Loving Linsey

by Rachelle Morgan

  “He said he put it on the first stage heading west.”

  “Good. I only hope he gets it in time to visit before I turn up my toes.”

  “The way you’re courting death, that will be sooner than you think.”

  Linsey rolled her eyes. “Please, the scolding you and Aunt Louisa gave me is still ringing in my ears.”

  “It’s no less than you deserve for making us worry like that. However, I suppose I can take some comfort in the fact that you won’t be pulling any more dangerous stunts for a while.” She glanced at the clock on the mantel, then set her embroidery in the basket beside her. “I have to run an errand. Do you need anything from town?”

  Linsey shook her head, hoping Addie couldn’t see how impatient she was to have the house to herself for a little while. Either she or Aunt Louisa or both had been hovering over her the last couple of days like mother hens.

  As soon as Addie left, Linsey set aside the catalog she’d been leafing through and scooted off the sofa. Her ankle was still tender, but at least she could walk on it without horrible pain. And if she didn’t get out and get some fresh air, she’d go stark, raving mad.

  Besides, she’d promised to visit Caroline for tea this week, and that visit was long overdue. It would be worth suffering through another of Addie’s lectures if she could just get out of the house for a while.

  Linsey returned to her room to fetch her cloak, gloves, her Lady Liberty coin, and the music box she’d picked up for the baby. She stood for a minute, trying to think if she had everything she might need. She had no desire to chance her luck by returning to the house for a forgotten item. Deciding she had everything, she limped into town to hire a horse and buggy.

  Caroline and Axel lived on a farm five miles west of Horseshoe, and the drive gave Linsey too much time to think. Perhaps she was being too harsh with Daniel. After all, she had been the one to lure him into the balloon, not the other way around. She supposed she might have wanted to exact some revenge if he’d cut a similar shine on her.

  Upon further reflection, she wondered if perhaps some of the anger she directed at him didn’t go a little deeper than the issue with Bishop. Daniel, for all his surly ways, was just too darned tempting for his own good.

  Or for hers.

  Hard as she tried to forget, she couldn’t rid herself of the memory of being crushed against him. Of feeling his chest against her breasts, his hand against her back, his breath against her mouth . . .

  Thank goodness the basket bottom had given way, or she feared she would have made the mistake of her life.

  Well, once she got him married off to Addie, that temptation would disappear. In the meantime she’d simply steer clear of Daniel and accomplish her matchmaking from a distance.

  That thought had her feeling much better by the time she pulled onto the driveway leading to Caroline and Axel Goodwin’s homestead. Free-roaming chickens pecking at the ground scattered out of her way. A herd of Angus beef, penned in the pasture behind the barn, lifted their flat faces to study the visitor. Only Frisky, the misnamed, lop-eared hound, lay sprawled in the middle of the yard, unperturbed by her arrival.

  Linsey parked the buggy under the shade of an ancient oak tree, and after leaving the horse a bucket of oats to feast on, walked up to the one-room house.

  When she heard the muffled keening, like that of an animal in distress, she knew something was wrong. Linsey hastily opened the door. Inside she found Caroline lying abed, her face pale, her hands shaking, her clothes and the bed linens drenched in sweat.

  “Caro!”

  “Oh, Linsey, thank God . . .”

  She dumped her packages onto a chair and hastened to her friend’s side. “Caro, what’s happened?”

  “My water broke.”

  “Where’s Axel?”

  “He left for Houston yesterday morning. He won’t be back till Tuesd—” A keening wail cut off further words and grew to a tortured scream.

  Linsey grit her teeth as Caroline squeezed her hand hard enough to snap bones. How could a woman want a child if this was what she had to endure, as if she were dying a slow death a thousand times over?

  When the pain ended, Caroline lay panting, sweating, sobbing. “Somethin’s wrong, Linsey. Its too soon. I’m gonna lose him, I just know I’m gonna lose this baby, too.”

