Kate’s lips formed a tired smile. “Not exactly. But look what we brought you.”
At her nod, Giuliana put down her bundle on an empty operating table and untied the petticoat. They had stuffed as many of the morphine vials from the crate into the petticoat as possible before leaving the automobile behind.
Within seconds, nurses and physicians crowded around the bundle, oohing and aahing as if it held a newborn baby.
Giuliana had to smile. At least their nerve-racking trip through the burning city hadn’t been for nothing.
“Thank you.” Lucy nodded first at Kate, then at Giuliana. “You can’t imagine what it means to some of these patients not to have to spend the night in agony or have to undergo an amputation without morphine.”
A warm glow of pride spread through Giuliana. She suspected her grin was as broad as Kate’s.
“Oh, and we should also return this.” Kate opened her carrying case and pulled out Lucy’s revolver.
Lucy pressed it back into her hand. “Keep it for now. I’m surrounded by soldiers, so I don’t need it.”
Giuliana wanted to say that the revolver had been the only thing stopping a soldier from shooting Kate, but she bit her tongue and watched Kate put the revolver back into the carrying case.
Loud voices from the tent’s flap made them all look toward the exit. Even some of the patients on narrow cots glanced toward the commotion.
A nurse was arguing with two women in low-cut dresses, one holding up the other.
Frowning, Lucy marched over, followed by Kate and Giuliana. “What’s going on?”
“She wants to turn my friend away,” the stockier of the women said, hurling a glare at the nurse.
Giuliana studied the slighter woman. She looked pale even though rouge gave her cheeks an artificial rosy glow. Like her friend, she wore a dress with a tight, low-cut bodice, which revealed the upper curve of her milky-white bosom. The ripped hem of her dress showed off a scandalous amount of leg—and a large, bleeding cut along her calf.
Lucy turned to the nurse blocking the entrance. “Is that true?”
“They’re harlots from the Barbary Coast, Dr. Sharpe,” the nurse said so loudly that everyone within a five-yard radius could hear her.
“Harlots?” Giuliana whispered to Kate. “What does that mean?”
With flushed cheeks, Kate whispered back, “Women who lie with men for money.”
“Just look at them.” The nurse wrinkled her nose as if smelling something bad. “It’s obvious.”
It was. Giuliana’s gaze dipped down to the top of the bigger woman’s bosom. Never before had she seen women in such revealing attire.
Lucy kept her gaze on the women’s faces. “They need help, Nurse. Let them in.”
“But, Doctor—”
“I said let them in.” Lucy’s voice sounded like the crack of a whip. “We haven’t asked any of the other patients how they make their living. We won’t start now.”
Her face as bright red as the paint on her charges’ cheeks, the nurse wordlessly led the two women into the tent.
Lucy watched them go and sighed. With the dark shadows beneath her eyes, she looked incredibly tired.
Giuliana fought the urge to give her a hug. Back in Sicilia, she wouldn’t have hesitated, but the Miricani were more reserved than the people back home. They didn’t even greet each other with kisses to the cheeks.
Oh, so what.
Just as Lucy was about to turn away, Giuliana wrapped her arms around her.
Lucy flinched as if she hadn’t been hugged in some time but then immediately relaxed and squeezed her back.
“This was a good thing to do,” Giuliana whispered.
“It’s only right. But thank you.” Lucy slowly let go and stepped back. She looked from Giuliana to Kate. “You two take care of each other, all right? And if you need anything, you know where to find me.”
Giuliana nodded while Kate stood there with a slight wrinkle between her brows.
“Are you all right?” Giuliana asked once Lucy had walked away to look after her new patient.
“I’m fine.” Kate turned sharply, pulled back the tent flap, and held it open for Giuliana to pass through. “Come on. We need to find some gasoline and get the automobile before the sun sets.”
* * *
Getting half a canister of gasoline from an army lieutenant was the easy part. Finding an automobile, a wagon, or a horse-drawn cab to take them back to the city, where the Packard waited, proved to be much more difficult.
Every vehicle in the vicinity of the park had been pressed into service as an ambulance, and the few drivers who still had their carriages asked for the outrageous sum of fifty dollars for a ride to Van Ness Avenue. Getting back to her father’s automobile seemed impossible.
