Mae settled herself in the chair across from Dr. Robinson’s desk. What could he possibly want to speak with her about?
Perhaps he was finally ready to offer her what she’d been working for all this time. She carefully smoothed the gray skirt of her uniform and settled her apron a bit more neatly. She wanted to look her best, her most efficient, if he was going to offer her the position she’d been dreaming about.
The eminent doctor was here today making his weekly rounds. He’d come from his university in Los Angeles on the train to the valley and then on the stage up the mountain to Pine Ridge. Strange to think such a distance was only half a day’s trip, that you could be beside the ocean in the morning and in the mountains by evening.
The doctor’s trim figure was in a position of stately repose. Rumor had it the doctor ate a diet of the most prescribed items in very precise combinations, the better to escape death.
Mae herself subscribed to no such nonsense. Her childhood had taught her that hunger truly was the best seasoning—and a full meal in adulthood was the purest ambrosia.
Dr. Robinson smoothed his short white beard as he looked her over. “I understand Mr. Obregon had a visitor today who distressed him.”
She squeezed her hands together as she considered how much to tell the doctor. The entirety of their conversation seemed a bit too personal to share, even with the doctor charged with reviving Mr. Obregon’s health. “His fiancée—former fiancée—came today, but I would not say he was unduly overset.” After all, when she went to check on him, he was sitting on his bed. Nothing unusual there.
“Even so,” Dr. Robinson said, “I worry at the state of his mind being here so long. Health does not solely reside in the body, Nurse McCallahan. The mind is an essential component as well. Perhaps the most essential component, when we take the examples of our hysterical patients. Why, Mrs. Hansen could easily will herself to a sound mind and body if she would only set herself to it.”
Mae put on her attentive face and sat up, recognizing the doctor’s lecture tone. Privately, she thought him wrong. She herself had never lost a child—but hadn’t it killed her own mother, as sure as any physical sickness would have, to lose all but one of her eleven children? Only there had been no sanatorium offering the luxury of a rest cure to her mother.
But she wasn’t the doctor—she didn’t have the power of diagnosis. So she kept her thoughts to herself. Besides, such things as she’d seen in the slums of New York were considered purely imaginary here in a California mountain resort.
“It’s time for a new direction in Mr. Obregon’s treatment,” the doctor continued decisively.
She nodded and blinked approvingly. He did need something new, something to get him out of that bed and make it available for someone who needed it.
“A trip out of the sanatorium might be it,” Dr. Robinson said. “Somewhere unconfined, where the wholesome mountain air can work unfettered upon him.” He stared pointedly.
“Oh yes,” she agreed when it was clear he expected a response. “That is exactly what might help him.” A change certainly couldn’t hurt. And she wouldn’t have to deal with Mr. Obregon’s surliness while was gone.
“I was thinking along the lines of a camping trip, perhaps a week in the high country—nothing too strenuous.”
Any night spent in the open air sounded strenuous to her, but she thankfully wouldn’t be going.
But why was he telling her this? She began to blink too rapidly. The doctor could not possibly be suggesting…
“Of course, you won’t be alone,” he said. “We’ll send an orderly along, perhaps Shiney, to help with the rough work.”
“I won’t be alone?” she said slowly, still not quite believing what the doctor was implying.
His face contracted in annoyance. “Of course you won’t be alone.” His tone said clearly Do keep up. “I just said that Shiney will accompany the two of you.” He ticked off three fingers. “You, Mr. Obregon, and the orderly.”
She knew it was a cardinal sin of nursing to contradict a doctor, but she was about to do it anyway.
“Dr. Robinson, you cannot possibly be suggesting that I, an unmarried lady, go alone on a camping trip with two unrelated men.” She might be a nurse, but she still had a reputation to protect. And of all the patients to accompany on a camping trip, Mr. Obregon was the worst. It would be her two least favorite things, joined together in something unspeakably horrid.
He waved that away. “You’re not an unmarried lady—you’re a nurse. And Mr. Obregon isn’t a man—he’s a patient. Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought you would put the fusty mores of society above a man’s health.”
The doctor was right. Her duties as a nurse came before her sensibilities as a woman. If she wanted the job at the university hospital, she had to impress Dr. Robinson. She ought not balk at this.
But she could try to gently extricate herself. “Perhaps a different nurse?” Pitched as if she were questioning her own judgment, rather than the doctor’s. “Mr. Obregon is not an easy patient under any circumstances, and he’s downright difficult with me.”
Dr. Robinson narrowed his eyes at her, and she wanted to bite her tongue. Patients were not supposed to be difficult with the nurses. Nurses were supposed to ensure such things didn’t happen. “Dr. Young tells me you are best able to manage him.”
