A Summer Affair

by Susan Wiggs

  Blue urged the horse to pick up the pace, for he was anxious to get some food and water into the greenhorn. He lived in a hilltop neighborhood of grand houses and broad gardens, where bellies were full of food instead of beer, young boys attended school rather than crimp joints and women were never sent nameless to paupers’ graves.

  His passenger, however, seemed to have other ideas. When Blue slowed for the turn into the service alley behind his house, the boy stirred. Clasping his hat down over his head and clutching a filthy, oversized coat around him, he jumped out and staggered away, into the rabbit warren of servants’ quarters and stables that lined the alley.

  “Hey,” Blue yelled after him, but he already knew it was too late. The greenhorn would go sleep it off somewhere, and probably find himself in the same trouble tonight.

  He shook his head over his expensive mistake and slid open the livery door himself, not wanting to awaken Efrena, who presided over the best stables in the district, with a half dozen stalls, three buggies and her own snug quarters aloft.

  Muttering soft nonsense to the Cleveland Bay horse, a favorite from his parents’ coastal breeding ranch, he removed the traces, rubbed down the damp hide and led him to his stall. After checking the water trough, he poured sweet oats. The horse jerked up his head and sidled back.

  “Easy, Ferdinand,” said Blue, latching the stall door. “We both need the same thing—breakfast and a nap.”

  Uncharacteristically, the horse didn’t bury his muzzle in the grain, but grunted and flattened his ears.

  “Please yourself, then,” Blue said, and headed for the door, satchel in hand. He followed the gravel walkway to the back door of the house and stepped into the quiet kitchen. He helped himself to two of Mrs. Li’s oat muffins, prepared last night and left in the larder for his early-morning meal. It was his favorite time of day, the empty, uneventful lull between the chaos of night at the Rescue League and the quiet order of his Nob Hill day practice. He took the muffins and a crock of butter into the dining room.

  The moment he sat down, the back of his neck prickled with the sense that he was not alone.

  Then the unmistakable metal prod of a gun barrel pressed between his shoulder blades.

  Two

  The faint scent of burned powder stole through the air. The gun had been fired recently.

  Violence erupted inside Blue, the reaction invisible to the sneak thief with the gun. He had a nearly uncontrollable urge to turn on the intruder and flatten him. But he resisted, forcing himself to breathe out slowly, to let go of the impulse. A scuffle was too risky right here, right now, considering what was at stake. Lucas. If he heard gunfire, the boy might try something rash.

  Blue set down his butter knife and gingerly raised his hands. “Look,” he said, speaking in a low voice so as not to awaken his son upstairs, “no need to hurt anyone. Take whatever it is you came for and be on your way.”

  “I require the immediate services of a physician,” said a faint voice in an unexpected British accent.

  For a split second he considered lying, then thought better of it. No need to send the intruder marauding through the household. “I’m Dr. Calhoun,” he said.

  “I know. You gave me a lift.”

  So this was the thanks he got for being a good Samaritan. He wondered why Pisco and Punch had failed to check for a gun. “You cost me fifty dollars.”

  “I didn’t ask you to do that.”

  “If I hadn’t, you’d be slave labor on a ship somewhere.”

  “No. I’d be dead.” The boy’s respiration was accelerating.

  Blue flicked a glance at the clock above the dining room mantel. It was still early yet. Lucas wouldn’t be up for another hour. Mrs. Riordan, the housekeeper, slept like the dead at the other end of the house. Delta, his assistant, rarely appeared before nine o’clock. Mrs. Li, who lived in a bungalow in the service alley with her daughter, would not report for duty until she had finished the day’s shopping down at the farmer’s market and at wharves where the fishing boats docked.

  “I can’t be of much help in this position,” he pointed out, his hands still in the air.

  The jab of the gun barrel was the only reply. The terrible silence was broken by the steady ticking of the mantel clock, and by a heavy drip, drip of some viscous substance hitting the oak parquet floor. Even before he glanced down to check, Blue knew it was blood. He could smell it, as familiar to him as brine to a seaman. He wondered why the crimps had shot the boy. Or had someone else done the shooting?

