Sawbones by Melissa Lenhardt Read Free Book Online Page A

She handed the pitcher over.
    I poured a small amount of water between Ida’s legs. “Have you heard of germ theory?”
    “No.”
    “I did not imagine you would have.” I rubbed the bar of carbolic soap between my hands, and gently cleaned the blood from between Ida’s legs. “About eight years ago, Louis Pasteur theorized disease is not transported through the air, but by direct contamination; physicians and nurses with soiled hands touching other patients is what spreads disease. Pasteur wasn’t the first to postulate the idea, only the most recent and well regarded.”
    I threaded the needle that had been soaking in the carbolic acid solution and tied off the end. I held the threaded needle up. “Purple thread. I would have never guessed, Ester.” I leaned forward. “Could you bring a lantern over, please?” With Anna holding the lantern, I sewed the incision I made.
    “The Rebels, during the war, ran out of everything. They resorted to using horsehair for sutures. Can you imagine the desperation you must be in to use horsehair? But it was coarse and not easy to work with, so they boiled it to make it more supple.” Ida twitched and moaned. I rose and held her by the shoulders while she drank the rest of the morphine-laced whisky. Soon, she was asleep again.
    I returned to my task. “Turned out, the wounds that were stitched with the horsehair were less likely to get infected.”
    “Because they were clean,” Anna said.
    “Yes.”
    “Four years ago, Joseph Lister championed the idea of using carbolic acid as an antiseptic during and after surgery. Like any new idea, it has been slow to take hold. It is difficult to change people’s minds.”
    “But, you listened.”
    I tied off the suture and stood. “The benefit of being shunned by the medical establishment is I can do what I want. I will tell you this: I have never lost a patient to infection, and I never will.”
    *  *  *
    “Ten minutes,” Ester said. “Ten minutes from the time she walked in the door ’til I was holding my grandson. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
    Maureen and I sat across Ester’s scrubbed wooden table from Cornelius and Anna. Anna held a pencil over a small bound journal, waiting to write the next item on our list of supplies to buy and things to do before our wagon train pulled out of Austin in a week’s time. Maureen licked the tip of her pencil and made note on her own list, or appeared to. In truth, she doodled boxes in the margins, having completed our list the night before.
    It was three weeks past the night of our arrival and Ester had told the story of Ida’s delivery daily, sometimes multiple times, ever since. Her gratitude and enthusiasm for my skills in saving her daughter and grandson were gratifying, a little too gratifying in Maureen’s opinion. She believed one compliment was enough, constant compliments were the Devil’s playground, and warned me more than once not to let Ester’s praise go to my head. When Ester wanted to spread the story beyond the boarding house, I pulled her aside and asked her to keep my heroics quiet, as well as my profession. Her face fell, slightly, until comprehension dawned. She nodded once and with a firm expression kept her word, though she couldn’t resist talking about it among our group in private.
    “She just reached up in there,” Ester said, miming my actions with her arm, “and—”
    “Yes, yes. That’s quite enough. No details are needed.” Cornelius fidgeted with the knot of his tie and glanced everywhere but at the women who surrounded him. Anna and I exchanged subdued smiles. Poor Cornelius was outnumbered and it made him extremely uncomfortable. “We were talking teamsters not—the other. You’ll need to hire one to drive your schooner,” Cornelius said to Maureen.
    “No, we won’t.”
    “Have you decided to take me and Anna up on our offer to travel with us?”
    “No need to be so crowded when we can afford our own.” Though paying