Winning The Doctor's Heart (Mail-Order Brides of Salvation 3) Page 5

  Finally upright, the little boy seemed to breathe more easily.

  Anne smiled and smoothed Tommy’s hair as she chattered at him. Her own hair was coming out of the simple bun she’d taken to wearing since the plague hit. Those pale brown wisps caressed her cheeks in such an enticing way that Daniel stroke them with his fingertips.

  Tired, he told himself again. It was taking more and more effort to be professional around her. He loved the sway of her hips as she moved from one cot to the other, and the dimples that deepened when she smiled at her patients. His patients.

  Their patients. He’d been skeptical about letting her into his clinic, but her devoted care was part of the reason they hadn’t yet lost a patient to the plague.

  And she would work herself to death if he didn’t intervene.

  He cleared his throat. “Anne, it’s your turn to nap. Have Beatrice wake you up in two hours.”

  After she left, he brought a handful of medical journals into the clinic and sat by Tommy’s bed, so he’d notice any change in the boy’s demeanor immediately.

  “God,” he silently prayed. “Please, help me find a way to keep these people alive.”

  No answer came.

  Chapter 8

  Anne felt tired and sore all over, even after her nap. As she rebraided her hair and wrapped it into a tight bun at the nape of her neck, thanked God that she was still healthy and able to help those sick with the plague. She also prayed for Daniel, who needed his health even more than she. The entire town depended on him.

  She found herself wishing that Kenneth had lived. That she could have seen Daniel and his brother together, just once. Both were heroes in their own way: Kenneth dying heroically to save a pregnant woman from a shotgun blast, Daniel sacrificing sleep and possibly his own health to make sure everyone else in town survived a plague.

  She’d been so busy since she’d arrived, she hadn’t had a second to worry what she’d do once the epidemic was over and Daniel no longer needed her. It would be cruel of her to stay—he clearly felt guilty about Kenneth’s death. She would be a constant reminder of his failure to save his brother.

  But where else could she go? She had no relatives she could stay with, and even if she wanted to find another husband, it would take months of correspondence to meet someone suitable. Aunt Beatrice could had offered to matchmake for her, but that meant marrying someone in town. And seeing Daniel for the rest of her life.

  Anne didn’t think she could stand it. Because even if she found another husband, deep in her heart she knew that she’d still love Daniel.

  No, she’d better move on, for both their sakes.

  At least I got to find out what it’s like to be a nurse. Grueling hours, taking care of sick, unhappy people, doing whatever was needed, no matter how arduous. Or nasty. It hadn’t been quite what she’d been expecting.

  It had been better.

  Not because it was hard, messy, exhausting work. But because when she saw her patients’ suffering ease, even a little bit, she knew she was doing God’s work. Taking away their pain, that was her calling.

  What were the odds that her future husband would allow her to follow it?

  With a smile on her lips, Anne went to the kitchen to fetch a fresh pot of tea prepared earlier by Aunt Beatrice. Technically, the older woman’s presence saved Anne’s reputation—an unmarried woman living in the same house with a man must be chaperoned in order to avoid being ruined. But because of the plague, Beatrice spent most of her time in her room, coming down only to do a thing or two in the kitchen. Anne didn’t mind. She felt safe around Daniel, and she’d rather the townsfolk gossip than see the kind older woman risk falling ill.

  Besides, she was leaving, right? It wasn’t as if she cared what the people of Salvation thought of her.

  When she took the tea into the clinic, Daniel wasn’t there. She shouldn’t have left him alone. They needed to watch each other for signs of infection. Or exhaustion. What if he’d passed out? Fallen and hit his head? He’d been working so hard, with so little sleep…

  Daniel burst in, holding a head of garlic in his dirty hands and grinning like a madman. An incredibly gorgeous madman.

  “Garlic!” He not-quite-yelled. “That’s what she was trying to tell me.”

  “Who?” In spite of her confusion, Daniel’s excitement was infectious. She couldn’t help grinning back at him.

