A Heartbeat Away: Quilts of Love Series Read Online Free Page A

make his left hand rise to massage the pain away. Throat raw with his helplessness, he waited for the woman to return.
    When he opened his eyes next, she was there, lifting his head and holding a tin cup to his lips. The liquid was cold, bitter. It hurt his throat when he swallowed and blazed a chill down to his stomach. He took another gulp, then another. Weak. “Wrong. It’s me.”
    The woman tilted her head, her lips curved in bemusement, and Joe felt the first niggle of self-awareness. What was wrong with him that he couldn’t speak right?
    “Are you hungry?”
    He shook his head and tried to get his heavy tongue to form what it was he wanted to say. “No dark.”
    She blinked, the long lashes making shadows on her cheeks. Those shadows, the lashes, reminded him of someone else, but he was too tired to bring the thought into focus.
    “It is nighttime, about one in the morning.”
    Joe straightened his right leg, where a cramp had begun to grip the muscle. A groan escaped from his lips.
    The woman leaned over his legs. “Which one?”
    He grimaced and shook his head. She stepped back like a child corrected. He tried to sit up so he could work the knot out, but he could only moan his agony. When the muscle finally loosened, he gulped air. She hadn’t left but stood by him, eyes full of concern. He drank in her presence and longed to be able to verbalize what he was thinking without everything coming out garbled and backward. He needed more sleep, for his head to clear, but closing his eyes meant she would leave and he didn’t want that either. “Stay.”
    “Rest. Your body needs to heal.” Her lips parted as if she had more to say, but she reached to lift the chimney. “I’ll send Grandmother to you soon.”
    With one breath, she blew out the light and folded him into darkness again.

4
    September 15, 1862
    Beth could tell the night’s weather by the inch-high ring of wetness around the hem of her grandmother’s skirt as she came into the kitchen, arms full of produce. Onions, sweet potatoes, green tomatoes, too-young green peppers, squash that had yet to mature. She moved to relieve Gerta of her burden, her unspoken question answered by the shadow in her grandmother’s expression.
    “It’s bad?”
    “Jim stopped in on his way back from town. They are in Sharpsburg. Families are moving north, west, and east to escape what is to come.”
    “You think they will attack?”
    “The Rebs have dug in deep, with a line of artillery along the east end of town. Lee has set up headquarters already. There is a rumor that they’ve captured Harper’s Ferry.”
    They were here. In Sharpsburg. The enemy surrounded them. Familiar tendrils of fear coiled around her throat, threatening to cut off her air. “We should go, Grandmother. We can fill the wagon with—”
    Gerta’s frown sucked the words from her mouth. “You wanted to be a nurse. Do you think it is healthy people whoseek a doctor? There will be much work to do. Many soldiers who will need you and me. We will stay.”
    She wanted to protest, stunned by the astuteness of her grandmother’s observation. In her mind, nursing meant delivering babies or placing bandages on scraped knees. Why had she never considered worse? She, who knew what happened when poor care or no care was administered. There would be more wounds like the one Joe had, and probably worse. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine and prepare herself. The worst injury she’d ever seen was her lacerated, crushed foot, or the child who had poked himself with a pitchfork, gouging out his eye and driving a tine into his brain. He’d never been quite right as a result of the injury. And Leo’s injury had been beyond any of that, just as he had been beyond hope of life long before she had tried to rescue him.
    Gerta drifted toward the fireplace and the cot where Joe lay in restless slumber. She placed her hand against his skin. “He is too weak to move. The fever is coming on him, I