These Healing Hills Page 4

  Fran pulled in a deep breath and took two more quick steps. The bridge bounced to life with seemingly one aim. To shake her off. She grabbed the rope side with a death’s grip, afraid to move either direction.

  A laugh behind her startled Fran. When she jerked around to see who was there, the bridge wobbled under her feet again. An old woman stood at the edge of the bridge with a basket looped over her arm.

  “First time on a bridge like this’n?” the woman asked.

  Fran dared a slight nod. “It doesn’t seem all that sturdy.”

  “That bridge has held up plenty of bigger folks than the slip of a girl you are.”

  “I’m not all that little,” Fran said.

  “But some smaller than an elephant.”

  “An elephant has been across here?” Fran couldn’t imagine such a feat.

  “Not that I’ve heard tell of, but ’twouldn’t surprise me if Mary Breckinridge brung one in. She takes a fancy to all sorts of unusual things.” The woman eyed Fran. Her bonnet shaded her face, but it was easy to see the deep wrinkles creasing her cheeks. Her eyes were an odd coppery color that made Fran think of lion pictures she’d seen.

  But her eyes were striking for more than their color. While the old woman’s shoulders were humped over a bit and her knuckles were thick with arthritis, her eyes looked like those of a young woman. Bright and glaring as she watched Fran, hardly blinking at all.

  Fran had the feeling the old woman thought she was one of Mary Breckinridge’s odd things. She decided to go along with her. “Like me.”

  A smile lifted one corner of the old woman’s lips. “Like you. But I’m thinking you ain’t as unusual as some of them others. ’Cepting for being scared of high places. These here hills ain’t a very friendly place for a body fearful of being high.”

  “I’m not afraid of heights.”

  “Are ye sure of that?” The old woman clucked her tongue, then set her basket down and moved onto the bridge. She grabbed the rope handhold and jumped on the bridge with both feet.

  Fran clamped her lips together to keep from shrieking. When the swaying slowed, she admitted, “Well, except those heights that wobble and sway.”

  The old woman twisted her thin lips to the side and gave Fran a considering look. “I like a body who tells the truth even if it has to be shook out of ’em. So I’ll cure you of the fear you’re having.”

  “How’s that?” Fran thought she might just have to stay on the bridge until somebody pried her hands loose from the rope rails and carried her off.

  “The bridge ain’t shaking. It’s dancing. You gotta dance with it, girl. Let your feet find the rhythm. If you pay some mind, there’s rhythm nigh on to ev’rything.”

  “Dance, huh?” Fran kept her eyes on the old woman. “But I’ve never been much of a dancer.”

  “Ain’t nobody what can’t dance if’n they turn their feet loose. The good Lord built tappin’ to music right in our toes.”

  Fran swallowed and gripped the side tighter.

  “Don’t be afeared. Give it a try.” The woman took a couple of steps toward Fran. She moved with the ease of a child and the bridge barely shivered.

  Fran followed her example and forced her foot forward. The bridge dropped down a bit but then seemed to lift up to meet her next step. The swaying did have a certain cadence that might make one think of dancing. She looked back toward the old woman, who had moved off the bridge. “I see what you mean.”

  “Good to know you kin take advising.”

  “Yes, thank you.” She took another step or two, but then thought she should say who she was. “I’m Nurse Howard, by the way.”

  “I knowed who you were.”

  “But I don’t know you.”

  “If that ain’t the truth.” The old woman picked up her basket and walked away from the bridge.

  Fran watched her disappear into the trees without looking back. Maybe it was rude to ask a mountain person her name. And if the woman didn’t want to tell her, that was her right. Fran wasn’t treating her. She was being advised by her. Advice was something Fran needed if she was going to figure out these mountain people.

  Down below, the fishermen, no longer worried about their lines in the water, stared up at Fran as though she were the best show they’d seen for a while. Either that or they were hoping the bridge would win and pitch her off in the river.

