Jess pried the little boy from her arms, his face bright pink from crying, but the screams were dying to a whimper, enough that he opened his eyes to see who held him. Dilation looked equal and normal in both eyes. Jess moved her head back from side to side, and his little eyes tracked her movements without a hitch.
“Mr. Kimper, would you mind bringing a lolly?”
The man rushed to the candy shelf and returned within seconds with one of the largest red lollipops Jess had ever seen. Had they gotten bigger since she was a girl?
The little boy’s eyes grew as round as tires and his whimpers dissolved into a series of sniffs. The bulge on his head swelled to an impressive size, but Jess had seen much worse. Painful, and certainly noticeable, but nothing life-risking. To be sure, she moved the lollipop in front of his face and watched as he reached up for it.
“What is this...?” Jess looked to the mother in search of the boys’ name?
“Thomas.”
“Thomas, what is this?”
He reached for the candy but Jess kept it just a teensy bit out of reach.
His dark, round gaze switched to hers, a bit annoyed, and back to the candy. “Lolly.”
“Yes, that’s right.” Jess moved the lollipop toward her mouth. “Is it for me or your mother?”
His gaze switched to his mother in response to her name. Yes, no sluggishness in those big brown eyes. A very good sign. “Mine.”
“Ah.” Jessica grinned, the tension in her body ebbing with her sigh. “I think you’ve certainly earned it from the goose-egg on your sweet head.”
Whether from her recent motherhood or the passage of time, Jess found new comfort in holding the little boy and talking with him—one she’d never experience when helping at her friend Ashleigh’s orphanage.
Mrs. Landers’ panicked gaze met Jessica’s. “Will he be all right?”
Jess handed the boy, lolly in hand, back to his mother. “I think so. The bump on his head is going to be there for a while. At least a week, but I wouldn’t let him nap today. Not until late afternoon, at least. And when he does take a nap, don’t let him sleep long without stirring him to the point he can answer a few questions for you. If all goes well, he should be fine going to bed tonight at his usual time.”
“Thank you.” Mrs. Landers gathered her sniffling boy back into her arms. “I’m so happy you happened to be by.”
Jess tossed Amy a grin. “It looks like you were already in good hands.”
Amy’s smile responded with instant gratitude. Jess felt the kindred tug toward this young girl’s dream, a desperate hope to climb from the world she’d always known to something beyond, maybe even something greater.
She stood and Amy rose with her. “Do you have any of your days free, Amy?”
Her brown eyes, almost a cinnamon color, widened. “What do you mean?”
“Would you like some training? Outside of your classes, of course, but a chance to learn from a real doctor?”
Amy’s palm covered her chest and her pink bottom lip swung loose. “Would I?”
“I can’t make any promises, you understand, but my grandfather could use another hand.”
Mrs. Landers walked past them, carrying her content, sniffling son out of the shop, and Mr. Kimper stepped forward. “I don’t know if that’d work, Miss Jesse.”
“Why not?” Jessica’s gaze took in Kimp’s wary expression and then switched to the sudden dejection on Amy’s face. “The school would object?”
Amy shook her head, a slight wobble in her bottom lip before it firmed into a frown. “Uncle Kimp means my bad blood... or my family’s, at any rate.”
Jessica knew the phrase, a title tarnished with the sins and superstitions of generations. Seldom did it prove true, except as a self-fulfilling prophecy for a child who couldn’t move beyond the stigma of having a debauched parent.
Jessica turned to Jude, offering him a smile. “Jude, would you go over to the cloth at the far corner of the store and try to find some white thread for Granny?”
Those eyes, filled with much more knowledge than they ought, scanned the faces of the three adults and then, with a nod, he moved to the other side of the store. What went on behind those eyes? Perhaps, as she sorted out how to be a mother, he’d let her know.
“Why?”
Amy looked to her uncle and, with a movement of his chin, he released her to speak. “I came here to live with my uncle and aunt because all my family’s dead or... gone.”
