Breathe: A Novel of Colorado

by Lisa T. Bergren

  "Tears aren't on a schedule you can control, Nic."

  He pulled his hand away. "It's time to grow up, Moira. A grown woman knows there's a time and place for such things."

  "Go away, Nic, and leave me be."

  "Think about someone else for once, Moira. Think about me or Dess."

  "I am!" She glanced up at him, green eyes flashing. She jumped up and pulled her shawl more closely around her. "Forget my offer to stay with Dess tonight. You have it all under control! Hire the nurse. Let Papa see the charge, wonder if he's made a mistake, leaving you to make the decisions about her care."

  She strode past him toward the door, but he caught her arm. "That's a foul thing to say, Moira."

  "No more foul than your thoughts," she said, wrenching her arm away and staring up into his eyes. "I'm simply more brave in giving voice to the truth than you are." With that, she turned and left the room.

  Roaring in frustration, Dominic grabbed the oil lamp and imagined sending it crashing against the far wall. It felt good to hold the weight of it in his hand. It would be even better to hurl it across the room, watch it splinter and fly apart, see the oil spread into a dollop and slowly ease down the pine wall. But it would only take the edge off his anguish. It wouldn't take away its source.

  He paced back and forth, hands on his head, staring at Odessa. "Come on, Dess. Come back to us. I need you."

  Bryce heard the man pacing on the floor above him and to the right. Somewhere near Odessa St. Clair's room. Or even Sam's, God rest his soul. Maybe even in it. For the first time since his arrival, he wished he had chosen an upstairs, private room rather than take a bed in the communal quarters. He'd been looking to save the money, but now he wanted nothing more than to duck his head out in the hallway and see what was transpiring above him. He heard a woman's light, hurried step and a man's heavy-footed stride down the hall.

  They were odd sounds, urgent sounds. And considering Odessa had remained unconscious since finding Sam the night before ...

  He eyed the patient next to him, a young miner named Jared from Illinois, who shared a look of concern. Bryce threw back the covers and sat up, waiting a moment to make sure he'd not start a coughing fit. The same action a month ago might've ended with him passing out.

  Then he moved out, listening hard for more noise coming from upstairs. But the wide stairs that began at the entrance of the sanatorium and split to take people up to two different wings in grand fashion remained empty. Taking a long, slow breath, he eyed the stairs with some consternation. He hadn't ever been up them; Odessa had been carried down to the sunporch they had shared on the west side of the house. Thoughts of the long hill between the stables and the cabin, ofTabito having to carry him up and to the wagon, as helpless as a baby, assailed his mind. But he shoved them back, choosing to think only of Odessa St. Clair and what might be unfolding above.

  Where the devil was everyone? He wiped the sweat from his lip and began the climb up the steps, feeling as if he were climbing the Peak instead of a flight of stairs. Halfway up, the stairway curved, and he could see a bit down the hall, with Nurse Packard and a maid moving in and out. A younger doctor, in training under Doctor Morton, looked in with a vague disinterest in his eyes, then turned to move down the hall.

  So Odessa was safe. But there was a lot of commotion emanating from her room. He knew the occupants of every private room-that was, up until old Sam had died the night before-and had guessed at which one might be Odessa's. With little to do but read and eat and sleep, he had spent a good amount of time thinking of such things, mapping out the place, imagining the movements of everyone present, counting the days until he could join the others on the daily rides into the foothills and canyons. He felt like an old woman in a small village, overly interested in the comings and goings of all. But it was so oppressively dull, what was a man to do?

  He vacillated, now that he had a pretty good idea that Odessa was safe. What was right, what was proper? She was no business of his. They'd barely spoken. But Sam ... Sam had liked her from the start. Said her eyes were like his daughter's, a daughter long gone. And now Sam was dead. One day sitting next to him on the porch, yammering on, teasing him, the next day in a pine box. His neighbor, the man responsible for getting Bryce himself to the sanatorium, to help, on the road to health, now gone.

  Bryce turned to head back downstairs and then paused and headed upward again. He had to see her. Just a glimpse to know she was all right. That something worse had not transpired. "Not another one, Lord," he whispered, panting. "Keep the girl safe."