  “You are not going to lose this baby.” Linsey searched the cabin and found a pile of folded cloths inside a chest. After filling the basin with tepid water from the pitcher, she soaked one of the cloths and bathed Caroline’s clammy brow. “How long have you been having the pains?”

  “All morning. They’re worse than I’ve ever felt. Oh, sweet Jesus—” She clutched her belly as another pain ripped through her. The walls echoed with the cry of sheer suffering.

  Linsey peeled the blanket off her belly and went pale at the sight of the blood staining the sheets. “I have to get the doc,” she whispered.

  “No, Linsey—” Caroline grabbed Linsey’s skirt. “Please don’t leave me.”

  “I have to.” God knew she didn’t want to leave her friend, but she didn’t know beans about birthing, and the closest midwife lived halfway across the county. “I won’t be gone long, Caro—I swear it on my mother’s soul.”

  Daniel arranged the bottles on the shelves, grouping those with the skull and crossbones on a high shelf while others sat at eye level or lower in the glass cabinet. The symbols had been on the bottles for as long as he could remember. A closed eye on the chloroform; a broken bone for laudanum; the letter C divided by a squiggly line on the carbolic acid.

  He’d learned the purpose of each drug from the labels before knowing the names. Another of his dad’s methods in teaching Daniel the trade before he’d been given a chance to decide for himself. Though Daniel didn’t regret his decision, and suspected he would have gone into medicine anyway, sometimes he wondered if things wouldn’t have turned out differently if his father hadn’t driven him so hard.

  Even now the old man wouldn’t let up. The last couple of nights, while Daniel had been studying reports documenting the advantages of surgery versus herbal treatment in female problems—a subject that had fascinated him for years—he could hear his dad in the background, finding fault with some procedure or another that Daniel had done.

  Though it only made Daniel more determined to pass his entrance exams and get the hell out from under his dad’s thumb, several times Daniel had caught himself drifting off in thought, seeking escape from the constant hounding. The closest he came was in remembering the view from Jarvis’s balloon—the sense of freedom he’d found with the wind in his hair and laughter in his soul.

  Invariably his thoughts would stray to Linsey, the woman who’d torn him from the burdens he bore, and how for a moment she’d looked at him as a woman looked at a man she wanted—not as a doctor to cure all ills, not as son who failed at every turn. Just a man.

  And it made him wonder if his dad might be wrong. That maybe a woman didn’t always drag a man down to the depths of misery, but sometimes brought him to the heights of contentment.

  Daniel abruptly shook his head to dispel the notion. He’d seen with his own eyes what happened, when a man let himself become diverted by a pair of sparkling eyes and winsome smile: he became resentful and unsatisfied; she drew into herself so deep that nothing mattered anymore.

  The smartest thing he could do was stay as far from Linsey as possible.

  Just as he finished stocking the cabinet, the door flew open, hitting the wall, knocking the cowbells clean off their hook.

  And who but Linsey skidded inside.

  Clutching the door, she cried, “Daniel! Thank God you’re here. Come quickly.”

  “Forget it, Linsey,” he said, twisting the key in the lock. “I’m not falling for that trick again.”

  She rushed toward the counter and slapped her hands on the tiled surface. “It’s no trick. Caroline is hurting something fierce. She says the babe is coming.”

  “The babe
isn’t due for another month.”

  “When it’s due and when it comes aren’t always the same thing. You should know that better than anyone. Daniel, please, there is no time to waste! For the love of Gus, she needs you now!”

  The escalating panic in her voice made Daniel waver in indecision. What if she wasn’t lying this time? Could he really take that risk? “I’m warning you, if this is another ruse, so help me . . .”

  He grabbed his bag from beneath the counter. Linsey pushed out the door and had climbed into the buggy out front before Daniel even got across the boardwalk.

  She scarcely gave him a chance to get into the vehicle before she set the horse in motion with a slap of reins and a sharp “Ha!”

  The drive to Caroline and Axel’s was wrought with an anxious silence. Linsey gripped the reins in pale fists, her features tight with a worry that appeared genuine. Daniel regretted giving her such a rough time. Even Linsey couldn’t fake the fear he saw in her eyes.

