Shifted By The Winds (3 page)

“Does Carrie know?”

Robert shook his head. “I was going to tell her, but then they got called away. I didn’t want to spring the news on her right before she left. She would just worry.” He was glad not to have burdened her with the bad news, but he was also sad she missed the joy of giving All My Heart to Amber. They had planned on doing it together.

Moses nodded easily. “Looks like you’re doing enough worrying for both of you,” he agreed.

Robert sighed. “I know worrying won’t change anything.”

“No, but you would be less than human if you didn’t. The trick is to not let the worry paralyze you. You gots to feel it, let it go, and keep right on movin’.”

Robert grinned as Moses slipped back into the black dialect. “Sarah?”

“Sarah.” Moses slapped him on the back. “Let’s go for a ride. There’s something I want to talk to you about.
 

Carrie groaned as she and Janie finished putting the sheets on the last bed. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired in my life. I have muscles hurting that I didn’t even know existed.”

“How easily we forget,” Janie said, managing a weak smile as she pushed back limp strands of hair from her weary face.

“Forget?”

“There were times we worked twenty-four hours straight at Chimborazo,” Janie reminded her. “We hardly knew our names when we walked out of there.”

Carrie frowned. “You’re right. I’m doing my best to forget those times.” She knew she never would. It had gotten much better, but there were still times she had relentless nightmares of mangled bodies, rotting flesh, and glazed eyes burning with pain. She shuddered as she forced the images from her mind, and then turned to analyze the room. Her eyes narrowed. “Where is everyone else?” She’d been so absorbed in her work she hadn’t been aware everyone else had disappeared.

Janie covered her mouth as she yawned. “They left a couple hours ago. Elizabeth, Alice, and Florence are finishing up on the first floor. The driver promised to come back for us. We told him we weren’t willing to leave until the hospital was ready for all the patients tomorrow.”

Carrie looked up as two men appeared in the doorway at the end of the long room. She recognized them as the watchmen she had seen earlier in the day.

“It’s time for us to leave,” one of the men called, “but we’re not going to leave you women here by yourself. You’re certainly not planning on staying all night, are you?”

Carrie shook her head. “Definitely not. Our driver should be here in just a few minutes.”

The watchman hesitated and looked at his companion. “We’ll wait until he gets here,” he said, only his eyes communicating how much he wanted to leave.

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” Carrie responded. She was certain the men had family waiting at home for them. They must already be frantic with worry. She could feel Janie’s alarm radiating from her eyes at the idea of being left alone, but it was not the watchmen’s fault they had insisted on remaining. “You must go home. We will be fine.”

The other watchman glanced out the window. “Things seemed to have calmed down out there, Gerald,” he muttered.

Gerald still looked hesitant, his kind eyes dark with worry.

“Go home,” Carrie insisted, suddenly wondering if she was making another unwise decision. The look of relief on the men’s faces forced her to continue. “We will be just fine. We’ll wait right inside the building for our driver.”

“And you’ll make sure the doors are locked?” Gerald asked.

“I promise,” Carrie responded. “Go.” She watched, struggling to push away a vague sense of panic when the two men nodded, and then disappeared, closing the door behind them as the left. Only then did she turn to look at Janie. “You think I made a mistake.” She longed for Janie to disagree, but the knot forming in the pit of her stomach told her she had once again been too impulsive.

Janie tried to smile. “What I think doesn’t really matter now. Let’s finish putting out the water pitchers and glasses. Our driver should be here any minute.”

Regret surged through Carrie. “Matthew will never forgive me if something happens to you.” She grabbed Janie’s hand. “I’m so sorry, Janie.”

Janie’s eyes softened at the mention of her fiancé’s name, but she straightened her shoulders and glanced toward the window. “Matthew has told me far too many stories of what he has risked to tell the truth of what has happened in our country. He might be terrified, but he would also support us doing what we believe is the right thing.”

“So you’re not mad at me?”

Janie’s smile was genuine this time. “If I got mad every time you did something impulsive, we would have ceased being friends a long time ago. Your impulsiveness is one of the things I love most about you. I’ve learned to deal with the fact that it sometimes gets us in trouble. Besides, it was your impulsivity that saved me the day we first met. Do you remember?”

“How could I forget you being attacked by a drunken idiot?” Carrie answered, forgetting their situation for a minute as her mind traveled backward. A loud noise outside jolted her out of her reverie. “What time is it?”

Alice Humphries, her blue eyes looking almost haggard beneath her blond curls, appeared in the door. “It’s ten o’clock.” She yawned as she looked at the watch she had pulled from her pocket.

Carrie’s eyes widened. “Ten o’clock?” she echoed, amazed at how swiftly the day had flown by. “What time is our driver due to arrive?”

Florence Robinson, her other housemate, walked in and fell on one of the beds with a dramatic sigh. “He should have been here,” she admitted. She stretched her long legs as she gazed up at her friends, her usually vivacious blue eyes glazed with fatigue. She pushed back stray strands of red waves. “Perhaps we should just stay here tonight. I’m so tired I could sleep anywhere.”

