The Doctor Takes a Wife Read online

  “I’ll send Antonio,” Mayor Gilmore said, getting heavily to his feet. He appeared relieved to have something to do. Anson sank back into the chair, nodding in acceptance.

  Nolan’s eyes met hers, and in them, she saw gratitude that she had calmed those in the room with her words.

  Lord, please, if it’s Your Will, save Mrs. Tyler and show Nolan that You are indeed the Great Physician. Help him to realize that You are present, working alongside him.

  He was awake, but in that not-fully-focused state in which one part of his mind watched the labored rise and fall of the elderly woman’s chest and heard the whistle of her breathing, while the rest of his mind roamed free, visiting the past, pondering the future, when some slight sound—a rustle or the creak of a floorboard behind him—brought him to full alertness.

  He turned, and saw Sarah standing there, a candle in its holder in one hand, a plate with a covered bowl in the other.

  A glance at the clock told him it was midnight. “Sarah? Sarah, you should not be here,” he said softly, rising with the stiffness that long stillness brought and coming to meet her. He’d thought she must have gone back to the cottage long since and be fast asleep.

  She came into the circle of light provided by the lamp on the bedside table. “I couldn’t sleep,” she confessed in a whisper, her gaze going to the woman on the bed. “How is Mrs. Tyler?”

  “About the same,” he said. “Soon it will be time to give her some more of the willow bark tea, if I can arouse her enough for her to safely swallow. She was cooler for awhile, but now her fever’s climbing again. What is this you’re carrying?”

  “I got to thinking about how you never did get to eat your supper,” she said. “I thought I’d warm up some of that soup and offer to sit with her while you eat it.”

  “Dear Sarah,” he said, smiling at her in the flickering light. “You are determined to feed me, aren’t you? I’m so tired I’m almost past the point of hunger, but this will be very welcome,” he said, taking the plate from her. He saw that there were also sandwiches next to the covered bowl of soup. “But come back into the anteroom, here, and sit with me while I eat. I don’t want you exposed to her illness any more than you have already been.”

  She hesitated. “But Mrs. Tyler—”

  “Will be well enough for a few minutes,” he finished for her. “I’ll be able to hear any change in her breathing from here,” he said, gesturing her into the adjoining room, where a small table and a pair of chairs stood.

  “Who came in, after I came upstairs?” he asked her. “I heard the door open and close, and voices.”

  “Reverend Chadwick,” she told him. “He’s down-stairs, keeping a prayer vigil. He said to call him if you needed him.”

  He absorbed the fact. “He’s a good man. Did you tell him what I said about canceling church services?”

  She nodded. “He said he’d pray about it tonight. If he does decide to cancel them, he could put out the word around town, but there’s always a chance people from the outlying ranches wouldn’t hear and would show up anyway.”

  “But there’d be fewer of them. Did the Gilmores and Mrs. Tyler’s son go to bed?” he inquired in between spoonfuls of soup. “Prissy, too?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s good. They’re going to need their rest tonight, in order to be strong enough to combat this influenza if and when it strikes them. After being around Mrs. Tyler so closely today, I fully expect one or more or them to come down with it,” he told her. “Especially her son, who’s been around her from its onset.”

  “I’ll be here to help take care of them,” she told him, her gaze meeting his steadily.

  She was as brave and selfless as any of the sturdy male assistants who’d served with him in the battlefield tents, he thought, though slender and dainty. No wonder he was falling in love with her.

  “I don’t want you ill, Sarah, but I may have to take you up on that. So you’d best go now and get some rest yourself, in case I have to call on you for nursing care.”

  “I will in a minute, Nolan, but before I go, I have a question for you, something I’ve been wondering about for a long time now.”

  “Yes?” He could not imagine what it was, but her lovely face was serious.

  “Will you tell me what were you doing in Brazos County, after the war, when you wrote me from there?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  She saw his blue eyes widen a bit, and thought he was going to assent, but then, from the other room, she heard Mrs. Tyler cough and utter a little moan.

  To Sarah’s disappointment, he shook his head.

