Hell's Fortress (28 page)

Steve returned to sit next to Eliza, his face a gray mask. He stared down at the blanket clenched between his two big hands. “I got the blanket.” He swallowed hard. “But Fayer is dead.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“Hand me a 3-0 Vicryl on a PS-2,” Jacob said. He held a clamp in one bloody, latex-gloved hand and held out the other for the needle with suture attached. A woman placed it in his palm.

He’d been working for so long without looking that he was no longer sure who was assisting. Not Lillian; she and Jessie Lyn Smoot were at the other table, plucking buckshot with forceps from the gluteal muscles of Jacob’s younger brother Joshua. It was a job that should be done by a doctor, not his nurses, no matter how game. But he had already treated twenty-two patients and had at least six more to go. They were through the critical cases—two had died on the operating table and another when Jacob didn’t get to him soon enough—and into the merely serious.

At least a dozen different assistants had come through since he’d started operating. Only Lillian had remained throughout, working tirelessly and efficiently. The others came and went, a succession of young women who had received medical training in the clinic over the past year. He made do.

Clancy Johnson lay unconscious on the table under Jacob’s home-brewed ether, synthesized from ethanol. Jacob sewed up the bowel, then called for the 4-0 sutures to stitch up the skin and muscle. He should probably use a smaller size, but he was running short. This would leave an unpleasant scar. He was so exhausted, he was mostly relieved he hadn’t botched the operation. How long had he been going? Thirty hours? He’d stopped only to visit the bathroom and to choke down a few bites of food Fernie had shoveled into his mouth.

He straightened with a groan and peeled off his gloves, which he dropped into a bucket of syringes, needles, vials, clamps, and forceps at his feet. Later, all of this would be sterilized for reuse. He couldn’t afford to throw out so much as a used strip of gauze.

“Okay, who is next?” Jacob asked as he made his way to the sink to scrub down with a bar of lye soap.

Lillian looked up. She wore a curiously amused expression. “That’s all.”

“Really? I thought you said six more.”

“Sprains, greenstick fractures, abrasions, and the like. All stuff the nurses can handle. But no more surgery.”

He let out his breath. “Thank goodness for small miracles. I’m going to catch a few minutes of sleep, then I’ll do rounds.”

“You might thank your nurses before you go.” Again, that funny little smile.

“Of course, I’m sorry. Thank you.” Jacob glanced around the garage-turned-clinic and was surprised to see how many young women were working around him. He’d been in a zone for so long that he’d scarcely noticed them coming and going. “And you, Sister Sarah. Sister Jessie Lyn, Sister Nell. Sister—”

Jacob gaped. His sister Eliza stood over the prone body of Clancy Johnson, where she had been bandaging the incision in his abdomen.

“Something the matter, doctor?”

“You!”

He swept her in his arms, laughing.

“I swear,” she said, when they broke their embrace, “seventy minutes of surgery and you never once looked up. I was attending the whole time.”

“When did you arrive?”

“Yesterday morning, from the south. Right after your battle. We saw the aftermath. Sister Rebecca almost blasted us off the road. I’d have come in, but we were so exhausted we just collapsed.” Another smile. “And some of us hadn’t had a home-cooked meal all year. That big lug of mine is all skin and bones.”

Jacob stared. “Does this mean what I think it means?”

“We found him, Jacob. Steve is home.”

Eliza was glowing. It was a beautiful thing to behold and he thought he would burst with joy.

He hugged her again. “I’m so happy for you.”

Then Eliza’s face fell as she sketched in the details of her trip to Las Vegas and the harrowing escape. There had been dark moments: Trost, killed on the road. Agent Fayer—no real friend of Blister Creek, even though Jacob respected her—dead of cholera.

He was especially sorry to hear about Trost. He was a good man and a friend of the saints. Later, no doubt, Jacob would feel that loss more deeply. For now, he was so relieved that Eliza was safe, and Steve and Miriam too, that he couldn’t give Trost’s death the attention it deserved.

Eliza also explained how she had cauterized Grover’s wound. Jacob listened, chewing on his lower lip.

“Was that the right thing?” she said. “Please don’t tell me I caused him unnecessary pain.”

“Well, I wasn’t there.”

“Jacob, give it to me straight. I screwed up, didn’t I?”

“Truthfully? I don’t know. They don’t generally recommend cauterizing infected wounds. The damaged tissue is often more at risk than it was before. But that’s presupposing modern antibiotics. And it must have been spreading awfully fast.” He put a hand on her arm. “You used your best judgment. That’s all you could do.”

She let out her breath.

“All the same,” he added, “I’d better take a look. Where is he now?”

“Digging graves at the cemetery, last I heard.”

“Better send him in.”

“Lillian and I treated him earlier. It’s going to leave an ugly scar, but it looks clean.”

“Good. Then I’m going to bed. What time is it?”

“Almost midnight.” Lillian spoke up from the other side of the room, where she and her assistant were finishing up with Joshua.

Jacob had operated all through the night and through the next day and into the evening. It had been like one of the hellacious rotations at Sanpete when he was a resident, only following a short night of sleep and a bloody battle. He yawned and made for the door into the house.

“How long do you need?” Eliza asked.

“About two days.”

“I need you awake by ten.”

“Tomorrow morning? Are you kidding? I am not getting up before noon.”

Eliza fixed him with a serious look. “I’ve already waited a day and half. And I wouldn’t have done that either, if I hadn’t collapsed in exhaustion. I’m not waiting another day. If you’re asleep, fine—I’ll ask David to do it.”

