Doing No Harm (37 page)

D
ouglas knew he would not
sleep that night, which came as something of a relief. He was tired of his own demons, the ghosts of men he had tried to save and failed, as they raised their arms to him night after night, seeking what he could not give. He sometimes tried to reason with them, speaking in calm tones as he described the ferocity of their wounds, and explained logically why a man cannot survive with half a head, or with most of his entrails lying next to the guns on the deck.

They weren’t interested in logic, his wraiths and haunts. They only wanted to live a little longer, to return to their parents or their wives and children all in one piece, not sewn into their hammocks, weighted with lead shot and slid off a board into the ocean, after a prayer and a verse. He had sat with each one of these men and watched them struggle for one more breath. He had closed their eyes, called the time of death to his pharmacist mate, who carefully wrote it into his medical log. John McIntyre, Scotland, carpenter’s mate, Nov. 18, 1815, off the coast of Spain. Cause of death: perforated bowel. And on and on through years of war. His logical brain reminded him occasionally of the many more sailors and officers who owed their lives to him. He knew it was so, but always standing behind them were the dead, not so much accusing him, but sorrowful that he could not have done more.

He sat alone in his surgery and grew angry at those ghosts. “You do not understand that I wish I could have done more,” he said, his voice firm. “There was not enough medical science to cure you. If there had been, I would have.”

He couldn’t possibly appease his demons. He never wanted to face Olive Grant again, she who knew what his dreams consisted of and who probably thought him a maniac and a weak man. He understood how much he loved her, the kind lady who fed people and risked her own inheritance. The woman with a blue eye and a brown one, and red hair and freckles, and a heart so big that it just might include him, if he weren’t so cursed by his own dreams. He could never wish that on a wife. Wouldn’t such a woman grow weary of sharing her bed with ghosts? Would love turn to disgust? Better not to chance it.

He slept finally, simply because the body craves sleep after too many hours without it. Mercifully, he slept alone this night, beyond the occasional shriek and mutter from the more persistent ghosts. When he woke, his bedroom was empty as always. He dragged his timepiece from the table by his bed, amazed that it was nearly noon.

He lay there on his back, staring at the ceiling as he used to stare to the deck above, thinking through his duties of the day, and reminding himself of one more remedy he might attempt, one more procedure. This time he thought about his patients in Edgar, his friends now. He shook his head, thinking how they called him “our Mr. Bowden,” possessive already.

Mrs. Aintree’s fingers would continue to heal. He had watched her move them yesterday, pleased to know that there was enough skin to permit the joints to bend. Rhona Tavish would keep her exercising those fingers.

He had removed the splints from Tommy Tavish’s leg two days ago and unwrapped the stiff bandages. Tommy had been reluctant to put his weight on the leg at first, but with a little coaxing from Olive the kind lady, he put down some weight and then more. Douglas had told Rhona exactly what to do there too. The boy who had been the reason for his several months in Edgar was on the mend.

The grocer’s wife would probably always be a little worried about her baby until she realized that he was fine and healthy, and destined to live. Maybe all new mothers were that way. She would learn. Just yesterday morning he had seen her talking so earnestly in the store with a Highland mother of four. All was well.

He wanted to do more for Lady Telford, but he didn’t know what it would be. She was aware she was failing, and that her little bouts of apoplexy would only increase. Maybe the best cure for what ailed her was something she had begun to do already of her own volition. More than once he had seen her leaning on Maidie’s arm and walking to the shipyard, where Homer Bennett always seated her in a prominent place and let her watch the growth of the yacht. If he had time, Homer would escort her to Miss Grant’s tearoom for green tea and biscuits.

He thought of Olive Grant, the woman he wanted to marry and have his children by. Better he spare her the complications of life with Douglas Bowden, retired surgeon who could not let go of his ghosts. He knew her hopes for finding a husband were not sanguine, not because she wasn’t pleasing or kind, but because she was thirty and had no real inheritance now, thanks to the Countess of Sutherland, determined to improve the little people right off her land because sheep were more profitable.

Not many men would look as deep as he had and see the kindness and quality that made Olive Grant the best of women. He had needed her help from the beginning, even though she was no great shakes in the surgery, and he needed her still, for reasons that were his alone.

That was his dilemma. When he was much younger and the blood flowed a little faster, he had fantasized about the woman he would marry someday. For a while they all seemed to look like Spanish ladies, then Polynesian women, and even a blonde and blue-eyed Dane he’d met in the Baltic.

But then he had clapped his tired eyes on Olive Grant and he knew, he just knew. She was no fantasy. She was a practical Scot with more character and principle than most small countries, especially Mediterranean ones. She was the woman he wanted, if only he had been a better man. If only he had known that Edgar, with its troubles and sorrows, was the perfect place to practice medicine. But no, he had yammered on about how quickly he could leave Edgar and find the ideal place, which he understood now was Edgar. She had probably known it all along and knew him to be a complete jackass.

“I am an idiot,” he said as he packed.

Packing took no time at all. He stuffed his medical satchel full of his usual assortment of sharp hardware and nostrums. He looked around, feeling a pang to leave his growing store of medicines and that wonderful surgery table that one of Edgar’s formerly out-of-work carpenters had built. Perhaps some other surgeon would venture into Edgar and not be such a fool.

