Four warriors carried the blood-soaked stretcher into the large tipi. The metallic stench of fresh blood filled the freezing air, crushing every other sound in the lodge.
"Set him down! Gently!"
Elena barked in English, her voice sharp and cold as ice, yet ringing with absolute command. The panic from the gorge was completely swallowed down. The aura of a master surgeon enveloped the room.
Turning toward Sarah, she motioned forcefully: "Sarah! Tell them to boil water! Light three large torches around the stretcher! Bring clean deerskin strips and high-proof spirits—hurry!"
Sarah hurriedly translated her commands in rapid Lakota to the warriors.
"Elena! What are you doing to my brother?" Running Deer towered beside her, his hand gripping his hunting knife, his bloodshot eyes glaring at her.
"Get out!" Elena spun around, snarling in English directly into the fierce warrior's face.
Seeing Running Deer's confusion and rage, Elena snapped to Sarah: "Sarah, tell him right now! His brother is in hemorrhagic shock! The Springfield bullet is lodged right next to his intercostal artery! If he stands here blabbering, he can dig his brother's grave in five minutes!"
Sarah yelled the translation in Lakota, her voice shaking but stern.
Running Deer froze. Looking at Grey Elk's ash-pale face and the white woman's blood-covered hands, his chest heaved violently. He spat a curse in Lakota and took a heavy step back.
"Everyone out!" Elena ordered, her tone ruthless. "Except Sarah and Old Wind Woman, if anyone steps in here... I will cut their throat myself!"
Sarah translated the threat word for word. Running Deer glared at Elena with a mixture of hatred and a quiet, budding awe. He yanked the door flap aside and stepped out, though his massive silhouette lingered outside the entrance, standing like a wild beast guarding its lair.
The ceremonial lodge was isolated completely.
Elena knelt beside the stretcher. She pulled her only remaining syringe from her satchel.
The last ampoule of Morphine.
She looked at the liquid inside, then at the deep, gaping wound on Grey Elk's flank. Extracting a deformed lead bullet from intercostal muscle would take at least fifteen minutes. A single 21st-century dose of morphine could not dull the excruciating pain for a man of his size.
He would have to endure this flesh-tearing agony... through his own wild, unyielding pride.
Torches flared and flickered, casting dancing shadows against the buffalo-hide walls.
The air hung thick with the smell of spirits, singed iron, and heavy blood.
Elena poured liquor over her hands, then sanitized two crude metal forceps—fashioned by a native blacksmith to her specifications. She injected the tiny dose of Morphine around Grey Elk's wound.
"Hold his shoulders down," Elena instructed Old Wind Woman, miming the action.
Sarah rolled a soft strip of rawhide, placing it between Grey Elk's jaw: "A-pó... bite down on this..."
Grey Elk closed his eyes, his teeth grinding into the leather until it creaked.
Elena lost no time. She inserted two slender fingers, calloused from surgical tools, directly into the blood-drenched wound.
Squelch!
Fresh blood welled up, splashing onto Elena's cheek.
Grey Elk's body jerked violently! His bare chest and abdominal muscles tightened like iron bands. Large beads of cold sweat erupted across his stone-carved forehead.
He did not let out a single groan.
Though the agony tore through his flesh, though the morphine barely scratched the surface of the iron's bite, the wild chief bit down hard on the rawhide, his fists gripping the wooden edges of the stretcher so tightly his knuckles turned stark white.
His amber eyes snapped open!
He did not look at the ceiling, nor at his bleeding wound. His fierce, burning gaze locked directly onto Elena's face.
Meeting his eyes, Elena did not look away. Her fingers moved along his tenth rib, searching for the deformed lead bullet.
To steady the nerve of the man lying on the brink of death, Elena lowered her voice, speaking in a flat, calm English:
"Lie still, Chief. Don't tense your muscles too hard, or you'll tear your artery."
Her voice rose soft and steady above the crackling fire:
"The bullet is right behind your rib. It hasn't punctured your lung. You're lucky, Grey Elk... Your black stallion ran fast enough."
