Page 75 of Doing No Harm
He stuffed his nightshirt into his trousers and scuffedhis sockless feet into his shoes, thinking of the many times throughout his life that he had wakened from terror, only to find himself in greater terror. Living or dead, he was doomed and condemned to be a surgeon. Hopefully, Olive had not heard him pleading and cajoling his stubborn corpses.
He ran down the stairs, snatching up the satchel that Olive held out to him. He gave her a quick glance and saw something disturbing in her eyes. He wondered if she had heard him talking and figured out just who he was talking to. Well, never mind. He would be leaving soon enough.
He touched Flora’s head and told her he would do his best and ran to the hovel that Gran shared with Flora, Olive and the child right behind him.
He dropped to his knees beside the dying woman. He could tell from the door that she hadn’t long, simply by hearing her tortured breathing, with its gaps and rattles. All he could do was cradle her head in his arms, and he did that, holding her close, hoping she was beyond terror now and fixed on a more peaceful place. He hoped it was her beloved highland glen, before eviction, soldiers, and fire arrived.
As soon as he held her, she relaxed and sighed. Death may have marched beside her, like troops harrying her family away, but she burrowed closer to him.
“We have you, Gran,” he whispered. “Flora is here, and by all that is holy, we will keep her safe. Come closer, Flora.”
Olive gave the child a gentle push forward. Flora hesitated and then sat down beside Douglas. In the space of a few more breaths, Flora rested her head on Gran’s stomach. Gran couldn’t move her hand, but Olive picked it up and placed it on Flora.
“You can’t …?,” Olive began, her voice soft and close to his ear.
“No. There is nothing I can do but hold her and watchher die,” he whispered back. “All my skills are useless at this moment.”
Olive surprised him then, as he already knew she had the capacity to do. She had been surprising and delighting him from the first day he threw himself at her mercy, an injured boy in his arms. “Hush, Doug,” she said, her lips on his ear now, which gave him a pleasant thrill, oddly out of place in the middle of an old woman’s dying, but suddenly vital to every breath he drew. “Almost the first thing you told me was that the hurt and wounded just want a calming hand. Sometimes that is all the medicine a body needs.”
She was right. For the first time in his busy life, he wanted desperately to apply the remedy to himself. He couldn’t, because Gran needed him right now. He glanced down at Flora, who clutched her gran, the only person in the world she thought could help her. He had seen children like her in war-numbed areas, nearly incapacitated when their only sure rock and anchor died before their eyes.
“Flora, look at me,” he said.
She raised tear-filled eyes to his.
“Know this: When your gran is gone, you will not be left alone.”
“It happened before,” she said, her voice so soft he could barely hear her. “No one helped us.”
“Those days are over, my dear. There is an entire town that will help you now.”
He made the mistake of glancing at Olive. She was watching his eyes, his face, not Flora’s. “You will not be left alone,” Olive said, but she wasn’t looking at Flora.
She knows, he thought.By all that’s holy, she knows. What must she think of me?
His anguished question remained unanswered because Gran stiffened in his arms, tried to reach for Flora, and died. He closed her eyes, and Flora shrieked and began to shake the old woman. Olive took her by the arms, butinstead of pulling her away, she enveloped the child in her arms and included the dead woman in their embrace.
“How is it that you always know to do the right thing?” he asked.
Olive looked up at him. “Prove it to me. Trust me,” she said.
He broke their gaze, too ashamed to look at her or say anything. He just sat there holding the old woman who had borne too much, with her granddaughter and the kind lady holding her too. With painful clarity, he realized he might be the most wounded of them all.
Flora began to keen then, the high-pitched sound similar to something he had heard in North Africa. Gently, Olive pulled the child away from her grandmother and into her own arms. She rocked back and forth until Flora was silent.
Grateful he had something to do, Douglas picked up the woman and set her on the bed. He arranged her hands, sorry to the depths of his heart that she could not have died in her own bed, in her own glen, and not in a distant town.
He turned to Flora, who watched him with dull eyes now. “When morning comes, I will ask Mrs. Tavish to take care of Gran. Right now, though, where would you like to go, Flora?”
He was so certain that she would speak Miss Grant’s name that he was momentarily taken aback when she whispered, “Mrs. Dougall.”
Olive was much quicker than he. She hugged Flora and said, “That is a wonderful idea. Would you like Mr. Bowden to fetch her?”
Flora nodded. She turned anxious eyes on him. “What will she do?”
Douglas touched the child’s cheek. “I think she will knock me down and trample me in her hurry to get here and hold you, missy. I also believe she will include Pudding, her mother, and the other kittens.”
Flora smiled at that image, as he hoped she would. He drew the coverlet over Gran. He stood there a moment looking down and wishing that life was fair and kind, and then he went across the street to the Hare and Hound. He saw a light on and wasn’t surprised to see Brighid Dougall peering back at him through the window by the door. He knew the first coach arrived shortly after six o’clock from Dundrennan, and her yeast buns, hot and drenched in melted butter and sugar, certainly didn’t make themselves.