  That wasn’t going to happen. She shut her eyes a moment and let the sway of the bridge soak up into her feet. And then she danced across, barely skimming the railing with her hand.

  The men down below yelled something. Fran wasn’t sure what, but it sounded like a cheer of some sort. Maybe they hadn’t wanted her to fall after all. Maybe the people here wanted to help her as much as she hoped to help them.

  She stepped off the bridge, relieved to feel solid ground under her boots. The mountain granny’s idea of dancing had gotten her over the bridge, but now she needed to do some fast walking. Willie said Mrs. Breckinridge had no use for those who were late. When Mrs. B wanted something done, she wanted it done yesterday.

  Fran kept a wary eye out for those geese Abigail had warned her about as she rushed up the hill past the cluster of buildings toward the Big House. Again she was struck by how well the house fit there on the mountain.

  “You’re on time.” Mrs. Breckinridge stepped away from a tree beside the path. “I like that in my nurses.”

  “Oh.” Fran put her hand over her heart. “I didn’t see you there.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Mrs. B moved down on the path beside Fran. She wore a blue-striped dress with a full white apron. She swept back a few wisps of gray hair that had escaped the bun at the nape of her neck and looked back up the hillside. “I was just out here communing with Brother Lawrence while the girls get the tea ready.”

  Fran peered up the hill too, but she didn’t see anyone. Not even a goose or a chicken.

  Mrs. B stepped back off the path and laid her hand on the trunk of a huge beech tree. “Meet Brother Lawrence. He’s stood guard in this spot for a very long time. Well before I came here to disturb his solitude.”

  “The tree?” Fran couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice.

  That made Mrs. B chuckle. “I like naming my friends, don’t you?” She pointed toward a cow grazing on the hill below them. “See, down there. That’s Gretchen. A fine milk cow. Something every house needs around here. I seem to recall you’re a city girl. Have you ever milked a cow?”

  “No. I used to watch my grandmother milk on her farm, but she never let me try.”

  “She should have, but learning to milk is no problem. It’s all in how you squeeze.” She held up her hands and demonstrated. “You’re not the first nurse to come to us without knowing the basics of mountain life.”

  She stepped down on the path and started toward the house. She wasn’t very tall and a bit thick around the waist, but in spite of being in her sixties and having once suffered a broken back from a fall off a horse, she moved with only a minor limp.

  She looked back at Fran. “I hear you had trouble on the bridge.” When Fran couldn’t hide her surprise, the woman went on. “News can come up the mountain fast as lightning. Best you remember that when you’re out on district. Eyes and ears are all around. I expect all my nurses to uphold a strict standard of proper behavior and gentle care of these dear people here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  When they reached the house, Mrs. B turned to give Fran another curious look. “How did you overcome your fear?”

  “An old woman gave me some advice.”

  “And what was that?”

  “She said I should dance across the bridge.” That sounded a little silly when she said it, but Mrs. B only nodded her head as if it was what she expected to hear.

  “And since you’re here and not clinging to the side of the bridge, you must have done what she said.”

  “I did.”

  Mrs. B laughed out loud. “Granny Em i
s far afield today. She’s not often on this mountain. She must have been looking for some rare herbs.”

  “She didn’t tell me her name.”

  “Didn’t or wouldn’t?”

  “Well, wouldn’t, I suppose.”

  “That’s Granny Em. But if she took the time to help you, feel favored. She doesn’t take to all the nurses.”

  “Is she a healer?”

  “She knows some good ways with herbs and delivered her share of babies as a granny midwife before I brought in you nurse-midwives. There have been times when she didn’t favor me so much, even though I rode up every trail and where there weren’t any trails, talking with all the granny midwives before I picked this spot for the Frontier Nursing Service. Most of them are fine with us here, but it’s the smart nurse who listens to advice when it’s given, whether that’s from a mountain granny or from somebody like me who knows the better ways.”

  “I want to be a good nurse-midwife,” Fran said.

