Shaken to the Core

by Jae

“She’s fine,” Lucy said. “A little pigheaded, but otherwise fine.”

  Kate made a face. “I wasn’t aware that was a medical diagnosis, Doc.”

  They got back into the automobile and continued their way south. Giuliana kept a close eye on both Kate and the hood of the vehicle. Both seemed fine.

  As they reached the hospital, a wave of heat hit them, even though the fire was still a block away. Smoke made Giuliana’s already raw throat feel as if she were breathing in shards of glass.

  Soldiers blocked the street and wouldn’t let them drive up to the hospital. “Turn around!” one of them shouted.

  “We need to get to the hospital,” Lucy called. “I’m a doctor. I need to check on a patient there.”

  The soldier shook his head. “The patients are gone. The hospital is being evacuated. We’ll blow it up in a minute.”

  A patient was carried past them on a stretcher, his head and chest heavily bandaged.

  From behind the steering wheel, Kate stared down at him. “Isn’t that…?”

  “Yeah.” The soldier nodded grimly. “Chief Sullivan. He was badly wounded when the neighboring building collapsed onto the fire station.”

  With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Giuliana turned and stared after him. The man everyone said would rescue the city looked as if he were clinging to life by a thread. San Francisco was doomed.

  CHAPTER 15

  Golden Gate Park

  San Francisco, California

  April 18, 1906

  Kate could hardly believe that this was the place where she had ridden the merry-go-round as a child, had sipped tea in the exotic Japanese Garden, and had been rowed across Stow Lake by William Jenkins just a few weeks ago.

  Now Golden Gate Park looked like a tent city. People huddled in the army tents, seeking refuge from the cool wind, while others had built shelters using sheets, blankets, and the odd piece of furniture they had saved from their homes.

  As they strode past rows of tents, Kate searched the faces for anyone she might know.

  People stared back with blank expressions. One woman, rocking her baby in her arms, met her gaze and smiled. The baby was completely still. Its eyes were closed, and its skin had a bluish tint.

  Oh Lord! Is it…?

  Lucy gave her a grim nod.

  Bile rose in Kate’s throat. She swallowed it back down as they entered one of the tents with a big red cross.

  Chaos immediately engulfed them. Doctors were bent over blood-soiled operating tables that had been improvised using sawhorses and doors or shutters. Nurses with dark shadows beneath their eyes hurried from cot to cot.

  One of them saw Lucy and hurried over. “Dr. Sharpe! We’re running out of morphine. We don’t have anything left to give them for pain.” With a flutter of her hands, she indicated the moaning patients surrounding them.

  Lucy dug into her ever-present doctor’s bag, but this time, she came up empty. “Looks like my bag is not as magical as you thought,” she said to Kate, her features set into hard lines.

  Helplessness gripped Kate—a feeling she had always hated. “There has to be something we can do.”

  “The drugstores.” Giuliana looked from Kate to Lucy. “They have the kind of medicines you need, no?”

  Lucy nodded. “They do. But how will you—?”

  “We’ll get it for you. Come on.” Kate gripped Giuliana’s elbow and hurried to the tent’s flap.

  “Wait!” Lucy stopped one of the nurses, unpinned the Red Cross badge from her blood-stained blouse, and stuck it to Kate’s shirtwaist. “Otherwise, the soldiers will take the automobile from you as soon as they spy you. Do you still have my revolver?”

  Kate had hidden it beneath the driver’s seat. She nodded, but the mere thought of using it made her queasy.

  “Good. Bring me whatever you can carry. Splints and bandages too. But don’t get yourselves shot in the process.”

  “I’m not planning on it,” Kate called back over her shoulder.

  As they drove east, back to the city, they tried to remember where they had seen a drugstore. They combed the streets, keeping an eye out for any place that looked promising.

  Other people seemed to have had the same idea. A man ran out of a store with a box of canned goods—either the store’s owner trying to save his wares or just a hungry person who had helped himself to some food. It wasn’t really stealing, was it? If the fires weren’t stopped, the store would soon burn down anyway, with everything in it.

