Rattigan’s heart. Maeve’s, too. He sat back, then came around to the other side of his desk, to sit beside the sergeant. His professors in medical school had always encouraged distance between physician and patient, nonsense Joe had discarded right after the Battle of Bull Run.
“I won’t ask you to abstain. How could I? Here are the facts, Sergeant—every few months, your wife suffers a spontaneous abortion. Technically, it’s not a miscarriage, because she is not far enough along for that. It’s wearing her out, body and soul. If this continues, your darling Maeve will become a name on a gravestone that you have to leave behind when the regiment moves on.”
Sergeant Rattigan groaned out loud. The heartbroken sound shot a chill down Joe’s back, reminding him of other Irishmen keening after death of comrades in battle. The unearthly sound had haunted him many a night.
“I fear for her life. She is unquestionably anemic and this is taking a terrible toll,” Joe added for good measure.
Rattigan looked at him then, and Joe absorbed all the pain and worry into his own heart, because that was part of medicine.
“Sergeant, would you try something?” He opened up the journal, ragged from being hauled from post to post, along with his other medical books. “This treatise by George Drysdale was published in London in 1854. I came across it in medical school. No one took it seriously. I do.”
Rattigan’s expression had changed from devastated to interested.
“I have no idea why Maeve suffers so. I doubt I will ever know, but try this. Confine your marital congress to directly after her monthly flow. Say, up to ten days after the cessation of menses, no more. Don’t resume again until after her next monthly.”
“What will that prove?” the sergeant asked.
“I think she will not get pregnant. Maybe others scoff, but as Maeve’s surgeon, I am desperate to help her. By God, I will grasp at any straw!”
He hadn’t meant to sound so adamant, but there it was, the practice of last-ditch medicine, the kind of medicine he seemed to practice all too often. He was almost afraid to look at the sergeant, but he did, and saw shock, followed by interest.
“It’s like this, Sergeant—the longer her body can rest and heal, the better Maeve’s overall health.” Joe held up his hands to stop the question he knew was coming from an Irishman. “I understand the tenets of your faith, but how could this possibly affect them? I am suggesting nothing artificial. Besides, after years of this wretched pattern afflicting the dearest person in your life, how could God be upset with you?”
Tears started in the sergeant’s eyes. He bowed his head and cried. Joe hesitated not a moment before putting his arm around the big man and holding him close. “Just try it, John,” he urged, disregarding rank. “Please. I don’t know what else to do.”
They sat together until the sergeant dried his eyes and blew his nose on the handkerchief Joe handed him. He held out the journal, too. “Read the article. Some of it you probably won’t understand—I barely do. Talk to Maeve. I believe Drysdale’s science is sound.”
“We’re never going to have children, are we?”
The words were wrenched from the sergeant like an inflamed molar. Probably he had never voiced that dread before.
Joe shook his head. “No, you’re not,” he said softly, “but it doesn’t follow that you have to be miserable. Try it, just try it.”
Sergeant Rattigan stood up. He managed a faint smile, and then he saluted. “You’ll know we’re successful if there aren’t any more late-night notes tacked to your message board. I promise we’ll try it.”
Joe let out an enormous sigh when the door closed quietly behind the sergeant. He just sat there, then nodded to his bust of Hippocrates, scarred and banged around from travel between garrisons. “Well, Hip, there you are. What am I going to do about Susanna Hopkins? Any ideas? I think I love her.”
I have to live here until I earn enough money to move on, Susanna thought as she stepped into the Reeses’ entry hall. She wished she had agreed to Major Randolph’s willingness to stand by her, but this was for her to do. She took a deep breath and walked into the parlor, where Emily sat frozen in place, dreading whatever Susanna was going to say or do. With a shock, Susanna recognized that look. It was the same look she used to direct toward Frederick Hopkins when he frightened