Jake panicked at being bound, reacting like a man terrified of something more awful than death itself. With his body twisting and turning in furious protest, he struggled to free himself from his bindings. When he at last collapsed against the mattress, fighting for breath, his trembling was so intense that the whole bed shook.
Tied spread-eagled to the bed, naked save for the towel between his legs, Jake lay in utter vulnerability. Hallie tried to soothe him by gently stroking his cheek and chest, but he cringed from her hand, moaning in a way that broke her heart. His reaction was that of a man who had been badly treated in the past and expected more such abuse. And she could only sit by his bed, bleeding inside for the torment he was suffering.
It was when she had to tend to his personal needs that his violence escalated to a frightening peak. Screaming hoarsely, Jake wrenched against his bindings so forcefully that dark welts rose on his wrists. His back arched wildly as he tried to escape, and tears rolled from beneath the bandages swathing his eyes.
“It’s all right, darling,” Hallie cried, appalled by his obvious terror. She stroked his hip in an attempt to calm him, but her caress seemed only to madden him further.
Seth, who had been snatching a few moments of rest, was awakened by Jake’s cries and rushed to his friend’s side. Understanding dawned as he accurately sized up the situation.
“I think he’s damaged inside,” Hallie exclaimed, glancing up at the tousled man standing by her side. “I was changing the cloth between his legs, and he acted as if I was hurting him.”
Seth shifted his gaze from his friend’s flailing form to Hallie’s troubled face. “In his mind, he probably thinks he’s being hurt.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Sweetheart …” Seth paused for a moment, trying to think of the best way to proceed. Jake was a proud man, and he wasn’t sure if his friend would want him to tell Hallie how he had suffered at the army surgeons’ hands.
He stared down at the man writhing on the bed. Yet how else was he to explain Jake’s reaction?
Seth let out a long sigh. “I don’t know what Jake has told you about his leg, if anything, but—”
“He told me how you refused to let the doctors amputate it,” she interjected quietly. “That was very brave of you.”
Seth smiled bitterly at her praise. “There were times when I wondered if I had been foolish in insisting that they try to save the leg. The wound festered … horribly so. In my worst nightmare, I never could have imagined a man living in such a condition.”
Uncomfortably he shifted his gaze from Hallie’s to stare down at the toes of his boots. “I can only imagine how terrifying the ordeal must have been for Jake. And the pain he suffered …”
His voice caught as he remembered his friend’s agony. “Because I refused to let them take the leg, he was subjected to a series of brutal operations and treatments. They wouldn’t give him any chloroform, since he almost died the first time they used it, so they tied him down and did the procedures without it. There were a couple of times when they didn’t have any morphine to give him to take the edge off his torment. A lesser man would have died from the shock.”
Hallie stared down at where Jake lay muttering and jerking about on the bed. “My poor love,” she crooned, wanting to cry for what he’d suffered. “No wonder he thinks that doctors are butchers and charlatans.”
“Can’t say as I blame him,” Seth replied with a grimace. “Do you know what he said was the worst part?”
Hallie shook her head mutely.
Seth reached down and touched the rope that bound Jake’s right wrist to the headboard. “Being tied. It frightened him to be lying there helpless and at their mercy.”
“He must have been terribly weak. Surely they could have held him instead?”
“They did try, but the pain from their handiwork maddened him to uncontrollable violence.” Seth let his hand drop from the rope. “Even as weak as he was from being wounded, Jake was still too strong to be restrained by the orderlies.”
It was with new understanding that Hallie turned back to the man she loved. As she finished cleansing him, she took care to touch his leg as little as possible. And though he cried out, shrinking convulsively from the probing of the damp towel, he eventually calmed to the familiar sound of her voice.
The remaining afternoon hours melted away, and as dusk deepened into night, Jake fell into a deathlike stupor. By midnight, his breathing was little more than a harsh, strangled wheeze, and his lips had taken on a bluish tinge that Hallie recognized all too well. Jake was suffocating.