  “It’s too long a story. There’s no way I could summarize it in a few short sentences and send you on to your rest.” Then he reached out and took her hand. “But I promise I will tell you one day, Sarah, when all this is over. I want to tell you about it.”

  She would have to be content with that for now.

  “All right, Nolan. I’ll say good night. Prissy and I will go back to the cottage to sleep, but Mrs. Gilmore told me there’s a bellpull by Mrs. Tyler’s bed that will summon Flora if you have need of anything. We’ll see you in the morning. The guest room’s been made ready for you down the hall,” she added, pointing. “When I relieve you in the morning, you can sleep.”

  He shook his head wearily. “I’ll have to go back to the office in case anyone else is seeking me.”

  She nodded, realizing she had forgotten in the last few hours that many others in and around Simpson Creek were also suffering from the influenza epidemic. How could one doctor take care of all of them? When could Nolan rest?

  Her fears must have shown on her face, for he reached out a hand and cupped her cheek. “Don’t worry, dear Sarah,” he said, in that flat downeast accent she was coming to love. “We doctors learn to doze in chairs, eyes closed, but with our ears attuned to any change. I’ll manage. Now go sleep—doctor’s orders.”

  She managed a weak smile at his words and left, sure she would never sleep a wink for worrying.

  For God hath not given us the spirit of fear…

  She fell asleep praying.

  Sarah woke the next morning with Prissy shaking her arm. “Come on, we’ve got to go to the house.”

  “Is your aunt—?” Sarah could not put her dread into words.

  “She’s no better—no worse, either—but Mama and Papa both came down with fever and chills during the night.” Prissy’s eyes were wide with anxiety. “Anson’s wild with worry.”

  Sarah dressed hurriedly and followed Prissy out of the cottage. On the way, Prissy explained that Nolan had gone back to his office to get more medicine for them and would be back as soon as he could.

  Going up the walk into his office, Nolan noticed that there was already a sign posted in front of the church:

  SUNDAY CHURCH SERVICE CANCELED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE DUE TO INFLUENZA OUTBREAK. PLEASE PRAY FOR THOSE SUFFERING.

  A good, sensible man, the reverend.

  Once inside, Nolan bent over his open black bag, replenishing his supplies of willow bark extract and morphine, conscious of the need to hasten back to the Gilmores’. He hadn’t been surprised to learn that the mayor and his wife had come down with the first symptoms of influenza during the night; it often took hold quickly like that and this was apparently quite a virulent epidemic. He was concerned for them, for neither was young nor of a particularly sound constitution, and Prissy had mentioned her mother had a weak heart just as her aunt did. Both the mayor’s wife and her sister, he suspected, were subject to dropsy. Perhaps Mrs. Gilmore and Vira Tyler would benefit from a little digitalis.

  He sighed. There was so little in his bag that really helped with influenza. He could treat fever and pain, but after that, it was up to the body to recover—or not. He refused to buy the patent medicines that were advertised in the newspapers as the answer to every ill. He knew they contained little but flavoring and opium or alcohol. Nor would he use the drugs his colleagues had relied on but which he kne
w to be dangerous, such as calomel.

  He was running low on morphine. Simpson Creek wasn’t big enough to boast a druggist’s shop, but perhaps he could persuade Anson Tyler to use some of his nervous energy to ride to San Saba’s chemist for some—it would give the man something to do besides pacing the floor outside his mother’s room and glaring at Nolan.

  A movement at the window caught his eye and he turned his head, but before he could focus on it, it was gone. It may have been only a bird perching on his windowsill, but might it be some patient peeking in to see if he was present before he knocked?

  There was no one at the door, however. Going to the side yard where the window was, he looked down the street and was just in time to see a female figure in a green dress disappearing into the Spencers’ house.

  Had Ada been spying on him through the window? He felt a flicker of annoyance, then pity for the madwoman.

  He thought for a moment of going to inquire at the Spencers’ to see if they were well, and by so doing make it plain to Ada that she had been seen, but he decided against it. He needed to get back to the Gilmores’ house, and didn’t have time today for Ada and her pregnancy fantasies.

