Page 7 of At Love’s Command

Before she could adjust and find the proper leverage to manage the task on her own, the scowling chauvinist next to her broke out of his stupor and grabbed his friend’s side.

“Thank you.” She offered a brief smile. Not that she needed the ruffian’s help, of course, but she was pragmatic enough to accept it if it sped the examination process.

Josephine eyed the back of her patient’s shirt. No hole. She ran her hand over his shoulder and back, feeling for a bulge to indicate the bullet had attempted an exit. She found nothing. She rolled him onto his back again and started cataloging what needed to be done. Cut away the shirt. Clean the wound. Find the bullet. Extract. Stitch. Guard against infection.

“You able to help him, Doc?”

Josephine glanced up as she retrieved a pair of scissors from the surgical tray she always kept readied. Concern was etched as deeply into her visitor’s face as the squint lines at the corner of his eyes.

Yet he’d called her Doc. Not Miss or Nurse. She’d had to prove herself by bringing old man Johnson back from the grave with a cholecystectomy before the men around Purgatory Springs had honored her with that title. After she’d removed his gallbladder, Hiram Johnson bragged to all who would listen that his pain had disappeared virtually overnight, finally garnering her the respect she’d worked months to build. The fact that her professional title rolled off this military man’s tongue on nothing but her say-so was really rather remarkable.

Maybe he wasn’t quite the chauvinist she’d taken him for. Then again, he was still questioning her skills.

Meeting his earnest hazel eyes straight on, she gave him the calm authority she’d been trained to impart upon worried friends and family. “Yes. I’ve extracted bullets before.” Only two, and never in an area quite so rife with major blood vessels, but he didn’t need to know that.

Despite the name, Purgatory Springs had been a peaceful little town until the rustling started. Jeffrey Cawyer shooting himself in the foot had been her only active gunshot case since medical school, though she had expertly pulled a slug from the Williams’ family turkey her first Thanksgiving in town when there’d been some concern over the new cook mangling the prize-winning poultry with her heavy-handed hacking. Mrs. Williams insisted on a pristine bird for her table, and since Hiram Johnson had still possessed his stone-laden gallbladder at the time, Josephine had been willing to demonstrate her surgical skills in any way possible.

Her lack of abundant experience was immaterial at the moment, however. She knew the anatomy, had been trained by the best surgeons the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania had to offer, and possessed the steadiest hand in her graduating class. With God guiding her, she could handle any task placed before her.

Josephine gripped the scissors with authority and angled them along the button line near the injured cowboy’s throat. First rule of dealing with antsy bystanders: reassure them. Second rule: give them something to do.

“There’s a basin by the window,” she said without looking up from her work. “Wash up. Once I get this shirt out of the way, I’m going to clean and examine the wound. It’ll be painful, and your friend might rouse. I may need you to hold him down while I work.”

Boot heels clicking sharply on her floor followed by the sound of pouring water told her he’d followed her instructions. One benefit of working with military men—they were good at obeying orders. As long as they recognized the authority of the person administering them. The fact that this one was washing dirt, blood, and grime from hands and arms without a single question or comment increased the likelihood that he’d actually be useful to her during the upcoming surgery.

Turning her scissors down the sleeve, Josephine finished cutting away the injured man’s shirt. She set her scissors aside, removed the field dressing from the wound, then gently pulled the tan cotton fabric away as well. Blood seeped from the hole, already thick with coagulation.

“What can I do?” He’d returned, hat gone, vest removed, sleeves rolled to elbows, and hair damp around his face.

Josephine bit back a smile. This one didn’t do things by half measures. He’d washed from stem to stern. Good. The cleaner the surgical environment, the better for her patient.

She took a clean dressing, one pretreated with carbolic acid to guard against sepsis, and pressed it to the wound. “Hold this,” she instructed. “And keep pressure on it.”

He did so.

She needed to do her own washing. Once her hands were scrubbed to her satisfaction, she returned and relieved him of duty. Peeling back the dressing, she bent close to examine the wound. It looked relatively clean. Not too deep. Little to no debris. Just some fibers from where the bullet had torn through the shirt. A simple irrigation should be sufficient. She reached for a syringe.

“What is his name?” she asked.

“Wallace.” Her new assistant had a rough, gravelly voice. Strong, yet worn down by life. “Mark Wallace.”

She swabbed away the few fibers she’d spotted and irrigated the wound for increased visibility. Dabbing the excess liquid from the surrounding flesh, Josephine glanced up at her assistant. “And your name?”

He didn’t meet her gaze. He was too busy staring at the hole in his friend’s shoulder. “Matthew Hanger.”

Josephine started. The Matthew Hanger? Decorated cavalry officer who’d joined General Nelson Miles in speaking out against the atrocities that had transpired at Wounded Knee?

She knew Terrance Dalton and the other ranchers had hired extra firepower to deal with the rustling problem, but she hadn’t realized they’d hired Hanger’s Horsemen. The famed foursome had made a name for themselves in the last couple years by taking on problems the law either couldn’t or wouldn’t handle.

Rumors and tall tales had spread through schoolyards and saloons, growing out of proportion. Josephine had ceased listening to the fantasy and speculation whispered in corners about the group of near-mythical heroes, her scientific mind less than impressed. Ordinary men couldn’t accomplish half the feats credited to the Horsemen. The men themselves probably didn’t even exist. They were no doubt the product of some newspaperman’s imaginative scheme to increase subscriptions with a bit of sensational journalism.

Yet the leader of the Horsemen stood in her examination room. Matthew Hanger. His jaw clenched. His stance braced. His eyes carrying the determination of one who would do whatever it took to accomplish his objective—saving his friend’s life.

Her role in that objective suddenly weighed more heavily upon her shoulders than it had a moment before.

Josephine gave herself a mental shake. It didn’t matter who these men were or what heroic feats they might or might not have undertaken. They needed help, and God had led them to her.

“Well, Mr. Hanger, I’m about to start probing for the bullet, and it’s bound to make Mr. Wallace cranky. The more you can calm him, the easier time I’ll have of extracting the ball. Your friend is fortunate. The wound is fairly shallow. Neither the clavicle nor the scapula was impacted, so we don’t have to worry about broken bones. However, there are a lot of blood vessels and nerves in this area. I don’t think the bullet damaged the subclavian artery, but the brachial plexus is delicate and could affect future arm functionality, so I must take great care.”