“Gone?” The way she hesitated on the word brought its own shadows.
Kimp took a look around the vacant store and lowered his voice. “Her mama’s in the asylum. She plumb lost her mind.”
Tears glistened in Amy’s eyes, giving them a golden hue among the cinnamon. “She killed my brother and daddy first.”
Jess’ palm flew to her stomach as the declaration hollowed her like a blow. “What?”
“I was with my Papa. He was dying from some sort of lung infection is all I can tell from my readings, so I didn’t know until I...” Amy stopped talking, her lips pinched tight against her emotions.
“The boy was found drowned in a feed sack,” Kimp whispered, placing a hand on Amy’s shoulder. “Her daddy... well, there wasn’t much left to know what happened to him after the fire.”
Jess glanced back toward Jude, the mere thought of someone hurting him inciting a wave of nausea and rage. She turned back to Amy. “I’m sorry, Amy. I can’t even imagine how much you’re hurting.”
“Thank you, Miss Ross.”
“Jessica.” Jess put out her palm. “Call me Jessica.”
Amy shook a tear loose from her lashes and smiled. “Thank you, Jessica.” She took Jess’ hand, lowering her head. “I’m sorry I can’t take advantage of your offer to learn more about medicine.”
“Why not?” Jess laced her arms across her chest and defied any argument. “Why can’t you? I don’t buy into this rubbish about bad blood, and I’m certain there are other people who won’t either. Besides, it’s high time people started thinking with their heads instead of their superstitions.”
“Do... do you mean you’ll still have me?”
“Have you? Amy, I have a particular fondness for helping young women believe in themselves. Bad blood? Good blood?” Jess shook away the ridiculous notion. “I see smarts and talent, and the world needs more people willing to take those skills in hand and refine them to serve others. If your uncle has no objections to me talking to my grandfather?” She sent Kimp a look.
“I... I don’t see why not.” He pushed a thick hand through his hair. “If you’re sure?”
She focused her attention back on Amy, her smile spreading. “Oh, I’m sure, and I’ll make sure Grandpa’s certain too.”
She looked over her shoulder to her little boy. “Jude, how about we pick out your very first lollipop.” She paused and smiled at Amy. “Make that two lollipops. I feel like celebrating a small victory in a really big war.”
***
“I know your heart is in the right place, Jessica.” Her grandfather moved across the clinic, putting away the supplies he’d used to set a broken finger after Mr. Chase hit it with his hammer. “But there are some battles too ingrained to try and fight.”
Jessica cast a look over her shoulder at Jude, who she’d given the job of rolling up some of Grandpa’s unraveled gauze. He’d come to help her at the clinic for the past few days, doing menial chores to pass the time, and they both seemed to enjoy each other’s company.
She turned back to Grandpa and lowered her voice. “I’d say it’s high time we performed some much needed surgery on the mindset of a few sects of mountain people.”
“Insanity is hereditary. You, as a nurse, are well aware of the fact.” He raised a brow, edging his doubts into her certainty.
“I’m also well aware that more times than not, this fear of hereditary insanity is used to condemn many an innocent person to a life as an outcast. I don’t think Amy carries her mother’s illness
.”
“Which may not present itself until adulthood.”
Jessica gritted her teeth at her grandpa’s reluctance. If God was watching this scene, wouldn’t He try to bring some sanctified reasoning to her hard-headed grandfather? She tossed her gaze to the ceiling for a brief and half-hearted plea for help and a sudden idea formed. An argument... no, an appeal.
“Then what a better person to look for signs, if there are any, of her having the same illness as her mother. You’re a doctor. You’d notice the red flags. You’d be able to predict if she was dangerous or not. There’s no safer place in all of Hot Springs for her to be than working for you.”
Grandpa bestowed her with a long-suffering stare. “I see you’ve lost none of your cleverness, my dear girl.”
“It’s especially handy with hard-headed men.”