  But the man never made it to the corner.

  Three soldiers marched down the street, rifles at the ready. “Halt!” one of them shouted.

  The man with the box threw a harried glance over his shoulder but kept running.

  A shot rang out.

  The man took one more step, then wobbled and fell. He lost his grip on the box as he landed on the cobblestones. A can of peaches rolled down the street.

  Kate braked before the automobile’s tires could crush it. Her entire body went cold, then a white-hot rush of anger swept through her. She stared across the street at the man who lay without moving, a puddle of blood spreading beneath him.

  The soldiers looked up from the fallen man and over at them.

  “You shot him,” Kate said. “How could you just shoot him? He wasn’t harming anyone.”

  “We’ve got orders to shoot looters on sight,” one of the soldiers said. He was barely more than a boy. “There are people who’re cutting the fingers off the dead to steal their rings. It’s our duty to stop that. See?” He gestured at a piece of paper which had been hammered onto a telegraph pole.

  Kate leaned toward it so she could read it.

  “What does it say?” Giuliana whispered next to her.

  “It’s a proclamation by the mayor,” Kate said, still reading. “The federal troops and the members of the police force have been authorized to kill any person found engaged in looting.” At the questioning look on Giuliana’s face, she added, “Stealing from others.”

  “That’s right,” the young soldier said. “We’ve got to restore order.”

  Mayor’s proclamation or not, Kate didn’t think it was right. “But how can you be sure he was looting? Maybe he owned that store or had permission to take whatever he wanted.”

  “Then why did he run?” the soldier said.

  Because you were aiming a rifle at him, Kate wanted to say but thought better of it.

  Another soldier took a step forward and gave a dismissive wave with his bayonet-topped rifle. “You’d better move on, miss.”

  “Kate,” Giuliana whispered. “Please.”

  With the soldiers giving her warning glares, Kate had no other choice if she didn’t want to endanger Giuliana and herself. She took her foot off the brake and stepped onto the gas pedal.

  “This is madness,” she said to Giuliana when they had safely rounded the corner. “Haven’t enough people died today?”

  Instead of an answer, Giuliana slid her hand on top of Kate’s fist, clenched around the steering wheel, and squeezed gently.

  Kate’s death grip instantly loosened as the warmth of Giuliana’s hand soothed her rattled nerves. She glanced over at Giuliana, glad for the normalcy she provided in all this craziness.

  Giuliana pointed at something down the street. “There is a store. What does the sign say?”

  Slowly, Kate drove past it so she could read the big, white letters on the glass front. “Yes! It’s a drugstore.”

  There was no one behind the counter. A closed sign dangled from the door.

  Kate steered the automobile around the next corner so it wouldn’t attract the attention of any soldiers or policemen and then set the brake. “I’ll go in and get what we need. You stay here.”

  Giuliana grabbed a handful of Kate’s shirtwaist and held on. “No. I come with you.”

  No need for both of them to head into danger, and Giuliana looked as if she could use a break. Kate vehemently shook her head. “I’ll go alone. I need you to keep an
eye on my camera. Make sure no one steals it.”

  Giuliana’s gaze veered down to the carrying case at her feet and then back up. She hesitated, still holding on to Kate’s shirtwaist.

  “Please.”

  Huffing out a breath, Giuliana let go. “Benu. You be very careful, please.”

  “Of course. Be right back.” Kate left the engine running and climbed down. After one last glance back over her shoulder to make sure Giuliana was staying put, she peeked around the corner.

  The street was empty, the path to the drugstore clear.

  Kate gripped her skirt with both hands, pulled it up a little, and ran. She tried the door, but it was locked. Both hands shielding her eyes, she peered through the glass front. Shelves full of bottles and other supplies lined two walls while a soda fountain was set up behind a marble-topped counter. Some of these bottles had to hold the medicine Lucy’s patients so desperately needed. She rattled the door again.

  It didn’t give.

  She looked around. The earthquake had shaken loose some bricks from the neighboring building. Kate picked up one of them and hefted it in both hands. Eyeing the drugstore’s glass front, she hesitated. Should she really…?

