I woke to the pounding of feet on the dirt road, stomping in time with the cadence of drum. They marched to their deaths, I had no doubt of that. Fools, eager to die. Maybe they’d not seen what powder and ball does to flesh and bone. The memory stays with you once it’s inside your skull, and it rests uneasy alongside the smell of gangrene, and the rasp of saw against bone.
I knew what I had to do. I closed the shutters and pulled down the sash despite the heat of the morning, and went back to bed.
The town was quiet by the time I’d dressed and made my way to my surgery on the floor below. Mrs. Perkins came mid-morning with her usual complaints for which I provided the usual remedy. The sidewalk in front came under the shade of the building by three, so I ventured out to lean against brick and admire the town. It had grown remarkedly since my days as a young doctor first hanging my shingle for all the word to see. I dozed, imagining the beat of drums and the slaughter that would come on the ‘morrow. At six in the early evening I prepared a simple supper, but the silence and the phantom drums had worked to erode my resolve. I moved to pack my kit and follow the footsteps of friends and neighbors to my most certain demise, and cursed myself for a fool.