“And I love you.” He doubted she knew what she was saying.
She drove the wagon down the lane that led to the house, going on past to pull up in front of the barn. Familiar as he was with the setting, Evan clutched his bag in his hands and ran for the pasture out back, calling to her to follow.
The two men lay on the ground near the gate while out in the pasture men Evan recognized as neighbors had roped one of the bulls and tugged him into a separate pen. The two bulls continued to bellow fiercely at each other.
Evan shut activity and people out of his mind as he focused on the two men, barely aware that Mrs. Clark and her daughter hovered over them. To his horror he saw that Betsy was also present.
“Reckon Ben’s hurt worst,” the bloody-faced farmer sprawled on the ground drawled. “See to him first.”
One look convinced him that Clark was probably right.
Now that the bulls were under control, the three neighbor men came running to help. Even as he bent over Ben, finding the younger man unconscious and bleeding from multiple injuries, he heard Cynthia forbidding them to move her boss for fear of damage to his back.
Ben undoubtedly had both legs broken and his whole body looked as though it had been scraped bare.
Even as he worked, he sensed Cynthia reaching into his bag and glancing over, saw that she was pulling out cloth for bandaging. “Too much blood,” she said briefly and, reassured that Ben was not in immediate danger, he switched his focus to the other patient.
He was relieved to see that she was not talking about arterial bleeding, but a massive cut on the older man’s chest that was leaking blood at a dangerous rate. His shirt was soaked and blood was pooling in the dirt around the big man. Cynthia acted as his assistant, handing him the requested items from his bag as he applied pressure to stop the bleeding. By the time that was beginning to succeed, she had people bringing hot water and soap as well as bed linen to use as additional bandages.
She stood, unflinching, though a sideways glance revealed her face was white, while he stitched the gaping wound. At this point, Clark passed out.
Somewhere in the background he heard Maggie sobbing and listened as Cynthia told the girl to take her mother and Betsy in the house. “They’re going to be all right,” she reassured them. “Doc is taking care of them.”
It seemed hours later when he had the men put together a kind of base made from boards they found in the barn, and one at a time, gently carry first Ben and then Clark into the house. Fortunately neither man was conscious or the pain of the movement would have been excruciating.
The day was well into afternoon before all broken bones were set and both men were resting in some degree of comfort, having been dosed with the medicine Miranda had her ladies made from poppy plants.
Now that the worst was over, he found Cynthia out beyond the porch vomiting fervently. She looked up at him, “How do you stand it?”
He grinned. “Same way you will when I’ve trained you to be a doctor.”
“No way on God’s green earth,” she informed him and then went into another round of throwing up.
She had been haunted by the memory of Michael’s face viewed through the mirror and the fear that he might somehow cross over to find her and Betsy, but events in the real world pushed even those thoughts to the background.
The neighbors were good to them and so much food was brought to the farmhouse that they didn’t have to worry about cooking. Neighbors also helped to do the farm work, but they had their own chores and few of them knew about running a professional dairy. The two Clark women and Cynthia had to lead the way and make the deliveries while both Ben and Mr. Clark struggled for their lives under the supervision of Evan and the women who came out from town to help with their care.
Cynthia didn’t have to be told that a barnyard was the worst of locations for injuries of the sort they had suffered and it came without surprise, but with a sinking heart when in spite of their efforts, Ben started running a high fever.
It was only after his funeral that she acknowledged that Evan had not been joking when he suggested he train her as an assistant.
They stood at the edge of the somberly clad crowd that had attended poor Ben’s burial. For the first time she was forced to face the fact that lack of modern lighting was the least of the changes she would have to deal with if she continued to live here. Modern antibiotics would not be discovered for decades yet. Medicine was practically in the dark ages still.
If she, or God forbid, Betsy became ill they could die of something easily managed in a 21st century emergency room.
Maybe she owed it to her daughter to return her to their own time. Evan had said this was impossible, that a trip into Lavender was one way with no return
But that day when she’d seen the face of her former husband, she’d felt that all she had to do was climb down from the buggy and walk down that bare vision of a road to the other side.
Now, though, she put off that decision as she watched Ben’s parents, his mother weeping and his father looking dazed with pain, say goodbye to their son.
Evan had done his best and managed to save the hearty old farmer who was her employer. She’d never seen herself as destined for the medical profession, but he needed help. He was going to kill himself working the way he did.
“Were you serious when you suggested training me to help you?” she whispered.
He nodded.
“Don’t forget. I ended up by being sick in the garden.”
His smile was bleak. She knew he took every death as a personal failure, a life he’d failed to save.
“You can do whatever you want once it’s over, but in the middle of the crisis you were cool as a cucumber, worked with one patient while I worked with another. And you seemed to have an instinctive knowledge of how to go about it. For example, you kept them from moving the men until we could do it safely.”
She shrugged. “Just something everyone knows.”
“Everyone where you came from. Not the average person here.”