He growled and shook his head. “Have you thought about her? How the rejection might impact her?” Her grandpa stepped closer. “There will be plenty of people who won’t even talk to her, let alone let her treat them.”
“Then for those who will, who see beyond superstition and bad blood...” She grimaced around the words. “For those people and for Amy, we have the opportunity to set the right example—to start a new way of thinking.” She waited until he looked back up from his work. “You wouldn’t let this culture hold me back from going to college, from traveling across the world to help serve in a war that wasn’t even mine yet.”
“That’s different. Your father was English and you... you were from a different type of family.” He faltered over his words. “You weren’t born back in those mountains, Jess. You were born here, where there is a little more opportunity, to parents who stretched beyond the borders of what they’d known.”
“Then help me bring that same kind of opportunity to these mountain girls.”
“The mission school is trying to do that.”
She released a burst of contained air and looked down at the floor. Yes, her grandpa grew from generations of mountain people, but innovative and creative mountain people. Big thinkers. Dreamers. That was the only reason he had the vision to send Jess’ mother abroad for schooling after she’d finished a surprisingly eclectic and solid education at the little two-room schoolhouse in town. Surely, she could reach beyond years of staying in these mountains to touch to his creative heart. “Our mountain school is a wonderful mission. And women will be much more prepared to take care of their families when they complete their studies. But what about those who desire even more? What about those who feel called to something else?”
Grandpa took her by the shoulders, and his green-hued gaze rimmed his firmness with tenderness. “There’s no need for you to put ideas in these girls’ heads. Lots of them are content with being mothers and wives.”
“And I’m only beginning to understand what a beautiful opportunity motherhood is. One of the highest callings of any woman’s heart.” Her chest flooded with a painfully sweet warmth, spreading wider more and more each day, as she thought about Jude and Faith. “But there are other callings too. I’m not trying to change anybody’s mind.”
His raised eyebrow challenged her statement.
“I’m serious. I don’t want to stop some girl who finds contentment in being a wife and mother. I’m glad my mother was able to be with me my whole childhood, even as she pursued her writing career from her mountain home. But she still fed another dream.” She sighed. “I only want these girls to know that if they harbor another dream inside them, they are as capable of making it happen as any man.”
“No, Jessica, they’re not. Man or woman, there are dreams in people’s hearts in these mountains that will never be able to find a place in reality.” He gave her shoulders a small shake and dropped his hold. “You’ve been across the ocean in the middle of a war, and you’ve gotten used to a really big world, with access to things that we won’t see in these parts for twenty years or more. But this world here”—he pointed to the window—“is still very small and wrapped in its own superstitions and beliefs and values.”
“But that big wide world has already started coming here. First, with the railroad and now, with fewer and fewer of our people living off the land and relying on foods provided from outside these mountains. Why should we wait for that world out there to impact us when we can impact it?”
Grandpa smiled, his moustache twitching with a look of resignation... and a hint of pride. “You sure can argue a point, girl.”
She held her smile in check, softening her voice. “I know this world can’t go back to the way it was before the war, and we’ll receive the good and the bad from those changes, but the world Jude and Faith walk into in fifteen years is going to look much different. And now, since this war and the railway and the radio have made this world so much bigger, don’t you think it can encourage us to dream bigger too?”
“You know you can’t change the mindset of a whole community and you can’t meet the dreams of every young woman in this town.”
Her breathing came in forced intervals. “Then how about we start with the dreams of one?”
***
“I can see you are very good at this game, Miss Jesse. I must work hard to keep up with you.” August tipped the birdie back across the net and Jessica bolted for it.
She’d worn a dress with a shorter hemline today, pale blue, and even more flattering than some of her other regular frocks. August could only suppose the length kept her feet from entanglement, but the dress itself also provided a tempting view of her silhouette. It cinched at her waist, showing off her curves in a way he’d failed to observe. He certainly didn’t miss the opportunity now.