  You’re wasting time. Time Lucy’s patients don’t have. Do it. She inhaled deeply, held her breath, and then hurled the brick through the glass front.

  Glass splintered, and the brick crashed against one of the metal stools in front of the counter, toppling it over. The noise sounded deafening in Kate’s ears.

  Heart pounding, she looked left and right.

  Nothing moved. No angry store owner came running.

  Kate used a second brick to clear the doorframe of glass shards and then stepped through. Father would be so proud if he could see me. Now I’m breaking into a drugstore. She hurried past the long counter and searched the shelves. Toothpastes, cigars, hair tonics. No. She moved on to the next shelf.

  Colic remedies, foot balms, and cocaine toothache drops. Nothing she needed either. Then a brown bottle with an orange label caught her attention. Laudanum! Yes! Next came several transparent vials of morphine.

  Kate looked around for something to carry it in. When she didn’t immediately find anything, she took off her petticoat and started piling bottles and bandages on top of it. Finally, she added a bottle of iodine tincture and tied off her bundle.

  It wasn’t enough. Lucy and the other doctors would need more to treat all the injured people in the park. After a minute of searching, she found a wooden crate filled with hair tonics. She tossed out the bottles and filled the crate with more bandages and all the morphine she could find. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as much as she’d hoped.

  She grabbed her bundle and headed for the door. Either she or Giuliana would go back for the crate in a minute. When she passed the counter, she paused. The sight of the soda machine made her painfully aware of how thirsty she was. Her tongue seemed to stick to the dry roof of her mouth. She imagined the ice-cold soda gushing forth from the spigots and then wetting her tongue. Her mouth started to prickle as if she were tasting the gingery drink already.

  She set her bundle down on the counter. When she’d seen the soda jerks operating the spigots, it had always seemed so easy, but she couldn’t figure out how the soda water apparatus worked. The bottles of grape juice behind the counter were a safer bet. Just as she leaned forward to grasp a bottle for Giuliana and one for herself, glass shards crunched beneath heavy boots—too heavy to belong to Giuliana.

  Kate froze, her arm extended. Her heart pounded as if it were trying to escape from her ribcage. Even before turning, she already knew what she would find.

  The young soldier from earlier stood in the shattered doorway, his rifle aimed at her. “So that’s why you were defending the looter. You’re one yourself.”

  “What? No! I’m not taking a thing for myself.” Well, other than the grape juice, but it was better not to mention that. With sweaty hands, Kate attempted to turn more fully so she could show him the Red Cross badge pinned to her chest.

  “Don’t move an inch, or I’ll blow your brains out!” He lifted his rifle higher until she looked directly into the black muzzle. “Don’t think I won’t do it just because you’re a woman.”

  Kate didn’t think that for a second. Her knees shook so badly she was afraid he’d pull the trigger because he thought she was trying to run. Her gaze darted back and forth between the rifle’s muzzle and the soldier’s narrowed eyes. He was squinting as if he was calculating the best place to aim to kill her with one shot.

  “Please, listen. I have a—”

  “Shut up,” he snarled.

  A loud click made both of them freeze.

  “Drop the rifle,” Giuliana said from behind the soldier. Her voice was shaking.

  Careful not to move too fast and make the soldier squeeze the trigger, Kate turned her head and looked over to her.

  Giuliana stood in the entrance. The carrying case with the camera rested at her feet as if she hadn’t wanted to leave it behind. She was holding Lucy’s revolver in both hands, the muzzle aimed at the soldier. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and her fingers trembled just the tiniest bit, but her eyes, dark and intense, shone with determination.

  The soldier held out his rifle to the side. His gaze darted left and right, but he didn’t dare turn to see what was behind him. Seconds later, his weapon clattered to the floor.

  Quickly, Kate bent and picked it up. Her heart was still beating wildly, this time with the joy and relief of knowing she’d survive. “Now will you finally take a look?” She drummed her hand against her chest, where the Red Cross badge still rested. “We’ve been sent out by a doctor who’s got nothing but her bare hands to save her patients. They need bandages and medicine.” She pulled free a corner of her petticoat, revealing the bottles in her bundle.

