Mae strode across the wide lawn separating the main building from the small, log-built sauna at the east end of the grounds.
Poor Mr. Stueben had overcooked himself in that steam box of a building, fainting and gashing his head against a bench. Naturally, being a head wound, it had bled all out of proportion to its seriousness, causing several other patients in the sauna with Mr. Stueben to panic. The combined efforts of three nurses and Dr. Young had been required to restore calm and see to the man’s wound. Mr. Stueben was resting peacefully, needing only three sutures to close the gash, while the other patients had been herded off like so many squawking chickens to other, less bloody, areas of the sanatorium.
She was headed back to clean the blood from the floors and tiles and return the illusion of hygiene and health to the sauna. Personally, she hated the thing. Many people thought the Indians might have been on to something with their temescals, or sweat lodges, but Mae had only ever found the sauna a sticky, stinking thing.
And now she had to clean it.
But there was only one more day to endure, and then she would be practicing her nursing arts in a modern, sauna-free hospital. The finest teaching hospital on this coast actually.
A strange mix of pride and sorrow began to bubble in her stomach. Pride that she had achieved what she had set out to do. Sadness that she would never have another night with Joaquin like the last.
She had been avoiding his room all day, terrified that she might have to face him. It seemed she had just enough courage to sneak into a man’s bedroom for some illicit intimacy, but not enough to face him the next day.
And really, what would she say to him? Last night was lovely. Look me up when you arrive in Los Angeles?
There had been no words of love exchanged last night, no words of permanence. No words at all, really.
She might have once been a guttersnipe in New York, but here in California she had a profession. Perhaps not a glittering enough one to snare a prince, but a respectable one, nonetheless. Last night’s events notwithstanding, she held herself too high to give herself for nothing.
She had almost made it to the door of the sauna when—
“Nurse McCallahan.”
Dear God, that voice. It plucked right at her heart, took it between his thumb and forefinger, and squeezed.
“Miss McCallahan.”
He was close now, too close to ignore. Perhaps she should try anyway.
“Mae.”
That one undid her. She had never yet heard her name pronounced with such undisguised yearning, such want. If his voice had squeezed at her heart before, that plea fully crushed it in his fist.
She had to turn to face him; there was nothing else for it.
He was as he always was, that fashion plate face and a fine suit, but the smile that played at the corner of his mouth was new, soft and gentle in a way she’d never seen before.
She felt herself sag under it, her own mouth curving in what must have been a most fatuous smile. But he did that to her—made her forget reason and professionalism, and kiss him in hedges.
And make love to him in his own bed.
“Yes?” Her words were high and flighty, exactly like the motion of her heart in her rib cage.
He didn’t seem to notice. “I have something I want to ask you.” His face went stern, commanding, and the core of her went hot. God, but when he assumed that expression, she wanted to obey him completely, to put herself unreservedly in his hands.
She licked at her lips, those brown eyes of his mesmerizing her. “Yes?”
“We—the both of us—will be in Los Angeles soon. And I can’t very well kiss you in the corridors of the hospital.” His mouth quirked. “I won’t have an excuse to be skulking about there.”
No, he wouldn’t, now would he? No excuse to see her at all.
His voice went suddenly stiff and formal. “I have been thinking on the matter, and I think it would be best… for us…” His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard.
“Best that we what?”
He rubbed at his neck, uncertainty bowing his shoulders. “You said once before that you would continue to work even after you were married. I always believed that a man—a true man—provided such that his wife had no need to work out of the house.”
She snorted.
“Yes,” he said wryly, “I know what your opinion of that notion is. Given that opinion of yours, might you…” He drew a deep breath. “If a man who wasn’t able to provide as fully as another man might, if he asked for your hand… would you accept it?”
Was he asking what she thought he was? He and his family were so stiff, so respectable, and her background… well, was decidedly not. She stared at him with an open mouth, repeating to herself what he’d just said.
