The Doctor Takes a Wife (12 page)

N
ursing Sheriff Poteet and his wife was much harder than taking care of the Gilmores and Mrs. Tyler had been. At the Gilmores' luxurious, stately home, at least, she and Prissy had had Flora and Antonio to assist them and take over when they needed to rest or take their meals. Here at the sheriff's far humbler abode, which was actually connected to the jail, they were completely on their own, and had only each other to rely on.

They soon developed a system—Sarah kept vigil by the ailing lawman and his wife, dosing them with willow bark tea and morphine and bathing them with tepid water, while Prissy kept chicken broth simmering on the cookstove and boiled the soiled bedding over a fire outside; then they traded off. In the evening, Prissy would go home to check on her father, who continued to progress slowly in his convalescence. During the night one girl slept on a pallet in the small kitchen while the other sat between the beds of the sheriff and his wife, and they'd switch in the middle of the night.

Sarah had not forgotten the middle-aged sheriff's complicity a few months ago with those who would
have persecuted the former slaves now working as Matthews Ranch cowhands, but she could not find it in her heart to hold that against him as he struggled for each breath. Each paroxysm of coughing turned his lips blue, a ghastly sight against the florid heat of his face. The once-paunchy man looked sadly diminished in his nightshirt.

“I'm gonna die, ain't I?” he rasped on the third full day they had spent there, after a spasm of coughing left the pillowcase blood flecked.

The sight of the crimson spots made Sarah queasy, but she steeled herself to ignore her churning stomach. She couldn't help the desperately ill man by giving in to squeamishness. “Sheriff, you've got to keep fighting,” Sarah said, sponging his sweaty brow. “If we can just get this fever down…” But she feared he was right. He kept coughing, but it didn't seem to relieve the increasing rattling in his lungs.

“Better send fer th' Rev'ren'…got a lot to atone for…I ain't always been the best sheriff I coulda been. Git Mabel in here, will ya?”

“I'll go fetch him, Sarah, and leave a message for Dr. Walker, too,” Prissy said. She had just come in the room with a couple of sheets she'd dried in front of the fireplace. Snatching up her cloak, she strode back through the door that led through the jail to the street. Thank God there were no prisoners awaiting trial in either of the jail's two cells. The criminals must be either holed up for the winter or had heard of the influenza outbreak and decided to give Simpson Creek a wide berth.

Sarah noticed Sheriff Poteet hadn't asked for the
doctor. He'd already given up hope, and probably nothing further she said about his recovery would sound convincing.

“Sheriff, your wife's already here—she's sick, too,” Sarah reminded him, moving aside so the ill man could see his wife lying on the trundle bed across the room. With some effort, Mrs. Poteet turned on her side and faced them, a tear trickling down her gaunt cheeks.

“Robert, you…got t'…hang on, y'hear?” she said, in between her own spasms of coughing. “I need you… Simpson Creek needs you.”

“Dunno…if I can, Mabel,” the sheriff mumbled, as his eyes drifted shut. “You been a good wife…”

Those were his last words. He drifted into insensibility and was unaware of Reverend Chadwick's arrival or his bedside prayers. He lasted until sunset. Nolan arrived just as he heaved his last breath.

Out of the corner of her stinging eyes, while she and Prissy did their best to comfort the new widow, Sarah saw Nolan close the sheriff's eyes and cover the body with the bedsheet. She kept Mrs. Poteet shielded against her body while Nolan, aided by Prissy, carried the sheet-covered form out of the bedroom and into the office so the ill woman would not have to witness her husband's removal whenever it took place. Nolan had told her the town's undertaker could hardly keep pace with the number of victims the influenza epidemic had claimed.

When he was done, Sarah left Prissy with their remaining patient and went outside with Nolan into the winter darkness. Fatigued by her ordeal and the overheated bedroom, she'd been craving fresh air and
news of the “outside world,” as she had begun to think of Simpson Creek, but she longed to spend a moment with Nolan even more.

Their breaths formed clouds in the chill night air.

“Sarah, you look so tired,” he said, stepping close and smoothing away an errant strand of hair that had plastered itself to her forehead. “Are you sure you're getting your fair share of rest?”

His fingers felt blessedly cool against her aching head, and it was all she could do not to lean into his caress. Her head pounded and she was too tired to examine the significance of his touch, and why she appreciated it so much.