  The soldier’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “I…I didn’t know.”

  “I was trying to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen. Heavens, the citizens of this city have been through enough. They don’t need some power-drunk boy going around, shooting people at will.”

  Glass shards crunched as he shuffled his feet.

  Now what? Kate couldn’t very well shoot him, as much as she wanted to. She traded gazes with Giuliana and then waved at the soldier to step away from the door. When he did, she pressed the carrying case into Giuliana’s free hand, piled the rifle and the bundle of medicine onto the crate, and urged Giuliana out the door.

  “My rifle!” the soldier called after them.

  Kate stared at the weapon. She couldn’t take it with her, or every soldier in the city would stop her, demanding to know how she had gotten her hands on a military weapon. Neither did she want to give it back. She set down the crate and picked up the rifle. After a moment’s hesitation, she gripped the barrel, swung it the way Corny had taught her to swing a baseball bat when they’d been children, and smashed the rifle butt against a brick wall with all her strength.

  Wood splintered.

  Kate swung the weapon again—and again. Each time, a satisfying crack echoed along the street. Images of the man with the canned goods lying bleeding on the cold cobblestones danced in front of her eyes.

  “Kate.” A soft touch to her back finally stopped her. “This is enough.”

  Dazed, as if awakening from a dream, Kate dropped the remainders of the rifle, picked up the crate, and took one last glance back at the drugstore.

  The soldier stood staring at her, his hands lifted to shoulder height.

  Side by side, she and Giuliana hurried to the automobile. The engine was still running. Within seconds, they peeled down the street, not knowing where they were going, just away, as fast and as far as possible.

  Kate couldn’t stop shaking. Tremors vibrated through her entire body. Only her death grip on the steering wheel kept her from falling off the speeding automobile.

  After half a dozen blocks, a fallen telephone pole lying across the street stopped them.
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  Kate brought the automobile to a halt. Breathing heavily, as if she’d run the entire way, she bent forward and leaned her head against the steering wheel.

  “Kate?” The soft touch to her back came again. “Are you all right?”

  Another tremor ran through Kate. Slowly, beneath Giuliana’s hand that gently rubbed her back, her muscles loosened and the shaking stopped. She sat up and sank back against the leather seat. Exhaustion overcame her without warning, settling across her shoulders like a too-heavy coat. She turned off the engine and just sat there, listening to the silence.

  Giuliana let her sit without saying anything. One hand kept resting on Kate’s arm, anchoring her, while she was still clutching the revolver with the other.

  Finally, Kate straightened and turned toward her. Her gaze was drawn downward to the gleaming weapon on Giuliana’s lap. “Would you have shot him?”

  “If he hurt you—yes.” The answer came without a second’s hesitation, and the expression in Giuliana’s eyes left no doubt about how much she meant it.

  Kate stared at her. So far, Giuliana had barely defended herself against Biddy or when Kate’s father had dismissed her from her position. The fire in her eyes was a surprise.

  Giuliana looked down at the revolver and then peeked back up at Kate. “Does this scare you?”

  Did it? Kate searched her emotions for any trace of fear but found none. “No.” A small smile formed on her lips. “It makes me feel good. Protected.”

  In the sudden silence, the ticking of the engine as it cooled off sounded overly loud.

  Kate peeked over at Giuliana. Had she said too much?

  But Giuliana smiled back, the intense gaze from before softened to something Kate couldn’t read.

  Was it possible…? Nonsense. Don’t start imagining things. Kate climbed down and walked to the front of the automobile to turn the crank and get the Packard moving again. No time to woolgather. She glanced at the backseat, where they had piled the crate, the bundle of medicine, and her carrying case. They had a delivery to make.

  * * *

  The worn grip of the revolver fit perfectly into the curve of Giuliana’s hand, as if it had been made for a woman’s fingers. She stared down at the weapon. Had Lucy ever shot anyone with it? And how about her? Had she really been prepared to take a human’s life—she, who hadn’t even liked killing the fish Turi and their father had caught?