She turned away from her ravaged reflection in the mirror over the washstand beside the bed—a real bed, though no better or larger than the cot she’d had at Carlisle. Covering the dirt floor beside the bed was an oval rag rug. The only other items in the room were a cabinet of medical instruments and supplies, an armless spindle-back chair, a trunk at the foot of the bed, a small stove for heat and, she suspected, for boiling water with which to sterilize his instruments, and a small table that held the room’s single lamp.
Spence had left her in his room while he made the arrangements for her father’s burial in the morning. Matt had stayed behind so her father wouldn’t be alone.
It was over. All her dreams of being reunited with her father, her dreams of the two of them sharing a life…of them laughing and talking late into the night, of him telling her stories about her mother the way he used to in the old days. All of it, gone.
Oh, God, how was she to bear it?
And what was she to do about the promises her father had wrung from her, to stay with Spence, to go home with him?
Time enough to worry about that after tomorrow. Tonight was for grieving.
Spence saw to the burial arrangements quickly and efficiently. He’d done it so often these past few years—it was hard to remember the last time he hadn’t lost a patient—he could have made the arrangements in his sleep. But Chee deserved better. Goddammit, they all deserved better!
It was the senseless waste of another life that sent him scrambling for the familiar haven of the dark shadows at the edge of the swamp. He wanted to hit something—hard. He wanted to pound his head again and again against the trunk of the thickest, hardest cypress he could find. He wanted to rant, to scream out his frustration, his helplessness, his rage. Instead, he clenched his jaw and his fists and squeezed his eyes shut.
How had it all gone so wrong? When would it end? When would their dying end?
As a doctor, he knew that accidents and illness happened. That they claimed innocent people was a fact of life he’d long ago learned to live with. But this…this that was happening to the Chiricahua…it wasn’t happening to them, it was being done to them in the unholy name of peace and security for the United States of America.
It was a crock of shit, he thought bitterly.
The rage rose in him until he shook with it. Until his breath came in gasps. Until his jaw and hands ached from holding them tight to keep from screaming, or hitting something. He swung at the tree, and at the last second, turned his fist to strike with the side of his hand rather than his knuckles. Mustn’t ram our fine surgeon’s fingers into a tree. Had to take care of those hands. Had to keep them limber, in perfect working order. So he could sign the next goddamned death certificate.
To hell with it. He wasn’t a doctor anymore, hadn’t been a surgeon in years. The minute Chee was buried, Spence was going home. With masochistic satisfaction, he rammed his knuckles into the tree and welcomed the pain.
For long moments afterward he stood in the black shadows beneath the cypress, the air heavy around him and smelling of rotting vegetation, of dying things. Gradually his shaking eased and his breathing leveled out.
It was late by the time he made his way back toward the row of dogtrots at the edge of the barracks. Near the door to Chee’s room a match tip flared then went out, leaving the red glow of a burning cigarette behind. Matt’s voice came out of the shadows. “Are you two really married?”
Spence let out a pent-up breath. “Yeah. Sort of.”
Matt paused with the cigarette halfway to his lips. “You’re sort of married?”
It was in Spence’s mind to explain, but something held him back. Maybe his own fierce need for privacy, or maybe it was knowing LaRisa would resent having her personal business discussed by white men. Whatever the reason, he found himself shrugging. “We’re married.”
“Why? You don’t even know each other. Hadn’t even met until what, four days ago?”
“Drop it, will you? I’m too tired for an inquisition tonight.”
Matt took a final drag then dropped the butt and ground it out with his boot heel. “I feel responsible for her, you know. Because of Chee.”
“I know. Let’s just get through tonight and tomorrow, then we’ll figure out…whatever needs to be figured out.”
Spence turned to walk away.
“Is this marriage real? Are you sleeping with her?”
Spence turned back slowly. “Even for you, that’s a little personal. Taking this uncle thing pretty damned serious, are we?”
“Yes, we are.” There was steel in Matt’s voice. “Are you going to answer me?”
Spence thought about it a moment, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think I am. She’s nineteen years old, a grown woman, and about as helpless as a rattler. She doesn’t need you to look out for her.”
“The hell she doesn’t. She’s never been on her own. She’s a babe in the woods, and I don’t want her hurt or taken advantage of.”
“I’m going to hurt her and take advantage of her? Come on, brother, don’t beat around the bush. Tell me what you really think of me.”
“This isn’t about you.”
“Isn’t it? I’m the man she’s married to, and you’re worried about her being hurt or taken advantage of. I’d say—”
“Ah, hell. I didn’t mean it like that and you know it. There’s no talking to you when you get your nose out of joint. Just go get her. I’ll keep my mouth shut. For now.”
Because it was what he’d planned to do anyway, Spence turned away and went to his room to get LaRisa. With a brief tap of warning, he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Then nearly swallowed his tongue.
He’d never seen her with her hair down before. She’d always worn it in a thick braid wrapped around her head. He’d had no idea…hadn’t even thought to wonder how long it was, how thick. As shiny black as the wing of a raven, it hung heavy and straight and bountiful clear past her hips to the middle of her thighs, and the sight of it took his breath away. He wanted to stand there forever and look at it. Wanted to touch it, feel it, smell it, bury his face in it and never come up for air. Merely looking at it made something inside him, some dark hidden place, start to ache. God, but it was something to behold, that hair.