She let her face come as close to a grimace as she dared. Drat that Dr. Young. And drat herself for being able to “manage” Mr. Obregon so well.
She summoned a smile, the one she wore most of the day as she dealt with the patients. “An entire week—are we certain Mr. Obregon is well enough for such a long period away?”
“The rest cure can only work if there is enough time to actually rest.” The doctor’s smile was sharp with warning.
Mae knew when she was beat. “Only for a week then?”
Dr. Robinson’s smile broadened.
Not that her consent mattered. Nurses did as they were told, or they could find other employment.
This is what must be done if you want to arrive at your intended destination. How difficult could a week’s camping trip be anyway?
“You’ll only be there to watch over Mr. Obregon,” the doctor said, “and to determine that the treatment is effective. Shiney will handle all other matters. Mr. Obregon’s only task is to improve, and your task is to push him in that direction.” A rather patronizing light entered his eyes. “I should add, Nurse McCallahan—I’ve been very pleased by the reports Dr. Young has given on your work.”
She sat a little straighter, a little more alert. “Thank you.”
Dr. Robinson leaned across the desk. “When you come back from this camping trip, we’ll discuss a possible position for you at the hospital. In Los Angeles.” He smiled conspiratorially. “Perhaps you might even be running the ward there in a few years.”
Head of a ward. She could hardly breathe at the thought. “That…” She forced her lungs to draw. “I’d like that.”
“We’ll speak when you return.”
He looked back at his papers, as oblivious to her now as if she’d never existed. But that was Dr. Robinson—once he’d said what needed to be said, he moved on, with no wasted moments on social pleasantries.
She rose and left the room without a sound, her heart thumping as if she’d had a shock.
Head of a ward. In a university hospital.
It was everything she’d ever dreamed of. She had only to remain diligent, perform her duties to her utmost, and it would be hers.
And she had to return from this camping trip.
She let the grimace she’d held in earlier cross her face. To have the doctor dangle the position in Los Angeles even as he handed her this horrid duty… the word bittersweet had been coined for that very thing.
She stomped off to her room, letting the grimace stay. If she was going camping, she would need to prepare her things. And herself.
They hadn’t even left and already the little nurse was already complaining.
Joaquin watched from his seat on the buckboard as she circled the wagon yet again. She was in her uniform, the starchy pleats of her cap fluttering in the wind. The silly thing didn’t shade her face even the tiniest bit and was likely to blow off in a mild gust.
“Are you quite certain we have everything?” she asked querulously. “We wouldn’t want to find ourselves out there”—she waved wildly at the pines surrounding them—“without something vital.”
Shiney, next to him on the seat, rolled his eyes but didn’t answer.
“Nurse McCallahan,” Joaquin called to her, “I’m beginning to believe you don’t wish to accompany us.” He didn’t bother to mask the mockery in his tone.
She stopped next to him and glared. “I have never been camping before, and I want to ensure all goes smoothly.”
“Do you mean to say you’ve lived here all this time and you’ve never camped? That’s the only thing people do in Pine Ridge.” That and waste away in your sanatorium.
“I’m not here as a tourist.”
Joaquin didn’t think he’d ever seen her so put out. When she’d first told him about this trip, he’d been too caught up in his own idea of it to notice her reaction. When she’d come to tell him of the doctor’s plans, her voice and expression as flat as his mood, he should have refused to go and saved them both some trouble. But he’d made the mistake of looking about his room before he answered.
Those four familiar walls had appeared much smaller than they had the day before. And the day before that.
Instead of refusing, he’d said, “When do we leave?”
But now he could see that Nurse McCallahan was even less enthused by this notion than he was. She had her fists on her hips and was leaning away, as if she might bolt back inside at any moment.
“Quit bellyaching and get in the wagon!” Shiney roared, obviously at the end of his patience.
She scrambled up into the bed behind them, and the orderly started the horses before she even sat down. Joaquin nearly laughed at the picture she made. Arms crossed over her ample bosom, bottom lip stuck out, and sparks shooting from those pale eyes, sitting atop one of the trunks, she was a perfect illustration of unrestrained pique. It seemed that when you pulled Nurse McCallahan away from her wards, her true nature ran free.
Joaquin turned back to watch the road. Against his will, he found himself searching every clump of bushes, every stand of trees—anywhere a man might hide. Anxiety tightened within him, his lungs squeezed hard by the fist of it, until his eyes could do nothing but hunt for any sign of movement, any sign that things were not as they should be.
A man ought not to be strung up by fear like this. A man was to be always bluff, bold, arrogant.
Joaquin had once been all those things. How easily such carefully built things were smashed, in no more time than it took to pull a trigger.
