Page 15 of Healing Hazel

Jim took the stethophone from his pocket and listened to Mikel’s heart. The beat was weak but steady. “Measure his temperature, if you please.”

“Yes, Doctor.” Miss Thornton hurried toward a medical cart for a thermo-meter.

Jim continued on and came to the bed of the older woman with the ankle injury.

Her eyes popped open, and she lifted her head but looked disappointed when she saw him. She laid back on the pillow.

“How is your pain today...” He glanced at her chart to remind himself of her name. “Miss Westbrook?”

“I won’t say it doesn’t hurt, because it feels like the devil’s fiery poker is stabbing into my flesh, if you’ll forgive me for saying so.”

Jim raised a brow at the woman’s salty language. “I imagine it does.” He made a note on the chart.Pain level:Devil’s fiery poker.Dr. Laurent would get a chuckle out of that one. Jim touched her forehead, noting that she still had a fever. That was worrying. “You’re lucky the doctor was able to set your bones as well as he did. The way they were crushed—”

“She’s doing well, isn’t she?” Miss Westbrook interrupted with a smug expression.

At her words, Jim glanced at Miss Thornton without even thinking, so he couldn’t very well look like he didn’t know who she was talking about. “Acceptable.” He turned a page in the chart.

Miss Westbrook grinned, looking across the ward at her young friend. “I knew it. I knew she would be capable, even with...” She looked back at Jim and her voice trailed off. In spite of her pallor, her cheeks reddened.

“With?” he prodded.

Miss Westbrook put a hand to her forehead. “Oh, but I am in such pain. Where is Dr. Laurent? I’d hoped he might have a moment to talk or even play some pinochle. Something to distract me from this blasted ankle.”

Jim didn’t allow the woman’s profanity to distract him. “What were you saying about Miss Thornton?”

“Oh, goodness me.” Miss Westbrook gave a distressed whine and started fidgeting. “Where is that bedpan?” She turned her head to the side, and seeing another nurse, she groaned. “Nurse? Would you be so kind?”

Jim dropped the chart back into its holder and left.

As he walked the short distance back to Mikel, he wondered what the woman had meant. Was there some problem? Miss Thornton had appeared healthy, at least from what he’d observed. Did she suffer from some other unnoticeable ailment? Was there a problem that might impede her ability to perform her duty? Or was the older woman’s pain causing her to misspeak?

When Jim returned to Mikel’s bed, Miss Thornton took the glass tube from beneath his armpit and held it up to read the temperature.

“Good,” Jim muttered. He started to note it on the chart but stopped, motioning for Miss Thornton.

She stepped around the bed, and he handed her the chart. “Mark it here.”

She did so, writing the numbers neatly with his pencil.

Jim stood behind her, watching over her shoulder as she worked. He tapped on another space. “Here, you record blood pressure. Here, pulse.”

“And this is for the time and date,” she said, touching the proper spot with the tip of the pencil. She glanced up at him with a questioning look that made her blue-gray eyes large and very pretty.

Jim nodded. She caught on surprisingly quickly. He’d taken much longer to remember the Spanish words.

He slid the chart back into its holder and started to leave, but he turned back and spoke to Mikel’s father.

The old man frowned, but he agreed.

“What did you tell him?” Miss Thornton asked.

“I told him he can remain for one hour, and then he will have to return tomorrow. Otherwise, he’ll have to deal with Lucía, and that would earn him a bed of his own.”

***

An hour later, Jim held the English captain’s head still as Joelle, the French nurse, sedated him, and Dr. Laurent carefully drilled a burr hole into the young man’s skull. The results from the lumbar puncture were as they’d predicted. The young man’s head was bleeding.

The necessary procedure required precision, and although Jim had seen it performed multiple times—he’d even done it himself—he’d never known a surgeon as skilled as Dr. Laurent and watched, mesmerized. The holes were drilled, the bone between them scraped away, and the extradural blood drained in record time.

---