Doing No Harm

A
LSO BY
C
ARLA
K
ELLY

F
ICTION

Daughter of Fortune

Miss Chartley’s Guided Tour

Marian’s Christmas Wish

Mrs. McVinnie’s London Season

Libby’s London Merchant

Miss Grimsley’s Oxford Career

Miss Billings Treads the Boards

Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand

Summer Campaign

Miss Whittier Makes a List

The Lady’s Companion

With This Ring

Miss Milton Speaks Her Mind

One Good Turn

The Wedding Journey

Here’s to the Ladies: Stories of the Frontier Army

Beau Crusoe

Marrying the Captain

The Surgeon’s Lady

Marrying the Royal Marine

The Admiral’s Penniless Bride

Borrowed Light

Coming Home for Christmas: Three Holiday Stories

Enduring Light

Marriage of Mercy

My Loving Vigil Keeping

Her Hesitant Heart

The Double Cross

Safe Passage

Carla Kelly’s Christmas Collection

In Love and War

A Timeless Romance Anthology: Old West Collection

Marco and the Devil’s Bargain

Softly Falling

Paloma and the Horse Traders

N
ONFICTION

On the Upper Missouri: The Journal of Rudolph Friedrich Kurz

Fort Buford: Sentinel at the Confluence

Stop Me If You’ve Read This One

In memory of Edward Jordan “Bud” Hagan (1916–2008), M.D., former US Navy surgeon serving with the First Marine Division at Cape Gloucester, Peleliu, and Okinawa, 1943–45
.

When I interviewed Bud Hagan to write his memoir, neither of us knew that he would become the model for Douglas Bowden, Surgeon [retired], Royal Navy. It was easy to write about an honorable military doctor because I knew one
.

“The physician must … have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm.”

—HIPPOCRATES

F
OUND IN
Of the Epidemics
, B
OOK
1, S
ECTION 2

Chapter 1

W
hat say you, Captain? Time’s
wasting. You come well recommended, and I agree with the Navy Board. The war is over, but we still need hospitals. Aye or nay?”

After twenty-five years at sea fighting in a global conflict, Surgeon Douglas Bowden, Royal Navy, wasn’t an easy man to surprise. He was surprised now. He sat back in Admiral Sir David Carew’s uncomfortable chair for guests—or was it a chair for uncomfortable guests?—and considered the offer.

Maybe he was silent too long.

“Starting tomorrow!” Sir David glanced at his calendar. “May 6, 1816.”

“Assistant superintendent here at Stonehouse?” Douglas asked and almost winced with the stupidity of his query.

“Where else?” the admiral snapped, his patience obviously at an end. “This Stonehouse, not the one in Siam! Don’t try me, lad.”

Maybe it was the “lad” that decided the matter.
I am a full-grown man and a competent surgeon
, Douglas thought, wishing the slight didn’t rankle, not after all these years.
I am not your lad. My father was only a cooper in Norfolk, but I am still not your lad
.

“I think not, Sir David,” Douglas replied, noting with silent glee that it was the physician’s turn to look startled. “I believe I will relinquish my warrant, instead.” He hadn’t forgotten all his manners. “Thank you for the offer.”

Evidently Sir David wasn’t accustomed to being turned down flatter than a ship’s biscuit. “Twice your current salary!” he sputtered. “A house on the row here!”

Douglas hesitated. Perhaps he had been hasty. He had nothing against making money, and a house on the row would certainly announce the habitation of a man at the top of his profession, someone worthy of note.

“You’ll be considered a gentleman!”

Sir David Carew had thrown out his final incentive. He sat back, folded his arms, and glared at Douglas.

That, you old rip, is the very reason I will never take this position
, Douglas thought, his mind made up by Sir David’s last dangled carrot. Just the saying of it told him that prissy old Davey Care-Less would never consider him a gentleman and an equal, even if his surgical talents far eclipsed most physicians’ abilities.

Douglas stood up. “Alas, Sir David, I cannot oblige you, kind as your offer is. I will surrender my warrant to the Navy Board when I pass through London and be on my way tomorrow.” He extended his foot and made a proper bow to the physician. “Thank you for the consideration. Good-day.”

He closed the door while Sir David’s mouth still hung open in amazement. Douglas stopped by the yeoman’s desk, laughing to himself at the scribe’s equally wide-open mouth and staring eyes. He must have heard the whole exchange.

“Am I the first sea dog to lift my leg on Sir David’s shoes?” Douglas whispered, his eyes merry.

“Very nearly,” the yeoman whispered back.

They both ducked involuntarily when something—perhaps a medical text—crashed against the closed door.

Douglas put on his bicorn and walked into the main hall of the administrative block at Stonehouse, the Royal Naval hospital between Plymouth and Devonport. He glanced into various offices as he headed toward the main door, noting that many of them were empty now.