  “Put the gun away,” he ordered, “and I’ll have a look at that wound.” He started to lower his hands. The gun pushed aggressively into the nape of his neck until his hands went back up. “I’m a physician by choice.” He let irritation penetrate his voice. “I don’t have to be forced at gunpoint to do my job.”

  “I’ve no money to pay.” The intruder sounded incredibly young.

  “I promise to waive my fee,” he offered. Half of San Francisco knew that about him, or so it seemed.

  “I was counting on that.”

  “I’m going to lower my hands and turn around,” he said. “I’ll take you to the surgery and we’ll get you fixed up. You’ll need to put away the gun.”

  “I’m keeping the gun.”

  “I’m worried about it going off,” Blue said.

  “I’m worried about dying,” stated the gunman.

  “Put it away, or I won’t be able to treat you.”

  “Yes, you will….” The voice trailed off into woozy silence. The gun barrel wavered. The floor squeaked and crystal clinked as the outlaw staggered back against the glass-fronted china cabinet. When the gun barrel wavered again, Blue stood and spun around, going for the weapon. Before he could disarm the intruder, the gun was aimed again, trained steadily at his chest. It was a well-oiled Colt’s cavalry pistol, held in a child’s curiously delicate hand.

  Anger flashed, quick and hot. Child or not, this person had brought violence into his house. Still, despite the things he’d seen in his years of practicing medicine, Blue was shocked by the boy’s appearance. Shadowed by the brim of a battered hat, narrowed eyes peered at him through a veil of pain and suspicion. Younger than Lucas, the intruder had rounded cheeks, now gray from traumatic blood loss and shock, lips bluish and trembling. The threadbare coat all but swallowed the slight form. The back hem of the old coat was stained scarlet. Blood dripped steadily on the parquet.

  Blue wondered how he had fallen into the hands of Pisco and Punch. Homeless boys who managed to escape the crimps often turned to violence when they ran out of options. What shocked Blue about this lad was the youngster’s stamina. He’d apparently followed Blue into the house and was still standing. He expected the outlaw to collapse at any moment. Then Blue would disarm the young fool and, more out of habit than compassion, try to save his life.

  “Follow me to the surgery.” Hands still in the air, he led the way to the foyer, through a door and under a breezeway. Purple clusters of wisteria dripped from the pergola vines that grew up from sturdy, wrist-thick trunks; he’d planted them a lifetime ago, for Sancha.

  A trail of round, livid drops marked their route to the annex adjacent to the main house. At this hour of the morning, it was deserted. Blue stepped through a gleaming white enameled door and held it open for his unexpected patient. He had built this place for healing, but through the years it had grown to something more. Here, women confided their most intimate secrets and men confessed their deepest fears. His duties as a physician gave him access to the private lives of strangers, and he kept his patients’ confidences with a reverence that was almost sacred.

  “Put the gun away and I’ll examine you in here,” he said to the gunman.

  “Stop complaining about the gun,” said the boy. “It stays with me. For protection.”

  That accent, Blue reflected, would not be out of place at an English tea party. “From me?” he asked.

  The narrowed eyes measured him. “Perhaps.”


  “You came here for help. Let me help you.”

  The desperado’s breathing became more labored by the moment. With instincts he had never really lost, Blue grabbed the gun. He disarmed the outlaw the way he had learned in thousands of army drills, angling his opponent’s arm skyward while gripping the wrist. He looped his thumb behind the trigger to keep it from firing. In a matter of seconds, he had possession of the pistol.

  A familiar wave of revulsion lurched through him. Even holding a firearm he had no intention of using nauseated him with old horrors. With quick efficiency, he unloaded the gun, tossed it into a metal cabinet and locked the door. Pocketing the key, he turned back to his patient only to find himself staring at emptiness.

  The outlaw had collapsed on the floor. A ghastly bloodstain bloomed at the back of the threadbare coat. Working quickly, he lifted the slight form to the cloth-draped table and lay the lad in a prone position, facedown. Grabbing a pair of surgical scissors, Blue cut the back of the coat up the middle from hem to neck. Under that was a linen shirt, gray with age, saturated with blood. He cut the shirt away and applied the scissors to a frayed undervest, exposing a messy wound.