“Oh Lord.” He groaned, rubbing at his neck again. “I’ve completely botched it. I meant to ask, will you—”
“Mae!”
It was Sally calling for her, urgency giving her voice a keen edge. The other girl was running toward the main building at a quick clip.
“Dr. Young needs us! There’s been a hunting accident, some tourist from the resort—they’re bringing him here!”
Mae was running after her before the girl even got the last sentence out, only dimly aware of Joaquin following behind. She and Sally reached the front drive as a wagon was pulling to a stop, Dr. Young already prepared to meet it.
“What’s happened?” Dr. Young called to the driver.
Moans were coming from the back of the wagon, deep and wretched.
“Gut shot,” the driver answered sparsely. “Fool he was with was firing at any noise in the brush. One of the noises was him.” He jerked a thumb behind him, toward those moans.
The wagon bed looked nearly exactly as she had been expecting. A youngish man of about twenty lay in a large puddle of sticky, dark blood, his feet kicking in time with the groans coming from his throat. The blood seemed to be coming from his abdomen—at least, that was where the stain was darkest—but they would not know for sure until they got him inside and cut his clothes away. The blood had begun to slip through the gaps in the wagon bed, landing in the dirt with soft, regular plops.
That poor man, not even having the small relief of being insensible through all this. She only hoped that they could help him, that his liver wasn’t hit, that blood poisoning wouldn’t set in, that any one of the thousand things that could go wrong would not go wrong in this case.
She stepped away as a pair of orderlies climbed into the wagon and lifted the man out. From the corner of her eye, she saw Joaquin leaning against the wagon, his face bleached white as if he were the one bleeding out. She hoped he wasn’t about to faint; she really didn’t have time to deal with that.
Then the orderlies were carrying the wounded man into the sanatorium, Dr. Young following and calling to her and Sally to fetch this and prepare that, and she had no more thoughts for Joaquin.
It was an eternity before Joaquin could breathe again.
The image of the young man, bleeding from the exact same spot Joaquin once had, would not leave his mind, even after his breath and heart slowed.
Three men. He’d never stop three men before they could fire—
He rubbed a fist against his forehead to drive away the lingering nightmares. Where was Mae? She ought to have come back by now.
Mae hadn’t even been present when they’d pulled the man from the wagon. There had only been Nurse McCallahan in that moment, a brusquely efficient woman with no time for Patient Obregon.
It was horridly unfair to think like that—she’d been doing her duty—but he wasn’t feeling fair or even-keeled at the moment.
He’d gone end over end when he’d been shot, stomach somersaulting with the rest of him—
He scrubbed his hands through his hair, his left side protesting at his position on the edge of the bed. How long had he been sitting like this? He wasn’t certain. He’d thought to wait for Mae to return, to reassure him that the wounded man was fine, that he would live.
But she hadn’t.
Isabel had screamed then. She never screamed, never even raised her voice—
He’d been about to ask Mae to marry him.
What a fool he’d been. He couldn’t afford to keep a wife, no matter her thoughts on working while married. His family would never accept her. What kind of man made a proposal like that?
No kind of man.
He’d been fooling himself, had let Mae’s managing optimism push him forward when he knew the trail would lead only to a sheer drop-off.
He wasn’t ready to leave here. Nowhere near ready.
The image of that young man’s torso, blood rippling out from the hole there, rose again, bile following behind it.
He hadn’t even felt himself hit the ground. He’d landed instead in gray silence, stretching into senseless black—
Mae hadn’t been able to save that young man. She would have returned by now if she had.
Would he even see her before she left here forever?
His breath sawed from his lungs, his heart stuttering against his ribs. No, no, she couldn’t leave. He’d tell her that she couldn’t leave him here and she would stay. She had to.
She wasn’t finished saving him.
Mae trudged slowly down the hall, thinking only of the nurses’ sitting room at the end and the cup of tea waiting for her.
