Page 19 of Echoes on the Wind (Borrowed Time #2)

I held Gwyn tightly in my lap and shouted for help until my voice was sore.

“Stay with me,” I pleaded, shaking his shoulders lightly, searching for some sign of life.

My hands and legs were covered in blood, and I could feel it smear on my face as I wiped away tears and called out again into the darkness.

“You’re going to be alright,” I said, mostly to convince myself, because the truth was that I had no idea if he was even still alive.

I grabbed his wrist to check his pulse, but my hands were shaking so much that I could barely keep hold of it. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I cried as I frantically felt around.

I pressed down, then moved my fingers and tried again. Nothing.

“Somebody help us,” I screamed.

“Tom?” I heard my brother calling out to me, panicked, and I shouted his name to try and guide him to us through the dark.

In the shadows, I could just about make him out, bounding over the wall from the schoolyard. There was someone else with him who I couldn’t make out, and they ran up the hill towards us.

“Lee, get Nellie,” I begged, but he dropped down beside me and knelt over Gwyn. A second later, Will came down on the other side and began to loosen the buttons at Gwyn’s collar.

“Tom, what the hell happened?”

“Get Nellie,” I shouted, ignoring him.

“She’s coming. We all heard you shouting. Will and I hopped the school wall, but the women had to go around. Now tell me what happened?”

“I don’t know,” I cried. “We were walking and someone hit him from behind.”

“He’s alive,” Will interrupted. He had his hand tucked into Gwyn’s neck and his ear down to his mouth. “It’s weak, but there’s a pulse. We have to get him to the infirmary.”

“Move out of the way.”

Nellie’s breathing sounded like she’d sprinted up the hill, and Lee stood up to allow her to get down beside us.

“Gwynfor, can you hear me?” She held his jaw and moved his head gently from side to side. “No blood in the ears. That’s a good sign. What happened?”

“Someone hit him.”

“With this, I think,” Lee said, and he came back holding a broken table leg that was splintered and charred.

“We need to get him to the house right away,” she said. “I can’t see anything out here.”

“Shouldn’t we take him to the infirmary?” Will argued .

“We don’t have time. Even if we had a carriage to hand, it would take nearly half an hour to get there. Now, can you lift him?”

Will and Lee took hold of Gwyn on either side of his body, looked at each other, nodded, then hoisted him off my lap into the air.

“Careful of his head,” she said. “We need to put some pressure on that wound.”

I got up off the ground and pulled my blood-soaked shirt over my head, then balled it up and placed it under Gwyn’s.

“Gwyn? Gwyn? What’s happened?” Mair cried out as the rest of the group reached us.

“Tom, hold that tight to his head,” Nellie said, “and keep him as still as possible.”

The three of us moved as quickly as we could up the hill to the house. Behind us, I could hear Nellie trying to reassure Mair and the rest of them that she would do all that she could.

Once inside, we rushed him down the hall and into the kitchen, and Nellie swept her arm across the table, clearing the contents onto the floor for us to put him down.

“I can’t have you all in here,” she shouted.

Lee turned to the door and held his hands up, sweeping everyone back into the hallway, but Mair ducked beneath his arm and made it clear she would be going nowhere.

“Joseph,” Nellie continued, “take Tish into the living room. Lee, I need water. Warm, not hot, in as many bowls as you can find. Betty, get my case from the living room. ”

Nellie was never more confident than when she was working, and nobody questioned her authority as she barked her orders around the room.

“Will, I’m sorry to ask at this hour, but I’ll need more stocks. Gauze, ether, laudanum, surgical thread… whatever you can put your hands on that you think I could use. We’ll pay, of course.”

“Don’t worry about that,” he replied, rushing to the door. “I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

She threw an apron on, though her dress was already stained with blood, and grabbed a handful of cloths from the drawer to place near Gwyn’s head.

“Put them on the counter,” she said as Lee returned from the bathroom with two bowls of water. “I’ll need more, but first, I need you to help me get Gwyn onto his side so I can look at the wound.”

