“Don’t worry, Mother,” Philip said, trying to muster a smile. “It just hurts like the devil . . .”
That attempt at levity cost him—his pulse raced then ebbed beneath my lips. I hushed him, as the war nurse in me frantically searched for the wound. I pulled back bedcovers to find the spot on his side where the doctors had already cut the clothing away.
What I found nearly drove me to my knees.
Dark blood, not bright red like the spatter on his face.
Dark blood, not red.
Dark blood, an inky Madeira.
The bullet had passed through his side and lodged itself in his opposite arm. It was the arm that bled red. But from the torso oozed the dark blood. Which meant the bullet had passed through some vital organ. There was no help for it. I’d seen soldiers suffer such wounds, and I knew, with horrifying clarity, that my son was dying.
Philip must have known it, too, because he whispered, “I need you to know I tried to escape the duel.” He followed this with a gasping breath. “And when I c-couldn’t, I determined to take no man’s life, but merely offer my own in preservation of honor.”
He grimaced again, writhing in pain, and Alexander shushed him with strained, halting words. “Oh, my dear boy. Save your strength. We could never doubt your honor.”
I’d only heard that tone in my husband’s voice one time before, when we lost our little baby, dead before she was born. Which meant he, too, knew it was happening again. Now.
Meanwhile, Philip was determined that we know he behaved bravely. “I reserved my fire . . . to throw in the air.”
A duel. He’d fought a duel. And he’d thrown away his shot. It was all sinking in, and I didn’t care. Dear God, I didn’t care for anything but keeping him alive and I hadn’t the faintest notion how to do it.
“Doctor,” I cried. “He must have laudanum.”
Alexander reached to still me and our fingers tangled, sticky with our son’s warm blood, as he drew my attention to the bottle at the side of the bed. Philip had been dosed with it already. Any more, and perhaps we would hasten the end.
I recoiled from the thought, though my desperate mind would later fasten upon the notion as some manner of mercy when our poor boy lay hour after hour, pale and languid, his rolling eyes darting forth through flashes of delirium.
Caring naught for the blood, we climbed into bed with him, Alexander on one side, me on the other, and whispered tearful words of love and comfort as the darkness fell. “My sweet son,” I said in a voice I normally reserved for the littlest children. “You cannot remember the happiness you gave us when you were a baby, but oh, the joy we felt, just to hold you between us in bed, just like this.”
Philip pressed his head against mine, and in my mind’s eye, he was still the little jester who’d made us laugh. The brave eleven-year-old who’d saved all my other children. The fiery thirteen-year-old who’d defended his father in the streets. And I wanted to know who did this to him. What fiendish murderer could have pointed a pistol at my beautiful, sweet boy?
I had so many questions. But they would have to wait.
For as Philip groaned in desperate pain, I realized my duty to him. I was his mother. I’d nourished him, baptized him, taught him, clothed him, and watched him grow into a man. And yet, he needed me still. Now, the most important, the most sacred thing that I could do for my son was deliver him from this world just as I’d delivered him into it.
“You mustn’t be afraid,” I whispered. “These pains will soon pass. They will pass, and you will find your rest with God.” Alexander tried to swallow a moan but couldn’t hold it back.
But Philip nodded, his blue-tinged lips trembling. “I have f-faith in the Lord and my conscience is c-clean.”
He closed his eyes, already more gone from the world than still in it. So I met my husband’s gaze across the expiring body of our son, and met eyes so full of agony that I had to look away.
Before dawn, Philip roused himself. “What s-shall I tell Aunt Peggy when I see her in heaven? I—I think she’ll be angry t-to see me so soon.” Philip said this last part with a little laugh that brought a fresh cycle of convulsions.
“Don’t laugh, my sweet,” I told him, choking back a sob as I pressed my nose into his hair and inhaled the scent of him. “Don’t laugh if it hurts you.”
Alexander echoed me, his voice cracking. “You always laughed too much. Your only fault, my dear boy.”
Philip tried to turn his grimace into a grin. “Father, I shall debate you that laughter can be a f-fault.”