  Before he could stop it, his hand reached across the seat to squeeze her leg. “We’ll get to her in time; don’t worry.”

  She gave him a feeble smile before returning her attention to the road.

  Finally they pulled off the country road and drove up to the cabin. The buggy had barely come to a stop when Linsey leaped down. Daniel grabbed his bag and raced after her inside.

  Linsey hastened to her friend’s side and dropped to her knees next to the huge tick mattress. “I’m back, Caro, just like I promised. I brought Daniel with me. Everything’s going to be fine now.”

  “I’m going to lose him, I know it,” she wept.

  “No, you won’t. Daniel won’t let anything happen to this baby.”

  Daniel wished she wouldn’t put so much faith in his abilities. He was only a man, not a miracle worker, and he’d seen healthier women than Caroline deliver stillborns. She’d already lost two babies midterm, and a third in the last trimester. The odds that she’d deliver a healthy child this time were slim to none.

  Still, strangely enough, Linsey’s confidence also gave Daniel a strength of purpose he hadn’t felt in a long time: to not fail the two women who trusted him to do his job.

  He set his bag on the foot of the bed. “Linsey, gather up all the lamps you can find. I’ll also need hot water, a piece of rubber sheeting if you can find it, and a pile of towels.”

  While Linsey hastened to do his bidding, Daniel rolled up his sleeves and scrubbed his hands in a tin basin. Several items—a pair of scissors, a whole garlic clove, a cartridge and a comb—littered the surface of the bedside stand. Three horseshoes had been nailed to the inside of the headboard of the cradle waiting between the bed and the fireplace.

  No one needed to tell him that Linsey had been responsible for the extra touches. If it would have done any good, Daniel would have ordered the nonsense taken away. But he didn’t have the time or energy for an argument. He needed to save both Caroline and her child.

  He finished scrubbing his hands and had just begun to press on Caroline’s belly to judge the position of the baby when Linsey set five lanterns on the trunk at the far side of the bed, and a stack of towels on the nightstand. Then she knelt beside Caroline and brushed the tangled brown hair from the woman’s eyes in a gesture Daniel couldn’t help but find touching.

  God knew, Caroline would need a friend today.

  As he examined her, he knew she was in trouble. Wave after wave of contractions rolled through her, pain twisting her gaunt, perspiring face. Blood trickled from her bottom lip where she’d bit through it against the pain.

  “Doc Jr, please do something. Don’t let my baby die. I can’t lose another one.”

  “I’m going to do everything I can, Caroline.” Not only for the babe but for the woman. He didn’t think she’d survive another miscarriage. “I need you to work with me, though.”

  “Whatever it takes—ahhh!”

  “Take deep, even breaths. Don’t push—even if the sensation becomes unbearable, hear?”

  “I hear. Don’t push.”

  Daniel poured carbolic acid into a pan to sterilize his instruments, then over his hands. Many physicians didn’t put much importance on cleanliness, but one of Daniel’s professors insisted that patients fared better, and over the years, Daniel had come to agree. “Linsey, inside my bag there’s a small brown bottle with the symbol of a closed eye on it. Dribble a few drops onto a piece of flannel, then press it against her nose and mouth until she passes out.”

  Linsey’s head snapped up. She looked at Daniel in astonishment. “You’re putting her to sleep?”

  “It’s necessary. I have to cut her open.”

  Cut her open? She’d never heard of such a thing! Granted, she’d never attended a birthing before, either, but she knew how babies were delivered—and it didn’t involve cutting anything open.

  The panic must have shown in her eyes, for Daniel told her, “If I don’t perform this surgery, Caroline and the babe will both die. She’s too small to deliver it through the canal, and the placenta has already begun to tear away.”

  She heard the anguish in his decision, yet his eyes shone with a steely confidence. He knows what he’s doing, she told herself. He had a degree to prove it.

  Even so, her hands trembled as she fished under rolls of bandages for the group of bottles, searching for the one he specified. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Daniel, it wasn’t that she doubted his abilities. It was herself she didn’t trust, herself she doubted. He wanted her to help him and she feared that if she failed, it would mean the death of one of her dearest friends.

