The Surgeon. Kate Bridges
finished with her plate and gently sipped her wine, welcoming the fruity taste on her tongue. “My mother passed away after a long bout with tuberculosis.”
“Mmm,” he said sympathetically, nodding his head. “That can be an awful decline. Did you have help?”
“There was no else at home—my father had passed away several years ago himself and…”
…and Keenan no longer lived with us.
John asked more questions about her life in Halifax, and the more answers she gave, the more he wanted to know.
She felt awkward at exposing herself, but flattered by his interest.
While they ate sweet plum dumplings, she asked, “Why did you become a doctor?”
A melancholy flitted across his brow. “Because of my family.”
“They urged you?”
“No.” His voice quaked. “Because of what happened to my family. My two younger brothers and one sister were very young…. They contracted typhoid and unfortunately didn’t pull through.”
Sarah winced, letting him go on, lulled by the serenity of his voice and this quiet, shared moment.
“There was nothing any of us could do to help. A few years later, I enrolled in medical school…”
“…because you never wanted to feel that helpless again.”
He nodded in surprise that she’d finished his sentence. The candlelight flickered, her throat ached with sympathy, and he quickly went on to another topic.
Later, after they finished eating and were strolling back to the boardinghouse, she still felt a connection, as if he’d opened up and told her things perhaps he’d never said before. What an awful thing to lose his sister and brothers the way he had. Sarah couldn’t help but admire the man John had become because of it. A doctor. Who else did she know who could reach beyond their own grief to see so clearly to the other side?
A purple half moon followed them, casting misty shadows on the uneven road. The scent of prairie flowers mingled with the scent of falling dew, and the lowing of cattle miles away nestled them in an intimate hush.
They were content to walk speechless in the tranquility. When they passed a streetlamp beside a deserted alley, Sarah stopped beneath it to say good-night.
She tilted her face upward and shivered in surprise when John cupped his fingers beneath her chin.
Riveted by the feel of his skin on hers, she parted her lips.
He fingered the cameo brooch at her collar. “This is pretty,” he whispered, then bent his head and kissed her.
It was an arousal, like a floating cloud of wispy lips brushing hers. She closed her eyes and let him draw her close against his muscled chest. Inhaling the scent of his clean skin and faint cologne, not able to breathe enough of him, she responded with an awakening.
The kiss was extraordinary. Supple and rich. She felt him growing urgent as he wrapped his heavy arms around her waist and shoulder. She responded with a torturous, teasing pleasure. Their tongues met timidly, like an exploration, then grew heated in desire…in the certainty of what could happen between them.
If they let it.
Awed by the feeling of being in his arms, of knowing who he was and where he came from and how he’d rescued her this evening, she lost herself in the universe of his body.
Why had it all been a hoax?
Why had she been denied the good fortune of becoming John’s wife?
It seemed like they had only started when John ripped away from her aching body. Although his gaze was hungry and his lips swollen from their kiss, he drew away farther. His mouth quivered with unreleased passion.
His words were a murmured plea. “Good night, mail-order Sarah.”
Chapter Six
For three days, sandwiched between his busy calls, John tried not to think of Sarah, the intimate evening they’d shared, or the tempting kiss. Why was it when it came to his work, he could make a judgment call in seconds, but when it came to Sarah, he wasn’t sure where he stood or what he wanted?
He was much safer dealing with his men.
On Monday he was busy changing burn dressings on the two constables who’d suffered in the forest fires. Fortunately the fire was under control and their burns healing.
On Tuesday and Wednesday John was critically busy with Constable Pawson, the man who’d sliced his thigh clear down to the bone in a train door while foiling a robbery attempt. The inflammation might have turned into gangrene if John hadn’t applied the poultices frequently and stayed up all night tending to the fever.
Finally, Thursday morning after a good night’s sleep, he was paying his routine weekly call to Angus McIver’s ranch. John was walking beneath the clump of pines with Angus as he headed to the buggy. He’d tended to Angus’s flaring gallbladder, treated the ranch cook for severe sunburn to the back of his neck, checked up on the blacksmith’s trembling hand—still puzzled over the symptoms—then treated the foreman’s youngest daughter for a patch of poison ivy.
“Anyway,” said Angus, pressing closer to John as he helped him to the buggy, “next time you come, maybe you could convince Sheila to let you examine her again.”
John tried to saying the words kindly, knowing how much it affected Angus. “We’ve been through this before. It’s not easy for you to hear, but you’re the one who’s likely sterile.”
Angus clenched his jaw. In his fifties, he was tall and brawny and as heavy as an ox. Widowed early from his first wife, he’d married Sheila in her twenties, but in their ten-year marriage, they hadn’t produced any children.
It was sad to see how desperately Angus wanted them. Sheila had resigned herself, content to mother her dozen nieces and nephews who lived down the road, but Angus owned one of the busiest cattle ranches in southern Alberta and had often told John he only wanted to pass it down to a son—or a daughter.
Someone tugged John’s knee. One of the blacksmith’s children peered out from John’s pant leg. “Are you gonna help my pa get better?”
John smiled at the slender eight-year-old boy. His name was Russell but most called him Rusty because of his orange hair. “I’m trying.”
“Why was his hand shakin’ so much this mornin’? It hasn’t done that for a long time.”
“I’m looking for the reason, son.”
“When are you gonna find it? What kind of doctor are ya?”
“Shoo,” said Angus with a laugh. “Us adults are talkin’.”
Angus tried to make light of what the boy had just said, but John sobered and watched Rusty run back to the stables in his dirty overalls and blackened bare feet. What was John missing in his readings? What couldn’t he see?
Sergeant O’Malley strode through the pine trees, ready to hop into the buggy beside John and return to town together, as they’d come.
“Any new information?” John asked him.
O’Malley shook his head and peered at Angus. “They got away with only one steer this time, but they attempted the entire herd.”
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