Joaquin woke sometime after dawn, all of him taut with agony.
He tried to sit up but only ended up rolling to one side, as helpless as a turtle turned on its shell. He’d never be able to rise today, much less walk. He blew out a shaky breath. And he’d have to tell Nurse McCallahan that. Damn.
She was by his side before he’d even finished refilling his lungs, dressed in the same clothes she’d been wearing yesterday.
“You’re hurting.” She helped him to sit up, her hands firm, certain. “Do you need to relieve yourself?”
He nodded, shame making his neck tight. It was odd; she was a nurse—she’d held a bedpan for him before, but somehow her helping him now burned him.
When he’d finished his business with her assistance, she helped him to sit up near the circle of ash that had been last night’s fire. She laid her fingers across his pulse when she was done.
“Hmm,” she said. “We can’t leave here today; it would be risking your health to do so.”
He didn’t bother to argue.
“Do you think you can eat?” she asked. “Or is the pain too great?”
“No food.” He could barely force the words past the vise of his jaw.
She began to unbutton his shirt. “Let me have a look.” She pulled his shirt from his torso easily, never once jarring him. One of the other nurses might have, but never Nurse McCallahan.
He pointed his gaze toward the pines overhead once his shirt was open. He hated to look at himself, at the evidence of what had been done to him.
Her fingers found the scar and pressed gently. Then more firmly. But the hard mass of it wouldn’t give, at least not like normal flesh would. She began to rub deep circles against it. He closed his eyes, letting his head fall a little farther back.
“Don’t tell anyone at the sanatorium I did this,” she said. “We’re not supposed to use massage unless we’re properly trained in it.”
“Really? It feels good.” And it did, a tight warmth spreading under his skin.
She pressed deeper, the muscle giving a little more before the force of her touch as she circled and circled, pushing the aches from his flesh.
“Were you scared?”
He was so relaxed under her ministrations he didn’t realize she’d spoken at first.
“When it happened?” she clarified. “When those men shot you.”
Afraid? He cast his mind back to that day, remembering the buggy reins tight in his hands as he’d pulled the horse to a halt when the three men had burst out of the brush, remembering the tension in Isabel’s body as she realized what was happening, remembering the weight of the pistol at his hip as he realized what was happening.
There had been no fear, only reaction.
After the months of recovery, the year of pain, the shattering of both his and Isabel’s planned lives—there was fear now, in the memory of it. Now that he knew the full depths that an outlaw’s bullet could send him to.
“Not at the time,” he answered. He pulled air in, pushed it free, and remembered. His recollection of pulling his pistol and shooting the Carey brothers was blurred and flat, as if he were looking at a photograph of the event and not his own memories. The other outlaw riding down on him, the shot that had torn into his torso and thrown him from the wagon—he was glad those memories were dull, free of emotion. He could only remember pain after that, bright agony and the four walls of his room, his mother’s white face and tight eyes, the doctor’s faintly disinterested concern. But layered on top of all that, stickily soaking through every image, was purest suffering.
“I wasn’t afraid then,” he went on, “and I shouldn’t have been. If I’d been afraid, if my nerve had failed, we might not have survived.” Her fingers had slowed, the pressure less as she listened. He didn’t much want to admit this next, but she had asked if he’d been scared. “It was what came after that I should have feared.”
He was eventually sent off to the sanatorium, immured within the walls of his room. After a time—weeks, perhaps even months, he wasn’t entirely sure—he noticed that the ache had slowly faded to a hum. It was no longer a screaming in his mind and body—only a murmur and a stiffness that never ceased, one that he could force himself to ignore.
And so he waited. Waited for the time when he was whole in mind and spirit again, wondering if it would ever come, wondering what he would do when it did. Waited to become the man he’d once been.
“I’ve never been shot,” she said. “I have only the slightest idea of what you went through.” Compassion warmed her voice. Concern rattled within the words.
An urge to reassure her moved within him. “The pain is tolerable. It wasn’t at first, but now…” He paused and thought on that. The pain was as dimmed as it would ever be. He was as healed as he would ever be. So what now?
“After yesterday, it must be unbearable again.” The circles of her hands deepened again, easing the agony there. “I was afraid, you know.”
“When?” he asked. He’d never seen such a thing on her.
“When they first brought you to the sanatorium. You were lucky to have survived.”