  At long last, he made it up the stairs. He paused for several breaths, swallowing against the sudden phlegm in his throat. The maid left, bucket in hand, and passed him by with little more than a curious glance. The room was still and quiet, morning sun streaming across the floorboards and out into the hall.

  Decided now, he stepped down the hall, felt the pull of leg muscles he hadn't felt in weeks, more alert, awake than he had been in months. His pulse raced; his temples pounded.

  He passed by her room first, just glancing in. Sam's room was dark in comparison, the shades pulled down, the bed remade and empty. Bryce frowned. The old man had seemed better lately, as if he were making a recovery. But the White Death was like that ... nibbling up people bit by bit, sometimes in hidden ways. Yes, sometimes it only took another swipe, a compounding infection, sometimes even a mere cool north wind, to carry off the barely standing wreckage of a consumptive.

  But he had seen people leave this place, if not fully cured at least whole again. On their feet. He wanted to be among their numbers. Resolutely, he turned back toward Odessas room and, seeing no one down the hall, peered in at her. He frowned. Her lovely face-a face begging to be immortalized by a sculptor-was covered in bandages. They had wrapped the cloth around her head, so that her dark hair lay flat beneath but sprang to life in swirling curls below, at her neck and around on the pillow.

  Bryce realized his hand was over his heart. What was it about this woman that moved him so? What right had he to feel his pulse quicken in the face of her further injury? What had moved her to risk herself, rising unaided? A man lumbered down the hall and Bryce started, realizing now that he was within Odessas room. He cast about his mind for a suitable explanation.

  "McAllan?" Dominic said, brow furrowing.

  "Forgive me, Dominic. I ... uh ... I know I have no business ... Listen, I heard some commotion and after last night ..."

  "You wanted to make sure she was all right." Dominic's eyes moved from assessment to a softer understanding. He reached out to touch his sister's arm, tucking it beneath a blanket. "Dess has that effect on people. Always has."

  "Yes, well. Now that I know you're here, I'll cease my meddling and be about my own business."

  Bryce moved to pass him in the doorway but Dominic reached out to grab his arm. "They found her in Sam O'Toole's room," he said. "Do you have any idea why she would have gone in there?"

  "No." Bryce shook his head, glanced at Odessa again. "How'd she get so cut up?"

  "Swiped one of these glass bells off the stand as she was going down," he said, picking Odessas up and stilling the ringer. "Just her luck to fall down on it." He set it gently back in place. "Doctor thinks she was confused, feverish. Wandering. Just happened to be in O'Toole's room after he died."

  "And you?"

  "Seems plausible," Dominic said, moving closer to Odessa. He looked up at Bryce. "I'm sorry for your loss. Your friend-the old man was kind."

  "Yes, he was," Bryce said.

  "Mr. McAllan!" Nurse Packard said, pausing in the hallway. "What are you doing up here? You get back down the stairs this instant. You're in no condition to be climbing them unaided!"

  "No, I suppose I am not. I only wished to see Sam's room, wondered-"

  "Ach, it's a pity the old man passed on. I understand you've lost a friend. But the man would've wanted you to go on to find good health and return home." She set down a tray on a hall table and then ushered
him down the hallway and stairs, not waiting for the men to say good-bye. "The last thing we need is for you to take a fall down the stairs. Miss St. Clair's fall was quite enough."

  There Moira was. After his discussion with McAllan, and when Moira failed to return, Nic had left Odessa's side to go after her, and had been down one city block and up the other before he spied her, just ahead, speaking to three men on the dusty Wahsatch Avenue. On either side, fine homes were going up, spoils from the miners who labored in the mountains to the west. But Dominic's eyes were only on Moira, who was looking to the left and down-what she always did when she felt ill at ease. She had a pasted-on smile and obviously tried to say "good day" to the men, miners by the look of them, but when she moved to go around the last one on the left, he stepped in front of her.

  "Hey!" Nic shouted. "You leave that lady alone!"

  The man looked up, sized him up, obviously found him wanting, and said something out of the corner of his mouth to his comrades. The other two laughed.