She was urgent in her manner but kept her tone entirely calm, and I had no idea how she could do it. Seeing him lying there made me want to scream, and I took hold of his hand, not caring if she noticed.

“One, two…” Lee counted down, and he pushed Gwyn over onto his side while Nellie kept his head steady.

“He’s going to be alright, isn’t he?” Mair cried. "Nellie, tell me he’s going to be alright.”

“I’m doing what I can,” she replied, offering Mair a sympathetic smile before rushing to the door. “Where’s my bag, Elizabeth?”

“Here, sorry,” Betty replied as she panted her way to the door with it.

She looked over Nellie’s shoulder into the kitchen, horrified at the scene, but Nellie nudged her back into the hallway and pushed the door closed .

“Gwyn,” she said,” taking his hand in hers. “Can you squeeze my fingers?”

All eyes in the room dropped to Gwyn’s hand, waiting for any sign that he would react, but he remained still.

“Why isn’t he moving?” Mair shouted. “Nellie, you’ve got to help him.”

She moved to her bag and unclasped it, letting the sides fall open so that she could dig around inside. “Will needs to be quick,” she muttered to nobody in particular, then she turned back around and held up a small clear bottle with just the smallest amount of liquid in the bottom.

“What’s that?” Mair and I asked in unison, and Nellie poured what was left of it onto a fresh cloth.

“Carbolic acid,” she replied, and she brushed Gwyn’s hair aside before dabbing it around the wound.

“Acid?” I yelled, but she didn’t pay me any mind, and I didn’t protest any more. I just had to trust that she knew what she was doing and remember the constraints of the time.

“The wound doesn’t seem very deep, which is good, but there’s some swelling that could get nasty. That table leg looked like it came from the bonfire, and some of it has splintered off around the cut. This should help to sterilise it and prevent infection from setting in.”

“And then what?” Mair asked.

Nellie paused and brushed her forehead with the back of her hand, then leaned onto the back of one of the chairs at the table. “I’ll need to see if there’s any damage to the skull. If it’s fractured, it’s beyond my capabilities, so we’ll have to get him to the infirmary. If not, then once the swelling goes down, I can stitch him up. Either way, I’m going to have to cut into his scalp. It’ll give me a better idea of what’s going on in there and should help to ease the swelling a bit.”

“And they’ve taught you how to do all this in your training?” Mair asked.

Nellie and I looked at each other briefly, and she nodded her head at Mair. I didn’t care how she’d come about the knowledge, and Mair didn’t need to know. It only mattered that she knew what she was doing, and I trusted her completely.

She resumed cleaning the wound, and for the first time since his attack, he let out a small groan. On hearing it, both Mair and I knelt close to him, but his eyes remained closed.

“If Will can get his hands on some ether, I’ll be able to ease some of the pain he’s likely feeling,” Nellie said. “But if not, then this is going to hurt quite a bit. Lee, can you get more water?”

He left the room with the bowls just as Will let himself back into the kitchen. He’d brought a whole box of medical supplies with him, and emptied it all onto the counter under the window.

“Is this enough?” he asked. “I can go back for more.”

In his panic, he must have cleared out entire shelves at his pharmacy. There were enough bandages to wrap Gwyn from head to toe and at least 50 bottles and boxes of things that would aid Nellie in her work.

She grabbed one of the bottles and pulled the cork out with her teeth, releasing a pungent, sickly sweet smell into the air. She doused one of her cloths in it, then turned to her bag, pulled out an ivory-handled knife and began to rub it down.

“Be ready to pin him down if this wakes him up,” she said, holding the knife up to the light, while Will and I took Gwyn by the legs and shoulders.

She held the top of his head firmly, then took the knife to the bottom of the wound and proceeded to cut it further, adding another inch to its length and releasing a fresh flow of blood onto my shirt beneath him.

“Cloth,” she demanded, and Mair ran around the table to grab a fresh one for her.

She mopped around the cut, quickly soaking it red, then tossed it aside for another. This time, she poured more of the liquid on it and pressed it firmly into the gash.

