Susan Wiggs - The Drifter

A six-day card game had taken place on an eastbound train, and without planning to, Jackson had found himself in New York City. He had no liking for the city, but a force he didn’t understand and didn’t bother to fight had drawn him inexorably eastward along the low, sloping brow of Long Island.

He’d gotten his first glimpse of the sea on a Wednesday, and he’d stood staring at it as if he beheld the very face of God. The following Monday, he signed on a whaler as a common seaman. The next three years consisted of equal parts of glory and hell. When he returned, he knew two things for certain—he hated whaling beyond all imagining. And he loved the sea with a passion that bordered on worship.

But the unfinished quest for Carrie held him captive. Eventually, he had traced her. In New Orleans, while celebrating a tidy sweep at the poker table, he’d found himself a whore for the night, oddly comforted by the mindless, mechanical way the services were rendered and received. But in the morning, he’d opened his eyes to a shock as disturbing as a bucket of ice water.

“What the hell’s this?” he’d demanded, yanking at the silk ribbon around the whore’s neck. “Where’d you get it?”

The whore had clutched the object defensively. “Lady Caroline left it behind, said it was a good-luck charm so I took to wearing it.”

He grabbed the charm, stared at it for a long time. It was the dove he’d carved for Carrie so long ago. “Lady Caroline,” he said, hope burgeoning in his chest. “So where is she now?”

“Gone to Texas, last I heard, with Hale Devlin’s gang.”

Texas. And that had only been the beginning.

The shattering of glass jarred Jackson out of his reverie. With a curse, he looked at the framed tintype he’d been holding and saw that he’d broken it. An ice-clear web of cracks radiated from the center, distorting the picture of Leah and her father. Her smiling mouth was severed as if by violence; the father’s hand on her shoulder had been detached.

Painstakingly, Jackson removed the broken glass. The picture went back to normal—Leah, smiling, aglow with pride. Her father cold, distant. The scroll of a paper diploma clutched in her hand.

An educated woman. But could she save Carrie?

He shuddered from the memory of what he had found in Texas.

Could anyone?

Bone weary, bloodied to the elbows and filled with self-doubt, Leah peeled off her patent rubber gloves. She pressed her forehead against the damp wall of the surgery and closed her eyes.

Nearby, she could hear Sophie’s movements as she placed soiled sheeting and gowns into a pail of carbolic solution, then emptied a large porcelain container into a waste pail.

“You did your best. I watched you like a hawk on the hunt,” Sophie said. “Those fancy city doctors in Seattle couldn’t have done better.”

“Try telling that to Mr. Underhill,” Leah whispered. “Oh, God, God.” She forced her eyes open, made herself look at Sophie.

Her assistant was broad of face; she had wise dark eyes and an air of serenity that governed every move she made, every word she spoke. Half Skagit Indian and half French-Canadian, Sophie had been educated in boarding schools that taught her just enough to convince her that she belonged neither to the white nor the native world, but stood precariously between the two. It was an uncomfortable spot, but Leah, a misfit herself, felt sometimes that they were kindred spirits.

“It is the great curse of doctors,” Leah said, “that while most people have to die only once, a doctor dies many times over, each time she loses a patient.”

Sophie pressed her lips into a line, then spoke softly. “But it is the great reward of healers that each time you save a life, you yourself are reborn.” She looked down at the unmoving, pale face of Carrie Underhill. “Yes, you lost the baby. But you also saved Mrs. Underhill from bleeding to death. She’ll live to thank you. Perhaps to bear other children.”

Leah swallowed the lump in her throat. She knew some babies were never meant to be, especially when the mother suffered such precarious health. There was something puzzling about Carrie Underhill’s condition, something besides the pregnancy. A chronic complaint, perhaps. But what?

Did she drink calomel? Leah wondered. The purgative was still a popular folk remedy; it had been her father’s favorite prescription. This was the sort of thing he caused, she thought resentfully. She intended to keep Carrie under close observation.

The task at hand was more pressing, though. She had to face this woman’s husband. The baby’s father.

With a leaden heart, she helped Sophie finish clearing up. After Carrie was clad in a clean gown and lying on clean draperies, Leah went to the door and opened it. “Mr. Underhill?”

His head snapped around as if someone had punched him in the jaw. Weariness deepened the fan lines around his eyes and mouth, yet a beard stubble softened the effect; he appeared deceptively vulnerable. “Is she all right?”

Leah nodded. “She’s sleeping, but will probably awaken within the next hour.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Good,” he said between his teeth. “Damn, that’s…good.” He opened his eyes. “Jesus. I feel like I just got dealt four aces.”

Leah cleared her throat. “She might suffer a headache, possibly vomiting, from the ether. You must watch her closely in case the bleeding starts again, but I don’t think it will.” She forced an encouraging smile. Something tender and desperate lived in Jackson Underhill’s haggard face. She wished she knew him well enough to take his hand, to hold it tight for a moment. Instead, she said, “I believe your wife will be fine. She needs plenty of bed rest and good food, and we’ll see to that.”

“Yes. All right.” His eyes closed again briefly. His knees wobbled.

“Sit down, Mr. Underhill. I can’t handle two patients tonight.”

He lowered himself to the wing chair and cradled his head in his hands, fingers splaying into his thick golden hair. “Didn’t know I was wound up so tight.” He glanced up at her. She felt an inner twist of compassion at the turbulence in his eyes. Those gunslinger eyes. The first time she had looked into them, she had nearly fainted from fright. Now she felt a chilly reluctance to tell him the rest.

“Thanks, Doc,” he said to her.

She nodded, holding the edge of the door, waiting. Waiting. Waiting for him to ask about the baby. He didn’t. He didn’t even seem to acknowledge its existence. She swallowed hard. “Mr. Underhill?”

“Yeah?”

She took a deep breath, sensing the harshness of carbolic and ammonia in her lungs. “I’m afraid I couldn’t save the baby.”

“The baby.” His soft voice held no expression, no hint of what he was feeling.

“I’m sorry. So terribly, terribly sorry.”

He stared at her for a long time, so long she wasn’t certain he’d heard and understood. Then at last he spoke. “You did your best, I reckon.”

In her travels with her father, she’d met her share of gamblers and gunslingers. They were men without souls, men who killed in the blink of an eye. Jackson T. Underhill was one of them. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how badly she’d wanted him to be different—better, more worthy, more compassionate. But his attitude about the baby proved her wrong.

“I did my best, yes,” she said. “But like every physician, I have my limits. Some things just weren’t meant to be.” She decided not to tell him her concerns about Carrie. Not now, at least.

“I see.” He steepled the tips of his fingers together.

Mr. Underhill, you lost a child today. She didn’t say the words, but she wondered why he didn’t react more strongly. Perhaps his way of coping was to deny the baby had ever existed. After all, he’d only known about it for a day.