Page 4 of Again, Scoundrel

She picked her way past a pile of rope and rigging and found the sailor who had fallen. One look at his leg, the tibia bone broken and poking through a hole in his bloodied trousers was enough for her to guess what had happened. But she seated herself beside him nonetheless to ask her standard diagnostic questions.

“My name is Violet,” she began, “and I’m a nurse. Can I help you?”

The man nodded; pain etched onto his face as he clutched his broken leg. His knuckles were white from the strength of his grip.

“You,” Violet said to one of the men standing nearby, “grab his hands.” When he hesitated, she added a stern, “Now!” that propelled him into motion.

The man lowered himself to the deck and held out his hands for the injured sailor, who grasped them.

“Thank you,” Violet said as she reached into her bag for a pair of shears.

“What in hell is happening here?” the captain barked, making his way through the small crowd that had gathered around Violet. “Where is the surgeon?”

“Over there with his head over the rail,” Violet said as she worked.

She’d met the captain on numerous occasions, and though at first, he’d been wary of her mint tea and bite-sized pieces of ginger, he’d refrained from further comment after he saw their results. Namely, far fewer passengers casting their accounts into the sea.

“Carry on then,” he said gruffly as she cut away the lower piece of trouser, revealing more of the man’s jagged, broken bone.

“Goodness,” she said to her patient. “You’ve taken quite a tumble. Did you slip and fall over the rigging?”

“Course he did,” the captain grumbled, although Violet continued looking at the injured man to answer.

“Didn’t slip. Blacked out.”

“Hm.” Violet pulled out her small bottle of iodine tincture to clean the wound. “This is going to hurt. Hold on tightly.”

Both her patient and the man whose hands he held swore roundly as the brown liquid hit the open wound, but Violet continued to work. She’d heard worse before.

“Captain,” she said, pulling a length of wrapped linen from her bag. “Your assistance, please.”

The captain lowered himself to the deck. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said softly to Violet. “The language alone is not fit for your ears. And certainly not…” he gestured to the grisly wound.

“I’d be glad to discuss any ill-effects to my person with you at a later date. But right now, I need you to help me.”

The captain looked at her askance. “Call for the surgeon, Miss. The bone’s broke the skin. It won’t heal.”

Violet glanced behind her, where the surgeon was still dangling halfway over the railing. “He seems to be otherwise engaged.”

The captain looked from the injured sailor to the surgeon then back again and sighed. “What would you have me do?”

Violet wrapped the linen around the man’s leg, covering the break and the cleaned wound. “Find me a wooden slat of some kind,” she said. “No thicker than his thigh. A piece of broken mast or flooring will do. We’re going to set his bone.”

“Absolutely not. I draw the line at quackery. There’s a reason we have a surgeon on board.”

“Charlie Sweet of New England, many sixteenth-century monks, and most of the ancient Egyptians would all disagree with your assessment of bone setting. Now, bring me a slat, Captain, or hold this binding in place while I find one myself. If the swelling gets any worse, we won’t be able to save his leg, and you will have to amputate. But wouldn’t it be better to at least try to save it? The surgeon can cut it off later if we fail.”

“Captain,” the sailor moaned. “Please.”

The captain made some gurgling sound in the back of his throat but stood nonetheless, returning a few moments later with a broken piece of deck.

“Now what?”

“Now we bind,” Violet said, her brow furrowed in concentration.

A great deal of swearing and moaning later, and the sailor’s leg had been set in a traction device that Violet and the captain rigged up in his berth.

After further conversation about the man’s diet, Violet had also given the captain a lecture on the importance of nutrition for the crew–the sailor had blacked out, she suspected, from anemia.