“Then I want to do it. I will try. The Clarks’ oldest son and his family is moving back home to help out so I’ll be free to move on within a few days.”
It did not seem the right place to talk about the private words they’d exchanged that day when the men were injured. She wondered if he even knew he’d told her he loved her.
Chapter Eighteen
She felt like a fraud when they called her Dr. Cynthia. Nobody could be a doctor with only a few months training, though she read constantly from Evan’s grandfather’s medical books and learned more than she could have imagined from Evan himself.
Sometimes she told herself she would give everything she possessed, what little it was these days, to be able to do even a little research on a modern computer, or listen in on a lecture at a real medical school.
Still it was no more useful to dwell on such thoughts than to wish for a dishwasher for Mrs. Myers in the kitchen, a zippy sports car, or cotton stripping machines to replace the hard labor the farmers and their families were doing in the fields this fall. After starting in mid-August, school was out again so students could help with the harvest and even Betsy and Eddie earned a little spending money by working at a farm just outside town.
Betsy came back in the evenings coated with dust, with blisters on her hands, and boasted to her mother of the few pounds she’d picked. Cynthia suspected the two girls spent more time playing around instead of working, but she wouldn’t complain as long as the farmers didn’t. They seemed to regard training young workers as part of their job.
The town buzzed with activity on Saturday afternoons as farmers and their pickers came to town to spend the script they were given in payment. Small groups clustered around the square to discuss the good crop and plans they’d made for their earnings, the women and children indulging in purchases of candy and other sweets from the store that was operated by two ambitious homemakers while their menfolk frequented the town’s two saloons.
The town constables also kept a little busier than usual what with the drinking and the occasional need of the less ambitious to relieve their harder working neighbors of a few coins, and some of the work came Evan’s way as well as he patched up men who’d turned their disagreements into fights.
Instead of heading back to the office on Crockett Street, by what seemed like mutual agreement they strolled from the cemetery toward the busy square downtown. Smoke blew across them from the two cotton gins that operated on the north edge of town.
“I feel like we’re playing hooky,” she said, trying to bring a bit of cheer to his somber face.
“If an emergency comes up, half the town will see us down here.”
She nodded. The funeral had been held on Saturday afternoon when most workers, other than those in the downtown stores had the afternoon off. They were not the only ones dressed in their darkest clothes who had chosen to stroll this way.
Most everybody in the community had known Ben Taylor through his work as the morning milkman. Quiet though he had been, he had been well liked, and was from a respected family.
“You did your best with what you had to work with,” she said for his ears alone.
“What would they have done in that time of yours?”
She looked down at the wooden slats in the boardwalk. “I only wish I know more, but medical science was so complicated. Only specialists understood much about anything.” Her laughter was tinged with bitterness. “We went to the doctor, took pills and shots and sometimes the infections overwhelmed us anyway just as they did with Ben. Even in my time doctors couldn’t work miracles, Evan. Everybody still died eventually.”
“You mean they hadn’t discovered immortality,” he made a feeble attempt at a joke.
“Not yet.” She smiled, than frowned as she remembered something. “The miracle drugs, that’s what they called them, seems to me they started with something like a moldy slice of bread.”
He frowned. “It’s a cure old women sometimes use. They put a piece of moldy bread against a wound.”
“Maybe we need to pay more attention to the old women and their home cures.”
“Do you think that would have helped Ben?”
She shook her head. “It was the barnyard. Even I knew that’s where you could get tetanus.” She didn’t tell him that in her time, they had a preventative shot for that. No doubt he was getting tired of hearing of shots that took care of things that were hopeless here and now.
It was like taunting him with preventatives that could not be. It would be years yet before most of that science was developed. One thing led to another, one brilliant individual’s thoughts influenced another’s. She had no ability to push events ahead.
Nodding to friends and occasionally exchanging a word or two as they went along, they strolled away from the square and toward home. Cynthia smiled at the thought of the half dozen suitors who had come calling over the summer, apparently intrigued more by her newness to the community than her personal attributes. She’d even gotten two proposals of marriage and another less proper suggestion for her future life.
The callers had stopped coming now, apparently seeing what was happening between her and Evan without the necessity of spoken words.
Nor were there many words of love between them. It was a matter of tenderness and, as now, holding hands. She tingled at his touch and dreamed of being in his arms, yet matters between them moved at a slow pace.
She had known so little of the intimacies of romance in her life. She’d grown up away from her beloved family. She had known they loved her—Mom, Dad and Moss—but because of circumstances, rarely had any one of them been around to give her a goodnight kiss or a loving touch.
And when she married Michael. Oh, dear Heaven, she’d thought she’d had it at last. Someone to love her forever. But her husband had been more into carnal relations than affection. Her marriage had left a gaping hole in her heart that had eventually been filled by her daughter.
That was enough, she’d decided. She’d never risk marriage again.