A dull gleam caught his eye, and he finally noticed the scissors in her hand, held poised to sheer off a handful of that luxuriant mass just below her jaw. She was going to…good God, she was going to cut it off!
He instantly knew why. It was the Apache way to cut off the hair and blacken the face to show deep mourning for the passing of a loved one. As much as he respected the Apaches’ rights to their own beliefs and customs, at that moment, he didn’t give a damn about respect or anything else. He couldn’t let her do it.
“No!” He leaped and grabbed her hand. “Don’t!”
LaRisa had seen him come in, but had ignored him. Now, with fiery shock in his eyes, his hand gripping hers with bruising strength and preventing her from completing her task, ignoring him was impossible. His interference was suddenly one injustice too many for her to bear.
Her people had been tricked and lied to and imprisoned far from home in a land full of sickness, hopelessness, death. The two-year exile had now stretched into eight, with no end in sight. She had been torn from her father’s side and sent to a cold, foreign, lonely place for those eight long years only to return in time to watch him die.
The white man had done this to her. The white man had lied and cheated her people. The white man had sent her to Pennsylvania. She had been beaten and starved, then forced to marry a white man just so she could come to her father. This white man before her had bared her shameful secrets and stripped her of her pride, her dignity. Made her feel things she didn’t want to feel. This same white man who called himself a doctor had stood by and let her father die. Now…now he was forbidding her the right to mourn her father? Her chest heaved with fury. It was too much. Too much! In blind, sheer rage, not even rememberi
ng she still held the scissors, she jerked from his grasp and struck out at him.
Spence saw the flash of steel. He ducked, but not fast enough. Pain exploded as the points of the scissors slashed across his left cheek. He cried out and slapped a hand to his face to hold back the burning agony and stem the sudden flow of blood.
“Spence!” LaRisa stared in horror, barely realizing what she had done. Rage couldn’t hold a candle to the sudden surge of shock. With a grimace of revulsion, she flung the bloody-pointed scissors to the hard-packed dirt floor. “Oh my God!”
“Sonofabitch!” Spence squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw. “Goddamn.”
“Spence, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. Oh, Spence!”
His only answer was a low growl as he turned and yanked open the cabinet of medical supplies. One-handed, he grabbed a thick sterile gauze pad and moved to the small mirror over the washstand.
When he took his hand away from his cheek to examine the wound, LaRisa gasped. It was long and deep, slashing straight across his cheek beneath his left eye. Blood streamed bright red down his ashen face. Surely he should have been screaming with pain. The realization that she could easily have hit his eye had her aim been a mere two inches higher started a cold trembling deep inside.
“Not exactly the blood of victory, is it?” he sneered. “I hope to hell they taught you how to sew at that school.”
Ignoring his sarcastic comment about the warrior she’d dreamed of—she figured he had a right to sarcasm just then—she reached for his bottle of carbolic acid. The wound needed to be cleaned. “Why?”
“Because I’m not in the mood to learn how to suture myself.”
He said it calmly, but she heard the pain and the fury beneath the words. “You trust me to stitch up your face after what I just did to it?”
“You cut it, you can damn well fix it,” he bit out. “Maybe it’ll make you think next time before you throw another one of your tantrums. Were those my scissors?”
LaRisa swallowed and nodded.
“Good. At least I know they were sterile.” The gauze pad filled with blood. He exchanged it for a fresh one and gave her a sharp look. “They were still sterile, weren’t they? You didn’t touch anything with the points?”
“I…I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so.” Hell, for all he knew she’d dragged the points across the dirt floor or used them to pick her nose. He was going to have to irrigate the wound. “Shit. While I get the bleeding stopped, you get a fire going in the stove. Then go out to the well three doors down and fill up both of those buckets there by the door. Shit. All I wanted to do was keep you from cutting off your hair.”
LaRisa struck a match to the kindling already laid in the small stove. The way her hand shook, it was a miracle that the match didn’t go out before the kindling caught. She then added wood from the pile at the foot of the bed. “All I wanted was to be allowed to mourn my father. If you understood anything about the traditions of my people—”
“I know what the hell you were doing. I shouldn’t have interfered, all right? But it’s too late now, and you can forget cutting your hair. After this, you owe me, girl. You cut so much as a single strand and so help me I’ll shave you bald every day for the next year.”
She slammed the door shut on the stove. “Look. I’m sorry about your face. I didn’t mean to cut you. It was an accident. But you don’t own me, white man. You don’t tell me what to do.”
His glare nearly sliced her in two. “Get the damn water.”
His voice was so hard, his eyes so cold, she swallowed further argument and went for the water.
While she was gone Spence swore a blue streak and kept pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. When she returned he instructed her to wash her hands thoroughly, heat the carbolic acid, and prepare the sterilized needle and silk for suturing.