  Blue rolled up his sleeves, his narrowed gaze never leaving the scarlet ooze. He would have to proceed without Delta’s assistance. Not impossible, he reminded himself. In his days at the army post in Wyoming, he’d operated under far worse conditions.

  Seeping blood obscured his view of the surgical field. He dipped a sponge in a basin of boric acid solution and cleaned away the blood until he could view the wound.

  It was a good thing the boy had passed out. Because removing the bullet was going to be excruciating.

  Inserting a finger into the entry site, Blue determined that a single ball had penetrated below the inferior angle of the right scapula.

  “How did you manage to get this far?” he asked, talking to himself as was sometimes his habit when he operated. “A wound like this would fell a two-hundred-pound man.”

  The bullet had burrowed across the narrow back, and Blue’s sensitive fingers discovered that the lead ball was still lodged inside, setting the patient up for a raging infection. So he went on a hunt, probing delicately and consistently, until at last he found the slug. Wasting no time, he used a pair of locking pincers to remove the bullet.

  He debrided the ragged tissue with precise cuts, removing gritty adhesions and lacerations from the site of the injury. Threads of powder-burned fiber from the dirty shirt polluted the torn muscle and flesh. Blue set his jaw, hoping the patient would not regain consciousness in the midst of the excruciating process of cleaning, closing and dressing the wound. At medical college, he had studied under Gordon Black, a gifted Scottish surgeon who believed with unwavering conviction in the importance of maintaining a sterile surgical field. Not all doctors embraced the concept, but Blue’s service as an army surgeon had provided plenty of support for the idea. At least ninety percent of bullet wounds treated in the field resulted in lethal infections, and contamination was surely the key factor.

  For a second, rage flashed through him, quick and sure as a lightning strike. Someone had gunned the lad down like a fleeing animal.

  Except this one had not been down for long.

  Admitting to a grudging admiration for the patient, Blue asked, “Who shot you?” No answer, of course. “You were running away when it happened. That much is clear.”

  The likely scenario involved some variety of mischief on the Barbary Coast, the place where all such troubles started in the city. The shadowy district of shabby bars and bawdy houses provided Blue and his colleagues at the Mission Rescue League with a steady supply of victims. Most suffered the fractures and contusions of assault, however, as they were rolled for their valuables. The unfortunate on the table here didn’t seem likely to possess anything of value save the well-maintained pistol Blue had seized.

  Perhaps this lad had managed to escape Pisco and Punch and stagger away, still under the influence of the heavily-drugged beer known as Mickey Finn. Perhaps he’d taken a bullet in the back during the flight from his captors.

  But the crimps favored blackjacks and knives over guns. It was not to their advantage to cause permanent damage to their stock-in-trade.

  Unless the youth was damaged when the crimps got their hands on him. In that case, maybe they weren’t taking him to a ship’s captain at all. No wonder they’d parted with the victim so readily—they’d already been paid to dispose of him.

  Blue used surgical silk and a curved needle to close the wound. Then he applied a bandage treated with herbal salve and mustard plaster. It was a healing poultice no one in medical school had ever heard of. The remedy was the invention of his talented nurse, and over the years he’d come to the conclusion that nothing worked better than Delta’s preparation. He laid the patch over the wound and found a roll of gauze to wrap around the gunman’s torso.

  A quiet moan drifted from the surgery table. The patient would be howling in agony soon. Without Delta’s help, Blue knew he’d have an awkward time binding the wound. He spread the cut edges of the bandage across the narrow back. He used his surgical shears to cut the fabric of the coat and shirtsleeves down each slender arm. Then he gently held a bony shoulder, turning the patient on one side and winding the bandage around the torso.

  He dropped the ball of gauze. He nearly dropped the patient as well.

  He had seen plenty in his years as a physician, but on this particular summer morning, he wasn’t quite ready for the unexpected. The outlaw on his surgical table was a woman.

