“You need to move this car while we take him in,” the smaller orderly said. “We’re gonna take care of him now.”
I did move the car into a parking space. Ran into the hospital. Noticed it had quit raining. Got stopped by a nurse behind a desk, who had paperwork.
There hadn’t been any new patients for an hour, since Moses had sung, the admissions nurse told me. “You’re lucky—the doctors have just finished operating and stitching and bandaging. We’ve been busy all afternoon.”
“If I was lucky, Eli wouldn’t have been shot,” I said, and she began filling out forms real quickly.
The two orderlies had carried Eli into an examination cubicle—I could just see the end of the table from where I stood—and a doctor (name tag read GIMBALL) and a nurse (ALLEN) were already on either side of Eli, whose eyes were closed. The nurse began cutting off Eli’s shirt, while the doctor listened to his chest, asked Eli questions he didn’t answer, and began to examine the bullet hole.
The canvas curtains were drawn around the booth beside Eli’s. From the sounds, a woman was having a baby.
“Are you the wife?” Nurse Allen called. She was stocky and middle-aged. She looked tired. I signed the last piece of paper and ran over.
“I am,” I said, and gasped like someone had stuck me with a needle. I landed back in my body from wherever I’d been.
“You all right?” Nurse Allen’s heavy face was creased with concern.
“Yes, ma’am. Just work on him! Please!”
“We’ll take care of your husband. Please take a chair outside.”
I didn’t want to leave Eli, but there was no room in the cubicle, even I could see that. I collapsed into a wooden chair against a wall opposite the canvas she pulled across. I could hear the doctor talking to the nurse, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying.
From my pocket I pulled the healing spell Eli had been trying to teach me. I began chanting the words just under my breath. The spell flowed out, all the words making sense to me. I kept it up, over and over, while I heard Dr. Gimball give orders to Nurse Allen. After twenty times, I had to stop for a minute.
So this time, I heard what they said.
“Bullet’s still in there. Where’s Dr. Fielder when you need him? Have you seen him, Nurse Allen?” Dr. Gimball was grouchy and tired.
There was a heavy little pause.
“I’m sorry to spread bad news, Dr. Gimball. Dr. Fielder went home to check on his wife, and someone had thrown a brick through their window. It hit Millie. She’s not conscious. Nurse Mayhew lives down the street, and she ran over when she heard him yell. He’s not going to leave her until he knows she’s going to recover.”
“Poor fellow.” Dr. Gimball seemed more curious than grieved.
“You taking the surgery?” Nurse Allen asked, after a respectful pause.
“I have to. I guess I have one more left in me.”
This did not inspire confidence. I doubled down on my chanting. I had my hands together, just in case. When Nurse Allen stepped from behind the curtain, she said with approval, “That’s the way to ask for help.”
“You going to operate?”
“Dr. Gimball has to get the bullet out. We’ll take him into the operating theater, prepare him for surgery, and then the anesthesiologist will make sure he stays asleep.” She explained all this as if she had done it twenty times today. I figured maybe she had.
“How long do you think it will take?” I asked her, my voice sounding stiff and odd to my own ears. Inside, I said, If he doesn’t live, I’ll kill you all. If I told her that out loud, she might not be more skillful, but she would sure be more shaky.
“At least an hour, maybe two,” Nurse Allen said. “There’s a lounge down the hall, opposite the operating theater.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I got to go do some things, but I’ll be back within an hour.” I looked directly in her pale eyes. “Don’t let him die.”
Those eyes widened, and I saw that she understood me.
“He’ll live,” she said, struggling to sound calm.
I raised my eyebrows to let her know he’d better. And I left the hospital.
When I got back to the courthouse, Mercer’s body was still there. He was for sure dead, now.
I went over to the statue. “You could have told us your song wouldn’t work on us,” I said. “Did you know that would happen?”
I didn’t really expect Moses the Black to explain this to me, and he didn’t. I wondered if he’d ever walk and talk again.
I was leaving the stolen-from-a-dead-man car, with its rear seat stained with blood. Nellie Mercer was standing beside it. She looked like she’d been dragged through a bush backward. She was scratched and disheveled. But she wasn’t armed.
I waited to see what she would say.
“We were wrong.” She tilted her head and looked at me. “You were right.”
“I am sorry about your father,” I said. I nodded to her, stepped around her, and left.
This day had been one surprise after another. I had expected Moses the Black to bring a sword. He had, but he had changed it into words that would alter the way people thought. I hoped that would last, but I wasn’t putting money down one way or another.
It was beyond my responsibility, and I was glad of that.
I reloaded my guns, got my rifle out of the trunk and put it under the front seat where I could reach it. Then I drove back to the hospital.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Eli came out of surgery about thirty minutes after I’d returned to the waiting room. There had been a few other people slumped in the chairs that lined the wall, and they’d all looked exhausted… but not too tired to give me a long stare.
I was past trying to pretend I was a Dixie woman, and our mission was over here.
After a nurse came out smiling to talk to him, a man with two children left. I figured he’d been waiting to hear about the woman giving birth. Beaming, he took the kids’ hands and off they went.
A white-haired man, slumped in the corner, had fallen asleep. No one but me was awake and waiting. It was black outside the window.
Harriet Ritter walked into the waiting room. She’d had a chance to clean up sometime recently. She had fresh clothes, her hair was done, her shoes were polished. Once again, she was wearing confidence like a dog wears hair.
“Why are you here?” I said.
“What do you mean? I’ve been looking for you. I spotted the car outside, so I walked around the hospital until I found you.”
“Why?” I asked again.
“Has something happened to Eli?”
I nodded. “They’re getting a bullet out.”
The Iron Hand agent looked as unsettled as I’d ever seen her. “I’m sorry for my part in this,” Harriet said. “When we took the job of watching your crew, we didn’t know what you had. We did know how the Ballards were, though. And our job was only to watch, because Mrs. Ballard wanted to know who was going to receive the chest, so she could take care of them.”
My brain wasn’t sparking after the long day, but a question drifted up. “You said you and Travis fired on the men attacking our car, after the wreck. Were you lying?”