A Time to Bloom (Leah's Garden #2)(88)

I’m afraid we need more than one, Lark thought.





26


Someone banged on the door.

RJ stumbled to his feet and down the stairs, snapping his eye patch in place. “Coming.” This was his first night back at the Brownsvilles’, and it must be someone for the doctor.

He pulled open the door just as Adam came up behind him. He had to look down to see the boy.

“Come! Come quick. Pa is on the floor. Ma said hurry, he’s been hurt.” Tears bubbled between the words.

The Kinsley boy—the one Del said never spoke, at least to her.

“RJ, you can ride out there faster than I can.” Adam laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Come wait in here. Is he bleeding?”

John shook his head. “I-I don’t know, not bad.”

RJ took the stairs two at a time and dressed fast as he had when they were being attacked in the war. He grabbed his pistol in its holster off the bedpost and slammed his feet into his boots. Downstairs, he lifted his jacket off the coat-tree and clapped his hat on his head as he ran back through the kitchen to get to the barn.

Forsythia met him at the door with a packet. “Supplies. Go with God.”

“Thanks,” he called over his shoulder.

Captain heard him coming and met him at the fence. RJ had him saddled within minutes, then brought the horse through the gate and swung aboard, stuffing the packet in his saddlebag. They pounded down the westbound road and then north. Lord, please keep us safe. He banished thoughts of the injured man, focusing instead on Adam’s request to hurry.

Keeping a firm grip on the reins, he slowed down as the road narrowed and roughened. A light ahead invited him onward. Captain skidded to a stop and, head down, fought to breathe. RJ swung off, grabbed his saddlebags, and got to the door as it opened.

“He’s over there.” Bethany pointed to a form flat out on the floor and covered by a quilt. “We couldn’t get him up on the bed.” She sniffed back tears.

“He fell off his horse, and . . . the children dragged him inside.” Mrs. Kinsley laid her hand against her chest as if it might ease her breathing.

RJ dropped to his knees beside the man. He tossed the quilt up on the bed and glanced up at the little girl.

“I c-covered him. He’s so cold.”

“You did well. Bring the lamp here, please.”

She had set the kerosene lamp on the floor beside him but picked it up again when he motioned.

“Is—is . . .” Mrs. Kinsley tried to ease closer but failed.

“He’s still breathing.” But I don’t know for how long.

A large bump on Kinsley’s forehead might have come from the fall. RJ felt for other injuries. A messed-up face, arms, and legs. Lord, what, if anything, can I do for him? Memories flashed of trying to care for wounded soldiers in the war, often to no avail.

Kinsley’s breathing was growing more ragged, his belly distended. His hands looked like he’d been in a brawl. One foot swollen clear to his knee.

Put him up on the bed, or leave him on the floor? What could RJ do?

Running to the door, Bethany announced Adam had arrived.

———

Adam set his leather bag down on the floor beside his patient, his gaze seeking out the trouble spots. He flinched when he saw the distended belly, the flinch noticeable only to the man who was looking for one. Adam raised his gaze to RJ with not a trace of hope.

“Let’s put him up on the bed.” He looked up at Mrs. Kinsley. “Would you like us to help you move to a pallet?”

The look in her eyes told RJ she clearly understood what was happening.

Both men stood and hoisted the patient to the pallet covering the rope-strung bed. The children clung to each other at the foot of the bed, as close to their mother as they could get.

Adam bent over and laid his ear first on Kinsley’s chest, then his belly. The stench of liquor mixed with unwashed body, urine, and excrement made RJ nearly gag. The body releasing early, that he remembered too. They should have left the body on the floor, but he knew why they’d lifted him. To make it easier for his wife to touch him.

RJ stared at Adam, who looked back, compassion showing in spite of the shadows. RJ shifted his gaze to the door and back, asking if he should take the children away. Adam’s head gave the tiniest of shakes.

RJ crossed the room to the fireplace and poked the embers with a narrow chunk of wood. Sparks flared, still hot enough to attack the wood, so he tucked that piece in and added a couple more. The stack of wood by the fire was down to three or four pieces.

“Do you have a cloth and a basin?” he asked softly.

The girl nodded and left her mother to get it. “There’s hot water in the teakettle.”

Without asking, she took the basin to the bucket of water near the door, dipped some into the basin, and brought it back to him.

Ah, child, you should not have to watch your father die. He added hot water to the basin and knelt down at the side of the bed. Basin on the floor, he wrung out the rag and gently wiped Kinsley’s beat-up face.

“I can do that.” Bethany appeared beside him and reached for the cloth.

Fighting back tears of his own, RJ allowed her to perform this loving service for the man who had abused wife and children. What was she humming? A familiar tune, but at the moment, he couldn’t recall the name. A lullaby his mother had sung to him? Surely not. He glanced at the mother to see tears streaming down her face as she bent over her husband. Bethany had started on the backs of his hands when he convulsed and breathed his last.