She nodded. “Oh, Prissy's doing her share and more. In fact, I caught her trying to let me sleep through my shift. She said she couldn't bear to wake me.” She gazed up at his earnest face, lit only from the kerosene lamp shining through the jail window. “I wanted to ask you about the Spencers, Nolan. How are they? Is Ada still well?”

His gaze fell, and she knew before he spoke what his answer would be. “Mr. and Mrs. Spencer died this morning, Sarah.”

She couldn't stifle the gasp. “Both of them? But what of Ada? Is anyone with her? She didn't catch it, did she?”

Nolan shook his head. “The last time I saw her, she was as she has been, physically hale but still insisting she is pregnant.”

Something in his eyes alerted her. “The last time you saw her? What do you mean? Where is she?”

He shrugged. “I wish I knew, Sarah. Mr. Spencer
died first, then his wife, and when I told Ada her mother had expired, she ran out the door, shrieking, and I haven't seen her since. The reverend has a couple of neighbors out searching for her, but though they've caught glimpses of her, running behind houses and dodging down alleys, they haven't been able to get close to her. It's as if she's become a wild creature… We left the house open—I hope when she gets cold and tired enough, she'll come back and take shelter.”

Even in the shadows, she could see his eyes were troubled.

“Poor Ada,” she murmured. “What will become of her? At least, when her parents were alive, she had a reason to stay around home, people to watch over her and love her….”

He rubbed his forehead. “I wish I knew what was best to do. I'm going to have to speak to the reverend as soon as I can to learn if she has any relatives who could be sent for. If not, I'm afraid an institution may be the only answer.”

“How awful.” She had a sudden sense of how blessed her own life had been, how relatively carefree, and shivered.

He misunderstood. “You're cold. Let's go back inside,” he murmured, gesturing toward the door, but he stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “Sarah, now that the Spencers have died, either Miss Bennett or Miss Lassiter are free to take over here. I believe I'd better send for one of them to relieve you and Prissy—”

Sarah couldn't hide her dismay. “No, not tonight, Nolan, not when Mrs. Poteet's just lost her husband. She's used to us. It wouldn't be right to turn her care
over to someone else when her grief is so new, so raw.”

“Tomorrow morning then,” he said firmly. “I won't have you overtaxing yourself, Sarah. You…you're too important to me.”

She froze in the doorway, caught by his words and the intensity in his eyes. “Nolan…”

He raised a hand to ward off her objection. “I know, I know. We agreed not to speak of this. But I won't let you endanger yourself any more than you already have, Sarah.”

Her eyes stung with unshed tears. Her throat felt thick with words she wanted to say. “I…that is, thank you, Nolan. For caring about my welfare.”

“I would do more than
care
, Sarah. You know that.”

Impulsively, she reached out a hand and touched his cheek, bristly with the beard he hadn't taken time to shave this morning. “Yes. I know, and I—” She caught herself, not wanting to blurt out something she hadn't thought through. “We'll talk, Nolan, when this is over….”

He covered the hand that still cupped his cheek. “Yes, we will. It seems we're always postponing our talks.”

“You can send Faith or Bess over tomorrow morning, and Prissy and I will go home and rest, I promise. Mrs. Poteet needs us with her tonight.”

He gave in with a sigh, perhaps recognizing she was right.

When he had gone, Sarah returned to the bedroom where Prissy sat with Mrs. Poteet. Nolan had given the
woman a sleeping draft, and she snored softly now, her breathing still labored and congested, but clearer than it had been yesterday. Her fever had been down all evening. Mrs. Poteet would recover, Sarah realized, though in her grief, there would probably be times the sheriff's widow would wish she had died, too.

Prissy studied her in the lamplight. “Go lie down for a while, Sarah,” Prissy said. “I'll sit up with her. You look done in.”

She wanted to argue, to point out that her friend looked just as tired, but she ached in every bone, and her head was throbbing. Maybe a few hours of sleep was a good idea. “As our old foreman Josh would say, I feel tired as a mule that walked a mile in spring mud. But—”

Prissy interrupted. “I'll come wake you when it's your turn, I promise.” She made shooing motions with her hand. “Now
go
.”

 

Nolan laid down the straight razor and rinsed the remaining soap from his face, then straightened and studied his image in the mirror above the basin to make sure he'd hadn't missed any spots.