  He didn’t wish influenza on his worst enemy, but the thought occurred to him that if Ada Spencer contracted it, he’d at least have the opportunity to examine her—properly chaperoned by her mother, of course—and prove once and for all she was not with child.

  For Sarah and Prissy, the day blurred into a nightmare of sponging the feverish Gilmores and Mrs. Tyler with cool water, changing their sweat-dampened sheets and covering them with blankets when the chills rattled their teeth. They made sure the patients were propped up with pillows to help their labored breathing. They emptied basins. Sarah was glad when Nolan sent Anson after some additional morphine, for his constant barging into his mother’s sickroom to check on her condition was making Prissy jumpy as a cat.

  She supported both women and helped Prissy hold her father in a leaning position while Nolan thumped their upper backs rhythmically. This was called chest percussion, he told them, and helped loosen the mucus that congested their lungs.

  It was clear to Sarah from the first, though, that the two women were taken worse than Mayor Gilmore. Though he coughed hard enough to rattle the windows, at least he could cough and clear his lungs, while the women both seemed unable to mount a defense against the rattling congestion in their chests and their raging fevers. Though Prissy’s father complained of a pounding headache and stabbing pain when he breathed, they only moaned weakly, while he finally drifted into a peaceful, snoring slumber. He was, in fact, asleep when the sun rose the next morning and both Mrs. Tyler and Mrs. Gilmore died within minutes of one another.

  Sarah held Prissy while she sobbed, her own tears blending with those of her grieving friend’s. Though it had been years since her own mother had died, she clearly remembered the knifelike sorrow that had lacerated her then.

  A stricken, pale Anson joined them in the parlor, followed by Nolan. Sarah released Prissy into Anson’s embrace.

  Nolan caught Sarah’s gaze, his eyes somber. “I’ll go notify the reverend,” he said. “I’m sorry, Sarah, but I’ve had word of another influenza patient in town. I’m going to have to go there, but I’ll come back when I can.”

  Numb, Sarah nodded dully.

  Flora entered the room, her own eyes already swollen from crying. “Senorita Matthews, I’ve closed the curtains and hung a black wreath on the door. If you will write the message, I will send Antonio to the telegraph office to notify Senorita Prissy’s brothers in Houston and San Antonio of their mother’s passing.”

  Prissy pulled away from her cousin. “They won’t be able to come in time. I wouldn’t want them to risk their health coming here, anyway. Tell them to stay at home and I’ll write when I can.”

  Sarah saw Anson wince, and guessed he must be wondering if Prissy would eventually blame his mother for bringing the fatal illness into their home, even though there were so many already ill here in Simpson Creek.

  “Prissy, why don’t you come lie down for a while?” Sarah murmured, urging her friend toward her old bedroom. “As soon as I compose the telegram, I’ll sit with your father, and Flora will take care of what’s needed for your mother.”

  To Sarah’s surprise, Prissy let herself be put to bed.

  The rest of the day, Sarah remained by the mayor’s bedside, with Flora and Antonio assisting in his care. She stepped away only to take a little nourishment brought by the housekeeper at noontime. She hoped it wouldn’t be left to her to tell the mayor his wife had died, but in the afternoon Mr. Gilmore’s fever soared, bringing delirium with it. He was incapable of asking questions.

  She was left with a new fear—would he die, too? How would Prissy survive losing both her parents and her aunt?

  Nolan returned at five, and was invited to join Sarah and Prissy for a simple cold supper in the dining room of the big house while Anson sat with the sleeping mayor. Now dressed in mourning, a hollow-eyed Prissy ate little and said nothing.

  Anson came into the room when they were almost finished.

  “Your father’s awake, Prissy, and clearheaded. He’s asking for you and about your mother,” he said. “I—he saw my black armband and asked about it, so I told him…about my mother. I think he’s guessed about Aunt Martha, but he’ll want to hear it from you.”

  Prissy rose, looking almost relieved now that the time had come to share the burden of grief with her father. Sarah rose also, intending to go with her as support, but Anson put out a staying hand.