After all those hours of work, the young man had still died. At least he had calmed in the last hour, sliding peacefully into the afterlife instead of being frightened, struggling, and in pain. It was a small comfort, to be sure, but she needed even small ones after today. Losing a patient was always difficult even when it was one you’d known only a few hours.
And of course, she could always take comfort in the fact that she had done her duty and done it well. Dr. Young had trusted her to administer the anesthesia, a high honor indeed. After, as she’d been scrubbing the instruments, then scrubbed and changed herself, she’d reflected that no one could have done better. As she held that young man’s hand as he died, she’d thought on how oftentimes the only thing a nurse could do was to ease a person’s passage into the next life. Even if that was all one could do, it was still worthwhile.
So lost in thought and exhausted was she, she passed by Joaquin’s door without even noticing, her mind reminding her of what she had done when she was already a few steps past.
She ought to go in and check on him, at least briefly. He had not looked well when they had brought in that patient. She hoped he wasn’t coming down with the grippe.
Now that she thought on it, he had looked particularly pale and clammy. She turned back, her head heavy on her neck as she did so. Tea and a chair to sit in sounded beyond heavenly right now, but she had to see if he was all right.
Just before she reached his door, a thought smashed her right on the head: He’d been about to propose.
Caring for the man had taken every last drop of her concentration today—she’d no time to ponder Joaquin’s half-formed declaration.
Well, now she’d have to speak him tonight.
Leaning a forearm against the doorjamb to keep from sliding to the floor in a tired heap, she searched for Joaquin in the gloomy light of late evening.
He was sitting on the edge of his bed, his head clamped between his hands. It was portrait of such stark agony she felt her throat close in response. She moved to him, her hands reaching out to give him any kind of comfort she could.
“Joaquin?” she whispered.
He lifted his head, his face taut and white while his eyes were reddened and bleary. Had he been like this all afternoon?
When he saw her, his face twisted into something that came near to terrifying, but then he was gathering her close, burying his face into her clean apron, his breaths hard and shuddering.
She threaded her fingers through his dark hair, the silk of it sliding easily through them as it all fell into place. That young man had been wounded exactly as Joaquin had been. What a terrible shock it must have been for him, to look into the wagon and see that. No wonder he was holed up in his room, looking as if Death itself were stalking him. In his mind, it probably was.
He tilted his head up to look at her, his dark, soulful eyes silently begging her to ease his torment.
“Joaquin,” she whispered as she stroked his scalp. “Oh, my poor dear, mine own heart.”
He closed his eyes and buried his face into her bosom.
“It will be all right,” she crooned. “I promise, everything will be just fine. When we leave here—”
He raised his head and began to slowly shake it. “No, I’m not leaving. Not now.”
She stilled. He could not possibly mean that. He’d had a scare, yes, but his nerve could not fail him. Not now.
“I know that you’re overwrought, but come morning…”
He seized her hands in his, his head still going back and forth, back and forth. “No. I am not leaving.”
Anger—that old, familiar anger his weakness always summoned—spurted hot within her. She had to goad him on, to drive him from this place. She must.
“Well, I am leaving,” she snapped. “Tomorrow, in fact.”
He squeezed her wrists with a force just shy of pain. “No. You’re staying too.” His head finally ceased its useless swaying.
She tried to tug her hands free of his, but he held tight. “I. Am. Leaving.” Whether she meant the sanatorium or just this room, she couldn’t say.
His face took on that commanding look, the one she was not proof against. “You must stay.” His expression softened, went to pleading, and somehow it was much, much worse. “Please don’t leave me.”
Something within her wavered and sputtered under that, a tiny flame fighting for life. Just a little more pressure from him, and it would snuff out completely.
“No.” This time she did wrench her hands free. His face twisted with agony, as if she had been the one holding him too tightly. “I am leaving. Tomorrow. And I am not coming back. You may stay here and bury yourself alive, but I won’t be here to see it.”
She turned and ran then, before he could call her back, before he could ensnare her again, before he could plead with her and destroy what little defense she had left against him.