Chapter Thirty-Five
Through the combined efforts of the Irish and a good number from the Red Road, a rope bridge spanned the nearly frozen river the day after the fire in the barn. Tavish was the third person across, his parents having been granted the right to go first by virtue of Finbarr’s condition.
What he found at the Archer home left him speechless. If not for the tufts of singed ginger hair and Matthew Scott identifying the swollen and bandaged young man in the guest bedroom, Tavish wouldn’t have known it was his brother. Even his eyes were hidden behind bandages.
“Is he blind?” Da asked Joseph when he came in to check on the family.
“We don’t know. He hasn’t been awake, so there has been no opportunity to ask him.”
Tavish looked down at his brother, an ache growing in his chest. “His eyes were damaged, then?”
Joseph nodded. “We looked at them before applying the bandages. I’m no doctor, but it didn’t look good.”
Ma had sent Matthew off to rest, taking over Finbarr’s care. She nodded as Joseph spoke, but didn’t look away from her son.
Joseph leaned against the wall near the door. Heavy bags hung under his eyes. He clearly hadn’t shaved. If he hadn’t taken time to wash up or sleep, the situation was even worse than it seemed.
Dread settled uncomfortably in Tavish’s heart. “How is Katie?”
Joseph didn’t answer, but he instantly looked more tired.
Tavish’s stomach dropped to his toes. He moved quickly out of the room and across the corridor to where he’d been told Katie was. Joseph’s housekeeper and Reverend Ford were packing Katie’s bandaged left arm and hand in ice.
Even from the door he could hear her labored breathing. She wasn’t as still as Finbarr, but neither was she thrashing about. Her expression held such pain, it hurt to look at her. Beneath the deep bruises and dark cuts, her face was pale as snow.
Saints above.
Tavish caught the preacher’s eye. “What can I do to help?”
“Not much, unfortunately. Other than bringing in ice from the river, we really don’t know what to do.”
A tiny, agonizing moan escaped Katie’s throat. Tavish sat in the chair next to the side of the bed. Her expression pulled tighter. She shifted the tiniest bit, then again. Tavish took her uninjured hand in his.
“You’re going to be fine, Katie.” He could think of nothing else to say. He didn’t even know if she could hear him.
Another sound of anguish followed.
“Go fetch Mr. Archer,” Mrs. Smith told the preacher.
Reverend Ford was already halfway out the door, apparently not needing the instructions. It seemed they’d done this before.
Katie began coughing, gasping. Panic swirled through Tavish’s mind. Was she choking? What ought he to do?
“Does Joseph have medicine for her?”
Mrs. Smith shook her head as she calmly checked Katie’s forehead with the back of her hand. “She rests better when he’s here. That is about all we can do for her.”
Tavish kept hold of Katie’s hand. “We’re here, Katie. Try to keep calm.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. His efforts at comforting her did nothing.
Joseph strode into the room in the very next instant. “Did she awaken?”
“No.” Mrs. Smith stepped back, making room for her employer to come closer. “But she’s fussing again. I would guess it’s the swelling in her hand. The skin is pulled so tight it has to be very painful.”
Katie continued coughing. Tavish watched helplessly. Each breath she took ended in a deep wheeze.
Joseph leaned over and whispered something in her ear. With one hand he stroked her cheek, then her hair.
Tavish watched for the miracle Mrs. Smith had practically promised Joseph could perform. To his surprise, he saw one—a small one, but something of a miracle just the same. Katie still struggled with each intake of air—her expression remained pained—but she breathed more slowly and the lines of pain around her mouth eased.
“There you are.” Joseph stood a little straighter, his whispered words reaching the rest of them, though he clearly still spoke to Katie. His gaze flitted directly past Tavish and settled on Mrs. Smith. “Can we give her more powders?”
The housekeeper shook her head. “The bottle says not for two more hours. I dare not risk it without a doctor assuring us it won’t harm her.”
Joseph looked haggard, worn to the bone. “What about lavender tea? That helped her sleep before.”
Mrs. Smith nodded. “And I’ll replace the poultice on her chest. That should help her lungs clear.”
On cue, Katie coughed again, the sound dry and raw. Mrs. Smith hurried out to fetch her supplies.
“Help her sit up a little,” Joseph instructed Tavish. “We have to get her to drink some water.”
Tavish slid an arm under Katie’s back and helped lift her. She winced, and he paused.
“This is hurting her.” Tavish could see that it was. Joseph hadn’t raised Katie from his side. “Maybe if we lifted both sides so she wasn’t tilted so much.”
Joseph shook his head. “This arm has to stay in the ice.”
Tavish held Katie up that small bit, fighting the urge to lay her back down. She whimpered in this new position. Joseph took a cup from the bedside table and slowly trickled water into her mouth.
She swallowed, her eyes scrunching tight with the effort. A few more coughs, then a few more sips, and they laid her back down.
Joseph reached for her blanket and pulled it back up to her shoulders. He dabbed at a bit of water hovering at the corner of her mouth, brushed her hair out of her face, then adjusted the tub of ice her arm sat in. It was all very automatic, almost habitual.
“You’ve done this a few times.”
Joseph nodded wearily.