Hallie’s heart gave a painful thud. If she didn’t do something to help him breathe, he would die. With dread coiling in her stomach, she went to awaken Seth, who was dozing on a pallet near Jake’s bed.
“Seth.” She gave him a frantic shake.
His years in the army had made Seth a light sleeper, and almost immediately he was awake. Pushing his tangled mane of hair out of his eyes, he stared into Hallie’s face. The urgency of her expression made his gut twist with fear. “Jake? He isn’t—”
“No!” Hallie interjected, not wanting to hear him say the ominous word. She could feel death’s presence hovering near, and superstitiously she thought that to say the word would bring the dark creature swooping down to take Jake.
Giving her head a sharp shake, she repeated, “No. But he will be if we don’t help him. I-I need—” Then her voice faltered.
“Hallie?” Seth reached up and grasped her arm. “What do you need? Just say it, and I’ll make sure you have it.”
She swallowed hard. “I have to c-cut into his throat … to help him b-breathe. I need you to assist me.”
Seth turned the color of putty at her proposal. “Is there no other way?” He’d seen the bloody procedure done during the war, and he was all too aware of the possible consequences.
“I wish there was.”
Without comment, Seth rose from the cot and followed Hallie to Jake’s bed. One look at his friend told him that Hallie was right: there was no other choice.
Watching as Hallie quickly laid out her surgical instruments, he asked, “Do you have everything you need?”
“You’re going to have to tell me where you found this case sometime.” Hallie pulled out a peculiar-looking contraption with long rubber tubes, and after rummaging about for a moment, she produced a strangely shaped silver tube. With a satisfied smile she added, “And to answer your question, yes, I’ve got everything I need. The kit is amazingly complete.”
“Good. Then I guess Dr. Barnes wasn’t lying.”
Hallie almost dropped her retractors. “Dr. Barnes?”
Seth chuckled at Hallie’s reaction. “The venerable Dr. Barnes is as inept at cards as he is at medicine, and I simply decided to call due his gambling debt. The man assured me that this is the finest case in all of San Francisco.”
Hallie paused in her preparations to give his arm a fond squeeze. “You’re a wonderful man, Seth. And I promise to find some way to repay you for the case.”
“You’ve already more than repaid me with everything you’ve done for Jake.”
“Jake’s lucky to have a friend like you.”
“And even more lucky to be loved by a woman like you.” He winked roguishly. “Why, if Jake wasn’t my best friend, I’d charm you right away from him.”
“And if I wasn’t so in love with him, I’d probably be swooning at your feet.” Hallie winked back, and then turned her attention to measuring out a liberal portion of morphine into a syringe. She knew how Jake would object to being given the drug if he were rational; yet in this too she had no choice. She needed to keep him calm during the surgery and since he was beyond reason, she could think of no other way.
“Forgive me, my love,” she murmured under her breath as she gave him the injection.
Jake fought agai
nst Seth’s hold at the initial pain of the needle, but he soon began to relax as the drug took its effect. When he lay completely sedated, Hallie began her grisly task.
She could feel Seth’s eyes on her face as she shaved Jake’s throat clean of its blue-black stubble. She knew he was mutely pleading for reassurance, but she had none to give.
“You’ll need to hold his head still while I work,” she said, finally breaking her silence. And when all was ready, Hallie picked up her scalpel.
With trembling hands, she let the blade hover over the tender skin at the base of Jake’s throat. He looked so helpless lying there, awaiting what might well prove to be the fatal cut. Hallie hesitated for a moment and then lowered the knife.
“I can’t,” she choked out. “I’m afraid.”
Seth released Jake’s head and pulled Hallie into his embrace. Stroking her heaving back, he murmured, “Of course you can do it. I have faith in you. And so does Jake. Why, you have no idea how many hours he’s spent bragging about your wondrous medical skills. Bored every friend he has with the topic.”
“He didn’t!”