  Mrs. B leveled her gaze on Fran for a long moment. “Yes, I can see you do. I think it’s time you moved out into one of the districts. Maybe Beech Fork. Betty tells me a number of mothers are ready to deliver in the next few weeks there. You can get your quota of births and then take the exam to get your midwifery certification.”

  “Thank you. I look forward to getting to know the people here.”

  Mrs. B’s eyes narrowed a bit. “Yes, I think Betty Dawson will be the perfect teacher for you. Have you met her?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “No matter. You will. But come.” Mrs. B reached for the doorknob. “The tea will get cold. I’ve instructed the girls time and again to use the cozies, but some of them can’t remember.”

  6

  August 2, 1945

  “Give me my gun!”

  Ben looked up from notating the vital signs of his last patient. The panicked voice came from the tent next door, where a makeshift ward had been set up.

  No enemy fire was downing soldiers now that the war was over, but plenty of men still showed up at the medical tents due to various and sundry other ills and accidents.

  Ben ran toward the ward. In between the man’s yells, he could hear a nurse trying to defuse the situation. A loud crash indicated the soldier was having none of that.

  “I’m not dying without my gun,” the man screamed. More crashes and the sound of broken glass.

  A couple of patients pushed out through the tent opening. One of them grabbed Ben. “Nurse Bertram ordered us out, but you gotta help her. It’s Jeffries. He’s gone bonkers.”

  The tent sides shook. Ben pulled away from the man and ducked inside. He knew the soldier. Private Jeffries had come in with a fever caused by an infected cut left untreated too long. His sergeant reported that the man showed signs of shell shock. Now the fever must be pushing him over the edge.

  The nurse was scrambling up from where the man had knocked her against one of the tent poles. Nurse Bertram was tough, but Jeffries was a bear of a man. Way bigger than even Ben. No way could he physically subdue him without help.

  Ben stepped up behind Nurse Bertram. “I’ll try to talk him down, but you better get a sedative.”

  “Right.” With a curt nod, she slipped past Ben. Jeffries turned on Ben. The soldier’s face was flushed and he was trembling all over.

  “Stand down, Private.” Ben barked the order like a sergeant might.

  It almost worked. The soldier went ramrod straight and raised his hand to salute. But then a truck backfired outside the tent and pushed him back into the war zone in his head.

  “The Krauts are out there.” The private’s eyes went wide as he stared at Ben. “You’re not Sarge.”

  “You’re right, Private Jeffries. But your sergeant brought you here. You’re in a medic tent. The war is over.”

  “You’re lying. You’re one of them.” The man made a sound something like Ben had once heard from a wildcat caught in a trap back home.

  “Watch out, sir!” a soldier in the bed beside Ben warned. A full cast on his leg must have kept him from escaping the tent with the other men. “He’s about to blow.”

  “Keep your mouth shut!” Jeffries lunged up the narrow aisle toward the kid who spoke up.

  Ben stepped in front of Jeffries and gave him a hard push backward that barely slowed the man down. Nurse Bertram needed to hurry with that sedative.

  “Come on, Private. I’ll help you look for that gun.” That slowed him better than the shove but only for a moment.

  “You’re trying to trick me. That’s what the enemy does. Tricks you. Then they shoot you.” His face changed, looked tragic. “They killed all my buddies. My brothers. All of them.” The anger came back. “But they won’t get me without a fight.”

  He roared like an enraged bull this time and came at Ben. The beds crowding in on both sides of the aisle left little room for escape. Besides, he couldn’t scoot out of the way and let the big man change his focus to the kid in the bed again. One messed-up leg was enough.

  Ben blocked the man’s way. “Easy, Private. We’re on your side.”

  The man wasn’t hearing anything except the battle in his head. He lowered his shoulder and banged into Ben.

  Ben couldn’t keep his feet. The man was too heavy. He tried to catch himself as he fell, but then Jeffries came down on top of him. It didn’t help that the bone snapping in Ben’s arm sounded like a rifle shot.