Just as impossible as driving the mental image of Giuliana embracing Lucy from her head.
Oh, come on. It was just a hug.
But Kate couldn’t help it. She wanted Giuliana to hug her, not Lucy.
“Kate!” Giuliana called. She’d been walking ahead of her down the row of tents, on the lookout for any vehicle. Now she pointed at two orderlies who were just loading an empty stretcher into the back of a horse-drawn ambulance waiting in front of the hospital tent.
The ambulance?
Kate stared for a second before shrugging. Well, why not? Desperate times called for desperate measures. She gripped her carrying case with one hand, pulled up her dress a bit with the other, and ran toward the vehicle. “Where are you going?” she called up to the driver.
“Lane Hospital,” the driver shouted back. “Getting ether and probably picking up patients along the way.”
That was up in Pacific Heights. Not exactly where they wanted to go, but the driver would have to go east first. “Can you take us as far as Webster Street?”
He eyed the Red Cross badge still pinned to Kate’s shirtwaist, nodded, and pointed to the back of the ambulance. “Get in.”
Kate climbed up first and nearly slipped. The wood floor of the ambulance was wet. She put her carrying case down and extended her hand to help Giuliana up. “Careful.” She kept hold of Giuliana’s hand, even when they were both inside—just to prevent Giuliana from slipping.
The driver cracked his whip, and the horse pulled forward so abruptly that Kate and Giuliana nearly fell.
Giuliana toppled against Kate, who still held on to her hand.
She clutched Giuliana’s shoulder with her free hand and somehow managed to keep them both upright. Protecting Giuliana like this, holding her close, made her feel warm all over. As the horse settled into a fast clip, Kate pulled Giuliana farther into the ambulance and sat with her back against the wall.
After climbing over debris, hauling mattresses, and driving all over the city for most of the day, sitting down felt good even though the floor was wet here too.
She touched the boards, and when she glanced down, her fingertips were covered in red. Blood! The entire ambulance was drenched in it. Quickly, she wiped her hand on her skirt, pressed it to her mouth, and swallowed against the wave of nausea.
They looked at each other without saying anything. Even Giuliana had gone pale despite her olive complexion. Their shoulders bumped against each other as the ambulance bounced over cobblestones and pieces of rubble, but neither moved away. Giuliana’s closeness was the only thing that made riding in the blood-soaked ambulance bearable.
Endless minutes later, the driver pulled the horse to a halt. “Webster Street,” he shouted back to them.
They scrambled over the slippery boards, out of the ambulance, as fast as they could.
“Thank you,” Kate called up to the driver. When she glanced down, she realized that they had left bloody footprints on the ground. Another wave of nausea hit her.
As the vehicle turned north and clip-clopped away, Kate again wiped her hands on her dress and looked around.
Not that she could see very far. To the east, a wall of black smoke blocked her view. Darn, the fire had crept west while they’d been gone. The dynamite blasts sounded closer than ever. Kate even thought she felt the ground shake beneath her feet. “Do you feel that?”
“Is…is it an earthquake?” Giuliana’s gaze darted around as if she was afraid the world would collapse on top of her.
Soothingly, Kate trailed her fingers over Giuliana’s arm and felt the tense muscles tremble under her hand. “No. Don’t worry.” After what Giuliana had been through, she couldn’t blame her for being scared of aftershocks. “I think that’s the dynamiting. It has to be just two or three blocks away—right where we left the automobile.”
They started to run, charging past people who sat in their front yards on rocking chairs and watched the fire approach. When they rounded a corner, another detonation shook the ground, this one even closer. The blast was so loud that Kate clutched her ringing ears. Just one block ahead, a shower of bricks rained down onto the cobblestones. Thick smoke rolled through the street toward them.
Kate stumbled to a stop. Through stinging eyes, she stared into the smoke. Should she try to make it through before the next blast came? She glanced at Giuliana, who had paused next to her, gripping the canister of gasoline.
Another deafening blast boomed. More bricks fell. The smoke became thicker, making them cough.
No. She wouldn’t risk her life—and, more importantly, Giuliana’s—to get to the automobile. If she was judging the distance correctly, the motorcar might have already gone up in flames or been smashed to pieces anyway.
