Stone Dreaming Woman

by Lael R. Neill

“But then, why are you…”

  “I have to go home with him. Please at least leave me my dignity, and trust me for now. I’ll explain it to you when I can. Just rest assured that I am not engaged to Phillip Hildebrand, I am not going to marry him, and when I take care of the present situation I’ll be back, I promise.” She looked up at him, her pleading eyes filling with tears. She saw deep sadness in his face as he looked down at her.

  He shook his head slowly, regretfully. “No, don’t make any promises you can’t keep. I respect you enough to let you go. Your father was right in one way. I’m not good enough to associate with you. Worse yet, I could harm your reputation. I know it hurts. It’ll hurt us both for a while, but summer romances are meant to be got over. It’s better that you’re hurt a little by what’s happened today than a lot by who and what I am.”

  “What on earth are you saying?” she asked, incredulous.

  “That I’m not even dirt under your feet. I’m not fit to tie your shoe. Let it go at that, please. You just asked me to leave you your dignity. I’m willing to do that if you’ll leave me mine.” But it was not in her scientific mind to turn loose of a situation she did not understand.

  “Not fit to tie my shoe?” she echoed. “You?”

  With surprising venom he rounded on her. “All right, Miss New York Debutante with all your pretty manners and all your society pretensions, here’s the ugly truth of it. I’m probably a bastard. My grandfather was a squaw man and so was my father. Men like that don’t usually marry their women. They leave children behind and move on. I’m a half-breed. A Métis. Madame LaPorte is my grandmother and Thomas Wise Hand is my great-uncle. I grew up in that shotgun cabin in North Village where you operated on Jimmy Richardson. I’m even Iroquois enough that I went through the manhood ceremony when I was fourteen, and had warrior visions. After the episode with Bart Hankins I became eligible for the Warrior Society, and I was inducted last February. What do you think of me now?”

  She realized that his towering anger was pure defense, and by now she knew him well enough to play to his vulnerabilities. She gave him her best limpid-eyed look. “Oh, Shane, what have I ever done to make you think I could be so shallow? I figured all that out when I first met you. It didn’t matter then, and it doesn’t matter now.” She watched him deflate and seemingly shrink several inches, but then he recovered and took a breath as if to answer her.

  Across the street, a liveried man had escorted Adrian Beaufort from the low building housing his warehouse and offices. The timber baron climbed into his ponderous touring car while his chauffeur went around to the front and gave the crank a heave. Shane continued, not noticing the automobile.

  “Nevertheless, I’m saying goodbye, with my best wishes for your future. It’s true that I’m a half-breed and my…” He was interrupted when the engine belched out a resounding backfire worthy of a ten-pound cannon. Brandy screamed, danced around, and kicked Midnight solidly in the chest. Midnight responded by pitching a tantrum of his own. He reared, pawing the air. Jenny ducked, and Shane moved automatically to shield her from the danger. He took a step toward her as the gelding’s mad prancing snagged a hind hoof under the overhanging boards of the platform. Half falling, the horse lashed out hard, striking Shane’s right temple with a lunging forehoof. Then he caught himself and tore off at a dead gallop, followed an instant later by the thoroughly panicked Brandy.

  Jenny and Paul made simultaneous grabs as Shane, completely unconscious, crumpled like a dropped marionette. His head slumped against the front of her shirtwaist, leaving a wide trail of blood on the white lawn. Instantly Jenny, the girl in love, became Jennifer Catherine Weston, M.D. She slipped a hand behind his head, protecting his neck.

  “Ease him down carefully,” she said quietly. “This is way more than a bloody nose.” With her free hand, she undid the top two buttons of his Red Serge and the shirt beneath it to ease his breathing. Her father came to his knees next to Paul, leaving Phillip standing dumbly. With gentle expertise she and her father log-rolled the unresponsive man onto his side so he would not choke on the blood pouring from his nose. Although he had a strong carotid pulse and he was breathing well, he was profoundly unconscious, had a profuse nosebleed, and there was blood in both ear canals. With ethereal gentleness, John Weston riffled through the dark hair at Shane’s right temple. He of all people knew that he should not palpitate to diagnose a fractured skull. Midnight’s hoof had left a mark well above and a little in front of Shane’s ear.