  It was all Dominic needed. He tore across the remaining fifteen paces and rammed into the miscreant who dared to waylay his sister. The second man grabbed him by the arms and bodily lifted him away, but Dominic tossed his head back and broke his nose, then found his footing and came forward with a solid right for the third man, who was descending upon him.

  He could hear Moira screaming at him, then begging him to stop through her tears, but it had been too long. Too long since he had felt so strong, so alive. He wanted to stay here, among the living, feel vital, for as long as he could. No St. Clair woman would ever feel the need to fear for her well-being in this town as long as her brother was around. This was why Father had sent him with them. To protect them. He had said to use his brain as well as his brawn. Not his brain alone ...

  Nic lifted the first man from the ground by the collar, backhanded him, then punched him. The second man surprised him, bringing a mine-forged hand into Nic's back. He gasped as shooting pain emanated from his kidney; from far away he wondered if this was what it felt like to be Odessa, always trying to steal a breath like a beggar before. He rose, keeping watch, instinctively knowing the third man was on his feet, when that man pounded a fist past his cheek and almost into his eye.

  Nic felt the flesh tear loose, and a warm gush of blood blinded him. Moira screamed and Nic braced for the next punch, again to his belly. He doubled over and the man rammed a knee up into his face. Nic's head spun and he fell to the ground.

  "Please! Please stop!" Moira begged, and suddenly all three did as she asked, mumbling apologies, brushing off their clothes, moving away.

  Moira sank to her knees beside Dominic. "Nic? Nic, can you hear me?"

  He laughed, little more than a breath of folly. "How can I help but hear you? You're screaming in my ear."

  "Nic, you can't do this. Not here. We can ill afford enemies and Papa isn't-" Her voice abruptly fell away.

  He squinted upward when a new figure stepped between him and the sun. "A mere five days in my town," the newcomer said, "and you're already brawling, Mr. St. Clair? I thought we had words about this already."

  The sheriff.

  Nic set his head back down and swallowed some blood. And then he laughed, laughed as he had not for years.

  Chapter

  5

  Odessa awakened late again, nothing but black at her window and a low-burning lamp in the corner.

  "Oh, Odessa," came a voice beside her. "I'm so glad you are awake. I had no idea a person could sleep so long."

  Odessa turned and studied her sister beside her. "Why are you here?" She moved again and for the first time recognized the pull of the bandages. Wearily, she raised a hand to her face and touched them. "What happened?"

  "You fell-scared us all to death," Moira said, her tone moving from care to complaint.

  "Didn't intend to," she said. Every word scraped out of her throat and out through parched lips as her memory of the event returned. "May I have a sip of water?"

  "Of course." Moira stepped toward the bedside table and poured from a sweating pitcher into a pewter mug marked with the St. Clair "S" on the side. "I wouldn't hear of them leaving any more glass near you," she said with a smile, "and the tin mugs simply won't do. I unpacked a few of our trunks. I knew you loved those mugs." She wrapped an arm behind Odessas neck and helped her take a sip, then another. Never had water tasted so good to her. It tasted of home.

  "Ah. Bless you," Odessa said, leaning back into her pillow. "It's as if I haven't had a drink in years."

  "Air's so dry here, I can't get enough. I imagine it's even more difficult on you."

  Odessa glanced at her. Moira always preferred to steer clear of Odessa when she was in her "weakened state."

  "Where's Nic?"

  "Nic?" Moira asked, covering her mouth as she yawned. "Aren't I enough? I thought you'd be happy with your baby sister here."

  Odessa sighed and closed her eyes. She struggled to make sense of her memories, of what had transpired. She'd been on her feet, intent on something ...

  A low snore sounded from the corner of the room. Odessa lifted her head from the pillow and gazed over at her sister. Moira was fast asleep in the rocker.

  "You have to let me out!" Dominic yelled.

  Could no one hear him? He shouted until his throat was sore.

  He pulled back and forth as if he could pry the bars from their welded edge at top and bottom, then rested his forehead against the cool bars of the jail cell. His captors refused to even respond anymore. His fingers, stiff and sore from the fistfight, closed around the bars and he squeezed as if he could pinch them apart and free himself.