She supposed from what little he’d said that Evan had been equally damaged. Certainly he never seemed to respond to any of the obvious attempts that the young women in town made to gain his interest.
She grinned at the thought. Those attempts had gotten a whole lot less noticeable of late.
The townspeople of Lavender had assigned them to each other. Now all they had to do was work their way to the happy ending.
The weather today was warm and almost spring-like with a light wind blowing. She was tempted to linger outside, but he led her through the door and into the house. They were barely inside when he turned to take her into his arms.
Never before had she been held by a man whom she trusted to truly love her. He held her tightly, than loosened his grip to hold her at far enough away that he could study her face. “Cynthia,” he whispered, his deep voice hoarse with emotion and his gaze fixed on her. “Will you stay with me forever?”
She had been feeling a kind of ecstasy, a floating-headed euphoria, but the question brought her sharply back to reality. This wasn’t the usual question between a man and woman about whether they agreed to spend their lives together.
Evan with all his deep honesty was asking if she would stay in Lavender and never go home for the rest of her life.
Until this minute she’d been certain that this house and this town were home. But now images of the ranch in Oklahoma and the house in Santa Barbara where she’d lived as a little girl played across her mind.
She hesitated too long. He dropped his hold on her, then turned away. He’d been rejected by the one woman he’d dared love by having her choose the larger world over him, their daughter, and life in Lavender. Without saying a word, Cynthia had given him a second rejection. She’d turned away from his love.
But could she permanently give up Moss and Lynne and the new baby that was coming. Could she forswear hot coffee in the morning and chocolate kisses at Christmas? Driving in cars, flying to England for the Shakespeare festival, dipping in the ocean off the California coast, the beautiful landscape of the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon . . .
Most of all the freedom of it all, the ability to live outside the prison of the invisible barriers Evan’s grandfather had set up. No! Most important of all was her brother, his wife and the family they would have. Her family.
Did she have a right to do any of that to Betsy.
“Evan,” she called after him. At the doorway that led to the stairs and his privacy in the tower room, he paused and turned, responded to her call. His face was grim and she realized for the first time that he did understand. Hadn’t he been faced at one time with this same decision? To protect others on both sides of the barrier, he’d given in to his grandfather’s request to stay and be the community’s only doctor. On the other side had been the wife who he had probably hoped to find somewhere, the medical studies he’d wanted to continue, and the same larger world that she hesitated to give up.
“Oh, Evan, the last thing I want is to leave you.”
He closed the distance between them in his long strides and pulled her to him, kissing her with primitive urgency. “My life is nothing without you,” he whispered when their lips had parted. “Please don’t leave me.”
At that very worst possible moment, the front door burst open as Eddie rushed into the hallway from outside, yelling with her customary energy, “We’re home! We won the game, though Betsy scraped her knee and it hurts.”
The stood barely apart by the time the two little girls, followed by Mrs. Myers came into the room. “The poor dear, she thinks nobody but you can fix her up, Dr. Stephens . . .” The housekeeper’s words halted abruptly as she took in the scene before her. It was apparent that she understood exactly what had been occurring when they walked in. “Oh my goodness,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
Neither of the two little girls was as aware. “Fix Betsy’s knee, Papa,” Eddie ordered, while
Betsy added, her eyes still leaking tears. “Please, Papa,” she said. “It’s bleeding.”
Cynthia’s heart jolted. Never before had her daughter called Evan papa. No doubt she’d picked it up from Eddie and under the distress of the moment claimed a relationship that was not hers.
Evan bent to look at the injured knee. “Not bad,” he soothed. “We can fix that up in no time.”
Cynthia stood, frozen in place while the two girls followed him to his office on the other side of the house where he would have the needed supplies.
“I am so sorry,” Mrs. Myers apologized again. “I was so hoping . . .”
Cynthia turned away from her. She didn’t know what she hoped for anymore.
After he’d medicated and placed a small bandage on Betsy’s knee with Eddie hovering over both of them and giving him advice on how to do it, Evan drew a deep breath and decided to take advantage.
He couldn’t go on this way. He’d go straight out of his mind if something wasn’t settled soon. It had been a long summer with Cynthia working at his side and him being conscious every second of the warmth and scent of her body, the beauty of her lovely face. It was a wonder that he hadn’t killed one of his patients.
It would be better to know there was no chance. If she continued to entertain the hope of returning to her own time, he needed to know, because that would mean she didn’t love him. He knew she liked him, but he had no assurance of love.
Once before he’d thought a woman loved him and she’d walked away without even looking back. If you loved someone, you stayed with them because you could bear anything but separation.
That was how he felt about Cynthia. If he could go with her, he would, but that was impossible. So the choice was entirely hers.
He helped Betsy down from the examining table and did his best to smile at both girls. The last thing he wanted was for either of them to sense his mixture of hope and despair.
“How about we take a little time for ourselves today,” he suggested, “and go on a picnic.’
Letters From Another Town: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 2) Page 13