Bags packed, ready to go, he stood in the surgical waiting room and talked himself out of going to the tearoom for a final meal before catching the bonecracker to the next small town. He could eat at the Hare and Hound after he stopped at the shipyard for one last look, and to pick up some of Joe Tavish’s sketches of the yacht in the covered shiphouse, boasting only a keel right now. All he had to do was travel to Edinburgh and speak to the two men that Homer Bennett suspected might be interested in such a thing as a yacht, sleek and nimble and built by men learning the trade.

That was the plan. It changed the moment he walked into the little antechamber, built to shelter anyone coming inside the house from a typical drizzly Scottish rain.

Someone had pushed a sheet of paper there, the very paper he had borrowed from Mr. Bennett, along with pencils, to coax the children into drawing out their eviction experiences, in the hope of expiating their demons. There was a note attached, so he picked up the paper for a closer look.

Draw your own experience, Douglas Bowden
, he read.
Heal yourself before you don’t care anymore. With fine regard, Olive
.

He stared at the note, written in Olive’s careful handwriting, wondering if he had read the words right, or if they had jumbled in some odd order to produce sentences that suggested someone cared enough for him to demand self-examination.

A fool would have considered her demand impertinent and forward. Staring at the note, Douglas Bowden decided he was tired of being a fool.

“If that’s what you want,” he said out loud. “I’m no artist.” He returned to his waiting room and dragged a chair up to the little table where a collection of old newspapers, religious tracts, and political pamphlets had taken over.

He started to shake before he even touched the pencil to the paper. He put his hands over his face for his quiet time. When his hands were steady, he picked up the pencil again.

Do I feel any different?
he asked himself an hour later. Perhaps not, because the first thing he did when he finished was turn the paper over so he didn’t have to look at it. Maybe he could slide it under Olive’s door before he bid farewell to Edgar.

He remembered his errand to the shipyard and spent a pleasurable moment there chatting with Joe Tavish. The Highlander gave him the yacht sketches done up in a pasteboard sleeve to keep them wrinkle free and dry, plus the addresses in Edinburgh, and then held out his hand.

A handshake wasn’t enough. Joe grabbed Douglas in a fierce embrace, reminding the surgeon of the man’s strength and his own black eye and unhappy ribs.

“I wish you weren’t leaving,” Joe told him after they stepped back and both of them tried to be sly about wiping their eyes.

“I’ve done what I set out to do here,” Douglas said, but it sounded so feeble to his ears.

“Ye have not,” Joe told him flatly.

“I know my own mind,” Douglas replied, waiting to be irritated so he could leave without a regret, but feeling dismal instead. What if Joe was right? “I have to give something to Miss Grant. Then I’m off.”

Joe’s blank look should have warned him. “Good luck to ye finding her. She’s scarpered off on the early carriage, with a grim look and those pictures from t’infernal regions tight in her grasp.” He shuddered. “Ye don’t want to see a grim look from the kind lady.”

Douglas stared at him as the words seemed to register slowly. “Wh … where did she go?”

“Edinburgh. T’kind lady saw a wee notice in a broadside about the Countess of Sutherland”—Joe paused to clear his throat and spit—“and her husband holding court at their residence in the city. Petitioners’ claims, ’tis called.” He spit again. “Ye won’t see them doing that at Dunrobin Castle in Ross-shire. They’d be burnt out.”

“What in the world is Oli … Miss Grant … hoping to accomplish?” Douglas asked, suddenly fearful.

Joe shook his head, not a mere shake, but a dramatic waggle from side to side. “I guess even the kind lady has her limits. I sent along one of my drawings, too, ’ta one with that evil witch’s factor, Patrick Sellar …” Another spit. “… watching old Mary MacKay burn to death in her hut.” He closed his eyes against the memory. “I could have drawn more, but time was short.”

“I’m going to Edinburgh,” Douglas said.

He turned to walk away, but Joe took him by the arm. “Wake up, man! I know ye’re going there. Ye told Mr. Bennett ye’d take the drawings of the yacht I just gave ye.”

“Yacht? Yacht? What drawings? I’m going to find Olive Grant,” Douglas said.

Joe gave his arm a little shake, which meant that Douglas felt his teeth rattle. “That’s the right answer. Maybe ye’re going to be smart yet, for an Englishman. Hurry now. No folly or foul play now.”

“Not from me.”

“Not ye! From the kind lady! Don’t let her do something she’ll regret.”

Chapter 35

D
ouglas was three days
getting to Edinburgh. The city is not a great distance if a body was a crow, but if the body was a surgeon and he had the misfortune to stop his post riders at the sight of a coach wreck, three days it was.

As he waded into the mess on the highway, sorting frightened people and limbs and pressing yet another neckcloth into service as a tourniquet, Douglas had reason to curse Hippocrates for being such a stickler about doing his duty.

The reward was sweet, however: No one died. The old people in the carriage were so grateful they would have adopted him if they could have, which amused his post riders no end. When Douglas finally handed the injured off to the care of their own physician and extricated himself from tears of gratitude, he was two days behind.

He also had reason to curse his lively imagination as he pictured the woman he loved cast into the dungeon at Edinburgh Castle for preaching rebellion and mayhem. Or maybe she was awaiting transportation to Australia for spitting on the Countess of Sutherland. There was no telling what a truly indignant woman would do, so he worried.