Storm of Love - A Historical Romance Set during the American Revolutionary War (9 page)

13
The Outpost

Something happened between the last time he saw the battlefield and the time he awoke in the dimly lit outpost. He had been out on the field of battle fighting one of his former friends on the British side, and he remembered taking the shot. The pain radiated throughout his entire body, but he didn't feel it at the time. For some reason, perhaps it was sheer adrenaline, he didn't consider it a serious wound, merely a minor setback, and he had gotten up again, rising from the ground to continue the battle.
              What happened after that he couldn't be sure. He vaguely remembered a blast going off—was it his own gun?—and then silence. To remember the moment his feet were last solid on the ground was like watching an event unfold in slow motion. Nothing seemed real and nothing seemed to be quite in focus. It was as though he had imbued himself with too much drink and fallen asleep, waking up still in a stupor and trying to find his way through the dark.
              He remembered distinctly the moment he hit the ground but nothing between standing and lying down. There was virtually no memory of the actual fall, much like dreaming that one is falling and waking up before hitting the ground, but the opposite. Suddenly there was sky above him and a searing pain like none he had ever felt before. It occurred to him afterwards that perhaps he was only just then feeling the pain that had in reality been coursing through his body for several minutes. Almost as though a battering ram had knocked him to the ground, his entire shoulder area and part of his chest felt as though they were simultaneously being torn from his body and lit on fire.
              His breath had become shorter, and above him the blue sky was slowly funneling out to gray and then nothing. In his last moments awake he had muttered Abigail's name as some last hope of safety and familiarity, though never thinking that he would actually see her, that she would play a part in saving him or helping him in any way. Not that she wouldn't be willing, but he had assumed that by now she was staying with someone else until the battle died down. In retrospect he realized how foolish that was, to think that Abigail would do anything except continue to fight in whatever manner she was allowed, and he chuckled to himself in the darkness.
              The day—had it been more than one?—seemed to replay itself in his mind. After the sky had disappeared from before him he didn't remember anything except waking up. There was only one way anyone arrived at the outpost, and that was by wagon. The wagon, as it was called, though in truth there were many of them, was a purgatory of sorts between the battlefield and the outpost. Many men did not make it to the outpost, and some barely made it onto the wagon itself before passing into whatever fate they had earned in life.
              Creaking wheels and rickety boards were all the dead and dying had to hold them on the several-mile journey, and speed was not the wagon's strong suit. Then again, nothing of any esteem was necessary for the wagon, since nearly every single person who met its acquaintance as a passenger was unconscious for one reason or another. If you were conscious you were fighting and there was no need for the wagon. Perhaps some soldiers would be treated beyond the trees and then enter the battlefield again, but only the most severe warranted a trip to the outpost.
              Edward wasn't sure what to think when he awoke. The dark room was very different from the bright blue sky he had last seen, and his eyes took some time to adjust. The first thing he noticed was a distinct parched feeling in his mouth, as though he had been chewing on cotton straight from the field for days without any water. A lovely nurse must have either read his mind or been so good at her duties that she simply recognized his need, and he was provided with water almost immediately. This helped soothe him and he continued to feel better throughout the—well, what was it, evening? Afternoon? It must have been evening because he could see past the windows, which were cut openings in the wall, and it was dark beyond them as well.
              After his thirst was ministered to, he continued to take a mental inventory of his working parts to see what had been damaged. He wiggled his toes and could feel them, so he knew he had not been paralyzed. For some reason, this made him feel much better, because he wasn't sure what had been injured when he first awoke. His knees and upper legs were equally mobile, though everything hurt to move. Recalling how bodies were so often dumped like potato sacks on the wagon, he had an idea of how that could have happened.
              He contracted his abdominal muscles, and while they were extremely sore, they, too, seemed to be all right. At least he didn’t have a gaping hole in his stomach, no spilling out of intestines or serious gashes to the side as so many of his patriot friends had suffered. Once he tried to move his upper body, though, the forces that be put him in his place and he humbly sunk back into the pillows and modest bedding that accompanied the wooden slab on which he lay. The same searing pain that had forced him to stare at the sky on the battlefield was now directing his eyes upwards to the old and cracked wooden boards above him.
              It wasn't immediately apparent to him what had happened, but then the shot and the last portion of the battle— the last portion his mind could recall, at least—ran through his head, and it all became clear to him. He was lucky to be alive and he knew it, and he was even more fortunate that General Washington had been merciful and let him out of his bondage. Had the British seen him held up in the middle of the forest, they would surely have beheaded him right then and there, or at the very least killed him in some fashion. They all knew by now that he was nothing but a traitor, at least in their eyes, and they had no use for him. He may have been injured, but he knew it could have been much worse.
              Immediately across from him was the cutout that led to the yard. The yard was essentially a large clearing in the forest, very similar to the battlefield, with mats laid out in rows in an organized fashion. They must each have been assigned a number or position, because the nurses and helpers seemed to know exactly where to go to tend to each person, never having to stop and seek out their patients. Considering the rate at which patients arrived at and departed from the outpost, he couldn't understand how anyone could keep track of where the patients were simply by name. And all of the patients looked the same when bloodied and bruised as badly as they had to be in order to arrive there in the first place.
Must be a system of numbers
, he thought.
              Candles glowed from every corner of the room and on the center table. The room was not large, but he could see directly into the center of the room, which was directly in front of the window. Everything was in a line: the window, the center tables, and then his own bed there at the outpost with only minimal spacing between the window and the table and the table and himself.
