Ring of Fire

  "This is Frau Tibelda. She's, uh—"

  "I can speak for myself." The herbalist marched past Harvey. "But not to him." She entered the house, the three farmers trailing her.

  "She's a little cranky." Anne shrugged. "Being abducted at scythe-point does that to people."

  "My condolences." He plucked a bit of straw from his sleeve. "I understand she is a healer of some sort."

  "Yes." She'd dealt with enough snotty doctors in her own time to recognize professional contempt. "She's the local expert on herbal remedies."

  The skin around his nose drew up. "You brought an herbalist to treat this man?"

  "It wasn't my idea." She gestured toward the farmhouse. "Go talk to the three stooges."

  Olearius cleared his throat. "We have heard rumors of extraordinary folk come to the south of here." He eyed Anne's backpack with barely concealed curiosity. "Would you be citizens of this new United States of America?"

  "Tibelda isn't—yet—but I am." She gave Harvey a deliberate smile. "I'm also a registered nurse."

  The older man's white brows rose. "Nurses of this region are required to be registered? Like Jews? How novel."

  A distraught wail from inside the home made Anne move. "Excuse me. I should go check on the reason I was kidnapped."

  The two dignitaries escorted her into the farmhouse, which like Tibelda's cottage consisted of one room. Unlike the old woman's home, it was much larger, with stone walls and a packed-dirt floor strewn with clean straw.

  Someone had been making cider, and the smell of apples was strong. Larry, Curly and Mo sat at one large center table, muttering as they passed around a jug of something that probably wasn't cider. Baskets filled with grain and root vegetables sat stacked against the walls, while cooking pots and utensils crowded shelves near a large hearth. The blazing fire added heat to the warm glow of candles and oil lamps.

  Anne's mouth hitched. Farming sure pays better than witchcraft.

  Tibelda crouched by the hearth, sorting through bunches of herbs from her satchel. On the other side of the room, a peasant woman knelt and prayed at the foot of a wood frame bed.

  Anne went to the bed and pulled the heavy coverlet back. "This the patient?" Without waiting for an answer, she put her backpack beside the enormous man sprawled on the straw-filled mattress and took out her stethoscope.

  Harvey joined her. "Are you a giddy midwife, to administer to him with such unseemly haste?"

  "Not now, doctor." Anne glanced at the peasant woman. "Wie heißen Sie?"

  "Uli." The woman sniffled. "I speak English."

  Harvey blocked her view with his bulk. "I've already personally examined this man."

  "Good for you." Anne leaned over to look around him. "Uli, how long has he been like this?"

  "Since this morning, when those men brought him home." She bowed her head over her clasped hands. "Drud is never sick. Never."

  From her place by the hearth, Tibelda made a scoffing sound. "He is probably drunk."

  The peasant woman stiffened. "He never drinks!"

  "Ladies, please, no bickering." Anne depressed Drud's tongue to check his throat. Airway's clear, no obstructions or inflammation.

  She didn't realize she'd spoke out loud until Harvey asked, "What has his throat to do with anything?" When she didn't reply, he tapped her shoulder. "I asked you a question."

  Oh, sure, explain standard traumatological procedure to a man who thinks leeches are a cure-all.

  "Let's chat later, shall we?" She rolled a black cuff around Drud's upper arm. "BP's two-ten over one-twenty. Pulse's irregular, two-fifteen." She moved the diaphragm of her stethoscope from his arm to his chest. "Tachy, fluid in his lungs." She reached automatically for drugs she didn't have, then exhaled her frustration. "I need some digoxin or lidocaine, he's going to stroke out on me."

  Adam Olearius came to stand beside her. "Can they be obtained locally? I can ride back to Jena."

  "No, not from Jena." She slung her 'scope around her neck and straightened. "I can't risk moving him. We need to get a doctor out here."

  The farmer Anne had dubbed as Curly stalked over, looked down at Drud, then shouted at Tibelda in German. Her response was equally blunt.

  Adam's dark brows drew together. "Perhaps I should ask Drud's neighbors to accompany me."

  "Ambassador, don't encourage this nonsense." Harvey turned to Anne. "As for you, young woman, I am a doctor."