After restocking his black bag, he'd slept straight through the night, for no one had come to summon him. It was the first time he'd had a solid night's sleep since the influenza had struck. Was it too soon to hope the epidemic was starting to abate?

He'd stop first by Miss Bennett's to ask her to relieve Sarah and Prissy, and then he'd drive around in his buggy, checking on all his influenza patients to make sure they were recovering. Pneumonia was always a
threat in the wake of influenza, especially if a person tried to rise from his bed too soon….

Then he heard the light thudding footsteps running up the stairs, followed in short order by pounding at his door. He grimaced.
No, the epidemic isn't over yet,
he thought, striding down the hall to his office. This would be yet another frantic relative of a new influenza victim, reporting that his wife, or her pa, or grandma, or child, was coughing and feverish….

Through the side window, he saw that it was Prissy standing on his porch, her shoulders heaving with her efforts to catch her breath, her eyes wide in her flushed face.

He threw open the door. “Prissy, is Mrs. Poteet worse?”

She shook her head, still panting. “Nolan, you've got to come! I-it's
Sarah!
”

“S
he's coughing and her forehead is so hot…and she says her chest and her head hurt…”

“Sarah?”
An icy fist seized his heart and squeezed it.
No, it can't be.
He'd just seen her last night, and while she was clearly fatigued, her eyes had been clear and she hadn't mentioned any discomfort… But it was often thus, he reminded himself. A person went to bed merely tired, and woke up ill. Sarah might not have recognized the first symptoms, the aching bones, the throbbing headache, as being anything more than fatigue.

“When did it start?” he demanded, mechanically throwing on his coat and spotted his doctor bag where he'd left it by the door, his mind racing ahead.

“She took over for me at Mrs. Poteet's bedside about midnight, and she didn't mention anything…but when I woke up this morning, I heard this steady rattling from the floor in the bedroom… It was her chair, Nolan, shaking from the force of her shivering in it!”

“I'll go to Sarah,” Nolan told Prissy as they rushed out of the office. He had grabbed an umbrella from the
tall hook on the wall as he left and handed it to Prissy. Big fat raindrops had begun to fall, and one landed with chilly precision on his left ear.

“Would you run home, please, and tell Flora to prepare a sickroom for Sarah, then go to Miss Bennett or Miss Lassiter—whoever's closer—and tell her to come to the Poteets' to take over there as quickly as she can? You may return home as soon as your replacement's arrived, but be sure to bathe and change your clothes before you come in contact with your father—we don't know what might trigger a relapse.”

“Do you want Antonio to hitch up the carriage to bring Sarah down to the house?”

Nolan nodded as they reached the street. “I could carry her there quicker, but getting drenched in this cold rain is the last thing she needs. Tell him to hurry!”

They ran their separate ways in what was now a downpour. Fear lent wings to his feet, and in his headlong rush, he skidded into an icy puddle between the hotel and the mercantile, lost his balance and fell flat in the mud. Heedless of the mud that now splotched both coat and trousers, he picked himself up and rushed on.

Within seconds of arriving at the Poteets', his eyes confirmed the truth of Prissy's report. Sarah lay propped up on the Poteets' horsehair sofa in their sitting room, swathed in a thick blanket, her eyes slitted open and dull with fever. A hectic flush bloomed on each cheek.

Her teeth chattered against themselves. “C-c-
cold,
” she muttered when the sound of his footsteps caused
her to open one eye a trifle wider. “Tell N-Nolan…sorry.”

She doesn't even recognize me.

“I
am
Nolan, sweetheart,” he said, “and you have nothing to apologize for. I'm going to take good care of you,” he told her, leaning down close so she could see him. “You're going to be fine, sweetheart,” he promised, though he had no idea if he was telling the truth or not. He reached out a hand and touched her forehead, intending only to brush away a lock of damp, dull gold hair plastered there, but it was like touching the inside of a pot from which boiling water has just been poured.

He wanted to wrap another blanket around her, scoop her up in his arms and run out of the house, but the rain still drummed steadily on the tin roof over head, and he forced himself to remain calm and wait for the promised carriage. Reaching in his black bag, he pulled out his stethoscope and listened for a moment, hearing the rhonchi, abnormal whistling sounds, and rales, a noise that proclaimed congestion in the breathing passages.

“Do you think you could drink some willow bark tea?” he asked her. “I'll just go set the kettle on the stove.”

“I'll…t-try…but wh-what…about Miz…P-Poteet…?”