There was a time …
He stopped, remembering the activity in the building when Napoleon stomped all over Europe, and nothing but the Royal Navy’s wooden walls kept him from jumping the Channel for more mischief. Boney had called England a nation of shopkeepers. Had he seen the paperwork flying about, he’d have called England a nation of clerks.

Douglas stood for a longer moment outside the main door, admiring the symmetry of the ward blocks, separate buildings on either side of Admin, connected by graceful colonnades. He had served a brief, involuntary six months at Stonehouse only because he was supposed to be recuperating from a falling mast after a nameless skirmish on the blockade. A month of pain between his shoulders was followed by more pain, as he rose up from his sickbed too soon and assisted the overworked Stonehouse staff. Such was war.

Thinking of his stay, he pulled his cloak closer against cold rain and hurried along the walk to Ward Four, where he had worked. The door wasn’t locked, so he went inside, sniffing stale air only, without the overlay of body stench and putrefaction.

“What are you doing?” he asked himself. He walked up the stairs to the first floor, scene of his own incarceration for a month because the officers’ block was crammed to overflowing, and his eventual residency for five more as he worked there.

The cots were still in place, and so was the ward nurse’s desk. Douglas Bowden looked from empty cot to empty cot, remembering each wounded seaman—those who lived and those who didn’t. It was much the same ordeal he put himself through each night before he slept as he did a mental inventory of some of his more memorable cases and anguished over the men he could not save. And then the dreams followed.

He had asked a fellow surgeon once if he dreamed that way too. The surgeon’s reply was a deep sigh, followed by a massive change of subject. Douglas never asked again.

But everyone was gone now. “How about that?” he said out loud as he turned around and went more slowly down the stairs. No smells, no moans, no screams. Why did he still hear them?

Ward Block Five appeared to be occupied. He thought about going inside just to see if he knew the attending surgeon, but it wasn’t necessary.

“Doug! I see old Davey Carew did call you in. Aye or nay?”

Captain Owen Brackett stood in the doorway, umbrella in hand. He motioned Douglas inside. The rain pelted harder, reminding him that England in May was a saucy minx, teasing with the bloom of spring one day and striking back with cold rain the next.

They shook hands. Brackett must have spent his whole career at Stonehouse, which was to the advantage of numerous wounded men, Douglas knew.

“ ’Tis nay, Owen,” Douglas said, with a shake of his head. “I couldn’t bring myself to take the offer.”

“Which was … ?”

“Assistant superintendent.”

“I turned him down too,” Brackett said. “I have my eye on a private practice in Ashton, Kent, and we leave in two weeks. Aggie’s idea, and I didn’t argue. You ever marry?”

“Never on land long enough to convince some poor lady of my nonexistent charms.”

The other surgeon held his umbrella over them both as they continued toward the street. “You can’t be a day over forty-five,” Brackett told him. “You’ll find a willing widow somewhere.”

Douglas winced. “I’ll be thirty-seven next Tuesday.”

“Beg pardon.” Brackett recovered quickly and laughed. “Nothing like a constant sea voyage to age a man, eh? You need a little wrinkle salve, that’s all.”

Douglas smiled at his friend. “I have all my parts, howsomever. I’m thinking about a practice, too, someplace where I cannot see the ocean.”

“You know that won’t work.”

“Certainly it will,” Douglas assured him. “I’m weary of water.”

Brackett shrugged. He gestured to one of the row houses that the admiral had touted as a main attraction for continued employment in the Royal Navy. “Come inside for luncheon? Aggie will be happy to see you.”

Douglas should have said yes. He had nothing more pressing on his schedule than a walk in the rain to Plymouth. He could have hired a hack, but he suddenly longed to be alone as he contemplated his unrelenting wartime career and the unease that peace was bringing.

He begged off, after promising Captain Brackett that he would drop him a line in Ashton when he was settled somewhere. Precisely where, Douglas had no idea yet, but Brackett didn’t need to know.

The dockyards still bustled with activity, and always would as long as England needed a navy. Quieter now, the hospital would still function. The turmoil of war had left in its wake a certain sadness that went beyond death and suffering. Douglas did not understand his feelings, except that peace was already proving to be onerous. He knew he could not bear to stay much longer in Plymouth, unwilling to see the worn-out ships—masts and sails gone—placed in ordinary. They were now as superfluous as he was, and he didn’t relish watching the end.

He stood another few minutes at the dry docks, which gave him the most concrete indication that the war was over. Of the three docks, a keel had been laid in one, and the other two graving docks were empty. He wondered if the shipwrights and carpenters had retired like him or if they had been dismissed. The ropeworks lay idle.