  Now he'll want to bleed him or something. "Right." She took out a styrette and jabbed Drud's finger, then squeezed a drop of blood onto a chemstrip.

  "Pricking the finger is not enough," Harvey told her, his expression smug. "Shall I demonstrate the proper method of opening a vein for you?"

  See? "Thanks, but we'll skip that for now." After the strip showed normal, she put a hand on Drud's brow. "Blood sugar's okay, but he's burning up."

  The great anatomist stalked off in a huff, but Adam bent closer to study the chemstrip. "That scrap of paper indicates he has the fever?"

  "No, this does." She pressed a digital thermometer to Drud's ear canal, then read the display. "Temp's a hundred and three. Could be viral pneumonia, with cardiac comp." Anne jerked the linens off the bed, startling Curly. "Uli, open all the windows and bank that fire. You"—she dropped the linens in Curly's beefy arms and gave him a push toward the table—"move. Adam, I need the cleanest water you can find, and Tibelda, start boiling some more."

  Uli took care of the windows, while Curly went back to drinking with Larry and Mo. Adam returned with a bucket drawn from the village well, and Tibelda brought it with some well-worn, folded linen to Anne. In a low voice, she said, "I have tincture of meadwort, to drive the fever out."

  Anne knew meadwort contained salicylic acid, but Drud needed a cardiac glycoside, not an aspirin. Still, if she could get his temperature down, it would take some stress off his laboring heart. "That would help."

  "You are wasting your time, young woman," the English physician said from his chair by the hearth. "Your theatrics are certainly entertaining, but useless."

  "You being an authority on that, I suppose?" As Anne began bathing Drud's fever-flushed body, she looked for signs of injury or disease, but found none. She hadn't packed more than the basic medkit before leaving town, so there was little more she could do. She eyed the man beside her. "Ambassador—"

  "Adam, please."

  "Adam, I need someone who can speak English to go to Grantville and get me a doctor and some supplies. Right now. And guess what?" She patted his lean cheek. "You're elected."

  "The man will be dead before sunset." Harvey sounded like a judge pronouncing sentence.

  Drud's wife dropped the pot she carried. Water went everywhere. "No!"

  "Calm down, Uli, we're going to get a second opinion." The nurse took out a notepad and scribbled down a brief explanation along with a list. Then she gave Olearius directions, ending with, "When you get there, ask for Dr. James Nichols and give him this note. Tell him to throw all of it into the fastest truck Mike's got and hightail it back here, okay?"

  "You have a lovely hand, but what is . . . a de-fibrill-ator, an IV rig, sa-line, EKG,"—Adam struggled over the words—"portable battery pack?"

  "I don't have time to explain, but it's what I need. Oh, wait." She took the list back and added another item. "Ask James to scrounge in the ER, see if there's any digoxin left."

  Harvey snorted. "For God's sake, man, you can't be seriously considering this—she's just a woman. She may have some amusing toys, but she knows nothing about proper methods of treatment." He said as much in German to the farmers.

  Larry, Curly, and Mo eyed the nurse with identical expressions of angry doubt.

  Anne decided the level of testosterone in the room needed immediate reduction. "Doctor, I have an M.S.N. degree from Johns Hopkins, and seven years experience working in a two-thousand bed hospital. Before I landed in the middle of this godforsaken place and time, I was studying for my P.A. in critical care obstetrics. I come f
rom a long line of women healers, too—my mother is a midwife and my grandmother, like Tibelda, is an herbalist. My great-grandmother took care of Rebel soldiers during the Civil War." From Harvey's bewildered expression, she realized he didn't comprehend half of what she'd said. "Look. If he's dying, it doesn't really matter what I do, right?"

  Adam murmured something indistinct to Harvey, who waved a languid hand. "Oh, very well, Adam, if you wish to be sent on a fool's errand, go."

  Before the ambassador left, Tibelda blocked his path. "Is something amiss, madam?"

  The old woman glanced over her shoulder at Anne and Harvey. "If you can find a priest there, bring him back, too."

  * * *

  After Olearius left, Anne had Tibelda administer the meadwort as she continued bathing Drud, and gradually his temperature dropped. Uli had resumed her fervent prayers, while William Harvey observed from the hearth, silent but bristling with indignation.