  “When I was a child, Grandmother told me how her own mother contracted diphtheria.” Daniel broke off a clove from the garlic bulb and held it up to show her. As if she’d never seen garlic before. “My great-great-Grandmother made her chew a clove of garlic several times each day.”

  “Raw?”

  “Yes, raw.” She must have wrinkled her nose, because he added, “I know, but it’s better than dying, right?”

  “We have nothing to lose.” Anne grabbed the head of garlic and peeled off another clove. “I’ll start administering immediately. Have we got more?”

  “General store will have some.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Anne returned with two braids of garlic—everything the store had in stock.

  Aunt Beatrice helped her to peel off the papery skins. Coaxing the patients to chew the cloves was the hardest part. Eyes tearing, they grimaced as they chewed.

  “Tea!” they begged. “Please!”

  “No,” Daniel insisted. “The garlic needs to be in contact with the infected tissues for as long as possible. Anne, don’t give them anything for at least half an hour.”

  When Anne got to Tommy, his breathing was a raspy wheeze. He could barely open his mouth to accept the garlic clove. After chewing only twice, he began to sob, coughing and choking until he spit the clove out.

  “Tommy, I know this is hard, but we’re trying to help you get better,” Anne said.

  Daniel tapped Anne on the shoulder and gestured for her to get up. As soon as she did, he sat on Tommy’s cot.

  “Tommy, when’s the last time you had something to drink?”

  “Drinking hurts,” the poor boy whispered.

  “Open your mouth.” After peering between the boy’s teeth, Daniel paled, stood, and stalked out of the room.

  Anne murmured something soothing to Tommy, then hurried after Daniel. She found him pacing the waiting room. She made sure the door was completely closed before she asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “His throat’s closed so much he’s barely getting any air at all. Even if I still had iodine…we’re too late to save him.”

  The despair in Daniel’s voice frightened Anne more than anything else that had happened since the plague struck. “He’s still breathing now, though?”

  The doctor grunted.

  “So I could squeeze the juice out of the garlic and swab his throat with it, just like I would with iodine.”

  “The disease is too far advanced.”

  “Then it’s not going to hurt if I try.”

  Daniel shrugged, his expression bleak. “I’ve got to prepare his mother.”

  Anne thought about how Tommy’s mother had reacted to the news of Tommy’s illness. Hysterics weren’t going to make Tommy better, and if he was going to die, they weren’t going to make his last hours better, either.

  “Wait until this evening,” she suggested. “Let me try the garlic juice first.”

  Daniel said nothing, his face stoic. She could tell he believed that Tommy would be Salvation’s first casualty.

  Not if Anne could help it.

  Chapter 9

  Everyone was getting better. Everyone but Tommy.

  Anne had been indefatigable, refusing to sleep anywhere except in the chair she’d positioned by the boy’s cot. She’d swabbed Tommy’s throat with garlic juice every few hours after coaxing the boy take a few swallows of tea.

  Tommy’s eyes followed Anne around the clinic as she went round to give each patient the treatment they needed. The second she was done, she’d return to his bedside. She sang. She told him stories. When her own voice grew h
oarse, she held the little boy’s hand as he labored to breathe.

  Daniel struggled to think of the boy’s condition in clinical terms. Larynx swollen. Infection spreading. Asphyxiation imminent. When he thought about explaining to Mary that her son had died, it was like Kenneth dying all over again. He’d failed Kenneth. He’d failed Tommy. He’d failed Mary.

  How long before he failed Anne?

  “Daniel!” Anne sounded terrified.

  Tommy was in mid-coughing fit, even though he had been propped on many pillows. Anne turned the boy toward him, so Daniel could examine him.

  Daniel held one finger near the boy’s eyes, moved it back and forth. Tommy’s eyes didn’t follow. Whatever the boy was seeing right now, it wasn’t Daniel. Tommy’s face contorted as he began to make choking noises.

  “The swelling in his throat is closing his larynx,” he answered Anne’s silent question. “The air can’t get into his lungs.”

  “What can we do?”

