UNSTRAINED MERCY

AuthorHouse

Chapter One

IT IS BEYOND THE OLD DOCTOR'S WISDOM AND pedestrian skills. Fifty-four years ago his medical training embodied a meager thirteen weeks in a diploma factory, respectable for the early nineteenth century. Such training constituted the summation of formal medical education available. His skills grew tenfold over the years, learning from those he helped and those he could not. But Lord knows he couldn't perform miracles.

It's warm for late October, temperature in the upper eighties. Heat and moisture from boiling water on the kitchen stove ascends through the second floor heat grate; the small bedroom is stifling. Theold doctor's tattywhiteshirtclings from perspiration, and his thinning white hair hangs damp. His eyes are afire from sweat and stress; while his whiskey complexion flushes. He mumbles to himself words that sound God-fearing, or is he cursing himself, his limitations—or the damnable state of affairs that slay the human spirit? He cannot save the young woman. Paying for one's indiscretions may be just in the grand scheme—but to die? Even an aged doctor who's witnessed rival sides of life, experienced suffering and death as parcel to his profession, even he cannot reconcile the premature passing of youth.

It is now his compassionate and ethical duty to ease the young woman's suffering. Earlier he had given her opium by mouth, only to be vomited. What else to do but dust morphine on the wound. In the War Between the States now waging, field doctors sprinkle the powdery substance on bloody stumps, rushing its numbing essence to the brain.

Aurelia's wound is deep inside—between her thighs. The old doctor spoons the powdery sedative around the torn cervix. The infant yet lies within the holy cavity. One angelic foot has sought redemption beyond the womb. Bloody clots appear, followed in warm pursuit the issuing of fresh blood. Aurelia is hemorrhaging! The harried doctor knows little time remains for the youth he delivered into this cursed life, on this very date, seventeen years earlier. He's grievously aware he cannot save her. How he despises such times. My calling to be a healer! As a young doctor he believed he could save the dying—that messianic tip latent in the mind of inexperienced healers. But some years back, his faltering self-compassion became excuse to take up the bottle. It seemed to the doctor, the whiskey flask affirmed more than the cosmos did. In his maligned thinking, God acted on stern admonitions; while the blessings pouring forth from the sanctified container enabled him to sleep, and temporarily forget his feeble humanity.

The Great War is near, not merely read about in the Neosho News; the fighting now wages on home fields. Soldiers on horseback, parched to the bit, ascend on farmstead wells to replenish barrels and canteens with precious water. The wind now carries grave commotions of battle. Gone are the once wistful currents that carried songbirds and flying nymphs, and which offered nurturing breath to the pastoral countryside.

The old doctor had only heard of babies birthing in such manner. He had successfully delivered breech, but "cross birth," never. The length of the infant lay crossways to the long axis of the mother. Unless such babies were very small, or been dead for some time and become greatly softened, birth through the natural passage was impossible.

"Do something! Please don't let her die!" pleads Cordelia, the young woman's mother.

"Sweet Mother, if only I could," replies the old doctor in a hoarse and exhausted voice. "The baby's wedged inside her."

Cordelia falls into the rocker across the room, swooning in grief, her apron concealing her face.

She suddenly bounds from the chair to Aurelia's side. Her lips near Aurelia's ear, she whispers adamantly, over and over, words intended to cleanse her own suffering soul. "Aurelia, please forgive me for the terrible things I said!"

Aurelia is subsiding from morphine and blood loss. Through glazed eyes beneath settling lids, she fights to focus on her mother's grief-stricken face. The young woman knows her long sleep is imminent, but it now seems an uncomplicated resolve; the one she loves more than life, her beautiful captain, is away in the Great Battle—perhaps never to return—and she's lost their child.

Outside the bedroom, youthful ears press against the closed door. Aurelia's brother, Uriah, is ten years old, barely that. He cannot comprehend the tragedy unfolding, but he knows what his mother means by, "Please forgive me for the terrible things I said!" He remembers the hateful accusations spoken to his sister. He once asked Aurelia what the word "whore" meant. Her adamant reply was, "Something I'm not!"

Uriah greatly admires his sister's boyfriend, even though he's twice her age. He does think it strange that Aurelia would like someone so old. But even young Uriah finds the captain handsome in his uniform. The jacket dazzles with yellow tape braiding, and a flashy sword drapes against his left thigh. Sheathed in a steel scabbard, its grip is layered in black leather with branches of brass circling to protect the warrior's hand. Uriah's compulsion to touch the cavalry saber was at times irresistible. The captain resisted him as kindly as possible, dutifully instructing the innocent youth that its cutting edge was lethal; that men died from its crescent lunge. Uriah keenly imagined the bad soldier's head toppling off as Captain Edward Christen dealt the dirty rogue a mighty one-fell-swoop with his silver blade—from atop an intrepid mount.

But events on the other side of the door appear nightmarish to Uriah. He knows people die, at least old—and others—but certainly not his sister who is youthful and with child. Grandparents, aunts and uncles pass away; that's part of the human scenario. Though painful at the time, a person's passing was shielded by older family members taking over the distasteful duties. He was never up-close to such events. Yet, through the closed door, his resisting young mind vaguely absorbs proceedings filling him with horror and pending loss.

In the twilight of consciousness, Aurelia hears her mother pleading forgiveness. But the words only swirl in a delusional vortex; neither Aurelia's voice nor her will can bend to a brain command. Could she respond, she would extend to her mother words of grace; despite her mother's accusations the last many months.

Aurelia Sutten met Edward Christen two years previous. Edward's wife died during a flu epidemic a year prior to meeting Aurelia. "Siskin, my green-eyed songbird," was sentiment expressed when speaking of his wife. She was with child at the time illness took her. He was still grieving the losses when he met Aurelia. Edward was worldly-wise at thirty-two; Aurelia was but a youth of fifteen. He'd fought valiantly in a number of Missouri battles: Wilson's Creek on August 10, 1861, the winter siege at Mount Zion Church; the battle of Independence in '62; and the first battle of Newtonia on September 30, 1862. He was a captain in the 15th Regiment of the Missouri Cavalry. He fought with abandon, with little concern for life or death, charging and shouting to heaven—or hell—all the boiling vengeance within him. He led his troops in battle while all about young men fell. He came to be called "Lord Christen" by his men; he had survived all the battles—unscathed.

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