  He had to get out ... Odessa, alone in the sanatorium ... Moira, all alone in the hotel ... What would Father say?

  Dominic turned and sighed heavily, collapsing onto the stiff cot mattress stuffed with old hay, and put his face in his hands. The sheriff had refused to give him more than a clean bucket of water and a rag to address his wounds. But Nic wasn't surprised. He'd been treated worse in Philadelphia. There, the law had come in and given him a second beating, saying it was "for his own good," thinking they could convince the dandy to stay on his side of the tracks.

  But in Philadelphia, Father had always come and bailed him out.

  Doctor Morton consented to let Bryce leave the next day and take part in Sam O'Toole's funeral. Bryce couldn't imagine his friend being lowered in a casket, with no one to pay their respects but people he'd met just a few weeks prior. Bryce wasn't family, but he was the nearest Sam had had. Riding in the wagon several miles out of town to Evergreen Cemetery taxed every ounce of his strength. He mused to himself that once they got Sam's body out of the wagon he'd have to get in it, flat on his back for the ride home. Sam would've laughed at that. The memory of his easy smile, his laughter, poked at Bryce and made him melancholy.

  "Why's the cemetery so far out of town?" he asked the wagon driver beside him, a servant at the sanatorium.

  "Hard for a city promoting herself as a `haven of health' if the dead outnumber the living," he said.

  Bryce smiled. Sam would've gotten a big laugh out of that, too. Finally, they arrived, and Doctor Morton, Nurse Packard, and several other patients from the sanatorium all unloaded from other wagons and carriages. A large man that Bryce deduced was the sheriff rode up and joined the small gathering that stood before the chaplain.

  Chairs emerged for the ill and weakened patients and Nurse Packard, but the others stood through the ceremony. Out of respect for Sam, Bryce stood as well, but kept a hand on the back of his chair in case his head started spinning with the fever. The chaplain did a decent job of it, considering he'd never known Sam. But Sam had been a believer, had understood something far grander was ahead of him, and hadn't dictated anything fancy for his funeral service.

  "When I'm done here, I'm done," he'd said to Bryce once, when it looked liked the consumption was going to take him. "No tears for me, boy. I'll be free. Free."

  He'd always been
looking ahead, that Sam. Bryce smiled as the chaplain uttered his last amen and picked up a handful of dirt, sending it in a dusty drizzle down to the pine coffin below. They buried a box, a body. But the man-his friend, his brother-was ahead, on to the next adventure.

  The group dispersed, heading back to their wagons and carriages, the service now over. Bryce remained, staring at that perfect pine box marred with dirt, imagining it covered, grass soon growing atop the mound. He looked out to the mountains, then back to the coffin. "Rest in peace, old friend," he whispered. "You shall be sorely missed."

  "Pardon me," said a man from behind him.

  Bryce turned, wondering if he was in the way. The man bore an extra thirty pounds and wore a fine suit that marked him as wealthy, but Bryce did not know him.

  "Are you Bryce McAllan?"

  "I am," he said, wrapping his arms around himself. He suddenly felt the bitter chill of the March wind.

  "Then this is for you," said the man, handing him an envelope. "I am Mr. O'Toole's attorney. He specifically asked that I deliver it to you."

  Bryce took the envelope and stared at the writing he knew to be Sam's.

  "Is Miss St. Clair present?"

  Bryce looked up at the man. "Pardon me?"

  "A Miss Odessa St. Clair," the attorney clarified, looking back to a second envelope. "Is she present?"

  "No. Miss St. Clair is in no condition to be out in this wind. She is back at the sanatorium."

  "Ah, I see. It's a bit unorthodox, but listen-would you mind delivering this to her? I have pressing business and must be off on this afternoon's train."

  Bryce reached out and took the second envelope. Again, Sam's handwriting. Odessa St. Clair's name on the front. "I will see to it."

  "Good," the man said, clearly relieved to have seen his duty through. "I bid you good day, Mr. McAllan. And my condolences on your loss."