“I know what to do, white man.” She had help tend many wounds while working in the infirmary. The children were forever falling down or getting cut or otherwise injuring themselves. Mary had been a stickler for antiseptic methods. But LaRisa had never actually pierced human flesh with a needle. She was quite certain that she didn’t want to start now, on this man. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go get the post doctor?”
“He left for town two hours ago.”
“Is there no one else…”
“What are you worried about? You’ve been wanting to stab me with something for the past four days. You took your best shot with the scissors. Let’s see what you can do with a needle.”
She’d apologized more than once. She wouldn’t grovel. “I think a nice chain stitch would look good. I could do your initials, maybe in script. Or if you’d rather, I do quite an attractive daisy, with the cutest little French knot in the center.”
“Shit.” Then he laughed. “Oh, damn, that hurts. Don’t make me laugh.”
But she wanted to. The sound was so startling, the shift from anger to humor, when he had every right to be angry, left her off balance.
“Open that bottom door on the cabinet.” When she did, he said, “See that pint bottle?”
“The whiskey?”
“Yeah. Pull the cork and take a healthy swallow.”
She held it up to the light and gave him a dubious look. “You want me to get drunk before I start stitching?”
“No, but I’d rather your hands quit shaking before you come at me with that needle.”
LaRisa looked down to find that her hands were still visibly trembling. “Oh.” She pulled the cork and tilted the bottle to her lips. Liquid fire poured down her throat and exploded in her stomach. Her eyes bulged and teared, and a coughing fit seized her. “You’ve poisoned me!”
Reminding himself not to laugh, Spence sat on the chair and moved the lamp near. “Not before surgery. I’m saving the poison for later. Your hands are steady now.”
“So they are,” she said, amazed. She held the bottle out to him. “Your turn. That carbolic acid is going to make you want to scream.”
He could have done without the reminder, but she was right. A stiff belt or two wouldn’t hurt. While he sipped, she washed her hands again, then removed the heated carbolic acid from the stove and turned toward him. He took another long pull, then set the bottle on the floor next to his chair. He had a feeling he was going to need it again before this was over.
She made quick work of cleaning out the wound, but no amount of speed could keep his breath from hissing through his teeth or his muscles from clenching at the near-blinding pain. When she came at him with the sutures, he forced himself to hold still. If he so much as flinched she’d probably end up sewing his eyelid shut.
With the needle poised, she paused and met his gaze. Her deep, dark eyes showed regret, uncertainty, maybe even a little fear.
“Just pretend it’s thin, wet leather,” he told her.
Her throat worked on a swallow, then she lowered her gaze to his cheek. Her touch was surprisingly gentle. The suturing wasn’t nearly as bad as the carbolic acid.
I don’t like this, LaRisa thought fervently. She didn’t like the idea of pushing a needle through flesh. She liked to think she had a strong stomach and steady nerves, but the first few stitches had her gorge rising and were probably harder on her than on Spence. Sweat beaded along her brow, between her breasts, between her shoulder blades.
Gradually, as she made her way across the deep cut with precise, even stitches, it became easier. She took care to make sure the edges of the wound were even, that the skin didn’t pucker. “Ice will keep the swelling down.”
“Ice?” Spence grunted. “In case you haven’t noticed, girl, this is hell. They don’t have ice in hell.”
“Are you being sarcastic or are you telling me there is no ice?”
“Both.”
“All right. No ice. Do you want me to dust with iodoform when I’ve finished?”
“Yes,” he said, surprised that she knew what it was. “Follow that with boric acid po
wder.”
She took her last stitch, then snipped the silk with a sterile pair of scissors from the cabinet. After dusting with the separate powders, she moved to press an antiseptic gauze pad gently over the wound. Before he would let her bandage him, he inspected her handiwork in the mirror.
She supposed it was too much to expect him to actually praise her efforts. A low grunt was his only response.
LaRisa applied the gauze, then thick wool treated with antiseptic. The only way to hold it in place and apply enough pressure to hopefully keep the cheek immobile was to secure it with a two-inch wide bandage wrapped firmly across his nose and around his head.
Satisfied that she’d done the best she could, she started cleaning up the room. “Laudanum will help you sleep.”
“This will do me.” He took another pull from the bottle.
“You’re going to be in enough pain in the morning without adding the effects of a hangover.”
“Trust me, it takes a hell of a lot more than this to give me a hangover. Besides, this’ll wear off long before I get any sleep.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Come on. I’ll help you with…your father.”
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “It’s for family to do.”
“I may be your husband in name only, but I’m still your husband. I’m the closest thing to family you’ve got, girl. You can’t do it alone.”
LaRisa lowered her gaze. She didn’t want to take care of her father alone, but she couldn’t admit she wanted Spence there. She gave a shrug that she hoped looked indifferent. “Suit yourself.”
When LaRisa stepped into her father’s room and saw him lying so peacefully, a soft smile on his face, she thought for a moment it had all been some horrible mistake. He wasn’t really dead, only resting. Any second he would open his eyes and look at her, and his smile would widen. He would hold out his hand as he’d done earlier, and she would take it in hers and kneel beside him and—
“What happened to your face?” Matt asked Spence.
Apache-Colton Series Page 155