Chapter Thirty-Six
Joseph felt sick inside. He’d dreaded this moment all day. Mrs. Smith carefully unwrapped the bandages on Katie’s left hand.
No one had spoken the obvious truth out loud, least of all Joseph.
Katie’s fingers were dying. The ice had helped slow the swelling. They had tried every salve, every folk remedy anyone down either road could think of, but Katie’s fingertips had still turned black.
Katie winced and groaned with each movement of her arm. She hadn’t slept in hours but seemed to hover half-conscious and visibly racked with pain. Her eyes had opened a few times but didn’t focus on anything. Her lips moved with silent pleas. Tears welled in her tightly closed eyes. She was in utter agony, and nothing Joseph had done had helped in the least.
He held his breath as Mrs. Smith exposed Katie’s fingers. His heart stopped. The blackness had spread nearly the entire length of her fingers. He saw resignation and mournful acceptance on the faces of Biddy and Ian and Mrs. Smith.
“What haven’t we tried yet?” he asked, shaking his head furiously. “Did you ask Mrs. Claire? She might remember something she learned as a girl. Or down at the ranches? They see injuries like this all the time. They might know something we don’t.”
“Joseph—” Ian began.
He spoke directly over him. “The ice didn’t help, but we haven’t tried heat. What if we alternate between the two?”
Biddy was already shaking her head. “This cannot be reversed. You and I both know that.”
“I don’t know that,” he said sternly. “We haven’t tried everything. Heat might get the blood flowing better. That could help. It could.”
“Joseph.” Ian took over for his wife. “There’s nothing—”
“No.” He barked out the word. “We have to keep trying.”
“Until when?” Ian asked. “Right now it’s only her fingers. But left unchecked, her entire hand will die, then her arm. What happens when the blackness passes her shoulder, Joseph? What if the dying spreads to her heart or lungs?”
He couldn’t listen anymore. He couldn’t. “We have to think of something else. There’s a way to fix this. There has to be.”
Biddy set a hand on his arm. “We can cut off the fingers, Joseph. She’d be left with the rest of her hand intact. But if we wait—”
“We cannot take her fingers, Biddy. I can’t let that happen.” Pinpricks of pain stabbed at the corners of his eyes. A thick lump grew in his throat. “I won’t.”
“It’s only fingers,” Ian said. “She can live without her fingers.”
“No.” Joseph paced away. Panic roared inside. He would explode soon, he knew he would. “We have to leave her fingers. We have to. You . . . you don’t understand.”
He pushed both hands through his hair, fighting the urge to simply shout with the frustration of it all. Katie was suffering. He wanted to take that away, but what they were talking about was unthinkable.
“I don’t understand.” Biddy watched him from the bedside, worry lining her face. “I know you don’t want to cause her pain, but we cannot leave her like this.”
“No one takes her fingers.” He growled it out, driven by desperation. “We’ll think of something else. But we won’t take her fingers. We won’t.”
They all watched him, brows pulled down, confusion in their eyes and faces. How could they not see what they were doing to her?
“It is one hand, Joseph,” Ian insisted. “Only a hand.”
“It’s more than that. It’s her music.” The echo of his words stabbed his heart. “She plays her fiddle with her left hand. She can’t play without her fingers. If we amputate them, she’ll never play her fiddle again.”
He could see by their faces they hadn’t pieced that together, and the realization gave them pause.
“Music is like breathing to her,” he said. “If I take that away from her, it’ll kill her.” He swallowed on the last words, fighting to control his emotions. “I can’t do that to her. I can’t.”
Katie had sacrificed her feet for the sake of her hands all those years ago in the cold Irish winter. She’d run back into her burning house to save the very violin she’d played for him and his girls these past months. Music was everything to Katie. It held her happiest memories. It was her strongest connection to her home. It was her one abiding source of peace. He could not—would not—take that from her.
“She isn’t able to make this decision herself.” Ian’s calm was both admirable and grating. “Someone has to decide.”
He shook his head again and again, the movement only growing more frantic. “I say no. Absolutely not.”
Another voice entered the argument. “Katie and I have an agreement between us.” Mr. O’Connor stood in the doorway of the room. His expression was somber. Apparently he’d been listening for a while. “She hasn’t a father here to look out for her, so I offered to stand in for him. She did me the honor of accepting that offer, and I’ve taken the responsibility very seriously.”
He looked around the room. When his eyes met Joseph’s, something like empathy, understanding, and a plea for trust passed between them.
“I love her like my own daughter, Joseph. I’d not let anything hurt her if I could help it. And I’d never take her well-being lightly.”
Mr. O’Connor meant to take the weight of this choice on his own shoulders? Joseph hated that he was even considering handing such a crucial decision over to anyone else.
