Upon A Time

Chapter Four

“Heavens above!” Walter Rousseau rose from his chair as his daughter burst into the house, all color gone from her usually rosy face. “What is it?”

“Come quickly, Father. There’s a man, near death. Bring your bag!” She ran out as quickly as she’d entered, and Walter left his unfinished supper before him on the table.

“Marie, boil water. Lots of it,” he urged his wife, as he rushed past her to retrieve the bag of medical supplies he always carried to his calls. True, he was most often calling on farms to care for animals injured or stricken; but since the death of the local physician from old age two years before, he had been the one that the town turned to when life and death was at stake for animals of the human kind as well.

When he reached the front step of his small cottage, Walter saw Thomas, still holding the injured man in his arms, uncertain what he should do with him. “We have nowhere to begin but the barn, I suppose,” said Walter. “Charlotte, lay down as much hay as you can. Thomas, bring him.

Charlotte ran to the only empty stall in the barn and began piling up hay. She grabbed one of the freshly washed horse blankets and threw it onto the pile, with apologies, as she did so, to Beau. “We’ll have to get you a new one, boy,” she said, and then led the horse as far away from the empty stall as she could; taking him, for now, outside the barn and securing him to the post.

Thomas was finally able to set down his burden, and he did so as gently as he could, given the man was dead weight. The darkened barn, previously lit only by moonbeams coming in through the multitude of holes in the roof, brightened as Charlotte ran from lantern to lantern, igniting them and hanging them upon hooks on the walls.

“Avert your eyes,” Thomas repeated to Charlotte, as he saw that Walter was about to remove the bloodied shawl from the man’s distorted face.

“I must assist him,” Charlotte objected. “If I am going to assist, I have to see.”

 “Thomas, there is more you can do to help, if you are willing,” Walter interrupted. “My wife has set about boiling water so I may clean my instruments. Please, would you fetch it and keep bringing more until I tell you to stop?”

 Thomas was forced to change his focus from worry about Charlotte’s response to the sight of the man’s hideously injured visage and turn it toward doing all he could to save the poor soul’s life. If that was to fetch water, then that was what he would do. “As you say, sir,” he replied, already on his way back to the house.

Walter instructed Charlotte next. “Fetch the largest pot we have, light a fire beneath, and begin piling my instruments into it. I have cleaned them once, but to use them on a man… I must do my very best to prevent infection.”

The man he spoke of suddenly jolted and cried out in pain.

“Sleep, sir, for your waking now will do neither of us any good,” Walter sighed as he brought a cloth soaked in liquid to the man’s nose and held it there until he once again lay motionless.

“Is there hope?” Charlotte asked, as she settled the large, heavy cauldron upon a bed of wood beside her father. She rushed to empty his bag of the metal instruments therein, and grabbed the first pot of water from Thomas as he carried it in. Without a word Thomas rushed back to the house, and the two continued this method of trading off empty vessels to fill the larger one until there was enough water to satisfy Walter.

“Little,” Walter replied at last. “He is fortunate in that the arrow wound to his chest seems superficial… as if deflected by something instead of hitting with full strength. His face, however…”

Charlotte finally had a chance to see, as her father held the lantern up to the man’s damaged features, just how badly he was hurt. “He’s lost the left eye, there is nothing I can do but sew the wound closed. The same for the gash over his cheek, I can only close it. He will never look the way he did before.”