The depth of her suffering pierced Tavish. “Her hand seems particularly bad.” Only the very tips of her fingers peeked out from the heavy bandaging, and he could see how terribly swollen and discolored they were.
“It was crushed when the barn fell. There are bones in a few fingers that feel like little more than powder.”
Merciful heavens.
“Papa?” Emma Archer stood in the doorway.
“You are supposed to be sleeping,” Joseph said.
“I want to see Finbarr.”
Joseph shook his head. “Finbarr is sleeping.”
“I know.” Her tone turned pleading. “I won’t wake him up; I only want to see him.”
Katie started coughing again. Joseph’s eyes darted between her and his little girl. Mrs. Smith’s words hit Tavish with renewed understanding. She rests better when he is here. Joseph didn’t want to leave while Katie was struggling, but his daughter was in need as well.
“I can take her,” Tavish offered, grateful to have found something he could do to help. “I’ll ask Ma if Emma can peek in on Finbarr.”
“Thank you.” There was no doubting Joseph’s sincerity, nor his complete exhaustion.
Tavish felt entirely expendable. He wasn’t ready to truly think on the reasons why Katie would find comfort in Joseph’s presence and not his. He could do nothing but accept it for the time being and do what he could to help.
Finbarr woke the morning after the Irish crossed the river. The entire family breathed a collective sigh of relief. He had no memory of the fire, no understanding of what had happened. Da and Ma decided that, until he was stronger, it would be for the best if they kept explanations to a minimum. He was told only that he and Katie had both been caught in a fire in Joseph Archer’s barn. Eventually he would be told how close the Archer girls had come to being trapped there as well. Someday they would tell him Marianne Johnson had died in his arms.
Tavish did his best to lift his family’s spirits. The effort felt nearly futile in the hours after Finbarr told them he couldn’t see. One eye provided little more than shapes, the very beginnings of faces, but through the other eye, Finbarr confessed in raspy, quiet tones, he could see nothing at all.
Mr. and Mrs. Johnson and their two boys came by again and again to look in on Finbarr and Katie. They begged for something to do that might help. Mrs. Johnson ended up sitting in Finbarr’s room, with Ma’s arm around her shoulders, as they both wept. Though the words hadn’t been spoken, everyone seemed to understand. The grief was a piercing ache they all shared, one nobody quite knew how to relieve.
A dark cloud of discouragement hung over the house. Everyone tiptoed around. An almost eerie quiet had settled there. Biddy had come across the river and stayed to help with Katie. Ian helped with Joseph, who looked like he hadn’t slept at all.
“I have to stay here with Katie,” he muttered every time anyone suggested he rest.
“I’m worried for him,” Ian said late the second afternoon as he and Tavish stood in the doorway of Katie’s room. “He can’t push himself like this much longer.”
“Aye, but he won’t listen to reason.”
“Of course not.” Ian’s words were heavy. “He loves her, but he can’t do anything to relieve her suffering. He’s watching her die.”
If only Ian was exaggerating. Katie’s condition was grave. Seeing her in such pain was eating away at Tavish.
His gaze settled on Joseph, where he sat at the bedside, arms tented and hands locked together as if in prayer. “She’s different with him.”
“His presence does calm her quite a bit,” Ian said.
Tavish shook his head. “I don’t just mean now. Even before all of this, the two of them—” He couldn’t find the right words to explain what he’d been seeing and feeling. Perhaps he didn’t want to find the words. He stepped a few paces away from the door. “I’ve been frantic for weeks, afraid I would lose her to him. But—” Saying the words hurt more than he’d expected, but he had to get it out. He knew Ian would understand. “If she needs him, Ian, if he is what will pull her through this, if he is the one who will make her happy, I . . . I can’t . . .”
Ian didn’t say anything. He moved to Tavish’s side and set an empathetic hand on his shoulder.
“She deserves to be happy,” Tavish said. “She deserves it more than any person I’ve ever known.”
“What about you, brother? Don’t you deserve to be happy?”
“I’ve seen her with him, Ian.” He pushed out a heavy breath. “I’ve seen the way they change each other for the better. I couldn’t be happy if I took that away from her.”
“But you and she—”
“—haven’t been the same lately.” Tavish finished the sentence with the hard truth of the matter. “I simply haven’t been willing to admit it to myself.”
“I’m sorry,” Ian said. “I truly am.”
“So am I. But this is right. I know it is.” The admission hurt more deeply than he could even express, but he could no longer deny it.
Ian watched him a moment, not with pity but with compassion. “You’re a good man, Tavish O’Connor.”
Tavish shook his head, overwhelmed by all that had happened. He took hold of the doorknob to Finbarr’s room. “I mean to look in on our brother.”
He slipped inside the quiet room where Finbarr was sleeping. Ma kept vigil at his bedside. Mr. Johnson stood at the bureau, setting out bottles of powders and ointment. They looked up as Tavish entered.
He offered the most sincere smile he could manage, hoping his grief didn’t show. There was enough suffering without him adding to it.
“I need to be with my wife,” Mr. Johnson told Ma. “Please send word if there is anything the boy needs. He or Miss Katie. Anything at all.”
“I will,” Ma said.
Mr. Johnson’s eyes met Tavish’s as he passed. The tears that hovered there tore into him. There was too much pain in too many hearts. Including his.