Read Online Caution to the Wind by Mary Jean Adams - Free Book Online Page A

soothing to say. “What’s your name?” she asked.
    “Simon, m…” He mumbled the rest of his answer, but at least she caught his first name.
    “Well, Simon,” she said, trying to sound cheerful, “it doesn’t look too bad. I am sure the doctor will have you fixed up in no time.”
    Simon gave her a week smile. In truth, his leg looked awful, and she had no idea how the doctor would go about removing the large piece of wood and repairing such a ghastly wound.
    Setting aside her doubts, Amanda continued to whisper words of encouragement to her shipmate, and Simon closed his eyes. After awhile, she stopped paying attention to what she said because it didn’t really seem to matter. So long as she kept speaking, Simon kept his eyes closed and continued to breathe in a slow, even pattern.
    “Well, let’s see what we have here.” Doctor Miller laid his instruments on a side table.
    With a pair of scissors, he cut open the man’s canvas trousers, revealing his large thigh, the dark, curly hairs matted in blood. Poking around the splinter, he examined the damage.
    “Are you well?” He peered at Amanda over the top of the round spectacles perched on the end of his nose.
    “Yes,” Amanda replied. Remembering her duty, she added, “but I really should return to my station.”
    The doctor ignored her comment and returned to prodding his patient. “First time in battle?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Amanda caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the washbasin in the corner of the room. She looked as white as a sheet, the paleness of her face accentuated by the soot smudges across her forehead and chin and the blood staining her filthy shirt.
    She looked terrified. The captain had noticed it too. The look of disappointment he gave her just before turning away had torn at her insides as surely as if she had been struck by the grape shot whistling past her ear.
    “Well, you have a good bedside manner. The damage here isn’t too great. No major arteries hit, just ripped the flesh a bit.” The doctor stood and met Amanda’s gaze. “Still it’s going to sting a bit when I take this out and clean him up. Mind staying down here awhile longer?”
    “No, sir,” Amanda replied.
    Not at all!
    The battle raged on deck. Even in the cool, shadowed darkness, the acrid odor of cannon fire hung in the air and mingled with the metallic smell of fresh blood. She gave Simon a reassuring smile. Gratitude shone in his bloodshot eyes when he tried, without much success, to return her smile. If she could do anything to ease this man’s pain, maybe it would be best to stay awhile.
    The doctor removed the splinter and cleaned the wound with a dark liquid that made the sailor suck air through his teeth.
    “Hold this against his leg, will you?”
    He handed Amanda a patch of folded gauze, already stained crimson from the man’s blood. More blood seeped through the thin fabric, wetting the tips of her fingers when she held it against his wound. Amanda wondered at the absurdity of calling the offending matter a “splinter.” To her, the jagged piece of wood lying in the refuse basket at the end of the table looked more like a garden stake.
    She held the gauze with a firm but gentle hand and watched the doctor thread a needle thinner and sharper looking than her sewing needles at home. This one also had a slight curve to it.
    A boom shook the timbers, and Amanda instinctively leaned over her patient to protect his open wound from the flecks of oakum and dust falling from the beams overhead.
    “There now, that looks good,” the doctor said, peeling Amanda’s hand and the gauze away from the man’s leg. “Looks like the bleeding stopped, but we’re going to have to sew this up before we get any more patients.”
    The doctor made the first stitch, dabbing at a rivulet of blood with the edge of a fresh piece of folded gauze. Despite the difference in the needle, his motions looked much like sewing, and Amanda wondered why there were not