“I’ll Pay You Back When I Grow Up,” Girl Told Mountain Man — 15 Years Later, He Remembered
Chapter 8
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She carved away the edges of the exit wound in his back, leaning him forward slightly, her forearm pressing against his uninjured shoulder to keep him pinned to the chair. The metallic smell of fresh blood overtook the stench of decay."Almost done with the knife," she murmured, wiping sweat from her own brow with the back of her wrist. "Now the acid. Hold fast, Gideon. Hold fast."She took the bottle of carbolic acid and uncorked it. The sharp chemical bite of it stung her eyes. She poured it directly onto a clean cloth and pressed it deep into the open cavity of his shoulder.Gideon arched backward, a raw, agonizing scream ripping past the leather strap. His back bowed off the chair, his heels driving hard into the floorboards. The acid sizzled, searing the nerve endings, chemically burning the lingering bacteria.Clara leaned her entire body weight into the wound, holding the acid-soaked cloth in place, fighting his violent, involuntary spasms."Stay with me!" she ordered, her voice finally cracking with exertion. "Stay with me, old man!"It lasted for 30 seconds. It felt like an hour.Finally, Gideon collapsed backward, his head lolling to the side. He had passed out from the sheer magnitude of the pain. The leather strap slipped from his mouth, hitting the floor with a soft thud.Clara exhaled a long, shuddering breath. Her hands were covered in his blood. She quickly packed the wound with sterile cotton wool, binding it tightly with heavy linen bandages, wrapping them in a figure-eight across his chest and under his left arm to immobilize the right shoulder.By the time she finished tying off the knot, the sun had set, plunging the cabin into heavy shadows illuminated only by the dying fire in the hearth.She didn't stop moving. She dragged Gideon—he was incredibly heavy, a dead weight of muscle and bone—from the armchair to the low cot against the far wall. She covered him with two thick bearskin rugs. She fed the fire until it roared, throwing a violent, flickering orange light across the log walls. She boiled more water. She cleaned her instruments, wiping the blood from the steel, drying them meticulously, and returning them to the velvet-lined loops in her bag.Then, she pulled the armchair closer to the fire, laid her loaded repeating rifle across her lap, and began the vigil.For three days, the fever raged. It consumed Gideon, burning him from the inside out. He thrashed under the heavy furs, muttering in delirium. He spoke to people who had been dead for 20 years. He shouted at the timbermen. He called out for water, but when Clara pressed the tin cup to his lips, he choked and turned his head away.Clara slept in ten-minute increments. She fed him broth made from dried meat she found in his larder. She changed the bandages twice a day, meticulously checking the tissue for signs of returning rot. The wound was angry, leaking clear fluid and blood, but the black tracking lines creeping up his neck had stopped. The acid had worked; the infection was halted. But the sheer trauma of the wound and the blood loss had left his body on the brink of collapse.