Gwyn sprang awake from the pressure and yelled out in agony. He butted his head back, knocking her hand away, then kicked out his legs, catching Will in the side.

“Hold him,” she shouted,” and she pressed the cloth against the wound again while holding him at his forehead so that he couldn’t escape it.

His yells turned to sobs as the pain became almost unbearable. He still hadn’t opened his eyes fully, but the agony was etched across his face as his body jerked against it, and it broke my heart to see him suffering.

“He’s moving too much,” Nellie shouted.

“Gwyn, you need to keep still,” Mair said, brushing the hair away from his forehead as she tried to soothe him. “It’s nearly done. Just one more minute.”

“Do you want the ether?? Will asked, and she nodded in reply .

“Mair, I’m going to need you to do something unpleasant, but I promise it will help.”

Will took one of the other bottles from the pile, poured a healthy amount out onto a bandage, then wrapped that bandage in another before handing it over to Mair.

“Hold this tight to his face,” he instructed.

“And don’t let him pull away,” Nellie added.

Mair looked apprehensive at first and apologised to her brother as she approached, but with a nod from Nellie, she clamped the cloth down over his face and held it tight.

Gwyn began to convulse and thrash about, and tears streamed down Mair’s face as he struggled against her. She held firm until he began to slow down, and a minute or so later he fell as still as he’d been when we arrived.

“Will, I need you to keep an eye on his throat for me. That looked like enough to take down a horse, so we need to look out for any swelling.”

While Will and Mair swapped places, Nellie cleaned up the wound at the back of his head and inspected his skull.

“I can’t see a fracture,” she said, smiling at us. “He’s going to have a nasty scar, that’s for sure, but if the swelling goes down, that might be the worst of it.”

I exhaled as she spoke, feeling a weight lifting for the first time since the attack. I’d felt so sure that I would lose him, and until it had almost happened, I had no idea just how terrifying that feeling was.

I grabbed Mair’s hand, knowing she was feeling the same relief that I was, and she dropped her head to my shoulder as we watched him sleep .

“I need a cig,” Lee said, and his voice took me by surprise. He’d stayed in the corner, watching so silently that I’d almost forgotten he was there. “Come on, you two,” he added, holding his hands out to us. “Let Nellie do what she does. You could both do with some air.”

We both hesitated, but Nellie agreed that she could do with more space, so when he pulled us up from the floor, we followed him down the hallway into the street.

“Are you two ok?” he asked, pulling us both into him and wrapping his arms around us.

“I will be when he wakes up,” I said, and Mair nodded in agreement.

“Mind if I join you,” Will said, and we turned around as he came out into the front garden alongside us.

He took out a packet of cigarettes and offered them around, though only Lee took one, and I wrapped my hands across my chest to gather some warmth.

“You’re going to need some new shirts,” Lee said through a plume of smoke.”

I looked down at my bare torso, covered in blood and sweat, and as I looked up again, I saw Gethin coming along the street. He raised his hat as he spotted us, but as he got closer, his smile turned to a look of annoyance.

“That’s hardly appropriate attire, Tom,” he said, noting my lack of shirt.

“Appropriate attire?” Mair yelled, and she stormed to the gate and gripped hold of the railings, keeping him on the other side. “Where the hell have you been while my brother is lying there almost beaten to death?”

Gethin was taken aback, both by her words and her tone, and stared at me again, noticing the state of me. It wasn’t his fault, and he would have been unable to do anything even if he’d been there, but Mair seemed to need somewhere to direct her anger, and it looked like he was going to be the one to get it.

“Come on,” I said, pulling her by the shoulders so Gethin could get into his house.

“I think some of us need to calm down,” he said as he swept past us to go inside, and I held on a little tighter as I could feel her try to pull away to go after him.

“Calm down?” she said once the door was shut.

“You can’t blame Gethin,” Lee said.

He was either feeling brave or stupid, and Mair spun on her heel to face him.

“I’ll find out who to blame,” she said, pointing a finger up at him. “And when I do, they can look out.”