Jacob stared. “Ask him to do what?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Let’s see. I didn’t leave the valley, venturing life and limb, to go on a joyride through the desert.”

“Wait, you’re talking about getting married?”

The women in the room laughed, and he felt foolish.

“Wow, you
are
tired,” Eliza said. She leaned and kissed him on the cheek. “See you in the morning, big brother.”

It took Jacob fifteen minutes just to get upstairs. Everybody wanted to stop him and chat. Why weren’t they in bed already? He was at the bottom of the stairs, one hand on the railing, when his mother caught up to him, wringing her hands about Joshua’s surgery. He wasn’t going to die, was he?

“He has buckshot in his butt, Mom. He’ll be fine.” His tone was sharp, and he regretted it at once. “Sorry, I’m just—please, it will have to wait.”

Upstairs, he collapsed on the bed, too tired to even take off his boots. Fernie wheeled herself in a few minutes later. “Come on, off with the boots.”

She tugged them off and set them to one side. “Now the rest of it. Do you know what a hassle it is to wash blood out of sheets these days? Get them off, mister. You’re not going to force me out of this wheelchair, are you?”

He groaned and undressed to his undergarments, then climbed under the covers. “Don’t let me sleep through the wedding.”

“Not a chance. I promised Eliza you’d be at the temple at ten or I’d do it myself.”

“Oh, so you’ve given yourself the priesthood now? This I would like to see.”

Fernie turned her chair so she could stroke his face. It was the first time they’d been alone since he’d left her in bed forty hours earlier. “I’m glad you’re safe,” she said.

“Me too. And thank you. We’d have been overrun if you hadn’t been vigilant.”

“It was Rebecca’s idea. She suggested that the best time to attack Blister Creek would be when the men were fighting at the reservoir. I put my best women at the bunker and had everyone else on standby.”

“They said no women died. Is that true?”

“Yes,” she said. “I wish the same could be said for the men.”

“We lost three at the clinic. I don’t know if others didn’t make it to me. Nobody would tell me a thing.”

“You didn’t need the distraction. That’s why I kept Eliza out until you were almost finished.”

“Well?”

Her voice dropped. “Eight more fell. Eleven dead in total.”

Eleven. A sick feeling settled into his gut. “Who?”

She named them. Three were teenage boys. Eight were men with families.

“Elder Potts had five wives,” Jacob said. His throat was so tight he could barely get the words out. “Twenty children still living at home.”

“There are ninety-two fresh orphans today. Nineteen widows. If you count Bill Smoot from last week, twenty-one women have lost their husbands.”

“We’ll take care of them.”

“We held a joint meeting of the Quorum of the Twelve and the Women’s Council this morning,” Fernie said. “Of course, the decision is awaiting your approval, but Elder Stephen Paul and I have put together a plan for the care of widows and orphaned children.”

“That’s good,” he started to say, then caught something in her tone. “Wait, why do I suddenly have the feeling I’m not going to like this?”

“Shh, we’ll discuss it later.” She pulled her hand from his cheek. “Get some rest. I’ll wake you in a few hours.”

Jacob was half-dressed on the side of the bed while Fernie was putting on his white shirt before he realized that he was out of the covers and sitting up. Daylight streamed through the window.

“You are not making this easy,” she said. “Come on, you big baby, give me a hand.”

“Sorry.” He buttoned up the shirt, yawning. “What time is it?”

“Quarter to ten. If I know Eliza, she’s pacing back and forth in the temple lobby. Steve has already received his endowments, so any time you show up, they’re ready.”

Jacob dressed in his temple whites and then helped his wife down the stairs, where David and his two wives waited with the wheelchair. Miriam and Lillian were freshly scrubbed and looked sweet and pretty in their long white dresses. Lillian looked especially young, with her hair drawn back and her ears sticking out a fraction too far. Miriam held her baby close, wearing a look of devoted motherhood. It was hard to believe he was looking at a cool, calculating killer. Blister Creek’s own lioness.

Jacob eyed her short hair, cropped above the shoulder. She’d previously worn a braid that had stretched halfway down her back.

Miriam caught his look and shrugged. “Had to pass myself as an FBI agent.”

“Do I dare ask why? And if it worked?”

David shook his head. “I would recommend, no.”

While they walked the few blocks to the church, David filled him in on the developments of the past day. The bodies were in the icehouse, the funerals scheduled for that afternoon. Stephen Paul had accompanied David in the Humvee back up to the reservoir—not another punitive expedition, David assured Jacob—but reconnaissance. There were still squatters at the lake, although they were down to a few hundred, not thousands. The rest were either dead or had fled north.

“We can deal with a few hundred,” Jacob said, relieved. He glanced at his watch as they reached the steps to the temple and its doors rebuilt from the previous fall. “Perfect, we’re right on time.”

“You three go ahead,” Fernie told David and the other two women. “Tell Eliza we’ll be there in a second.”

Jacob stepped around Fernie’s wheelchair so he could speak to her face-to-face. “Is this about what you told me last night?”

“Yes, about our plan for the widows and orphans.”

“I think I know what you’re planning, and I don’t like it.”

Fernie met his gaze with a serious expression. “And I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say they don’t need to remarry, that we can take care of them anyway.”

“That’s exactly what I’m going to say.” He made his voice light. “See, we don’t even need to have the conversation.”

“Don’t get sidetracked. Eliza is going to strangle us if we don’t hurry.”

“Then what’s the rush? We’ll talk later.”

“I need you to hear it from me, and not someone else.”

“Fine, you say your piece and I’ll say mine.”