              The table, he conjectured, must have been used to prepare various treatments, because it seemed to be a workstation of sorts. There was a variety of tools, some parchment for writing, some ointments and liquids, and little trays that were used to carry whatever supplies were necessary for the patients. The nurses would come in and write something down, then take supplies, put them on a tray, and bustle out the door hurriedly to tend to the patient at hand.
              As he watched the goings on of the table he formed the opinion that it had to be a sheet of supply inventory. It seemed that whenever a nurse would take out or bring back the reusable supplies, or simply take out the single-use supplies, she updated the log sheet so that there was an accurate account of the supplies on hand at all times.
              He marveled at the organization with which everything had been put together for what amounted to a temporary location. He also knew that he had to be in fairly bad condition because he had learned from gossip on the battlefield that if you got "a raised seat," meaning you were on a table indoors, you were expected to live but just barely. It was these individuals that required constant supervision for their injuries, and there he was among them.
              Slowly turning his head to the left, he observed the man lying on the raised seat next to him. His right hand was hanging off of the wooden board on which he lay as though he no longer had possession of it. It looked awkward compared to the rest of his body, which did not seem to be in such a relaxed position. The man's face had been partially blown away, no doubt by a shell blast, and the side facing Edward was nothing but blood. He couldn't even make out the man's eyes or nose, just blood. His face was likely there, but enough damage had been done that his features were not yet visible beneath all the injuries.
              Taking note of the man's chest, he realized that he was not dead, at least, because his chest was rising and falling ever so slightly. His breathing did not come in any consistent pattern, and at times Edward had a hard time seeing his breath at all, but then just as he began to worry it would start up again in a haggard attempt at respiration.
              Feeling slightly nauseated, Edward returned his head to its position looking at the ceiling and rose up slightly to look through the window. Seeming to read his mind again, the nurse came over and helped him prop up against a pillow so he could see the room in full. Turning slightly to the right, he saw a young man, probably no more than twenty years old, who was lying on his back and moaning terribly. It occurred to Edward that the man had been moaning since his awakening to the world again but that he had only then heard it. Perhaps his hearing had been slightly affected by the blast, or perhaps he simply hadn't noticed, he wasn't sure.
              He shut his eyes momentarily and then opened them again to see something move past the window. It was his first glimpse of her, and once he realized what he was seeing, he thought it was a ghost. But then he looked harder, trying not to appear obvious to the nurses who seemed to read his mind and know his every thought and desire. Could they know that he was peering so closely at her? Did they know her? He tried to be as subtle as possible but still peered as closely as he dared without any of them noticing the direction of his gaze.
              She moved from the left side of the window over to the right. Unlike the other nurses, who hurriedly shuffled from one patient to another, in and out the door, efficiently but in a rather unceremonious manner, she moved with grace, even in her ragged clothing that seemed to be clothing that had been given to her. At least it was not her battlefield outfit. She was almost floating from one patient to another, her feet barely seeming to touch the ground, and he thought for a moment that he was in a dream. A smile passed over his lips and he leaned his head back against the wall.
              It made him happy to see her doing well. At least he could rest knowing that she was safe and not lying among the rest of the individuals in the yard. She passed back and forth outside the window several times, and although he was no longer peering at her so carefully and his vision was still slightly off from either the blast or the time spent unconscious—he didn't know which—it was as though he could still see her as clearly as anything else.
              She was beautiful and captivating, just as she had been that first night in the forest that seemed like a lifetime ago now, though it was only a matter of weeks. Even in her father's clothing and her unceremonious garb, she still appeared to him as an angel in the forest. Right as he was thinking his own life was meaningless, having fled from his own troops and being haunted by the images of the people he had killed—especially the one man he couldn't get out of his head—he thought that he was a coward, that he had been led astray by his own country. He was confused and lost, and there in the forest she had reached out and saved him, even though she couldn't have known it at the time.
              Was it a happy coincidence? An accident? A twist of fate? The hand of God Himself? What had brought them together at that particular moment in the forest that night he could never know. But he knew that had he not met her his fate would have been entirely different, that it would have been only a matter of time before he had fallen victim to the woods or perhaps even taken his own life, such was the state of his soul then.
              Images of the man—the one he had killed right before the realization hit him that this was more than just an unfair war, that it was a slaughter of people who, in all reality, had a good reason to be declaring and fighting for their own independence—still haunted him daily. He could see the man's face every time he tried to sleep, could hear the last words he said, begging Edward, imploring him to show mercy. And then the click and the blow of the gun, as though it was shot by someone else's hand, as though by replaying this horrible event over and over he could somehow reach through the sands of time and undo what had been done. As though he could bring this man back to life.
              But it was only grasping at the wind, as they say, and Edward could do nothing. Nothing except fight for the same cause that the man he had killed—and all the others—had been fighting for that very day. He was trying to make it right, but somehow he still felt that he was failing. And as he was feeling so low, there he saw Abigail.
              She had always been able to lift his depression ever since they first came together. Even when she was being indignant and difficult, most of the time on purpose, she was still charming and elegant and beautiful. He didn't know how she managed it, but she did, every time, and he wanted nothing more than to speak with her and find out where she had been and what had happened.
              He remembered overhearing General Washington say something about Abigail staying with Mrs. Dodson, so it had initially surprised him to see Abigail working there. But as soon as the surprise had set in, it left, because, after all, this was Abigail. To resign herself to still another household to sit and sew and ponder the fate of the men on the battlefield was not in her nature. Not in the slightest. How she had convinced the doctor, whom everyone seemed to call Doc, to allow her to stay on there as a nurse and helper he had no idea, but knowing Abigail she had a way of charming people that was disarming as much as it was delightful.