"Hurry, child! Come here."
She picked up her skirts and went to him as fast as she could go across the rows of bodies.
She put her hand on his arm and felt that it was trembling with weariness but there was no weakness in his face.
"Oh, Doctor!" she cried. "You must come. Melanie is having her baby."
He looked at her as if her words did not register on his mind. A man who lay upon the
ground at her feet, his head pillowed on his canteen, grinned up companionably at her words.
"They will do it," he said cheerfully.
She did not even look down but shook the doctor's arm.
"It's Melanie. The baby. Doctor, you must come. She--the--"This was no time for delicacy but it was hard to bring out the words with the ears of hundreds of strange men listening.
"The pains are getting hard. Please, Doctor!"
"A baby? Great God!" thundered the doctor and his face was suddenly contorted with hate and rage, a rage not directed at her or at anyone except a world wherein such things could happen. "Are you crazy? I can't leave these men. They are dying, hundreds of them. I can't leave them for a damned baby. Get some woman to help you. Get my wife."
She opened her mouth to ten him why Mrs. Meade could not come and then shut it
abruptly. He did not know his own son was wounded! She wondered if he would still be here if he did know, and something told her that even if Phil were dying he would still be standing on this spot, giving aid to the many instead of the one.
"No, you must come, Doctor. You know you said she'd have a hard time--"Was it really she, Scarlett, standing here saying these dreadful indelicate things at the top of her voice in this hell of heat and groans? "She'll die if you don't come!"
He shook off her hand roughly and spoke as though he hardly heard her, hardly knew
what she said.
"Die? Yes, they'll all die--all these men. No bandages, no salves, no quinine, no chloroform. Oh, God, for some morphia! Just a little morphia for the worst ones. Just a little chloroform. God damn the Yankees! God damn the Yankees!"
"Give um hell, Doctor!" said the man on the ground, his teeth showing in his beard.
Scarlett began to shake and her eyes burned with tears of fright. The doctor wasn't coming with her. Melanie would die and she had wished that she would die. The doctor wasn't coming.
"Name of God, Doctor! Please!"
Dr. Meade bit his lip and his jaw hardened as his face went cool again.
"Child, I'll try. I can't promise you. But I'll try. When we get these men tended to. The Yankees are coming and the troops are moving out of town. I don't know what they'll do with the wounded. There aren't any trains. The Macon line has been captured… But I'll try. Run along now. Don't bother me. There's nothing much to bringing a baby. Just tie up the cord. …"
He turned as an orderly touched his arm and began firing directions and pointing to this
and that wounded man. The man at her feet looked up at Scarlett compassionately. She turned away, for the doctor had forgotten her.
She picked her way rapidly through the wounded and back to Peachtree Street. The doctor
wasn't coming. She would have to see it through herself. Thank God, Prissy knew all about midwifery. Her head ached from the heat and she could feel her basque, soaking wet from
perspiration, sticking to her. Her mind felt numb and so did her legs, numb as in a nightmare when she tried to run and could not move them. She thought of the long walk back to the house and it seemed interminable.
Then, "The Yankees are coming!" began to beat its refrain in her mind again. Her heart began to pound and new life came into her limbs. She hurried into the crowd at Five Points, now so thick there was no room on the narrow sidewalks and she was forced to walk in the street.
Long lines of soldiers were passing, dust covered, sodden with weariness. There seemed
thousands of them, bearded, dirty, their guns slung over their shoulders, swiftly passing at route step. Cannon rolled past, the drivers flaying the thin mules with lengths of rawhide. Commissary wagons with torn canvas covers rocked through the ruts. Cavalry raising clouds of choking dust went past endlessly. She had never seen so many soldiers together before. Retreat! Retreat! The army was moving out.
The hurrying lines pushed her back onto the packed sidewalk and she smelled the reek of
cheap corn whisky. There were women in the mob near Decatur Street, garishly dressed women whose bright finery and painted faces gave a discordant note of holiday. Most of them were drunk and the soldiers on whose arms they hung were drunker. She caught a fleeting glimpse of a head of red curls and saw that creature, Belle Watling, heard her shrill drunken laughter as she clung for support to a one-armed soldier who reeled and staggered.