Grey Elk stared at her. Through the sweat dimming his vision, he saw the pale yet resolute face of the white woman. Her ash-gray eyes burned with a cold, focused light. Her voice acted like an invisible charm, suppressing the agonizing pain twisting through his chest.
Click...
"Found it."
Elena worked the crude metal forceps deep into the muscle pocket, clamping onto the flattened piece of lead.
Slowly, using measured force, she pulled the tool outward.
Clang!
The deformed Springfield bullet dropped onto a copper tray, ringing out dry and clear.
"It's out."
Elena let out a long breath. She grabbed a jar of dry moss mixed with honey and powdered Yellow Root, packing it directly into the cleaned wound before using a crude needle to drive sutures through his skin, closing the gap.
One stitch. Two stitches. Four stitches.
Her hands remained steady and cold until the very last knot was tied.
When the final thread was secured, Elena set her tools down.
And in that exact moment, as the procedure came to a complete end... the hands once praised as "blessed by God" began to tremble violently.
An uncontrollable tremor.
Just like her feeling after the failed surgery in Operating Room 4. The extreme psychological strain burst, leaving her completely exhausted, her knees giving out beside the stretcher.
Late at night.
The wind from the Bighorns howled against the Tipi walls, making the oil lamp flicker in yellow trails.
Silence settled over the lodge. Sarah and Old Wind Woman had been sent by Elena to rest.
Elena sat alone on the buffalo-hide rug beside the stretcher. She replaced a cold, river-soaked cloth over Grey Elk's burning forehead.
The post-traumatic fever had taken hold.
Grey Elk lay unconscious. His face burned red from the high fever, his chest heaving rapidly as faint, involuntary groans slipped from his dry, cracked lips.
Elena gently wiped the sweat from his bare chest.
Looking at the man who had roared so proudly before the council fire now lying helpless against a fever, a strange ache bloomed in Elena's chest.
In the quiet dark, she began to speak.
She spoke in English—a language he could not comprehend in his delirium—confessing the darkest secret buried in her heart:
"In my century... three days before I came here..." Her voice was a fragile whisper. "...I lost someone. A young man, only twenty years old. He was in a car accident, his aorta completely severed."
She looked deep at the scar on Grey Elk's neck, tears brimming in her ash-gray eyes:
"I stitched his wound with the most advanced thread. I shocked his heart five times. These hands did everything modern medicine could do... but the monitor still went flat."
A warm tear slipped down Elena's pale cheek, landing on the chief's chest.
"I ran away, Grey Elk. I drove like a lunatic through a storm because I couldn't face my own helplessness... I thought my knowledge was a joke."
She used a soft strip of cloth to gently wipe a tear from his cheek:
"But this afternoon... when I saw you fall at Limestone Gorge... I ran out again. I don't want to see anyone die before these hands ever again. Especially not you..."
Just then...
Grey Elk's massive, burning hand reached up!
His calloused fingers clamped tight around Elena's slender wrist!
The strength in his delirium was enough to make Elena freeze. He squeezed her wrist, pulling her hand down against his violently heaving chest.
Grey Elk turned his head, his dry lips moving, rasps of a name slipping out—a name heavy with ancient pain:
"Dewdrop... Dewdrop..." (Hạt Sương...)
Elena froze in place.
Dewdrop.
It was not a random word. It was a woman's name—soft, gentle, belonging to a native girl.
The night wind battered the tipi walls.
Grey Elk held her hand tightly, burying his feverish face against Elena's palm, repeatedly whispering that name in agonizing delirium.
Elena sat motionless in the dark.
Her wrist was gripped so tightly red marks flared beneath his fingers.
She could have used force to pull her hand away. She could have stepped back into the cold rationality of a doctor.
But Elena looked at the pained face of the man struggling against his past...
She did not pull her hand back.
Her slender hand remained trapped within his burning grip, quietly keeping him company through the long, dark night of Talon Ridge.
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