Mr. O’Connor was not a tall man, but he could command a room. He stepped up next to Joseph. “I understand about Katie’s music. I saw the love she has for it and her need for it in her eyes the first time I ever saw her play. Let me promise you now, I don’t take that lightly. Not in the least.”
Joseph could feel the man’s sincerity. The tension squeezing his heart lessened the slightest bit.
“Katie trusted me enough to think of me as family.” Mr. O’Connor spoke only to him. “Can you trust me to care for her as I would my own child? Can you put that trust in me, Joseph Archer?”
Could he?
“I swear to you—I’ll bring in the preacher and give my word on his Bible if that’ll help you believe me—that I won’t make any choices without thoroughly weighing the consequences. I swear it on the souls of the sons I lost—may they rest in peace. I swear it to you.”
There could be no stronger assurance than that. Joseph nodded, even as he fought down a fresh surge of desperate emotion.
Mr. O’Connor set his shoulders. With mingled compassion and determination, he spoke again. “The first order I’m giving is for you to leave.”
“I . . . what?”
Mr. O’Connor didn’t waver. “You are not equal to what the next hours may hold, son. You’ll not do our sweet lass here any good if you fall apart. You’ll crumble clear to pieces if you stay. You have to leave her in our care and trust us to look after her.”
That hadn’t been part of the original bargain. He couldn’t agree to it. “I promised her not to leave. I’ve promised her again and again that I would stay with her. I won’t break my word.”
“Then make her a new promise, Joseph. Tell her you’ll be nearby. Tell her you’re leaving her in the care of trusted people.”
“I can’t—”
“She will understand.” Mr. O’Connor pulled him across the room to Katie’s bedside. “We can give you a few moments alone.” The others in the room nodded. “Then you need to go. Go love your daughters—they need you too. Go rest your mind and body. Your Katie needs you to be strong enough to leave.”
Even as the room emptied, Joseph doubted he had the strength to simply leave Katie there, knowing the enormity of what she faced. But he knew for a fact if her fingers or hand or arm had to be amputated he couldn’t sit there beside her while the deed was done. Even understanding the necessity, he would likely fight them every step of the way.
Mr. O’Connor was right. He had to find the strength to walk away and let them take care of her.
He sat on the edge of the bed, looking into her pale face. The agony he saw there broke his heart. He knew, though he struggled to admit it, that much of her suffering came from her hand. His mind understood what had to be done, but he couldn’t force his heart to accept it.
“I wish I could make it go away,” he whispered to her. “If I could give you my hands, I would. I would do anything for you, Katie.”
He gently took her blackened fingers in his hand. He could do nothing to save her from this. Nothing at all.
“I am so sorry.” He placed a featherlight kiss on the back of her hand. “So very sorry.”
Her whimper of pain nearly broke him.
“I know I promised not to leave you.” He struggled to push air through his tight lungs. “But I’m not strong enough to watch them do what they need to do.”
He ran his fingers along her hair, letting his eyes linger on her face. She was the most beautiful thing in the world to him. He could only hope she would forgive him for what was about to be done to her.
She grimaced, shifting about as if searching for a position that would relieve her pain. A tear trickled over her temple.
“I love you, Katie Macauley.” He swallowed with effort. “I have almost from the very beginning. The longer I know you, the more I—” The pain of regret and worry forestalled any further admissions. “I need to go sit with the girls,” he said. “The O’Connors are going to look after you. I promise I’ll be back. I promise.”
A moment later, Mr. O’Connor peeked inside. He didn’t say a word; he didn’t have to. They both knew what came next.
Joseph forced himself to stand and walk away from Katie’s side. This had to be done.
Mr. O’Connor set a reassuring hand on Joseph’s shoulder as he passed. Joseph nodded his understanding. Reverend Ford, Karl Kester, Ian, and Seamus Kelly waited in the corridor. The reverend had likely come to pray over their efforts and Katie’s well-being. Ian and Karl, no doubt, meant to help hold her down through the agony of an amputation—there was nothing for the pain but ineffectual powders and all the liquor they could gather up.
Not until the men had stepped inside the room and closed the door behind them did Joseph piece together Seamus’s role in the coming operation. As a blacksmith he had tools—those that hadn’t been destroyed by fire—and was skilled with his hands, and he was by far the strongest man among them. Seamus was the one who would be cutting off her dead fingers.
Joseph slumped against the wall. He blinked hard against the tears that gathered hot and furious in his eyes. A blacksmith had removed Katie’s toes. Now the same thing was happening all over again. For all his money and influence, he couldn’t even give her a real doctor.
He had failed her. Utterly.