  Larry, Curly and Mo disappeared briefly, only to return and take up their vigil at the table, passing around two more jugs and an enormous joint of some kind of meat.

  At last Anne felt safe enough to leave her patient under Tibelda's watchful eye. She took the notebook she was using as a chart and went to Harvey. "Doctor, Uli said you brought Drud home. Where did you find him? Was he conscious? Did he complain of any chest pain or nausea?"

  "Oh, you wish to consult me now?" His upper lip curled. "I, who never attended Jonathan Hopkins's school?"

  "I apologize, I didn't mean to insult you." She'd have to play Stupid Helpless Female for awhile, to appease him and get the information she needed. "Please, help me out here."

  He steepled his fingers and considered that for a moment. "We came upon his cart, which had gone off the road," he told her. "The man was sitting beside it, short of breath, but in no other apparent discomfort. He remained lucid enough to direct us here, but his subsequent utterings were quite unintelligible."

  "The fever must have made him delirious." Anne bit her lip. Drud's wife continued to insist he'd been in perfect health until today. "This doesn't make sense."

  "I have no wish to disparage your efforts, young woman—misguided though they are—but I examined him quite thoroughly." Harvey nodded toward the bed. "The man will be dead before nightfall."

  "No!" Uli reached out and seized the herbalist's hand with both of hers. "Tibelda, you can save my husband! A stimulating tonic—you can make that for him, that will work!"

  Anne knew many aggressive drugs that came directly from plants—like the heart stimulant atropine, derived from belladonna, AKA deadly nightshade. "What's in this tonic?"

  "Come here, Miss Jefferson." Harvey led the nurse to Drud, and placed her hand over the man's heart. "Do you feel how rapidly it beats?"

  Anne gathered what was left of her patience. "I know his heart rate is too fast."

  "I am an expert on the function of this organ. Not only is it beating too quickly, but the rhythm itself is irregular." He tapped Drud's sternum. "This indicates that the heart is either diseased or damaged, and doomed to fail."

  His diagnosis was surprisingly accurate, she thought as she removed her hand. "So you're convinced the patient is in a terminal decline."

  "I am certain of it, my dear. I have treated many patients with these exact symptoms, and all of them died." His tone went from pitying to adamant. "This woman's ridiculous potions cannot repair a damaged heart."

  Uli wailed again, and Curly staggered over to pull her from the floor and guide her to the table.

  "I'm not so sure about that, Doctor." Despite the great man's intuition, and lack of supplies, Anne couldn't give up on Drud. You're a nurse. Treat the symptoms, and let James Nichols worry about the disease. "Tibelda, tell me what ingredients you use to make your tonic."

  "Sage, dandelion roots, and humility flower." As she named them, the old woman produced each from her satchel.

  Anne took the flower and studied the dried stalk. "Was this white and bell-shaped, and did it grow in a shady place?" Tibelda nodded. "Thought so. Granny called it Dead People's Blossom."

  "That is lily of the valley!" Harvey sputtered the words. "It's deadly!"

  "Dr. Harvey, this plant has been used medicinally to treat cardiac disorders for centuries, even before now." Anne crushed the end of one stem, and held it to her nose. The fragrance assured her it had been dried properly. "A correct dosage will increase the efficiency of Drud's heart muscles without increasing his need for oxygen." Which was a reasonable substitute for her longed-for digoxin.

  "An incorrect dosage will kill him!"

  Anne remembered to count to ten. "Tibelda, has anyone ever died after taking your stimulating tonic?"

  "No."

  "Then would you be so kind as to make some up for us?" Before Harvey could protest, she lifted her hand. "Please, unless you have a better idea, let's give this a shot."

  "That woman's presence is an insult to me and my profession. I will not be a party to this farce a moment longer." Harvey swept out of the house.

  With him gone, Tibelda's shoulders rounded, and she seemed to shrink. "The English physick grows angry. Angry men are dangerous." She glanced at the three villagers gathered around Uli at the table. "Very dangerous."

  "Don't worry, the cavalry is on the way." She handed the dried stalk back to the herbalist. "Show me how you steep it."

  The simple process took less than a half hour, and Anne watched as Tibelda administered her brew to Drud. By then Larry, Curly, and Mo had silently left the house, while Uli paced back and forth by the bed, until it became apparent there was to be no miraculous change in her husband's condition.