“I'll check on her,” he promised, but he put the kettle on to boil before he did so.

The sheriff's widow opened her eyes when he peeked into the bedroom. They were reddened and puffy from
weeping and her sallow features wan, but the light of full awareness shone from them.

“Doctor…”

“How are you today, Mrs. Poteet?” he said, forcing himself to come to the bedside and inspect her more closely when all he wanted to do was go back to Sarah.

“Better….” she rasped. “Sorry…Sarah's sick now….”

He had left his stethoscope in the other room, but he could tell even without it that her breathing was much less labored than it had been yesterday. Sarah and Prissy had nursed her back from the brink, and now it might cost Sarah her life.

“I'm going to take good care of her,” he promised again. “You just rest, Mrs. Poteet. With some watchful nursing, I believe you'll be just fine. Miss Bennett or Miss Lassiter will be here in a few minutes to help you.”

Sarah had fallen into slumber by the time he returned with the tea. He had to shake her awake to take it, and when she drank the hot brew, her teeth rattled against the crockery cup.
Where is Antonio with that carriage?

Oh, God, make him hurry!
He was hardly conscious of addressing the Lord, whom he had not talked to since his wife had died—except when he had prayed, in vain, that Jeff be made well.
And please heal Sarah. Don't let her die like You did Julia and Timmy, please…

While he waited, he laid Sarah out more fully on the couch, yet keeping her propped up so she could breathe, and pushing up the sleeves of her blouse, bathed her arms, her face and her neck in tepid water
to bring down the fever. Sarah seemed barely aware of his efforts, her only reaction to shiver as the heat of her skin evaporated the moisture left by the cloth almost before he could dry it. Was he winning against the heat that burned within her, or merely keeping pace with the inferno?

“Please, Lord, let her live. Take me instead,” he prayed aloud, willing the carriage to appear, along with one of the other Spinsters.

It seemed an eternity before the creak of wheels and the slowing
splosh
of hoofbeats heralded the arrival of the mayor's brougham.

 

For Sarah, the day passed in a series of confusing, unfocused images—being swaddled in blankets and carried outside, the rhythmic turning of carriage wheels, the soft touch of feminine hands as she was undressed and placed in sweet-smelling, warmed sheets, of Nolan's “Downeast” accent as he barked out orders for cool water, another blanket, willow bark tea. She heard Prissy's voluble chatter, too, shrill with fear, Flora's melodious Spanish…and was that Milly's worried voice? But how could that be? Hadn't she firmly told her sister to stay on the ranch, away from the contagion that plagued Simpson Creek?

She was aware of each breath rattling in her lungs, shaking the thick fluid that threatened to smother the life-giving air, the knifelike pain with each inhalation that stabbed into her ribs like thin spears heated over a fire, the paroxysms of coughing that racked her body until she had to stop and gasp for air so she had the strength to cough some more, the headache that was
like a white-hot hammer pounding on a red-glowing anvil, producing multicolored sparks that flared against her eyelids. Her throat felt like a raw wound that had been rubbed with salt, too sore to swallow the liquids that she nevertheless sucked down greedily whenever she was awake enough to take them. She had to have water, for her skin felt like the parched sand of the desert, and then, in the next instant, she felt as if she lay in a snowbank, with more feathery-cold flakes drifting down on her, her skin turning blue against the icy crystals.

Then the fever soared even higher, and the voices around her faded, and other voices and figures swam hazily into view—her mother, her father, smiling at her. She saw a figure standing with them, and wondered if it was Jesse, her dead fiancé, and whether she would see him soon.

Then she looked closer, and saw that it was not Jesse—the Figure that stood between her father and mother was much taller, and wore a long robe so dazzlingly white between them that she couldn't look at Him, but she knew who He was. He smiled, too, but He held up a nail-scarred palm.

“Not yet.”

And she knew nothing more for a while, sinking back now into a dreamless sleep.

Later, the voices she knew swirled around again—the voice of Reverend Chadwick, praying and reading aloud from the Psalms, and Prissy's voice, saying she'd heard that, sometimes, the only way to decrease a fever for a woman was to cut her hair as close as possible to the scalp. The idea was so horrifying to her that
she raised up, swinging and shrieking, until she heard Nolan's voice promising they wouldn't cut her hair if she'd only calm down, for her frenzy was raising her fever still higher.