A mirthless laugh escaped him. “I know. Everyone keeps saying so.” Lucky, lucky Joaquin, to have survived so he could lie in a bed all day.
She ignored his sarcasm. “Then you slowly began to recover. And I thought, ‘A miracle happened here. A man was saved in order to rejoin the world.’” Her circles stopped. “Sometimes that doesn’t happen.”
He could say nothing to that.
Her fingers moved again. “I was afraid when you went to stop that mob. It still wasn’t certain that you’d live—and that woman dragged you out of your bed all the way to Cabrillo.” Such tartness when she spoke of Isabel. He ought not to be amused by that. “You fell ill after, from the exertion. Do you remember?”
“I do.” He actually didn’t remember the illness—that was another week gone to sickness. But he remembered dragging himself along to help Isabel, Nurse McCallahan by his side, remembered how bone weary he’d been after. The ride back to the sanatorium, with a wounded marshal along with them, was nothing more than a blur. The week after, when he’d fought wound fever again, was nothing but blackness.
He looked at her, her expression holding the emotions stirred by those dark memories. He slid his hand under her chin to tip her face to his. “You don’t have to be afraid now.” But he saw the flash of it there, deep in her pale eyes. “I’ll be able to walk tomorrow. We’ll be back tomorrow or the day after. I swear to you, you’ll be just fine. Nothing will happen.”
She stared at him for one long heartbeat, then pulled her chin from his hand. “I know.”
She’d put her nursely voice back on, so he couldn’t tell if she was reassured or only humoring him. She began to button his shirt back up, her fingers practiced, assured. When she was finished, she stood and looked at where the fire had been. “Shall I prepare some breakfast?”
He rose, wobbling a bit when he put weight on his left leg. He wasn’t near strong enough to walk any kind of distance. “If you water the horse at the stream,” he offered, “I’ll start the fire.” His inability to properly help with it last night as she’d struggled had chafed at him.
She looked warily at the horse, then at the cold ashes. “I suppose I could water the horse.” But she made no move toward the lead rope.
He set his hand at the small of her back and pushed, the flesh there surprisingly firm. “If you can save a man from bleeding to death, you can lead a horse to water.”
She squared her shoulders, looking as if she were about to barrel down the sanatorium halls. “I suppose I can, can’t I?”
Mae didn’t need to watch Mr. Obregon so closely as he started the fire.
But she couldn’t look away.
His lips were softly pursed as he blew on the pine-needle kindling, a tiny curl of smoke rising from it. The curl grew thicker and thicker under the pressure of his breath until finally a flame caught and held. He leaned back and fed the flame bits of wood as it built into a true fire, licking hungrily at the branches he set on it.
“Thank goodness we had that flint,” she said. “Else we might have had to rub two sticks together the way the Indians do.”
He rose slowly as he brushed his hands clean. “The Cahuilla use a flint too, you know.” A brief smile from him.
“We have some salt pork,” she said, deciding not to comment on his rare humor, “and some tinned beans.”
“Sounds fine.” He stared out at the pine-covered slopes surrounding them, a stillness coming over his expression.
She would be stuck in this place with him all day. And there was only so much nursing she could do. Not that he needed much. She’d have to converse. With him. Keep him entertained… somehow. But first she had to get through breakfast.
He ate silently, stopping every so often to rub at his scar. His drawn expression and the tight way he held himself made it clear there would be no traveling today. But at least he was eating. She prayed that tomorrow would see him recovered enough to walk again.
She herself ate quicker than usual, her nerves all strung up from the predicament they were in, despite his earlier reassurances. All she’d had to do was sit him by that lake for week, let the rest cure work its effects, and then she would have been off to Los Angeles, ready to take up the position she’d dreamed of.
And look at what had happened.
“You all right?”
She put on her nursely expression. “Certainly. If you’re finished, I’ll wipe the plates.” Couldn’t have him asking how she was—that was an unacceptable reversal of their positions.
She got him settled again, then bustled about clearing away the breakfast things. And when she was finished, she looked about the little camp… and sighed.
At the sanatorium, she would have had any number of things to do. Inspecting the wards, handing out medications, giving prescribed treatments, updating records. But here, all she had to do was talk with Mr. Obregon.
She rocked from one foot to the other, trying to think of anything that might claim her attention. Anything at all.
“Did you get enough to eat?” He was sitting as she’d left him, his long legs stretched before him, but the strain in his face had eased a bit.