Carrie pushed aside the appealing image of falling into one of the beds. “How late is the driver?” She was acutely aware she was responsible for sending the watchmen home. She was also quite certain it wasn’t a good idea for five women to be alone in the hospital all night. She cast Janie an apologetic look.

“He should have been here thirty minutes ago,” Elizabeth said as she walked in. “I decided to come wait up here on the second floor with the rest of you.”

Carrie’s heart sank. “Because you don’t feel safe down there?”

“Let’s just say I like being further away from the street,” Elizabeth replied, trying to hide her worry with a tired smile.

Carrie frowned and moved over to look out one of the windows. Once the sun had gone down she had stopped keeping track of what was happening in the neighborhood. She and the rest had simply worked to get everything done. Her heart sank even further when she poked her head out. Every muscle tensed with sudden fright as she tried to interpret what she was seeing.

“What is it?” Janie murmured as she came to stand beside her.

Carrie stared at the clusters of people congregated on the hill beside the hospital. She could see blankets and buckets of food. Small children huddled sleepily against their mothers, while the older ones played in dim lantern light. “They seem to be preparing for a show of some kind,” she muttered as she peered down at the crowd.

A sudden movement to the right caught her eye. It took her several moments to sort out the moving shadows from the darkness of the night. “Oh dear God…”

“Carrie?” Alice asked sharply. “You’re scaring me.”

Carrie took a deep breath and turned back to her housemates. “There are men carrying buckets of water to the rooftops of the homes surrounding the hospital.”

Alice looked confused. “Why would they—?”

Florence leapt up from the bed. “Because they will use the water to extinguish any sparks from the flames,” she snapped as all signs of fatigue swept from her face. “They’re going to burn the hospital,” she announced. “We have to get out of here.”

“But our driver isn’t here,” Alice stammered. “Where will we go?”

Carrie berated herself for sending the watchmen home, though she was dimly aware she might have also saved their lives. Surely the men preparing to torch the building would have more compassion for five women. She also knew she had no time to regret her decision. They must act. “Florence is right,” she said, looking out the window one final time before she headed to the stairs. “We must leave.”

“Leave?” Alice echoed. “Surely our being here will keep them from setting fire to the building. Perhaps staying could save the hospital,” she said bravely, even as her voice wavered with panic.

Carrie gazed at her with compassion, wishing she believed the same thing. The tension she had felt building through the day told her differently. “We must leave,” she repeated, knowing it was too late to spend time berating the choice she had made.

“And go where?” Janie tried to control the fear on her face, but failed dismally.

Carrie said the first thing that popped in her mind. “Home.”

Janie stared at her. “Home? How? We can’t walk there. It’s not safe.”

“Safer than we are here,” Florence said grimly. She fell in line with Carrie. “Let’s go, my friends.” She flashed them a confident smile. “It’s time for an adventure.”

Carrie gave her a look of gratitude as she ran down the stairs and unlocked the door. The night was still muggy and warm, but the searing heat had disappeared with the sun. She took a deep breath of dank air that somehow felt better than the cloying air that had embraced her all during the day. She pushed away the instant yearning for the plantation that swamped her as she waited for the other women to join her on the landing.  They all looked hopefully down the road, but there was no evidence of a horse and carriage. The road, bustling all through the day, now seemed ominously empty. Something had happened to keep their driver from returning. She hoped he had not come to any harm, but she couldn’t worry about that right now.

“Which way?” Alice asked, her eyes wide with fear, but her face set with determination.

Carrie was glad she had watched the sunset so she had a feel for the direction they must go. “We’ll go right,” she said. It was an unspoken agreement that kept everyone from mentioning they would have to walk over six miles on unknown roads through the dark night to get home. Linking arms with Janie and Florence, Carrie set off. She kept her head high and her step confident. Showing the fear she felt would only make them more vulnerable.

They were barely two blocks from the new hospital when they heard a triumphant yell and the sound of breaking glass.

They whirled around just in time to see the first flames shoot from the windows.

Carrie ran straight back toward the hospital. She heard people laughing as children danced with glee on the hill, their tiny shadows flickering in the light of the growing inferno. They reminded her of little ghouls. “No!” she screamed. Her only thoughts were of the patients who so desperately needed a place to recover from cholera. It didn’t matter that most of them would die — they needed a place to live out the remainder of their lives in dignity, and they needed a place where they might have a
chance
to survive.

A large group of men must have been hiding when Carrie and her friends left the building. As soon as the girls were out of range, the men had tossed in their homemade firebombs of rags, sticks, and kerosene. Carrie groaned as she envisioned all the new beds and supplies burning up in the blaze. She ran faster. There was no plan in her mind — she simply knew she had to do something.

She gasped when a strong hand grabbed her arm and stopped her dead in her tracks. Frightened, she struggled to free herself. “Let me go!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t do that.”