  Nurse Bertram was back with her syringe. Ben squirmed out from under the big man as the nurse found a place to stab the man with her needle.

  Even before the drug had time to take effect, the soldier went from enraged to crying. “I never wanted to kill nobody. Not even those Krauts. I’m sorry.”

  The nurse got him up and, with the help of a doctor who appeared on the scene, led him back to his bed. “It’s all right, Soldier. You’ll be going home soon. Things will be better then.” Nurse Bertram’s voice trailed back to Ben.

  Ben wondered if that was true. They all said the word “home” like it was a cure for everything. Home. If they could only get home, everything would be good. But Private Jeffries would still have those memories lurking below the surface. Ben too. The things they’d been through couldn’t be brushed aside.

  Holding his injured arm to his chest, Ben leaned against the foot of an empty bed and looked across at the young soldier. “You okay, kid?”

  “You mean besides having a broken leg?” The kid smiled a little. “My leg bone made an even bigger crack than your arm.”

  “Lucky no shell-shocked guys were around you at the time then.” Ben tried a smile back at the kid but couldn’t quite push it out on his face. He felt dazed. He started to reach up to see if he had a lump on his head, but he didn’t want to turn loose of his arm.

  He pushed away from the bed and the tent started spinning. War was a funny thing. He had gone through almost four years of stepping around land mines, diving for cover when the bombs started falling, and dodging bullets and shrapnel to pull wounded men back to safety without much more than a scratch. Not one battlefield wound, and now he’d been taken down in the middle of a hospital tent.

  The kid kept talking, but Ben couldn’t make out any words. He sat down on the bed. They’d get to him when they had time. Hadn’t he done enough making one man wait with no more than a broken bone to stop another man bleeding? That’s how you did things. Took care of those in the most need.

  He had a banged-up arm, but he didn’t have a broken mind like Jeffries. Like so many other men he’d seen in the field hospitals, tormented by seeing their friends die in front of their eyes and by the noise of death. Ben had heard it too. Death waiting in every explosion.

  Nothing like the peace at home. He shut his eyes and let his mind drift to keep from thinking about the pain starting up in his arm. He was on the wooden porch in front of his father’s house. His home. He had known no other except for those months he’d spent in a dorm on the Richmond college campus before the war. And then hi
s home, if you could call it that, was the army, among his brothers in arms.

  He didn’t want to think about arms right now. Not his broken one. And not the arms that killed. Home. Better to let his mind drift to home.

  He shut out every thought of war and imagined the cool mountain breeze on his face. Dawn was pushing back the shadows of night. The house perched high on the mountain like a bird on a branch. The morning sun bathed the porch in light when it slid up over the neighboring mountain. A mourning dove cooed and then a cardinal added its trilling song. Ben pulled in a deep breath and could almost taste the green pushing in on him from every side. From the open door behind him came the smell of biscuits in the oven and the rustle of his family coming awake like the morning. His father stepped out on the porch behind him.

  His imaginings crashed down around him. Even after he did finally make it home, his father would never step out behind him. Instead he had stepped ahead of him into heaven.

  But his last words to Ben before he climbed on the train to go to the army camp rang in Ben’s ears. “A man does what a man has to do for his family. For his country. You do that and make me proud, son.”

  “Ben, talk to me.” Nurse Bertram’s voice brought him back to the hospital tent. Her cool hand touched his brow. “Did you hit your head?”

  “I don’t know.” He tried to remember, but everything kept slipping away. “My arm hurts.”

  “Your arm is definitely fractured, but let me check your head.” Her fingers explored through his hair on the back of his head. “Nasty lump there.”

  He winced. “Easy.”

  “Don’t be such a baby.” She pulled her hand back and flashed a light in his eyes.

  “I’ll just lie down here and rest awhile.”

  She put her hand under his arm. “Nope, Soldier, come on. No sleeping for you. You’ve got a concussion and we need to find a doctor to do something about that arm.”