  “I’ll go with her, Miss Sarah. You look exhausted. Finish your supper, and keep Dr. Walker company.” All hostility toward the Yankee doctor appeared to have vanished in the wake of Anson’s grief.

  Gratefully, she watched Prissy and her cousin go, then turned back to Nolan, only to find him studying her.

  “He’s right, you know,” he said. “The old sergeant who was my surgery assistant would say ‘you look as if you’ve burned all your wood.’ Sarah, you must get some rest tonight.”

  Sarah managed a tired smile. “Thank you, Doctor, but no more so than you. Who was the new influenza patient you went to see today in town, may I ask?”

  His brow furrowed. “I’m afraid it’s your old friend Mrs. Detwiler.”

  She uttered a cry of alarm, and would have jumped to her feet, but he took gentle hold of her wrist.

  “Sarah, there’s no need for you to go charging out of here to nurse her, too. Her family is taking care of her very capably, and she doesn’t seem to have a very bad case.”

  “But she’s old…” Sarah said, still gripped by fear for the feisty old lady who had been so opposed to the Spinsters’ Club but who had become her and Milly’s close friend this past year.

  “I imagine if you were to call on her tomorrow you would find her much improved, unless I’m sorely mistaken,” Nolan said. “She’s already been through the worst of it, and her daughter only just contrived to sneak out to ask me to call on her, just to be certain.”

  Sarah felt her lips curve up in a smile in spite of the exhaustion that threatened to swamp her. “That sounds like her. Perhaps if I organized the Spinsters’ Club ladies, we could provide nursing during the epidemic for those who aren’t blessed with families like Mrs. Detwiler’s…” she said aloud. Her mind already raced ahead to think how it could be done.

  “Sarah, I’ve been so impressed with how you’ve shouldered the responsibilities here,” he said. “Prissy would have been lost without you. You’re quite a lady, do you know that?”

  She could only stare at him, for she had felt totally inadequate to the demands and sorrows she had faced this day. She only knew Prissy and her family had needed her, and she was there.

  “When I met you,” Nolan went on, after taking a sip of the coffee Flora had brought them, “I heard you were a very talented cook but got the impression Milly always made the decisions. It was Milly who ran the ranch, who started the Spins
ters’ Club…”

  “She did,” Sarah agreed, not sure what he was getting at.

  “I think she will be quite proud to hear what you’ve taken on here,” he said. “But I must tell you, the very first thing I had to learn as an army surgeon was that I could only concentrate on one patient at a time. No matter what they brought in after I had begun to remove a bullet or—well, you can imagine, there were worse injuries—I had to finish what I was doing before I could take on something else.”

  “What are you saying?” Sarah asked him. She was sure his point must be plain, but her exhausted brain was too tired to glimpse his meaning through the fog that surrounded it.

  “Prissy isn’t as strong as you,” he said simply. “She’s just lost her mother, and her father won’t be healthy again for a long time. She’s going to need to lean on you in the next few days and weeks.”

  She could only stare at the table, her gaze unfocused, as realization dawned of what Mrs. Gilmore’s death would mean. “Prissy won’t be able to stay in the cottage—she’ll have to move back into the house to look after her father.” Her shoulders sagged in discouragement. “I can’t stay there alone, so I’ll have to move back to the ranch. How can I help her then? Poor Prissy—so much for her learning independence and the housewifely arts. Flora manages everything in the house.” Secretly, Sarah felt a little sorry for herself, too. She’d enjoyed living in town with Prissy. And she loved her sister, but Milly didn’t need her as she once did.

  “I hope you don’t have to move back to the ranch, Sarah,” he said. He looked as if he wanted to say more, but he didn’t. “Nothing needs to be decided tonight. As soon as Prissy retires for the night, please, I want you to, also.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  On the day after Prissy’s mother’s funeral, Anson left to take his mother home to Burnet to be buried.

  During the farewells in the courtyard, Anson said, “Dr. Walker, would you mind if I spoke to Miss Sarah for a moment?”