  “Probably a depressed fracture,” Jenny’s father said quietly, his tone grave. Jenny nodded, looking down at Shane. She was still holding his head. Her right hand was full of blood, and her white lawn shirt sleeve was stained halfway to her elbow. Oh, Shane, don’t let go. We’ll make you well, and when this all blows over we’ll be together again. I promise you. Just fight through this, please.

  Both Adrian Beaufort and his driver had sprinted across the street and were beside them, the older man red-faced and blustering.

  “Doctor Weston!” he exclaimed. “Is he badly hurt? I’ve told this cretin a thousand times to watch for horses before he starts that infernal machine!” His remarks were directed to Jenny, but her father looked up, too.

  “It’s bad enough, sir. He has a fractured skull or worse, and he needs to be taken to the nearest hospital as quickly as we can get there. Get me a wagon. He has to lie completely motionless.”

  “Doctor Weston, who is that?” Adrian asked.

  “That, Mr. Beaufort, is my father, Doctor John Charles Weston. He’s chief neurosurgeon on the staff of Northtown Surgical Clinic in New York.”

  “You heard the doctor, idiot!” Adrian barked at his chauffeur. “Get a wagon! Get going!” His English was heavily Québécois, and he had a marvelously Gallic temper. His unfortunate attendant flapped off across the street like a scarecrow in a gale.

  “I need something to cushion his head. Your coat, please, sir.” John Weston’s polite request came out a demand, accompanied by an outstretched hand. The large man pulled off his jacket and folded it precisely, slipping it beneath Shane’s head at John’s direction. Even after years of living in the world of high finance, Adrian Beaufort still had the broad, coarse hands of a lumberjack. While John’s sensitive, knowing fingers adjusted Shane’s head a minute fraction, Adrian turned to Jenny and Paul.

  “I’m so terribly sorry. This is very unfortunate. Let me do anything I can.”

  “First things first, Mr. Beaufort. Accidents do happen, you know. Let’s get him to the nearest hospital and see just how bad this is,” John responded. At that moment, the hapless chauffeur rattled back with an empty freight wagon. Among the four men they lifted Shane in.

  “To St. Luke’s,” Adrian commanded the teamster. “And take the smoothest way. This man is badly hurt. And you?” He turned to his chauffeur. “Go find those horses and bring them back, and I may let you keep your job!” His voice wound up into a roaring crescendo at the scrawny man, who tore off in the direction the horses had run. Paul boosted Jenny into the front seat of the wagon, where she sat ignored, trying to see what her father observed when he opened Shane’s eyes. Paul climbed up next to her a moment later.

  “It’ll be all right,” he whispered, touching her arm. She shook her head and looked down at her blood-stained blouse.

  “Oh, Paul, the whole world is falling apart,” she breathed.

  “We’ll put it back together. One way or another we’ll make this right.”

  “Jenny, do you have admitting privileges at this…St. Luke’s?” John asked, looking up at her. It was the first time he had addressed himself to his daughter.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Good. Your last act as a physician here will be to get this man admitted. He will need immediate surgery. And I want you to resign from the staff and sign yourself off any cases you may be currently attending. If you want me to treat him, you are going to have to stay well out of my way and do exactly as you are told. And no one else is to address
you as ‘Doctor’ in my presence.”

  “Father, Mr. Beaufort could buy and sell the Westons and the Brisbanes ten times over. He can address me any way he wants to.” Her voice was dull. It was another impotent shot, but she felt obligated to kick against the traces whenever she could, just to let her father know she had not given up.

  They arrived at the hospital, where John heavy-handedly dished out orders right and left. He was as good as his word. She signed admission forms for Shane, did paperwork confirming her father as a consulting surgeon, then, accompanied by the Chief of Surgery, who incidentally was a close friend of Angus MacBride’s, returned to the room where Shane was being prepared for surgery. His clothing had been removed and he lay on a cart, covered to his waist by a sheet. Her father was holding a stethoscope to his chest. He did not look at her but fixed his eyes on the doctor accompanying her.

