Heart and Home
Cassandra Austin
Chapter One
Kansas, autumn, 1879
Dr. Adam Hart leaned against the unyielding back of the train seat. He had almost reached his destination; his chance to practice medicine in the Wild West was a few short miles away.
Only one thing kept him from feeling completely elated. He reached into the inside pocket of his suit coat and withdrew the letter Doreena Fitzgibbon had given him just before he boarded the train. "Don't open it until you're underway," she had whispered. He had hugged her and kissed her and promised yet again to send for her once he was settled.
He didn't read the letter now, but tapped a corner of it thoughtfully against his chin. She wasn't coming west. "I'm confident," she'd written, "that once you have served the year you must in that backward town, you will come home and we can be married."
Hadn't she listened to his descriptions of this land? Didn't she recognize the wonderful opportunities that were here? Wasn't she as eager as he to live surrounded by the unspoiled prairie?
Evidently not. Perhaps he had made the whole adventure sound a little too exciting. And the gunfights. He should never have mentioned the gunfights.
At least, he thought with a sigh, she had given him a year. The glowing reports he'd send home were bound to win her over, then she would consent to move here and become his bride.
The train slowed for the Clyde, Kansas, station, and Adam strained to see out the dirty window. A crowd had gathered on the platform under a banner that read Welcome Dr. Heart.
Adam grinned. He could ignore the misspelling with a greeting like this. As the train pulled to a stop, a brass band started playing … something. It was hard to tell what since the musicians were hardly together. Still, Adam was warmed by the sentiment. He gathered the two bags he had with him, stepped into the warm autumn air and received a rousing cheer from the crowd.
A rather stout man who couldn't have been much more than five feet tall stepped away from the others, motioning them to silence. "George Pinter, at your service," he said as the band tapered off. "Mayor of this fair city."
"Mr. Pinter," Adam said, "this is indeed a warm welcome."
Pinter beamed. "My buggy is waiting to take you on into town," he said, directing Adam along. "Your trunks will be delivered straight away."
Adam climbed in beside the little man and they started toward the main part of town, a few blocks away. The band struck up again and the crowd followed.
"We have a house for you to live in that should serve well as an office besides," Pinter shouted over the noise. "I'd suggest you eat next door at the Almost Home Boarding House. Miss Sparks sets a fine table."
Somehow the particulars of living and eating had not occurred to Adam. He had always pictured Doreena keeping house. "Until my fiancee arrives, I might do that," he shouted back.
The buggy stopped in front of a tidy little twostory frame house with a narrow porch nestled between currant bushes. As Adam stepped out of the buggy, he noticed the house next door, a much larger affair with a porch that wrapped around two sides. A few late flowers bloomed in the flowerbeds beside the steps. That house, he realized, would suit Doreena much better than his tiny one.
He shook off the thought. When Doreena came west, it would be because she loved him. Where they lived was immaterial.
Pinter had opened the front door and was waiting for Adam to join him. The house had obviously been scrubbed clean. Adam walked across the front room, furnished with a desk and a few mismatched chairs, and peeked into what looked like a well-appointed kitchen.
Turning back into the room, he discovered that
several of the townspeople had followed them in. More crowded the porch and street outside. The band began another tune.
"There's a bedroom here you could use for examinations," Pinter shouted, indicating a door. "Upstairs is another. Don't worry about dinner tonight. I'll be over to get you."
Adam thanked him, setting the two bags on the desk.
"Well, come along, folks. Let's let him get settled. Your trunks'll be along."
Pinter shooed everyone out. Adam followed, closing the door behind them. He then turned and leaned against it, closing his eyes. His dream of practicing medicine on the frontier was about to come true. The perfection of the moment was marred by a touch of melancholia. It might have been homesickness, but he was inclined to think Doreena's letter was the cause.
He was reminding himself that Doreena would come around when suddenly the door behind him shook with someone's forceful knocking. He swallowed a groan at the abuse to his shoulder blades and flung open the door. He. wasn't sure what he had expected. The mayor again, perhaps, or the men who had promised to bring his trunks.
What he found was a tall young woman who seemed as surprised to see him as he was to see her. She was covered from neck to toe in a simple dress of blue calico dotted with brown flowers. Her dark brown hair was pulled savagely back from her face and bound at the nape of her neck. A few wisps of hair had escaped their confinement and curled around her face, softening the effect quite charmingly. Dark circles around her brown eyes made them seem too large for the pale face.
"I'm sorry to bother you," she said. "I was looking for Dr. Hart."
"You've found him," he said, stepping aside and opening the door wider. She remained standing on the porch.
"You're … younger than I expected." She waved a hand as if deciding that was unimportant. "Grams is quite ill," she said. "Can you come see her?"
"Your grandmother?" Were they both ill, or was this exhaustion he saw in the young woman's face? Adam moved quickly to the desk and grabbed the smaller of the two bags. He joined her on the porch and closed the door.
"I'm Jane Sparks," she said, leading the way. "I run the boardinghouse next door."
In a moment they were inside the large house. She led him past a tidy parlor, through a dining room and into the kitchen. The smells that greeted him told him her dinner preparations were well underway.
She led him into a tiny room just off the kitchen. A narrow bed took up most of the available space. A woman Adam guessed to be in her sixties lay covered to her neck with a white sheet. As they entered, her body was racked with an agonizing cough. The granddaughter hurried to her side, supported her shoulders and held a handkerchief until the spell passed.
"Pneumonia," Adam whispered. He didn't need to see the pale skin and overbright eyes, or touch the hot dry brow. He could hear it in the sound of her breathing and the dreadful cough.
"Yes, I thought so," Miss Sparks said. She showed him the blood on the handkerchief before she tossed it aside. She dipped a clean cloth in a basin of water, wrung it out and smoothed it carefully on the fevered brow. She must have left this task only a few minutes before. "Is there anything you can do for the pain?"
Adam set his bag on the edge of the bed across from Miss Sparks and found his stethoscope. He needed to know how far the infection had developed. He listened to the rattle in the woman's lungs while the granddaughter made soothing sounds.
"When she's awake, she's in such pain it breaks my heart. I just want her to sleep."
The last was spoken just above a whisper. The emotional and physical strain the young woman was under was clearly visible.
"I could give you something to help you rest,"
he suggested gently. "You could find someone else
to care for her."
She didn't look up from her task. "I can't," she said. "I have to be here."
Adam slipped the stethoscope back into his bag. "Her lungs are full of fluid," he said. "My recommendation is to drain them."
"Drain them?" The dark brown eyes turned in his direction and he was struck again by how large they were.
"With a tube, uh, into the chest cavity." Adam touched his own side. He knew it sounded pretty awful. Well, it was pretty awful. But he had seen it done successfully, and he knew he could do it. "She's drowning, actually, in the infection."
"This would … hurt her?"
"There would be some pain, yes, but she's in pain now, and it could save her life."
The young woman shook her head and turned her gaze back to her grandmother. "I can't let you hurt her."
"I don't mean to hurt her," he said. "I want to save her. If I don't do it, she will die. It's her one chance."