Sawbones by Melissa Lenhardt Page B

risk by telling her story, even if I didn’t use her name? Had I inadvertently been leaving little clues across Texas for Beatrice Langton’s Pinkertons to find if they were indeed following me? I did not think so. Anna’s face was full of frank openness, curiosity, and admiration. I wanted to believe I could trust her. I also needed to touch the bravery of a woman I felt less and less connected to the farther into the frontier I traveled.
    “My father was a doctor. A surgeon. As a child, I watched and admired what he did. He encouraged my curiosity. When in England, I heard many lectures on science and medicine and was inspired by the great medical discoveries. However, I was young and easily distracted in those days.”
    I paused before I went on. “The idea was always there, lingering. But, it was during the war when I realized I had talent.”
    “The war? Were you a nurse?”
    “Of sorts. I was rejected as a nurse at the onset of the war because I was too young and too handsome. My father would not intercede on my behalf because he did not want me anywhere near the battlefield. I have always despised being told what I could or could not do, another necessary character trait for female physicians. I went to a rag shop and bought ratty clothes, cut my hair, and presented myself to my father as a male orderly.”
    Anna’s eyes were round. “You didn’t.”
    “Indeed, I did. He was furious.”
    “I can imagine.”
    “Because I cut my hair.”
    “Not because of the danger?” I shook my head in response. “Your hair is beautiful,” Anna said, dutifully.
    “It is like my mother’s,” I said, touching the long blond braid that fell from my slouch hat. “He ranted and raved about my ‘damnable independence’ and my complete lack of respect for his authority or society’s mores. When he realized I was going ahead with my ruse with or without his help, he went along to help protect me. I became his orderly, his right-hand man, so to speak.”
    I swallowed. I had never before told this part of the story. “We were at Antietam. The battle was over but the wounded kept pouring in. I thought they would never stop. The carnage was staggering. I was throwing a leg onto the pile of amputated limbs when I saw an officer sitting by a tree, drunk. My apron was covered with blood and the sounds of the dying soldiers on the battlefield filled my ears. The smell of charred flesh and blood was there, too, but by that time I had gotten used to it. I still smell it, even today. Not always. It assaults me at the strangest times. It’s as if it lives deep within me, festers there, rotting.”
    Anna gasped. Her expression was horrified. “I apologize.” I tried to lighten my voice, to regain a storytelling timbre. “The officer. The sight of this unscathed officer getting drunk infuriated me, as you can imagine. I marched over, intent to find out his regiment and report him when he turned his head. The left side of his face had been sliced open by a saber.” I ran my finger from my hairline at my temple down to my jaw. “Not only was he drunk, but he was in shock from his wound and from a blow he had taken to the back of his head.”
    I took a deep breath and continued.
    “He was like every other man haunted by war except for his eyes. When he looked up at me, drunk and barely sensible, I somehow knew there was more to this man’s melancholy than simply war. It wasn’t my job to worry about that, however. I managed to get him up off the ground and into a camp chair. My father was away in the field to attend more wounded and the other doctors were busy with other men. The officer wasn’t in danger of dying, but I wanted to help him. I decided to do what I could for him myself.
    “I knew I did not have much time. When a doctor saw I was treating a brevet colonel they would pull me away. That was the least of what they would do to a lowly orderly treating an officer. I used whisky to clean his wound, the needle and