  “I’m glad you’re here. He started with decerebrate posturing, then had a spectacular grand mal seizure,” he said without preamble. “His pupils are only sluggishly reactive, and the right one is dilated. So you can see there’s not a moment to lose.”

  “Father, this is Doctor Silas Dalton, Chief of Surgery,” Jenny began.

  “John Weston,” her father said, moving the stethoscope to the apex of Shane’s left lung. “We have a depressed fracture of the right temporal and possibly the sphenoid. I think there is bleeding around the brain, probably a subdural hematoma. If he isn’t in surgery within the hour to evacuate that blood, we’ll have a dead or permanently disabled patient on our hands.”

  “I’ve heard of your reputation, Doctor Weston. I’ve ordered the operating theater readied. We can move him there whenever you want.”

  “Good. I will require your best team, gloved and gowned. I want strict sterile procedures followed. Otherwise we’ll finish with a fatal infection. Jenny, as much as I don’t want you within a mile of this procedure, I need you to assist me. I know how you’ve been trained, so you’re not quite the unknown quantity these other people are. Doctor Dalton, you too. Please get him into the operating theater right now.”

  “I’ve alerted my surgical team. They’re getting ready as we speak.”

  Nurses materialized and took Shane toward the surgical theater. Jenny followed Doctor Dalton, and her father tagged behind.

  For all River Bend’s modest size, St. Luke’s was a modern hospital. It had a scrub room outside the operating theater, and inside the entire room was tiled, walls and floor both. It even boasted adjustable electric lights, automatically delivered oxygen, and central suction.

  With help, Jenny donned a sterile gown and scrubbed up next to her father, who largely ignored her. Then she turned to a nurse who wound gauze around her hair and tied a mask over her nose and mouth. The nurse glared at her with extreme disapproval. Jenny had been through that one before. She looked up into the woman’s cold, blue eyes and thought, If you wanted to become a doctor, you should have gone to medical school. Don’t resent me because I had more courage than you did.

  Shane had been moved to the operating table. He did not even look like a living being to her. His face was waxy white, and a nurse was already shaving the side of his head.

  “Don’t bother to shave his entire head,” John barked as soon as he entered the room. “Shave the operative site only. We haven’t time for more. Turn him on his left side and sandbag his head so it won’t move.” The staff jumped to obey his orders. Inside the operating theater, Doctor John Charles Weston was God. Jenny moved up toward his right hand and saw with satisfaction that all the instruments he would require were already laid out.

  John positioned himself above Shane’s draped head and held out his hand. “Scalpel, please?” he asked. He was not one of those prima donnas who raged and stormed in the operating room. Instead, he became an icily polite gentleman. She passed him the instrument, not slapping it into his glove, but handing it to him firmly enough that he could grasp it without looking. “Thank you,” he murmured. So the procedure began. Her entire world narrowed to the patient. He had ceased to be Shane. Instead he was a potentially devastating brain injury that she could help alleviate.

  Jenny went into an alter reality. She watched her father make a big U-shaped incision that began behind the forehead and ended over the ear, reflected the scalp, removed a section of bone and incised the dura mater, then bared the essence of humanity: the brain. After a long, tense interval, he suctioned out a huge blood clot, then replaced the bone, carefully closed the incision, and bandaged Shane’s head. He was the rare surgeon who did his own closures and his own bandages. And when Jenny went back through the scrub area and pulled the gauze off her hair, three hours had elapsed. Across the room, John Weston was also shedding gloves and his sterile gown.

  “Father…” she began.

  “The prognosis is grim, as I suppose you surmised. I don’t think he’ll make it.” Her heart, which had died earlier in the day, could not sink any lower.

  “Yes,” she said, looking down at the green tile floor.

  “But I thank you for your competent assistance. Now I expect you to resign your admission privileges and sign yourself off this case and every other case in this hospital.”