  We? She was with him to the end. He wished now that he’d been kinder to her when she’d first arrived. “He’s dying, Anne.”

  “There must be something we can do.”

  “If his mother had brought him in when he first started coughing, he might have made it.”

  “Tracheotomy.” The fire of hope in her eyes just made him feel more hopeless. “You could perform a tracheotomy. I read it in one of your journals.”

  “Anne, don’t be s—“

  “George Buchanan saved a child with diphtheria by performing a tracheotomy just a few years ago.”

  He hated how hopeful she sounded. He hated that somewhere deep inside him, he still hoped too.

  “Put him on the table.”

  Anne picked the boy up and laid him on the battered table in the center of the room. Most of the time, Daniel used that table for mixing medicines. Surgery was a rare occurrence into a small-town clinic like his. Daniel muttered a prayer as he gathered everything he’d need for the operation.

  Tommy began to flail around wildly. Anne struggled to keep him still.

  Daniel quickly sprayed his hands with carbolic, ignoring the way it stung, and sterilized a scalpel, then rummaged through the old box of medical supplies from school and found a silver tube. He’d received it as part of a kit he’d bought just after graduation. He never thought he’d have to use it.

  He doused a clean cloth with chloroform, holding it to the boy’s nose until his struggles ceased. Chloroform was tricky to get the right dose, but it knocked the patient out faster than ether.

  Carefully, the doctor sprayed the last of the carbolic acid over the silver tube, then approached the boy. Anne handed him the scalpel. She’d sterilized her hands without his having to tell her.

  Daniel palpated Tommy’s swollen throat, trying to find the Adam’s apple. There? Yes. He positioned the scalpel slightly beneath the spot where his finger pressed into the turgid skin.

  His heart was pounding so hard he feared his hands were shaking. If he made a mistake, he would kill the boy.

  “I have faith,” Anne said calmly.

  “I’ve never done a tracheotomy on a living person before.” Daniel swallowed hard before continuing. “In medical school, we practiced on cadavers.”

  “I have faith,” she repeated.

  She believed in him. Even when he’d dismissed her hopes.

  Please, Lord. Guide my hands. Let me be worthy of her faith. Daniel took a deep breath, made the incision, and inserted the silver tube.

  Blood welled around the edges of the tube. Daniel bent close, his pulse so loud in his ears he could barely hear the whistle of air passing through the silver tube. It worked. His entire body went numb. It worked. It worked. It worked.

  He stayed several moments longer, listening to Tommy’s breath rush in and out through the tube. The boy’s breath was stabilizing. He had a chance.

  Anne gently removed the scalpel from Daniel’s hands. Then she turned to the unconscious boy, stroking his matted hair.

  “You are a lucky boy, Tommy,” she said to him. “Your guardian angel is watching out for you.”

  In a daze, Daniel washed up, still unable to believe that the surgery had succeeded. So much could have gone wrong. He could have cut the wrong place. He could have cut too deeply. He could have hesitated until it was too late.

  But Anne had refused to give up on Tommy. She’d refused to give up on him. She was so beautiful, so kind and so perfect for him...

  God had brought him the wife he wanted and the nurse he needed.

  “God,” he prayed silently. “Give me your blessing in asking Anne to marry me.”

  If Kenneth was watching him now from Heaven, Daniel hoped his brother would give his blessing too.

  Chapter 10

  Two weeks later, Anne assisted Daniel as he performed his second surgery on Tommy—removing the boy’s breathing tub and stitching the incision in his neck closed. Tommy would have a scar for the rest of his life. A reminder of his nearly-miraculous recovery.

  Anne had half-laughed, half-cried when the boy had announced that he was never eating garlic again.

  “Thank you, thank you, both of you,” the happy mother said through tears of joy. “You saved my boy.”

  Anne smiled at the tenderness Daniel showed to both mother and son as he escorted them out. Tommy was the last patient to leave the clinic.

  Salvation had survived the diphtheria outbreak without a single death.

  Anne was about to join Aunt Beatrice in the kitchen when Daniel returned to the clinic waiting room.

