ran to the barn, untying our horses as quickly as I could and helping William onto the back of mine.
"You ran all the way from your house?" I asked him, clicking to my horse and leading Benjamin's Highlander by the reins behind me. William nodded, close to hysterics.
     Ben stumbled outside in his breeches and a robe, pulling himself onto Highlander using only his arms. The three of us rode as fast as the horses could take us, Benjamin leading the way. He may have been slow on foot, but his horsemanship skills were unmatched by anyone I'd ever met.
     I ran into the house after William and Ben and the crying could be heard even from the doorway.
     "Jane," Benjamin said, kneeling beside the bed with her hand wrapped in his, "this is my wife, Louisa. She's the best surgeon in the world, alright? She'll take really good care of you."
     I put a hand on his shoulder and whispered my thanks, pulling back the blankets and lifting Jane's dress over her head. She was only five or six years old and her eyes were wide with fear, only made better by the comforting words William and Benjamin whispered the whole time I worked.
      Her head was bleeding tremendously and there were brutal marks on her chest from the impact of the horse's hooves.
"Alright, darling," I said softly, "I'm going to look at your head, okay? Don't move, just squeeze your brother's hand if it hurts."
William knelt beside me and took his sister's hand as I began examining the gash on the back of her head.
"This is good; it doesn't seem to have done anything to her skull...just a horrid cut. Jane, all I have to do is close it up and give you a big bandage, aye? You can do this."
Just as I was reaching for a needle and thread, blood erupted from her mouth and her chest heaved laboriously. William began throwing up and Benjamin jumped back as I pulled the girl into my lap, holding her and the blood against my apron. My mind reeled.
"Good gracious," I said in exasperation, "Ben, get William out here and come back as quickly as you can. I need your help."
With shaking hands, I began pressing firmly against Jane's ribs to find the injury. "Tell me when it hurts the most," I told her as calmly as I could, "You are going to be okay; I know that was scary."
She whimpered when I began touching the lower portion of her ribs and I ran my hand along the bone, feeling the concave where it had been broken inward. It had punctured her lung.
Benjamin stumbled back in and said, "I put William in the kitchen. Is that okay? What do you need?"
"I just don't want him to scare her, he'll be fine down there for a little while. Have you ever done stitches before?"
His eyes widened and he shook his head adamantly. "You're about to learn, Ben. I can't just let her bleed like this but I need to work on this...lung issue. Grab the needle and thread from my bag."
I put my ear to Jane's heart, listening closely and trying to ignore the dreadful wheezing that came every time she took a breath. Her heart was racing.
"Louisa," he whispered to me, trying not to let the terrified girl hear, "I can't do this! Do you want me to send for Doctor Sheldon instead?"
"Listen to me, love. If we wait much longer, she will have lost too much blood. She'll die. It's just like sewing anything else, I promise. You've seen me do it on you and your soldiers hundreds of times."
He pursed his lips and sat on the ground next to me, rubbing Jane's head that was laying on my lap.
"Just pull the needle in and out," I said quietly, feeling up and down her spine for other injuries, "Keep the stitches close to one another and tell me when you're finished and I'll tie the end. I know you can do it."
Jane began to cry but it quickly turned into an uncontrollable coughing fit, her eyes wide as she tried desperately to breathe correctly.
"Jane, dear," Benjamin said, distress on his face as he methodically stitched up the gash, "have you ever been to York City?"
I smiled a little and the girl shook her head. "It's a marvelous place, you know," he continued as I turned her onto her injured side to allow more room for her lungs to expand. "There are hundreds of people, merchants and sailors, and enormous ships, some of them carrying good, wonderful things and some of them with bad things." I knew he was thinking about the Jersey.
"And the sunsets are terrific by the harbor; almost as good as the ones we have here, don't you think, Louisa?"
"Of course," I answered, wrapping her fractured arm into a makeshift splint.
"You would love New York; perhaps you could go when you're a lady." He looked up and nodded at me, signaling that it was time for me to pull the stitches tight and bandage it up. His hands trembled as he passed me the needle.
"Jane," I said softly, taking her hand and pressing it to my heart, "I want you to take deep breaths...as big as you can, even though it hurts. Hold Benjamin's hand."
    She cried out and writhed in pain as I closed the wound, grasping desperately at Ben's robe. He looked at me with terrified eyes.
     "That's it, dear," I cried, brushing hair away from her bloody face and putting my forehead against hers, "That's the worst of it! You've been so brave, darling, you're going to be alright. I'm just going to wrap it in a bandage and examine your ribs a little more, okay? But I'm not going to operate anymore."
     Her hiccuping sobs made me want to cry.  "You can call William back up here if you'd like," I told Benjamin, "I need the two of you to help me clean her off."
     As I worked on making it easier for her to breathe as her broken ribs healed, William and Benjamin washed away the blood on her and the bed linens and made her more comfortable.
     "When will your parents be back?" I asked William.
     "They went up to visit family in Hartford for two weeks. They ought to be back in six days if the weather is good."
     "And why didn't you go?"
     He chuckled a little and glanced at Ben. "They're Loyalists. They don't want anything to do with me."
     By mid-afternoon, Jane was fast asleep and the three of us had been talking quietly at the foot of her bed for almost an hour.
"We should get you home," Benjamin whispered into my hair as I leaned against him in exhaustion, "I'll draw a bath for you and you can change out of these clothes."
William put an arm around Ben and helped us down the stairs and onto the porch, looking at us with emotion on his face.
"You saved my sister's life. I don't know how to thank you."
"Will you bring her over to our house when she wakes up? You can both stay the night, if you'd like. That way I can help you take care of her."
William kissed my hand and laughed incredulously. "How did little fourteen-year old me just happen to find favor with the most gracious man and woman that ever lived? Thank you, Louisa. Thank you, Major."
As we arrived home, Benjamin took both of our horses into the barn and told me to go inside and lay down.
     "I don't need to sleep," I argued, "I have so much work to do, Ben. The laundry never ends."
     He chuckled and took me by the chin. "That can wait. I'll do it if I must. Go inside and wait for me to draw water for a bath, Doctor Tallmadge. That's an order."
     I rolled my eyes and slowly went inside, ready to fall asleep right there in the doorway. We had gone to William's house around four o'clock in the morning and I had worked nonstop until two in the afternoon. I hated to admit it, but I was in desperate need of a rest.
      As I sat in the wooden bathtub near the crackling fire in our room, Benjamin read from Mr. Hammond's latest novel recommendation on our bed.
"You were so good with her," I said with a smile as he reached for his tin cup on the bedside table, "She trusted you."
He limped over and sat beside the tub, running his hand through my wet hair.
"I just imagined that she was Maria. That's how I was able to bear making those stitches."
I looked at him with tears in my eyes. "I did the same thing. We could have..."
Ben put a finger to my lips and blinked back tears of his own. I knew how terribly the death of his daughter had broken him.
"Would you ever be willing to risk your heart again?" I asked softly. He looked up in surprise, his eyes searching mine as if looking for me to falter at the suggestion I'd made.
"You want to have another child?"
I nodded.
"Me too."
He pulled me into his strong arms and I could feel the warmth of his skin through his shirt. We both knew how terribly dangerous it was in so many ways but it was more unbearable to imagine this big house without children any longer.
"Are you sure, Louisa?" he asked softly, "I don't want you to do this only for me. It's your life at risk, not mine."
I smiled a little. "I'm sure. I long to be a mother, dear Benjamin."
"Then I wish it for you, Mrs. Tallmadge."