  As confounded as he was mortified, he quickly finished bandaging her. Then he snatched a gray cotton gown from a folded stack in the cabinet and threaded it on to the woman’s arms. The bedjacket was standard army issue; he’d kept a dozen or so of the garments. After being cashiered in disgrace ten years earlier, Blue had felt disinclined to return the government’s property. In light of all that had happened back then, appropriating a few bedjackets seemed a minor infraction.

  After he tied the jacket at the nape of her neck, he laid her on her side. The woman was small and lean; no wonder he’d mistaken her for a boy. The swath of gauze around her chest accentuated her thinness. There was a certain delicacy in her features and hands that fit well with the few words she’d uttered in her British accent. Her deep brown hair might have been glossy at one time, he supposed, gingerly lifting a dark lock away from the neckline of the garment. Despite her youthful appearance, he noted a certain quality in her sharp features and callused hands that hinted at hard experience.

  She had been remarkably quick with the gun. And quick to threaten violence. Who knew what life had done to the creature in his care? A bright spark of interest took him by surprise. He considered himself a compassionate man, but his newest patient affected him in a peculiar way.

  Time to alert the authorities. As one of the city’s original subscribers to the American Speaking Telephone Company, he could normally count on fast service when he needed it.

  The woman moaned again and drew up her legs, a reflex response to extreme pain. Agony and defiance mingled in a soft, almost musical voice uttering a wordless plea. He glanced at the locked metal cabinet containing syringes and morphine. Perhaps he should give her something for the pain. No, he thought, best to get help without delay.

  An ominous metallic click stopped him halfway to the door.

  The patient had awakened. Blue turned to find her sitting up and pointing a black-handled Derringer straight at him.

  Although needles of panic iced his veins, he regarded her calmly—a young, desperate woman with hacked-off hair and eyes full of secrets.

  “Again, miss?” he asked, allowing a note of exasperation to creep into his voice. She truly was remarkable, he admitted to himself. Her resilience was impressive.

  Yet her entire appearance had an unexpected effect on him. Because in the middle of his cold fury, he felt something else. Something rare. Not just interest, but a fascination, almost.

/>   “You should have checked for an ankle holster,” she pointed out. Seated with her legs dangling over the side of the table, she kept the cocked gun and her unsettling gaze aimed at him.

  Blue weighed his options. Despite her size and the gravity of her wound, she had admirable stamina and an impressive threshold for pain. She spoke in an educated manner and was damnably clearheaded and focused for someone who had just been shot and then operated on.

  “That’s not the only thing I should have checked,” he said.

  “I should like a glass of water,” the woman said. “Please.”

  Blue felt a prickle of irritation—at himself. He was the physician here. It was his job to ease her suffering. Not for the first time he realized that grief, time and loneliness had eroded his soul, hardened him to the pain of others. That was why he labored at the Rescue League, why he employed troubled or homeless women in his own household. It was a penance for him. The trouble was, his self-imposed penance failed to work. He was no closer to redemption than this gun-toting Englishwoman.

  He offered her water from a porcelain cup, which she managed to drink without lowering the gun or taking her eyes off Blue. He knew that if she discharged the weapon, she was unlikely to hit him, even at close range. But he couldn’t afford to take a chance, not with Lucas in the house.

  “Thank you for saving my life,” she said, setting down the empty cup.

  “Another jewel in the Redeemer’s crown,” he said.

  “Ouch. Your sarcasm’s sharper than your surgeon’s knife.”

  He didn’t bother to apologize as he sat down on a swivel stool and regarded his patient. She was as alert as ever, but the bright hardness of her eyes, coupled with the ashen pallor of her face, told a deeper story. An infection was already building. He’d learned to recognize the subtle symptoms.

  “I can offer you ether or morphine for the pain,” he said.

  “No, thank you. I need to keep my wits about me.”

  So she was familiar with the effects of the drugs he had in his medicine locker, or at least she pretended to be. Refusing to allow himself to weigh the risk, he stood and placed his hands at her waist, thumbs drawing inward circles over the rough cotton duck fabric of her pants. She was a soft wisp of a woman, one he’d term fragile if he didn’t know better. She gasped and shoved the small handgun hard at his chest. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”