  “I need to speak with you,” he said, gesturing for her to sit.

  Her stomach sank. Now that the outbreak was over, he didn’t need her anymore. Her very short nursing career was over.

  Equally awful, her time with Daniel was over too.

  Declining the seat, she forced herself to fold her hands and wait for him to continue. If he was going to dismiss her, she wanted to be able to make a quick exit. She couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t see her broken heart on her face.

  Daniel turned his gaze away from her and said under his breath, “I miss Kenneth. He always knew what to say.”

  “I’m sorry that my being here reminds you of him.”

  “I don’t mind it, being reminded of Kenneth. I never met a woman more kind-hearted and selfless than you. You would have made him a fine wife.”

  Anne blushed.

  “You kept me going when I would have collapsed.” Daniel continued. “You’ve proven yourself a capable nurse. More than capable. Without your help, I would have lost Tommy.”

  “But you didn’t. Tommy’s alive. Everyone else, too.”

  “My point…” He looked down at his shoes, like the words he needed were written on them. “My point is that you’ve done Salvation a great service. Those who don’t owe you their lives owe you for saving a family member. You could do worse than settle here.”

  The townsfolk would welcome her, she had no doubt of that. But it would be a torment to be so close to Daniel, knowing she could never be with him. “I appreciate Beatrice’s offer to find me a husband. But I think it’s better if I look elsewhere.”

  Daniel gulped. “I know I wasn’t kind to you when first arrived—“

  “You were grieving. No apology needed.”

  “I want to. Anne, I—“ He seemed at a loss for words again. “When we were younger, Kenneth followed me everywhere. I used to call him Shadow, because every time I turned around, I was practically stepping on him.”

  The love for his younger brother shone on Daniel’s face as he remembered their childhood.

  “Kenneth was fearless. When we climbed trees, he climbed highest. When we went swimming, he dove deepest. He never worried about getting hurt.”

  But you worried about him. You were the responsible one. What a burden for a child to carry.

  “Going to medical school felt like abandoning him. He wanted me to go. But every day I was gone, I half-expected to get a letter from Aunt B
eatrice, telling me something had happened to Kenneth. That he’d been reckless and luck hadn’t saved him this time.”

  “It must have been upsetting when he became a deputy.”

  “I think by that time, the worrying had become so normal I barely noticed it. But when Sheriff Eisley brought him in…”

  What a blow that must have been. She finished the sentence for him. “…you blamed yourself.”

  “Yes.” He took a step closer. “How arrogant I was.”

  What?

  “To think that I had the right to tell Kenneth what to do. How to live his life. I realize now, it was his life to live. His life to give.”

  Relief fluttered through Anne, a disconcerting blessing. Daniel was going to be all right—she didn’t have to worry that he’d continue to punish himself for Kenneth’s death when she was gone.

  “I know you’ve got a choice to make, Anne. I can’t tell you what you should do. But I’m asking you to give me a chance.”

  What was he talking about? “A chance at what?”

  He looked almost…amused. “You just spent three weeks caring for a town full of plague-stricken strangers. Why?”

  She hesitated. It would sound insane to say that the last three weeks had been the best in her life. But the sense of rightness she’d felt as she worked by his side—she couldn’t deny that.

  “When I was at the orphanage,” she began, “it was my dream to become a nurse.”

  He nodded, like he’d been expecting her to say that.

  “But the only way for me to pay for nursing school was a scholarship. The scholarship went to someone more deserving.”

  “Not more deserving, Anne. You’ve proven that.”

  She blinked to keep the gathering tears from falling down her cheeks. “Nevertheless—”

  “Nevertheless, I’m asking you to stay in Salvation.”

  Did she hear him right? “But Kenneth…”

  “Kenneth asked me to marry you. It was his dying wish.”

  Guilt turned Anne’s stomach. That sounded like the Kenneth she knew.

  But even if Kenneth meant well, she had no intention of being a burden to Daniel. To love someone and live with them, knowing you were just another responsibility they must accommodate—no. “Of course you can’t be held to that.”