  "His breathing does not ease." Uli clasped her husband's limp hand between hers. "You must make a stronger tonic."

  "It takes time, Uli," Anne said. "Give it a chance."

  "You can see it was not enough." Drud's wife turned on the herbalist, and grabbed her hands. "You can't let him die. You know what they will do if you fail."

  "Yes." Tibelda eased out of Uli's desperate grip. "I will try again."

  Anne had faith in the herbalist, but caught the flicker of fear on her face. "What happens if we fail?"

  Tibelda wouldn't meet her gaze. "Something bad."

  Anne checked her watch. Sharon was on foot, and Adam might get lost on the way to Grantville. Neither of them might return for several hours. If Drud's condition deteriorated any further, he might not last thirty minutes. She didn't have time to worry about the something bad. "I'll give him another bed bath while you make it up."

  The old woman left the house for a moment, then returned with some flowers and leaves and went to the pot of water boiling over the fire.

  The nurse glanced over her shoulder. "What's that?"

  "Fairy's glove, to ease his chest." Tibelda crushed some leaves before immersing them in hot water. "How is the fever?"

  Anne took Drud's temperature. "Climbing again."

  Tibelda cooled the second tonic by pouring it from one pot to another, then brought it to Anne. They had to dribble it between Drud's parched lips, a little at a time, but had gotten two-thirds of it in him when the door flung open.

  "I have returned," Harvey announced.

  "I'll notify the press." As Drud coughed, Anne took the cup away. She didn't see the English physician go to the table and examine Uli's ingredients.

  "What have you done?" He stalked over and grabbed Anne's arm, giving her a hard shake. "This moronic hag means to kill him! Give me that!"

  With difficulty, Anne held the tonic out of his reach. "Hands off. Let us do . . ." she trailed off as the three stooges and a sizable number of villagers entered the farmhouse. "What's going on?"

  Tibelda seemed frozen.

  Harvey turned to the people and pointed an accusatory finger at the two women. "They have poisoned this man!" He strode back to the table, grabbed a handful of leaves, and shook them. "Here is what they have used to hasten his end!"

  Uli pushed her way through to the fron
t, then stared in horror, first at Tibelda, then Harvey.

  The crowd made a collective, ugly sound, then several voices cried out "Witches!" and "Murder!"

  Drud's wife flung herself on top of her husband, while Tibelda backed up until her thin shoulders hit the wall.

  Anne stepped between the mob and the herbalist. "We are not witches and we are not poisoning this man. Tell them that, Dr. Harvey."

  "I have proof of the poison right here." The physician put on his judge face. "You may not be witches, but women like you kill more patients in a month than I can save in a year."

  "Yeah? And how many do you bleed to death, doc?" Anne held the cup out toward the villagers. In German, she repeated, "I'm a trained nurse. This is not poison."

  Curly lifted a ham-sized fist and shook it at her. "Save your assurances for God, witch!"

  "You need proof?" There was only one way to handle their disbelief—the same way she had Tibelda's. "Fine. Cheers." Anne lifted the cup to her lips and drank the rest of the tonic.

  * * *

  "Maybe you should drive, Sharon," Father Mazzare said as he held onto the pickup truck's roll bar with a white-knuckled hand.

  The paramedic patted Hans Richter's strong arm. "Slow down, Hans, you're scaring the priest."

  "Jeff says I am good driver," Hans said proudly. Jeff Higgins, the American boy who had saved Hans, his sisters, and his nephew during "the Battle o' the Crapper," had since become both brother-in-law and personal hero to the young printer. He glanced at Sharon. "You wanted to get back fast, you said, ja?"

  "Fast, ja. With concussions, nein."

  Hans chuckled and eased his foot off the accelerator. For the beautiful dark angel who'd awakened him to his new life, he'd do just about anything. "Okay, I slow down."

  Father Mazzare muttered a short, fervent prayer of thanks.

  "Almost there?" Gretchen yelled through the window from the back of the truck.

  Sharon checked through the window, saw the lights of the village and gave her a thumbs up. She watched as the German girl adjusted the belt around her curvy hips. "Did your sister have to bring a gun?"