She set the doctor bag on the table and quickly built a fire in the stone fireplace at the kitchen end of the cabin. She hung a kettle of water on the pothook to heat, then grabbed more towels and the doctor bag and went back into the bedroom. She watched Jake Harkner while the water heated. Had God led him here deliberately? Was she supposed to help him? How ironic that this man had invaded her life twice today. To her it seemed a kind of sign, that for some strange reason he was supposed to be a part of her life, that there was some purpose for his being here. She rolled her eyes then at the ridiculous thought.
She took a bottle of laudanum from the bag and uncorked it, again leaning over Harkner and raising his head slightly. “Try to drink some of this,” she said. “It will help kill the pain. I’ve got to try to get out the bullet, Mr. Harkner. I doubt that it went very deep. It was a small gun I used, and the bullet had to go through your woolen jacket first.”
“San…tana,” he muttered. “I tried…sorry…Pa. Pa!”
The word “Pa” was spoken with a hint of utter despair. Miranda found herself feeling a little sorry for him, then chastised herself for such feelings. If the man wasn’t in such a state, you’d probably be dead by now, she told herself. Again she felt like a fool for wanting to help him, yet could not bring herself to let him just lie there in pain. She shoved the slim neck of the bottle into his mouth and poured. Jake swallowed, coughed and sputtered. “No, Pa,” he murmured. “Stay…away. Don’t…make me drink it!” His eyes squinted up and he pressed his lips tight when Miranda took the bottle away. He let out a whimper then that sounded more like a child than a man.
Miranda stepped back in astonishment. His whole body shuddered, then he suddenly lay quiet again. He had mentioned his father twice, the first time with such utter pain, this time with an almost pitiful, childlike pleading. She reminded herself that time was important now. The laudanum would take effect quickly. She went back into the main room and rummaged through a supply cabinet until she found some rope. She went back into the bedroom and used the rope to tie Jake’s wrists and ankles to the sturdy log bedposts, afraid that when she started cutting into him he would thrash around and make her hurt him more—or perhaps he would come awake and try to grab her.
“As soon as this is over and I see you don’t have a fever, I’ll give you a bath and a shave,” she said as she fastened the ropes tightly. “You’ll feel a lot better then. I don’t mean you any more harm, Mr. Harkner.” She had no idea if he heard her. She only knew she had to keep talking to keep up her own courage. She had seen her father remove bullets a couple of times, but she had no real experience of her own. All she knew to do was to dig with a knife, or perhaps she would have to reach inside the wound with her fingers to find the bullet. Somehow it had to come out.
She went back to the fireplace to find the water was finally hot. She poured some into a pan and brought it back into the bedroom, setting it on a small table beside the bed. She then retrieved a bottle of whiskey from her pantry, something her father always kept around for medicinal purposes only, for he had not been a drinking man himself. She thought about the time Wes had gotten into the whiskey, how there had been times when she and her father had come home from church to find her brother drunk and acting silly. It had been a source of heated arguments between her brother and their father, and one of the reasons Wes had left—so that he would be free to do as he pleased, to drink and smoke and gamble and do all the things his father hated.
She put aside those thoughts and doused Jake’s wound with the whiskey. His body jerked, but his eyes did not open. She poured more whiskey over her own hands and her father’s surgical knife. She drew a deep breath then and said a quick prayer. “Heavenly Father, if you meant for me to do this, then help me do it right.”
Fighting to keep her hands steady, she began digging. Jake’s body stiffened, and a pitiful groan exited his lips, but he did not thrash about. Miranda fought tears as she dug deeper and more sickening groans welled up from what seemed the very depths of the man. She swallowed, then reached inside the wound with her fingers, feeling around until she touched what she thought must be the bullet.
“Please let it be,” she whispered. She got hold of the object between two fingers and pulled, breathing a sigh of relief when she retrieved the bullet and held it up to look at it. She smiled with great delight, an almost victorious feeling coming over her then as she dropped the bullet onto the small table beside the bed.