Stone Dreaming Woman (29 page)

The railroad tracks made a big detour to follow the Elk River, while the road itself ran straighter, giving them their only prayer of beating the train to River Bend. While they did not have to push their horses, they did not tarry, either. Midnight, trail-hardened, could have kept up his canter all day, and Brandy, just as tough as her breed came, stayed right up with him.

The train was just passing the edge of town as Shane and Paul pulled up at the station. Both horses were sweaty, and the heat plastered Shane’s shirt nastily to his chest. As he and Paul dismounted, they could just see the train on its way in.

“I hope I eventually have cause to thank you for hauling me down here,” Shane muttered sourly, giving his partner a hard stare. Paul, used to his superior officer’s unnerving Scorpio gaze, merely shrugged.

“I can’t stand the thought of that arrogant bastard getting away with it, lying to you and coercing Jenny. Just who in bloody hell does he think he is, anyway? Jesus Christ or His Father?” Shane knew all along that there had to be a limit to Paul’s easygoing approach to life. He had just begun to see where it lay.

Chapter Fifteen

When the little spur train bumped and hissed to a jerky stop, John Weston was the first person off. Jenny declined the hand he held out, gathered her black skirt, and made her own way down the steps. Then she looked up and saw two very familiar figures in brilliant red tunics.

“Shane!” she exclaimed, her voice barely above a whisper. She detached herself from her father and Phillip and floated toward him.

He reached for the hand she held out. “Jenny…” he began, but he was summarily interrupted.

“I say, Inspector Adair, your presence here is most unwelcome!” Jenny’s father began, making as if to come between them. However, Paul intervened.

“Doctor Weston, my partner has more right to be here than you do. Yes, I brought him here. I want you to account for the lies you told him,” he began, only to be confronted by the older man, whose icy eyes blazed with fury.

“You, young man, are nothing but a common meddler! I strongly urge you to mind your own business!”

“Oh you do, now, do you?” Paul planted his fists on his hips, drew himself up to the top of his six feet three inches, and took a few steps toward John, who held his ground.

“This is a family matter. It is not police business.”

“I’m the one who calls the shots here, Doctor Weston,” Paul retorted, pointing at his own chest with his thumb as if to reinforce his words. “I say it
is
police business. This is my jurisdiction, and you are coming perilously close to disturbing the peace. May I remind you that you’re aliens, here at His Majesty’s sufferance. Heaven only knows what contraband you have with you. I’ll have to check your luggage…”

“What did he tell you, Shane?” Jenny asked, diverting his attention from the escalating byplay between Paul and her father.

“That you are engaged to Phillip Hildebrand and you had a standing agreement to return to New York after six months in Canada. He said he had been in contact with you and you consented to go home with him.”

“Oh, Shane, it’s all lies! Not one iota of it is true! I have never been engaged to marry anyone.”

“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.