  But if she didn’t help him, Caroline or her baby would most certainly die. Did she really have a choice?

  “Caro? Daniel says we need to give you this to make you sleep.”

  Questions swirled in her pain-riddled eyes. “What for?”

  “So he can save the baby.”

  “Tell her to breath deeply when you put the cloth over her nose and mouth.”

  Linsey repeated Daniel’s order, and whispered, “Don’t be afraid, Caro.”

  “Don’t leave me, Linsey.”

  “I won’t. I’ll be here the whole time until you wake up.”

  And though she knew it was a necessary procedure, her eyes grew moist as she pressed the drugged cloth over her friend’s face. In just a few seconds, Caroline’s eyes closed, her tight muscles relaxed, and the hand within Linsey’s went limp.

  Linsey couldn’t bring herself to watch when Daniel set his knife beneath Caroline’s navel. She turned her head, hunched her shoulders, and gripped Caroline’s work-worn fingers.

  The click of steel hitting steel, the thump of a clock, the consistent yap of a dog, all had her nerves on edge.

  She focused on Daniel’s steady breathing, willing it to calm her. Amazingly, it did. Slowly the tension left her neck and shoulders, and the anxiety seeped from her body.

  After a while she even managed to brave a glance at Daniel. His cowlick drooped low over his forehead, creating a frame for his right eye. The mouth she’d once longed to taste was pressed together in a relaxed line.

  His composure really was remarkable. While she battled hysteria, he remained unflaggingly calm and self-assured, almost as if he worked on a mechanical object instead of a person. Maybe that was what made him so capable—being able to separate himself from his emotions.

  “Wipe my brow, please.”

  Grateful to be of some use, she snatched a square of flannel and stood to blot the beads of sweat from above his eyes, then sat down again. If he needed anything, she’d be happy to comply, but unless he asked, she figured the best thing she could do was just keep out of his way.

  “Talk to me,” he said a few minutes later.

  “About what?”

  “Anything your little heart desires.” Click. Snap. A curse.

  She caught a flash of white; felt the tension in Daniel’s shoulders as his movements turned swifter. Only then did she realize that he wasn’t as detached as sh
e thought. That he would seek a sense of normalcy, of comfort, from her made her heart do a little flip.

  “Jenny asked me to stand up in her wedding,” she said.

  “She did, huh?”

  “Will you be there?”

  “I plan on it.”

  It went unspoken that sometimes his plans didn’t always work out the way he wanted them. “She asked her girls to wear blue. It’s a lucky color.”

  “You wearing blue at your wedding?”

  “I would if I married, but I’m afraid that won’t happen.”

  “The right man’ll come along.”

  She longed to tell him that even if he did, it was too late. “And you Daniel, have you set your eye on a lady yet?”

  “Nope. Haven’t looked, either.”

  “Sometimes you don’t have to look. Sometimes she’s right under your nose.”

  His hands paused. She felt his gaze on the top of her head. Her scalp tingled.

  “Thread the needle on that tray with the cat gut. And fetch me a warm blanket.”

  “The baby’s out?” she breathed.

  “Will be in two seconds.”

  The next few minutes passed in a rush of activity: Daniel’s hands nothing more than a blur above the sheet covering Caroline; Linsey hurrying to and fro bringing him items he requested, sometimes even before he requested them; blood-soaked cloths tossed heedlessly into a metal basin. . . .

  And then the announcement she’d been waiting for.

  “Caroline’s got herself a fine girl child.”

  The next thing Linsey knew, he’d placed a screaming, squirming bundle in her arms. She took the baby across the room to get her cleaned up while he finished with Caroline.

  “What a little cherub you are,” Linsey crooned, wiping a damp cotton cloth along the wriggling body. She couldn’t weigh more than five pounds, but she looked pink and healthy despite the mottled complexion of her wee face. Even more incredible was that such a painful experience could have brought forth such a beautiful creature.