“Cross my heart,” Seth vowed solemnly. “He even went so far as to say that he would trust you with his life. We all know what a glowing recommendation that is, coming from Jake, considering his low opinion of the medical profession.”
“Did he really say that?” Hallie sniffled and met Seth’s gaze, her eyes flaring with gratitude at his vote of confidence.
“I already said honest Injun, didn’t I?” He rummaged in his pocket and produced a handkerchief. Typically Seth, it was a vivid shade of orange. “He claims that there’s nothing you can’t do, as far as doctoring goes. You wouldn’t want to make him into a liar, would you?”
After Hallie had wiped her eyes and blown her nose, he picked up the scalpel and slipped it into her hand. “For Jake’s sake, prove him right.”
Hallie stared at the knife in her hand and then back up into Seth’s face. He winked at her. Jake trusted her. That in itself was enough to give her much-needed courage.
And this time when she pressed the blade to Jake’s throat, her hand was steady. Working quickly yet cautiously, she made the necessary incisions. Jake seemed oblivious to the pain, and for that she was eternally grateful. Aside from a violent bout of coughing when she inserted the curved silver tube through the incision and down his trachea, he remained senseless.
After securing the tube in his throat, she began the painstaking job of suctioning out his airways. It was a repulsive task, one that made Seth turn away retching, but Hallie was beyond all disgust in her quest to save Jake’s life.
“There,” she whispered, giving the tube in his neck a final swabbing. “He’ll be all right for a little while, but we’ll have to watch him carefully. He’ll need to be suctioned at regular intervals, and we have to make sure he doesn’t disturb the tube.”
Seth grimaced at the odd hand pump. “For how long?”
“If all goes well, not for more than a day or so. By then, the swelling in his air passages should be down and the secretions about gone. I can remove the tube then.” She saw Seth shudder with aversion as he glanced at the pump again.
She knew what it cost him when he offered, “If you’ll show me how it’s done, I’ll help with the pumping.”
The man’s obvious devotion to his friend deeply touched Hallie. Giving his hand a grateful squeeze, she whispered, “As I’ve said before, Jake’s lucky to have a friend like you.”
Seth returned her squeeze. “I’m the lucky one. I’d still be a gutter rat if it wasn’t for Jake. That is, if I wasn’t dead from drink and hard living.”
Hallie laughed at that. Gutter rat? Seth Tyler? Why, there wasn’t a more courtly or elegantly mannered man in all of San Francisco. Expect for Jake, of course. And she mentioned as much.
“You should have seen me ten years ago.” He chuckled. “I didn’t have two cents to rub together, and I smelled so bad that the ladies would cross the street when they saw me coming.”
“Now I know you’re teasing me!” But when Hallie glanced up at his face, she saw that his expression was wholly serious. Leaning forward to soothe Jake’s cracked lips with a piece of ice, she asked, “How did you meet Jake?”
“It was in ’57. I’d been working a silver claim at Mount Davidson and came across what I thought might be a substantial vein.” He smiled ruefully. “Well, not having the funds to mine the claim, I applied to every bank in Virginia City for a loan. Of course they turned me down. So I came back to San Francisco in search of backing.”
He paused to study the man on the bed. “I’ll never forget the first time I saw Jake. He looked like a young prince. I was at the bank, begging for a loan, when he walked in. Everyone snapped to attention, falling all over themselves to accommodate him, and I was roughly shown to the door. After all, my lowly presence might have offended the mighty Mr. Parrish. I remember shouting my proposal as I tumbled into the street.”
Seth sighed. “How I hated the exalted Jake Parrish at that moment. Hated him for his money and position, hated him for the power he wielded. So you can imagine my surprise when he stepped into the street and offered his hand to help me up.”
“He did that?”
“Yes. At first I refused to acknowledge his presence, bent on hating him. But then he told me that he’d overheard my proposal and might be interested in investing. Unmindful of the eyebrows being raised by passersby, he pulled me to my feet. Then he took me to a restaurant, where he fed me the first real meal I’d had in days. Best of all, he actually listened to me.”
