Susan Wiggs - The Drifter

“May I come in?”

The door opened. Jackson T. Underhill stood there hatless, his blond hair mussed as if he’d run his fingers through it. “She’s awake, Doc,” he said.

No one had ever called her Doc. She realized that she rather liked the homey, trusting sound of it. She found herself remembering the incident in the bathhouse. What a shock it had been to see him standing there, naked except for a towel around his middle. Even without the gun belt slung low on his hips, there was something dangerous and predatory about him. Something she shouldn’t let herself think about. She forced her attention back to where it belonged—her patient.

Evening light spilled through the dimity curtains framing the bay window. The glow lay like a veil of amber upon the reposing figure on the bed. Carrie Underhill wore the shroud of gold like a mythic figure. How lovely she was, the fine bones of her face sharpened by light and shadow, her milk-pale skin and fair hair absorbing the pinkening rays of the sunset.

She turned her head on the pillow and blinked slowly at Leah.

“Mrs. Underhill, I’m glad you’re awake.” Leah took the slim hand in her own. Immediately, the pathologist in her took over. The first thing she noticed was how cold the hand was. Too cold. “How are you feeling?”

Carrie pulled her hand away with a weak motion. Her eyes, blue as a delft dessert plate, were wide and wounded. “I feel awful, just awful.” Her gaze sought Jackson, and she seemed to calm a little when she spied him. “Is this a safe place, Jackson? You said we were going to a safe place.”

“You’re safe here, sugar,” he said. His voice was so gentle that Leah almost didn’t recognize it.

“Hurts,” she said with a whimper, and her perfect face pinched into a wince of pain. “Hurts so bad.”

A chill rose up and spread through Leah. Her suspicions, the ones she had been beating down since first laying eyes on Carrie Underhill, came back stronger. She moved the coverlet aside.

Carrie clutched at the quilt. “Jackson!”

“She doesn’t like being uncovered,” he said. “Likes being wrapped up tight.”

“I need to examine her,” Leah snapped. Then, collecting herself, she turned back to Carrie. “I’ll be quick,” she promised. As gently as she could, she palpated Carrie’s abdomen through the fabric of a clean flannel nightgown.

An outlaw who did laundry…

What was a ruthless man like Jackson T. Underhill doing with this fey and delicate creature?

The scent of laundry mingled with something sharper, an odor that was rusty and unmistakable.

She looks to be about three months along…

Leah’s hand touched the abdomen low. Carrie screamed. Her legs came up to reveal an angry smear of fresh blood on the sheets.

“Jesus!” Jackson grabbed Leah’s arm and yanked her back. “You’re hurting her.”

Leah drew him away from the bed and into the recess of a dormer window. Lowering her voice so Carrie wouldn’t hear, Leah leaned toward Jackson. “When did the bleeding start?” she demanded. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I didn’t know she was bleeding.” Fear edged his words. “I thought she was doing better, just sleeping.”

“She didn’t tell you?”

“No. She—I don’t think she knew, either.”

“I’m afraid she’s miscarrying,” Leah said.

“What’s that mean?” he demanded, clutching her arm, holding tight.

Leah wrenched her arm away. “She’s losing the baby.”

“So fix it.”

The chill inside Leah froze into a ball of fear. “It’s all I can do to save the mother.”

“So save her. Do it now,” he said, raising his voice above Carrie’s high, thin keening.

“I don’t think you understand, Mr. Underhill. It’s not that simple. She might need surgery.”

“Surgery. You mean an operation.”

“I have to stop the bleeding.”

His face paled. “Surgery,” he repeated.

“Yes, if the bleeding doesn’t stop.”

“No.”

She could see the shape of his mouth, but she made him say it again. “I didn’t hear you, Mr. Underhill.”

“No. You aren’t going to hurt her anymore.”

Furious, she tugged on his hand, leading him out into the corridor.

“You aren’t operating on Carrie,” he repeated, his voice low and threatening. “She’s not some critter for you to experiment on.”

“How dare you,” she shot back. “I’m a healer, Mr. Underhill. Not a butcher. Believe me, I would give anything not to have to do anything invasive to your wife, and I will try to stanch the flow as best I can. But if we ignore the problem, the bleeding will continue. Toxins will spread through her body, and she’ll die. A slow, painful death.”

He pressed himself against the wall of the corridor, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. “Damn it. God damn it all to hell.”

“Mr. Underhill, this isn’t helping your wife. You have to make the decision.” A thin wail of pain drifted from inside the room. “You have to make it now.”

He moved so fast that Leah didn’t even realize it until he was clutching her by the shoulders, shoving her up against the wall. The desperate strength in his fingers bit into her upper arms. He put his face very close to hers. She caught his scent of bay rum and leather.

“Look, lady doctor. You’re telling me she could bleed to death?”

“That’s correct.” She tried to glare him into releasing her, but he only held her tighter. She moistened her lips, trying not to let the fatigue of a long day bother her. “An infection could take hold, and she’s too weak to battle an infection.”

“Then you fix her.” He spoke in a low, icy undertone. “You do it now. You stop the bleeding and you make her well. Or I swear to God I’ll kill you.”

Leah and her father had argued long and loud about outfitting an operating theater in the surgery. Edward Mundy claimed to scorn the fancy, big-city ways of modern medicine. In truth, what he scorned was spending money on anything but himself. Leah rarely won an argument with her father, but when it came to her profession, she found strength in her passion for healing.

In the end, she had prevailed and was rewarded with a tiny but innovative theater adjacent to the main suite. It was nothing so grand as the busy hospital theaters where she had learned her brutal craft in Denver and Omaha, but it was an impressive facility for a small island town.

She religiously followed the antiseptic methods of Dr. Lister of Great Britain. Lister had proven beyond a doubt that sterilizing the operating theater reduced the risk of infection. Penny Lake had written to say that all the surgeons of Johns Hopkins were using rubber gloves during surgery. Leah willingly embraced the technique.

Her assistant, Sophie Whitebear, had returned from Port Townsend. With quiet competence, she sprayed the chamber with carbolic acid solution until a fine mist hung in the air. Everything—their gowns, their hair, their sleeping patient, the instruments, the walls and the floors—grew damp and acrid-smelling.

When all was in readiness—the light in place, the patient draped, the dressings and instruments at hand—Leah closed her eyes and said a quick prayer. She had done this many times, had probed dozens of bodies in search of bullets or gallstones or bleeding tumors, but each time, she was overwhelmed with the enormity of invading the sanctity of the human body.

Dear God, please guide my hand in this. Please….

Holding her breath and her nerves perfectly steady, she began.

There wasn’t a goddamned thing he could do.

Like a caged beast, Jackson prowled the surgery. His gaze kept cutting to the enameled white door. Beyond that door, in a room lit so brightly his eyes hurt, Carrie lay bleeding. He might have looked his last at her as they brought her into the strange, foul-smelling chamber. She might never awaken again. He might never again see the color of her eyes, hear the sound of her voice, feel her hand grasping his.