That stand of pines. It looked remarkably like the one he’d been ambushed near. His hand went to his hip and found empty air rather than the pistol he’d been expecting.
Of course an invalid wouldn’t be armed. He had to remember that no one was lurking in these bushes, that the men who’d gunned him down were either dead or imprisoned. This was a pleasant drive in the woods, nothing more.
He’d been crippled on a pleasant drive through the woods.
It had been a typical Sunday. He’d taken Isabel for a buggy drive after dinner with her family, a drive he’d thought would be like any other. Every detail of that day should have been seared into his mind, but when he tried to summon the details—Isabel’s dress, what they’d spoken of—she was nothing more than a lean shadow next to him.
The stand of pines was clear and true in his memory though. The Carey brothers and their newfound friend, Cole McCade, had come from behind the trees, forcing Joaquin to halt the buggy when they’d blocked the road. The Carey brothers were only a pair of ordinary miscreants, but McCade was another matter entirely. There were rumors he’d killed a Sonoran down in the valley, but Joaquin hadn’t been able to find any proof.
Looking into the man’s eyes that afternoon, Joaquin had believed him more than capable of murder. And when McCade drawled that a Mexican ought not be wearing a sheriff’s star and that he was going to teach him a lesson, Joaquin knew bloodshed couldn’t be avoided.
When the shooting broke out, Joaquin shot the Carey brothers right off, each in the heart. But when he swung his pistol toward McCade, he was too late. McCade had already fired, the bullet punching Joaquin straight in the gut. He felt himself flying off the buggy seat through the air… and then nothing.
He came to in a tunnel of pain, aware enough to hear Dr. Blackmun announce that he wouldn’t make it through the night.
Good, he’d thought. Then the pain will end.
But he didn’t die and the pain didn’t end. It just went on and on—the pain in his scar, the ache of losing the life he’d built, the agony of seeing the grief in his family’s eyes as they’d sent him off to the sanatorium.
He was jerked back to the present when a stringy, ragged gray shadow trotted across the road a ways before them.
The little nurse gasped at the sight. “Was that a wolf?”
He snorted. “A coyote. There are no wolves here.”
Isabel would have never been so silly about a mangy coyote. She might have wanted to leave them behind forever, but she’d been born and bred to these mountains. Nothing in them frightened her.
They passed another stand of pines, and his hand jumped to his hip, searching again for the pistol that wasn’t there. He eased it back down and shifted on his seat.
Look at him, chiding her for being frightened of a coyote when he was the one jumping at a bunch of trees.
He turned around as much as he could manage in order to look at her in the wagon bed. Her head was bent, a few colorless strands of hair escaping from the pins holding her nurse’s cap in place. The stoop of her shoulders was forlorn, defeated.
“Nurse McCallahan.”
She twisted to look up at him, her eyes big in her face.
“There’re no wolves here,” he said gently. “No bears anymore, either. The only things that might hurt you are cougars and rattlers. And they’re shy creatures. They don’t want any more to do with you than you do with them. You’ll be perfectly safe.”
She gave one hard jerk of her chin in acknowledgment, then turned away. He was forced to do the same by the rising ache in his side before he could discern if his reassurances had eased her worry.
They arrived at the lake in the midafternoon, judging by the set of the sun in the sky. Joaquin swung himself stiffly off the seat, his entire left side screaming from sitting too long on the jolting wagon. But he’d be damned if he’d limp like a decrepit old man. He forced himself to walk as normally as possible—but of course the sharp eyes of the nurse caught him out.
“Mr. Obregon,” she called, speaking for the first time since they’d seen the coyote. “Do not even think of helping to unload this wagon. You are under strictest orders to rest and not reinjure yourself. Shiney will take care of it.” She motioned to the orderly to get on with it.
Joaquin wanted to growl at her that he would decide what he could or could not do but thought better of it. She was right; he’d be no help. Instead, he dragged his unhelpful self to the shore, looking on its sparkling depths for the first time in years. The lake was ringed with high, stony peaks, reflected back in the mirror of the surface. Thousands of insects danced above the water, birds darting and diving among them as they gobbled them up. The wind through the pines was restless, fluttering, a sort of never-ending sigh.
Pebbles shifted beneath his feet as he made his way to the water’s edge. The sun was high, but the air was cool at this elevation.
All in all, it was perhaps the most restful picture he’d seen in years.
Before the attack, he’d never been too fond of the outdoors. He’d looked forward to the time when he could leave the mountains behind for the civilization of the city. But having been deprived of it for so long, he felt something unfurling within him at the sight, at the crisp breeze blowing across his face. Something bright and strong, something that almost made his lips curl into a smile.
Such an urge hadn’t taken hold of his mouth in ages.
Perhaps this trip would be the cure he sought. For both his body and his mind.