Hallie smiled at the thought of her elegantly dressed Jake sitting down to dine with a ragamuffin Seth. “He invested?”
“Better. He became my partner. And I worked hard to make sure he never regretted the association. The claim yielded over five million dollars in less than a year. He could easily have cheated me, since I couldn’t read or write and was ignorant on the finer points of the law. But he didn’t. Jake played square with me then, and he always has. When he discovered I couldn’t read or write, he taught me himself. And when I told him that I wanted to be a gentleman, he helped me smooth out the rough edges. He made me what I am today.”
How so very like Jake to bring out the best in a person, Hallie thought. Hadn’t he done the same for her? Making her feel special after a lifetime of being told she was worthless? Taking a plain spinster and making her feel beautiful? Cherishing her?
And how had she repaid him? A sob caught in Hallie’s throat. By almost getting him killed.
Jake began to stir restlessly, obviously not liking the tube in his throat. Gently, Seth lifted his friend’s head and fluffed the pillows into a more comfortable position. He could feel the heat from Jake’s fever beneath his palm.
“Do you know what mattered more than anything else?”
Hallie shook her head.
“That Jake had faith in me. He gave me the chance to prove myself. You see, even if I hadn’t made my fortune from that mine, I would have been all right. He made me believe in myself.”
All through the night and through the following day, Hallie worked over Jake. He was out of his head with fever, and though it broke her heart to do so, she was forced to keep him bound for fear that he would tear the tube out of his throat.
As Hallie sat by Jake’s bed holding ice to his lips and letting the melted droplets wet his dry tongue, she despaired that his fever would ever break.
“Hallie.” It was Seth, rising from the pallet. “You need to get some rest. Why don’t you let me sit with Jake for a while?”
She was tired. Her eyes felt all scratchy from a lack of sleep, and every inch of her body ached with bone-crushing fatigue. Hallie pushed Jake’s matted hair off his brow. He moved restlessly beneath her hand, his body twitching as uncontrollably as if he lay upon a bed of sharp stones. He was so terribly ill. What if
he should take a turn for the worse while she slept? What if he died and she wasn’t with him?
As if reading her thoughts, Seth reassured her, “I promise to wake you if there is any change.” He pulled Hallie to her feet and pushed her toward the pallet he’d recently vacated. “Go.”
“But—”
“Sleep. You’re half sick yourself with worry and fatigue.” He gave her another nudge. “I’ll count to five. If you’re not lying on that pallet by the time I finish, I’ll carry you there myself. One …”
Of course he was right. She did need to rest. Maybe just for a few minutes …
“Two.”
Hallie sighed. “Only for a half hour. Not a second longer.”
“All right. Three.” He smiled as Hallie settled for a nap. Good. Jake would never forgive him if he didn’t watch over Hallie.
“Four and five. Pleasant dreams.”
And she did have a pleasant dream. One where Jake was taking her in his arms, seducing her as much with his sultry gaze as with his caresses. Her heart contracted with longing. Oh! He looked so handsome! He was smiling in his special way that made the dimple crease in his cheek, setting the flames burning low in her belly. Just as his lips were about to claim hers, she was roughly shaken awake.
“For God’s sake, Hallie! Wake up!”
Even through the murkiness of her sleep-fogged mind, Hallie could hear the panic in Seth’s voice. As she forced her heavy lids open, she could feel her body being pulled into a sitting position.
“Hallie—”
She stared at the tears coursing down Seth’s cheeks. “Jake?”
Wrapping her in his arms, he sobbed, “It’s over.”
Chapter 22
“No!” Hallie screamed, impotently beating her fists against Seth’s chest. “You promised to wake me if he got worse.” She pounded her fists against his chest again, this time more weakly. He didn’t even flinch. “Why didn’t you wake me, damn it? I didn’t even get to say good-bye!”
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