Nobody stayed for very long after Gethin arrived home. Once Nellie was done stitching up Gwyn, Will carried him to the bedroom and said his goodbyes. Joseph followed closely behind, and then once he’d made sure that I was alright, Lee took Tish back to her house.

Gwyn had briefly woken from the ether that Mair had administered, but he was groggy and in pain, and quickly fell back to unconsciousness. Neither of us had any mind for sleep, so while everyone else went to bed, Mair and I sat huddled together on the cot, watching him sleep and talking until dawn.

“I hate seeing him like this,” I said, and she squeezed my hand, nodding as I shuffled to turn towards her. “Mair. What the fortune teller said…”

She shook her head firmly. “No, Tom. We’re not doing that. This isn’t your fault, and she didn’t see it in the stars.”

“But–”

“No!” she said firmly. “That’s enough!”

She shut the subject down and would hear no more about it, but I couldn’t shake off the guilt I was feeling as another silence fell over us. Though I’d done my best to push it down, the truth was that the guilt had lingered for a long time. My mother had gone to her grave adamant that I’d brought bad luck to her, and now with Madame Ana’s warning and Gwyn lying unconscious, I couldn’t help but worry that there may be a pattern emerging.

“How long do you think Will has been in love with Nellie?”

Mair’s question took me by surprise, and I turned to her curiously as she raised her eyebrows and shrugged, like it was the most obvious question in the world.

“He’s not in love with Nellie.”

“Oh, come on,” she said, nudging my arm. “What did we say about you playing ignorant? He gives her the same eyes that Gwyn gives you. And what about all those deliveries? Have you seen how steep that hill is? You don’t go running up and down there unless you love the person at the top of it, let me tell you.”

“Tonight doesn’t count. It was an emergency. ”

“True,” she replied, “But did you see everything he brought? For free! And it wasn’t his first visit, either. Does the baker come up with the bread? Or the butcher? It’s so obvious.”

“You’re turning into a gossip,” I said.

“I never gossip, Tom,” she said seriously. “I just refuse to pretend I don’t see what’s right in front of my nose. Besides, it’s not gossip if I’m only telling you. You’re practically family.”

“He does seem quite keen,” I admitted. “But he’s a lovely guy, and he’s obviously not going to press it. And Nellie wouldn’t dream of entertaining it.”

“She could do much worse if she were a single woman,” she said, pulling her shawl tightly around her shoulders. “He’s kind, he’s got a good job and, well, he’s extremely easy to look at.”

She looked at me with a sly grin, and I laughed, conceding the point. “He really is.”

“I heard that.”

Gwyn’s voice was croaky and quiet, and we both jumped at the sound of it.

“You’re awake,” I said, dropping to my knees beside the bed.

I leaned over and kissed his forehead, trying to be as gentle as possible, grabbing his hand as he tried to smile. It wasn’t much, like the muscles in his face weren’t working properly, but it was a start, and I was relieved to see it.

“You had us worried for a while,” Mair said, and she sat down on the bed beside him and took his other hand. “There are other ways you could have gotten me to stay. There was no need for all the dramatics. ”

His eyes were still closed, but his smile widened at his sister’s voice, and she looked like she was going to start crying again.

“Can I have some water?”

I grabbed a glass from the side and eased it to his lips, and he took a few sips before nudging it away and trying to sit up.

“I’m not sure if you’re supposed to move just yet,” I said, looking to Mair for guidance.

She jumped up and headed for the door. “I’ll ask Nellie. She’ll want to know he’s awake, anyway.

When she left the room, I leaned in close, kissing him gently. “Gwyn, I was so scared I was losing you,” I whispered, and he brought a hand up to my cheek.

“I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me.”

The tension and the relief all came to a head, and I could feel myself starting to cry. In my old life, I’d probably cried three times since I was a child. Since I’d come here, it seemed I couldn’t go a week without something setting me off.

“Did you see who did it?”

He shook his head and winced at the pain it caused, then brought his hand up to feel the bandages. Nellie had dressed them loosely to allow for any swelling, but Will had brought so many that by the time she’d finished, the top half of his head looked twice the size.

“I’m sorry I frightened you,” he said, and I clenched his hand tighter.

