Carefully, Rebecca dabbed at the wound, cleaning it out and applying pressure to force out more of the infection. Very soon she was so involved in her job that everything else, including the foul smell, seemed to fade from her consciousness.
Jocko returned more quickly than she expected, or perhaps time had passed more quickly than she noticed.
"I have plenty of good, fresh honey, Miss Rebecca. No sugar crystals in it at all, and it has been strained to get any comb out. And I brought a small a pot of boiled water, too, to make the compresses. My mother used to pour about a cup of honey into about two cups of hot water, then soak the lint in it to make a compress. Do you want me to prepare it?"
"Yes please." She answered without looking up from the next area that she was working on. As she made another cut, she felt the blade catch on something. "Elizabeth, I think there is something here. Can you give me more light?"
Elizabeth reached into her surgical kit and pulled out a small mirror, which she used to focus a beam of light on the small incision that Rebecca had made. Tersely, she commanded, "Expand the incision." She pulled a pair of forceps out and used them to spread the incision. There was a small sliver of something the color of the red clay mud; it was almost the color of the flesh around it. With a pair of tweezers, she carefully pulled it out of the flesh in which it was embedded. It was a long sliver of half rotten wood.
"Oh, God. How could I have missed this?"
"Elizabeth, look at it. It is the same color as everything else. I would not have seen it. I only found it because the scalpel touched it while I was cutting."
"So do you think that each one of these pockets of infection may be hiding a bit of debris?"
Rebecca chuckled. "Me? You are the doctor."
Elizabeth smiled, possibly for the first time in over a week. "Right now, I am feeling more like the fumbling fool than the doctor. Let us finish cleaning up his wounds, get him a bit more stabilized, then do some serious probing."
"All right. Whatever you think it best."
--*--
Rebecca sat next to the bed, holding Charlie's good hand and praying. She placed a cool cloth on his forehead, hoping to help bring down the fever that still gripped his body. She, Elizabeth and Jocko had spent two and a half hours flushing the wound and taking turns pulling out small pieces of wood, that had embedded themselves deeply into his flesh.
She leaned over and kissed his cheek. "I love you, Charlie. You need to get better and come home. Your daughter misses you and there are two baby boys who want to meet their Papa. Please, Charlie."
A soft moan came from the recumbent form, and Charlie’s good hand twitched, as if reaching for something.
"I am here darling." Rebecca's voice was hopeful as she leaned closer to his cheek, giving it a kiss. "I am right here."
Charlie’s eyelids fluttered open. He looked at her, blank and unrecognizing for a moment, then murmured, "‘Becca?"
"Yes, my love." She kissed his cheek again and brushed her fingers through his hair.
"Dream of you. Always you." He smiled and relaxed some.
"And I of you. We are together now, Charlie, and I will not leave here without you."
He tossed his head and shifted in the bed, trying to get a little more comfortable. "Hurts. So much. Please make it stop."
"I know it hurts my love, we are doing everything we can. We are going to make you better. I promise."
He stirred again, clenching her hand convulsively. She almost cried when she felt how weak his grip was. "Say goodbye for me."
"No one to say goodbye to, my love. You are going to be just fine and I am going to take you home to our farm and our babies."
"Home? Home. Becca. Sweet Becca. Miss you so." He smiled and closed his eyes.
Rebecca leaned over, allowing tears to fall for the first time, as she realized that he did not understand she was there with him. "It is all right, Charlie. I am not leaving. I will be right here with you, until I can take you home. Rest now my darling. Just rest."
"Rest. Yes. Rest." He turned his head into the hand stroking his hair, closed his eyes and lay still. The only sound in the room was the slight rumble of his breathing and the soft sound of Rebecca’s tears.
--*--
Dusk had dimmed the light in the tent to soft shadows when Elizabeth came in, followed by a trooper carrying a tray with two steaming bowls and a pot of tea.
"I thought you might need some food, dear. You have had a long day. I know I am starving. How is Charlie doing?"
"He was talking awhile ago. I thought he was talking to me and then I realized that he did not know who he was talking to." She reached for the bowl. "Thank you." She took a bite and watched as Elizabeth settled down with her. "Is it true? Is President Lincoln dead?"
"Evidently, yes. The telegraph said that he was shot in the head last night by some actor while he was at the theater and died today."
"How horrible. It would seem his dream was prophetic after all. I feel terribly sorry for Mrs. Lincoln."
"I feel more concerned for us, dear. Already, there is a great deal of anger at the South for his death."
"I am sure. What do they know about the man who shot him?"
"Evidently it was one of the Booth boys. John Wilkes, I believe. Ironic, since his father was on stage at that theater not four months ago."
"Oh, Lord, it was his father Charlie and I saw while we were in Washington. We attended a performance at Ford's Theater."
"Well, of the children, Wilkes was the least talented. I always thought he was trying to outdo his brother Edwin –– and usually failed. Perhaps this is his way of being famous. Pretty poor solution, in my opinion."
"Did they catch him? Do you know?"
"I believe they are still looking for him. Personally, I hope they catch him and he burns in hell. They will surely execute him for what he has done."
"I do not doubt that. Hopefully, that will be the last of the killing from this awful mess." Rebecca looked to Charlie and replaced the cloth on his forehead. "It has cost us all too much."
Elizabeth finished the last bit of stew in her bowl. "Well, this is just the beginning. What will it take to put this land back to work? To repair the damage? I have seen fields that were so soaked with blood and torn up with canister shot, I doubt anything will ever grow there again."
"To be honest, Elizabeth, I have little care about that. The South brought these problems on itself. I just want to make Charlie better and take him home. I have little sympathy for these fools who did not know when all was lost, who did not have the brains God gave a nanny goat, to know when to stop. They should have stopped months ago and because they did not, look at what they did to Charlie."
Elizabeth was a bit startled. She had seen Rebecca angry, offended, annoyed, lost, depressed, and downright ready to kill Mrs. Williams. She had never seen this deep, despairing bitterness before. "My dear, it has been a long and very difficult day. You have a long, hard road ahead of you nursing Charlie back to health. Can I give you something to help you sleep? Jocko and Samuelson will take turns watching over Charlie tonight."
"No. No, I want to be able to come if he needs me." She gestured to the other side of the tent, where a blanket had been strung. "Jocko has provided me with a place to sleep when I get tired, but I do not want to leave Charlie."
"I did not mean for you to leave him, dear. I just thought you would need some sleep sometime, and the men will be happy to watch and call you if he wakes."
Rebecca looked at Charlie, whose face twitched with pain. "He does not know I am here. I want him to know I am here."
Elizabeth’s heart almost broke at how forlorn Rebecca looked as she said those words. "My dear, he is delirious. Now that we have dug out all the debris from his wounds, he should start to improve. At some level, I think he does know you are here. He is trying more, trying to cooperate, to stay still when we work on him. His hand must hurt as much or more than his leg, but he held it still while you worked on it today. He has been trying to pull it away from me."