Then darkness fell—for the first time? the second? the third?—and the light in the room was reduced to the glowing circle cast by the single lamp on the bedside table. Her bones ached as if someone was grinding them to powder, inch by inch. At intervals, liquid was trickled down her throat. Sometimes the liquid was bitter, and though the pain slid into the background then, the sleep that followed was full of horrifying images—of the terrifying, war-painted faces of attacking Comanches splashing across Simpson Creek on their Paint ponies, of arrow-studded, bloody bodies of the Indians' victims….

“Are you praying, Reverend?” she heard Nolan's voice, the vowels flat and harsh, demand. “Why isn't she getting better? Why isn't your God doing something to bring her out of this? Doesn't He care?”

“Are
you
praying, son?” came Chadwick's gentle answer. “We all need to be praying, I think.”

“Oh, He doesn't want to hear from me, Reverend, I promise you. If He did, He wouldn't have let Julia and Timmy die in that horrifying way.”

“'Julia and Timmy?'”

“My wife and son. They died in a cholera epidemic. Have you ever seen someone die of cholera, Reverend? You'd never—” she heard his voice catch “—forget it…”

Is Nolan crying?

“Easy, son, easy…it's going to be all right,” she heard Chadwick say, his rusty old voice soft and soothing.

“No, it won't, Reverend,” Nolan snapped. “It wasn't all right for them, or for so many of the men I tried to save, men in blue
and
gray—I didn't care! It wasn't all right for Jeffrey Beaumont… No, He doesn't listen when
I
ask. I'm nothing to Him.”

He expected the preacher to challenge him on his last remark, but instead Chadwick asked, “Who's Jeffrey Beaumont, Nolan?”

“A colonel who was brought to my tent during one of those last battles, after the war should have been long over, but it wasn't yet. He wore gray, Reverend—I cut away what was left of his uniform and found a minié ball had penetrated his spine. He couldn't move his legs. He begged me to let him die, but I wouldn't listen. Maybe I should have…“

“So he lived?”

She heard Nolan's short, harsh laugh. “He lived. Long enough for them to threaten to haul him off to Libby or someplace like it where he'd just lie there, helpless, until some fever took him. I held them off at gunpoint one time, and told the pair who came for him I'd send them both to perdition before I'd let them take him. Jeffrey and I had become friends by that time, you see.”

“Yes, I can well imagine,” the minister said. “I'd want such a staunch defender as a friend, too.”

“He told me he knew he was going to die, but he just wanted to get home to Texas. I couldn't imagine what difference that made…I hadn't been home to Maine since the war broke out and I'd seen so many states
by then I couldn't even remember where I was by that time. I told him that he wasn't going to die, that with some devoted nursing care he could live out his life in a wheelchair, though it was sure he'd never walk again. He told me there was no one at home who could do that for him—his parents were dead, you see—but he wanted to make it to Brazos County. He said he'd die happy if he could take his last breath under that big cottonwood tree on the bank of the Brazos River that flowed past his land.”

“So what happened?”

“About the time I was sure they were going to court-martial me and ship him off to prison by force, the war ended, and I resigned my commission and told Jeffrey Beaumont I was taking him home. So I rode with him on the train, and took care of him. Sometimes I had to defend him against arrogant Federals who wanted to take his seat on the train—for I had to purchase extra space for him so he could lie down. Other times, once we left the train and were traveling over the road, he had to tell suspicious Southerners that the Yankee with him was trying to help him reach his home.”

So that's what he'd been doing in Texas, Sarah thought, and felt guilty about all the times she'd imagined him being part of the occupying troops, or some sort of carpetbagger….

“So you took him home,” the minister's voice gently prodded.

“Yes. I took him home to Beaumont Hall, his plantation on the river. And I met his cousins and his elderly aunt, who wept on my shoulder and thanked me for bringing him home. We were there for weeks, and he
was doing well. He could still use his hands, even if his legs were becoming withered and contracted, despite my efforts to exercise them and massage them. He'd gotten used to his chair on wheels, and the necessity of accepting help with so many everyday things….” Nolan's voice trailed off as if he was remembering.

A moment passed, and then he went on. “The girl he loved chose to marry another man, a man who could walk and ride and give her children, and he didn't become bitter—he accepted it with such grace and generosity…he even gave them his blessing.” Again, the bitter laugh.

“He sounds like a very good man.”

“He was. A better man than I'll ever be, Reverend.”