“Yes. I’m not going to waste away from a day or two of reduced rations.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Soft, without a hint of sarcasm. Which pricked her conscience.
“I’m sorry.” She lowered herself to sit tailor-fashion, her wide skirt hiding the improper position of her legs. “I don’t like being out here.”
He leaned toward her, one hand cupped around his mouth as if to tell her a secret. “Neither do I.”
“But you grew up here!”
“And I’d always planned to leave. Before… well, before, Isabel and I planned to move to Los Angeles.” He looked down at the space between his legs. “But obviously that didn’t happen.”
She had the urge to tell him that she would be leaving for Los Angeles soon, if she could just get him back to the sanatorium in one piece. But she held back, knowing it would be cruel to tell him she was going to the place he’d wanted to.
“You could still go,” she said.
He didn’t answer.
“You don’t really believe all those things you said about being a cripple. You can’t.”
“You never say such things in the sanatorium.” It wasn’t an answer, but at least the defeat had left his voice.
“We’re not in the sanatorium.” Even so, she shouldn’t be so bold. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “And you don’t belong there. Not anymore.”
He looked at her then, the skin around his eyes tight. “You’re the only person who believes that. You know that, don’t you?”
She made a rude noise. “Hardly. You’re the only person who thinks you should still be stuck in your room. And perhaps your family, although they visit so infrequently I couldn’t say for sure.”
His mouth drooped. “I was their golden son. They were so proud of me, that I had been a sheriff. And then… I wasn’t. It was hard for them.”
“And it wasn’t for you?” She waited, but he kept silent. “There are other honorable professions beside sheriff, you know.”
“What occupation am I suited for?” As if he truly wished to know her opinion and wasn’t simply making conversation.
She felt suddenly silly. “I don’t know. I don’t suppose I know anything about such lofty things as occupations.” When she was a child, work was simply something you did, something to keep food in the belly and a shelter around the rest of you. It didn’t occupy you.
“You’re a nurse,” he pointed out. “You obviously work hard at being a good one, and you have a plan to someday work in a hospital. That’s very clearly an occupation. Some might even call it a profession.”
“Nursing is certainly not something you’re born knowing,” she mused. “Not everyone finishes nursing school, you know.” A bit of bragging, yes, but she was proud of that.
“But you did. Did you attend a school back East?”
“Yes.” She didn’t elaborate and he didn’t ask.
“So, what occupation should I take up?” Again, as if he actually wanted to hear her thoughts on the matter.
“I don’t think my nurse’s training qualifies me to advise you about this.” He might want to hear, but she wasn’t entirely comfortable sharing her thoughts with him. Not all of them.
He shrugged. “I like your opinions.”
She narrowed her eyes as she studied him, as if looking at him a little longer might provide some new insight into him. “I think the law might suit you.”
“I told you,” he said in a strained voice, “I’m a former lawman.”
She shook her head. “I don’t mean becoming a sheriff again—I meant as a lawyer.” She nibbled at her lip. “Do you have to go to school for that?”
“You can. You can also apprentice with a lawyer.”
“Do you know any?”
“I do,” he said slowly.
“Then write to them. Ask if they’d take you as an apprentice,” she said. “You’re continually in the library, reading. It should be no hardship to read about the law.”
“Perhaps.” The neutrality of his tone made her lips purse. “What else can you suggest?”
“Well, the only profession I know up close is doctoring.” She inspected him again. “And you seem a bit too fastidious for it. Doctors can get quite soiled, you know.”
He shuddered. “No, I’ve had enough of sickrooms for a lifetime. So, lawyering it is then.”
“You truly wished to discuss this with me?” They’d exchanged only the barest pleasantries before this—certainly nothing that could be considered a discussion.
“I enjoyed conferring like this with Isabel.”
She pushed her mouth flat to keep it from twisting sourly. How lovely that he considered her a stand-in for that woman.
“I mean it as a compliment.” His lips tipped up in a half smile. “You’re intelligent and you’re ambitious. I told you, I admire those qualities in a woman.”
She thought of Los Angeles. Head nurse. Her own ward to run. “I suppose I am ambitious,” she allowed. Really, it wasn’t such a terrible fault, not when it had brought her so far.
They shared a smile in that unguarded moment between them.
It isn’t hard at all to converse with him. In fact, it’s rather nice.
What a curious thought to have about a man she so disliked.