Caring for her personality through letters came with a somewhat benign attraction, but in the flesh, the fiery and beautiful flesh, his attraction twisted into a severe distraction. He missed the next shot.
“Are you growing tired yet, Mr. Reinhold? I can give you a rest if you need one.” Her smile mocked him with a sweetness her gaze contradicted. Good-humored teasing.
Her previous disdain had disappeared after their conversation at the chapel, and perhaps her suspicions would run the same vein. At the very least, she tolerated his presence, but he hoped time would curb her indifference.
He caught her watching him as he went to collect the birdie from the grass. His grin hitched. Perhaps things were already changing? “I am merely distracted by the lovely view, Miss Jesse.”
She opened her mouth to respond with something witty judging from the defiant tilt in her chin, and then she seemed to catch his hidden meaning. A swath of pink rose into her cheeks, her gaze faltering on his before she recovered. “Whatever advantages I need, you understand, Mr. Reinhold.”
“Your advantage or mine?” His poor attempt to tame his smile transformed into a full grin, and another ribbon of pink shot into Jessica’s face.
With her golden hair loosed from its bindings around her heated faced and her evergreen eyes bright from her physical exertion, August couldn’t imagine an advantage or vantage greater than his at present.
“Are we going to play or talk? Or perhaps you’re stalling because you need the rest?”
They followed with two more long rallies, both of which August won. Jessica leaned forward, catching her breath.
“Would you like to stop for today?”
“No,” she answered too quickly. “I’m one point from passing you.”
He stepped close to the net, bending down to see her face. “You must truly love the game.”
She slit him a glare. “It’s beginning to lose a bit of its luster.”
“You would not be a bad sport, would you, Jessica Ross?”
She stood straight, her lips wrestling with a smile. “Honestly, Mr. Reinhold, I’m a horrible sport, but I’m putting on a good face for that little boy over there.”
She nodded toward Jude, who sat on the porch with a lemonade in hand, watching the entire exchange. Her smile turned ruthless. “I hate losing.”
“Anot
her rally then?” he offered.
She fought ferociously for the next point and it seemed impossible, but August dove for it, barely touching the birdie with his racquet before crumbling to the earth. He watched from his grassy bed as the birdie flew through the air and, as if sprouting wings, tipped over the net to Jessica’s side.
With a relieved sigh he collapsed back to the earth and suddenly, the most remarkable thing happened. From the other side of the net, a chuckle bubbled into full-blown laughter. He turned his head as she rounded the net, her clapping exaggerated.
He could do little but stare at her—her eyes glistening, her smile broad, and everything about her drawing his waiting heart into her very unpredictable hands. Beautiful.
“Mr. Reinhold, I rarely see such commitment in an opponent.” She reached down in an effort to help him to a stand. “Quite impressive.”
Without hesitation, he took her offering and she helped him to his feet. “I’m pleased I’ve impressed you in some way, my dear Miss Ross.”
Her smile faded, her emerald gaze locked with his, and a jolt of connection, as fierce as the first touch in the train depot, shocked back to life between them. Her breath faded, and for the faintest second, her attention dropped to his mouth.
A violent heat scorched through him at the sudden awareness... desire. He dared not move, breathe... do anything to break this unexpected link of her initiation. Her gaze flickered back to his, curious and confused. To have a battlefield of experiences, her understanding of romance mirrored more of a schoolgirl’s than a woman’s. Uncertain. Timid. Or at least it did with him.
She blinked and dropped his hand, stepping back. “You are quite the anomaly, Mr. Reinhold.”
“And this is a compliment, yes?”
His gaze searched hers until her smile twitched up on one side. “I’m not quite sure how to figure you out.”
“I am simple, really.” He opened his palms and shrugged. “As you see.”
Her survey swept the length of him, leaving a lightning trail in its wake. “You are many things, but simple doesn’t seem to hold the appropriate description.”
The Thorn Healer Page 16