“Don’t be silly. It’s not your fault. Just don’t do it again. My heart can’t take it.”

I let go of his hand when I heard footsteps on the landing and put a frustratingly appropriate distance between us when Nellie entered the room with Mair .

“How’re you feeling?” she asked as she shook a bottle of something she’d brought with her. “You gave us a terrible fright. I’m going to have a look under those bandages in a little while, just to see how it’s looking, but for now, I want you to take some of this for the pain. Open up.”

He stuck his tongue out and she squeezed two drops of brown liquid into his mouth. It must have tasted awful because he instantly screwed his face up, but she had him wash it down with more of the water.

“It'll make you sleepy, but it should ease any aches. Mair, are you still leaving today or will you be staying longer? It’s fine either way, but if you’re leaving, I’ll send Betty in to sit with him while Tom takes you to the omnibus.”

“I can’t go now,” she said. “Not while he’s like this.”

“Go,” Gwyn rasped out. “I’ll be alright. Iris needs you more than I do.”

“A few more days won’t hurt. Just until you’re on your feet again.”

“I’ll be downstairs when you’ve decided,” Nellie said, leaving the siblings to argue it out.

“No,” Gwyn said. “Go. I’ve got Nellie and Tom to look after me, and you’ll be back soon. Let me have some peace before you move here permanently.”

She slapped his leg for his cheekiness as he grinned at her. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. I’ll only feel bad for keeping you away from Zack and Iris.”

She paused, contemplating what she should do, but eventually nodded in agreement. “I better go and pack, then. ”

“And you,” he added, turning his attention to me. “You should be at work.”

“I can’t go when you’re like this.”

“You’re as bad as my sister. You can’t do anything by watching me sleep.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” I admitted. “I’ll feel better being here with you.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll be asleep. Betty will be watching me, and Nellie is at home. Go. It’ll take your mind off things. You’ve got to take Mair uptown anyway.”

I could see how worn out he was getting, so I didn’t want to argue further. “Ok,” I replied reluctantly. “I should probably explain to Mr Carter why I didn’t show up, anyway.”

He smiled at his victory, but his eyes were getting heavy and starting to close again, so I gave him a kiss and began to get changed, leaving him to sleep.

An hour later, I was standing at the bus stop with Mair, trying to ignore how anxious I felt about leaving Gwyn.

“I’m going to miss you,” I said, hugging her. “When do you think you’ll be back?”

“Soon, hopefully,” she replied, though her attention was focused down the street, looking out for her carriage. “As soon as we find a tenant for the cottage, I’ll write and let you know.”

“How long will Mr Hughes keep the house free for you?”

“Not long, I’d imagine, but we’ll find something else if needs be. ”

“Mair, you will be alright, won’t you? I hate the thought of you going back and having trouble with Graham.”

She looked up and gave me a reassuring smile. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry. Just please look after Gwyn, won’t you? I feel awful for leaving.”

“I will. I promise.”

“And look after yourself, as well, Tom. You could find trouble in an empty room. Try to stay in one piece until I’m back.”

“Here,” I said, digging in my pocket for the small pouch I’d brought with me. “This will cover you with the lender. It’s all there.”

She stuffed it into her bag, then leaned up to kiss my cheek. “Thank you. I’ll pay you back every last farthing. I promise.”

A bell rang out down the road to signal the arrival of the omnibus, and the horses pulled up alongside the pavement dragging the long carriage that would take Mair home.

She fastened her bonnet, then patted herself down to check she’d not forgotten anything before climbing up into the back of the carriage. The hay-lined gangway was narrow and short, and I had to duck as I followed behind her with the bags. She took a seat at the front with her back against the window, and I put her luggage beside her and reached out for a final hug.

“Write to us as soon as you get home to let us know you got there safely.”

“I will,” she replied, nodding. “Give this to the driver for me.”

She handed me a coin, and I jumped down onto the street and tossed it to the man up front. He used it as his cue to pull off, and as the carriage merged with the other carts and wagons on the road, she turned and gave me a final wave through the window.