  “I can’t,” she responded. “When I signed the admission forms, the administration informed me that you are practicing under my privileges. If I sign myself off this case, I sign you off, too. If you don’t want to follow up yourself, then fine. I’ll resign and we can catch the next train out.” She knew this was a bluff he would not call. He had committed himself to the care of his patient and would not abandon that commitment this side of Armageddon. She peeled off her gloves and dropped them into the scrub receptacle with its burden of soiled gowns, operative linens, and towels. One of the less resentful nurses moved up to remove her gown, but, remembering the blood on her blouse, she waved the woman away with a word of thanks. John considered her for a moment.

  “Very well. Keep your privileges until this case is resolved, one way or the other. But as I said, his prognosis is extremely poor. I expect him to expire within the next forty-eight hours.”

  “Until then, I will wait in his room,” she said quietly, daring him to forbid her.

  “Jenny, you’ll not…”

  “I will wait in his room,” she interrupted with the Weston firmness she had learned at her father’s knee. She did not voice an or else. It was unnecessary.

  “Very well, then. For the duration of his illness. But if by some miracle he does survive, the moment I judge him able to leave the hospital, I expect you to live up to your promise.”

  “I will. After all, you taught me to keep my word.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Her path to Shane’s room included a side trip to the echoing, tile-floored lobby, where Paul was now waiting with Bob Shepherd. Both men rose when they saw her across the room.

  “Please excuse my surgical gown,” she began, before Paul interrupted her.

  “Jenny? How…?” She shook her head, and the question died.

  “Doctor Weston? How is he?” Superintendent Shepherd asked at the same time.

  “He’s still alive, but I won’t sugarcoat it. He had a big blood clot under the outer membrane that covers the brain. The medical term is subdural hematoma. They are extremely dangerous because they put pressure on the brain. Since the resultant swelling has nowhere to go inside the skull, eventually that pressure can cause circulation to fail. Father was able to remove the clot, and it probably won’t come back, but the prognosis is not good. Very few people survive an accident of that type.”

  “Oh, God,” Paul whispered, his face going as pale as Shane’s had been.

  Bob looked crushed. “Well, then, I know Shane has no family, but is there anyone I should notify?” he asked.

  “In point of fact, his grandmother lives near Elk Gap. If…if the worst happens, I’ll take him…the body…there for burial and tell her myself. But I think someone should telephone Angus MacBride. I’d like to be able to
tell Uncle Richard, too, but he’s away delivering a guest lecture. He’s not due back until next week. By then we’ll know one way or the other.”

  “Could I see him?” Bob asked.

  “It wouldn’t do any good. He’s comatose. And if he…if this is…the end, Bob, I know he would want you to remember him as he was the last time you saw him, whole and well and happy. If he does manage to pull through, you and Paul will be the first ones I allow to visit him.”

  “If there’s anything at all I can do…” Paul could not continue.

  “No, Paul. Not really. Just please, if you will, pray for him. It really does help, you know. Oh, by the way, did Mr. Hildebrand leave after Father told him to go home?” A tic that could have been mistaken for half a smile tugged at the corners of Paul’s mouth.

  “Yes. I saw him off myself.”

  She had a picture of that. “I imagine you did, and in grand style.”

  “You could call it that. He wanted to argue with me. After I pressured him a bit, he let slip that he couldn’t return without a firm marriage commitment from you, which brings to mind…ah…certain doubts about his financial solvency, perhaps? The word ‘dowry’ did come up in our conversation. However, in the end I persuaded him to leave, and on the way I gently informed him that he is persona non grata in my territory from now on. I went so far as to tell him that if he came back I’d be watching him like a hawk, and if he so much as said ‘damn’ or spat in the street he’d be under arrest so fast he wouldn’t even see it happen.”

  “Thank you for that, Paul. And now I really must go. I’m going to sit with Shane. I’ll let you know the moment there’s any change.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Bob Shepherd said. “The telephone number at the constabulary is 422 and my home is 583. Do I need to write that down for you?”

  “No. I’m good at remembering numbers. I won’t forget.”

  “Marie and the girls are going to be devastated. Please keep in touch with us, won’t you?”

  “Don’t worry. I will.” She took her leave, her heart as inert as a chunk of granite in her chest.