She gripped Giuliana’s elbow and pulled her north.
It would be a long walk home—and she didn’t look forward to facing her father and confessing that she’d lost the automobile.
* * *
As they trudged up Nob Hill, the sun started to set. The gas streetlamps hadn’t been lit, either because the gas mains had been broken by the earthquake or because the streetlamp lighter had fled—or worse—so no one was going from street to street and climbing up to open the gas valves.
Still, there wouldn’t be a lack of light tonight. Scarlet walls of flames spiraled upward at the southern and eastern horizon, painting the sky blood-red and throwing dancing shadows on the blackened ruins of a dozen skyscrapers. In the west, the sun was setting behind a dense cloud of smoke in shades of gray, brown, and ochre.
Lord, what was happening to their city? Just yesterday, everything had been fine, and now…Kate still couldn’t believe it. Would nothing stop this inferno?
At the top of the hill, she paused, unpacked her camera, and took several photographs of the burning city. Looking at the destruction through the lens of her camera somehow made it more bearable. As she pressed the shutter for the last time, a sharp aftershock wrenched the ground out from under her. With both hands wrapped around the camera, she couldn’t break her fall.
Strong arms caught her but couldn’t keep them upright. They went down together in a semi-controlled descent. The aftershock lasted only for two seconds; then everything went still.
“Are you all right?” Giuliana asked, her arms still around Kate.
She nodded. “How about you? Did you hurt yourself?”
“No.” Giuliana patted her hips. “I have better…pillows than you.”
“You mean you’re better padded?” Kate snorted. It wasn’t as if Giuliana was overweight. She just had curves in all the right places. But she couldn’t very well tell her that. Then she remembered that she was still holding her camera. With trembling fingers, she checked to make sure the camera and her precious glass plates had survived the aftershock and the fall.
Everything seemed intact.
“Thank you.” With a sigh of relief, she pushed in the bellows, closed the camera, and placed it back in its carrying case, next to the revolver. She regained her feet and helped Giuliana up. “Let’s go home.” For today, she’d had enough excitement. Now she longed for some water, food, and a soft bed.
But they’d have to make it past her parents first.
This time, they didn’t even make it inside before her parents were upon them. They had dragged two of the high-backed chairs from the morning room outside, either to keep an eye out for Kate or because they were afraid of being trapped in the house if another earthquake came.
Kate’s mother jumped up and flew down the granite stairs, directly at Kate. For a moment, she looked as if she was about to slap her, but then she collapsed against her and started to sob. “Don’t you ever do that to me again! Your father and I were frantic with worry when he returned home and you weren’t here. We thought you were dead!”
“I’m sorry, Mother. I didn’t mean to worry you.” Kate held her for a moment before gently freeing herself.
Her father rose from his chair. His cravat was missing; his vest was torn in several places, and his once-pristine shirt now looked more gray than white. Apparently, he hadn’t had time yet to change into a set of clean clothes. “Where have you been all day?”
“It’s a long story.” Kate’s gaze flickered to Giuliana. She would leave out the part about them driving around to take photographs. “We were pressed into service helping to transport patients to the temporary hospital in Golden Gate Park.”
Her father looked past her toward the street. “Then where is the automobile? The soldiers didn’t confiscate it for good, did they?”
“Um, kind of.” Kate swallowed down the big lump in her throat, took a deep breath, and added, “I think they blew it up.”
“Blew it up?” her mother echoed. “Why would they do such a thing?”
“We ran out of gasoline right where they wanted to create a firebreak.”
Her father clenched his fists around his already battered bowler hat. “Do they have any idea what that automobile cost? Do
you
have any idea?”
Kate knew it to the cent: three thousand two hundred dollars. It was the most expensive vehicle on the market right now. Her father told her so nearly every time he allowed her to take out the automobile. She ducked her head. “I know, Father.”
“It is not the fault of Kate. She could not stop them,” Giuliana said quietly from behind her. “If she tried to save the automobile, she would be killed.”
Her father’s mustache twitched. He took a step toward Giuliana.
Every muscle in Kate’s body tightened, ready to block his path if he should take another step.