Within My Heart

by Tamera Alexander

  Rand reached the buckboard and tossed his bag up on the seat. He could still see the girl clutching the half-melted stick candy in her sweaty little hand.

  “I’m saving this one . . . for later,” she’d whispered to him late last night between coughing spells. “Mama says . . . I need to . . . eat my soup first.” After sharing with the Fosters about their daughter’s worsened condition, he’d encouraged Helen Foster to let Paige have anything she wanted to eat, to make all of Paige’s favorite foods, whether it be cookies or meatloaf. Mrs. Foster’s expression had sobered, and Rand had spoken to them more plainly about their daughter’s prognosis.

  It was a fine line to walk, deciding how forthcoming to be with patients—or in this case, the patient’s parents—about the prognosis. He wanted to give them hope, wanted to leave room for God to intervene if He chose to, yet he also wanted them to know the truth so they could have time to be better prepared. If there was such a thing. Knowing death was coming, or not knowing . . . Both ways held blessings, he guessed.

  He climbed into the wagon and gathered the reins. He’d seen God work in miraculous ways. He’d also seen God remain silent. Well, not exactly silent, he reckoned. God always spoke. Sometimes His answer just wasn’t the one a man wanted.

  Rand guided the buckboard down the crowded street toward Miss Clara’s cafe, trying to dislodge the melancholy that settled over him. Miss Clara would have his usual breakfast waiting for him, and he’d sit at his usual table by the window and watch the townspeople as he ate. He knew how to cook. A man didn’t live thirty-four years, nearly half of those without a woman in his life, or in his kitchen, without picking up a thing or two about cooking.

  His specialty? Hot-boiled peanuts.

  He smiled, his stomach growling. Knowing how to make boiled peanuts was hardly something to brag about, but those peanuts helped him earn his keep through medical school in Philadelphia, then during his training in New York City. For all the boast and swagger with which Yankees regarded the South, Northerners loved boiled peanuts.

  Miss Clara must have been watching for him, because when Rand pulled the buckboard up to her restaurant and walked inside, the older woman was bustling down a side aisle, covered plate in hand.

  “Morning, Dr. Brookston! I got your biscuits slathered in gravy, scrambled eggs, and sausage right here. Hot, wrapped, and ready to go!”

  Ready to go? Rand frowned, seeing his usual table open by the window. “You eager to be rid of me this morning, Miss Clara?” He summoned his best hurt-puppy look, not having to work at it too hard.

  She squeezed his arm tight and gave him a grandmotherly hug. “Don’t you go tryin’ to make an old woman feel bad. I’m just thinkin’ you don’t have the time. A boy was in here a few minutes ago. Cute little dark-headed thing, came in yellin’ your name. Bless him, he couldn’t say much of anything else, leastwise that I understood. I just nodded and told him you’d be coming by anytime. He gave me this.”

  Rand took the envelope dusted with flour and read his name on the front. He opened it. The thickness of the stationery should have been a clue as to its sender, but when he read Colorado Hot Springs Resort in fancy type across the top of the paper, he guessed no further.

  Dr. Brookston,

  A guest at my resort is in immediate need of your attention. Please come at the earliest possible moment.

  With kindest regards,

  Brandon H. Tolliver

  Rand slid the note and envelope in his side pocket, praying it wasn’t another case of typhoid. The resort’s grand opening was only three weeks away—as if anyone in Timber Ridge could forget with the banners Tolliver had strung up all over town—and an outbreak of typhoid in town already didn’t bode well. But at the resort . . . That raised another level of concern.

  “Thank you, Miss Clara.” He brushed a kiss to her papery cheek. “You’re an angel.”

  “If I was thirty years younger, you wouldn’t dare be kissin’ me like that.”

  He smiled at her reproving look.

  Then she smiled too and winked. “Which sure makes me glad I’m not. Run on, now.” She patted his arm. “You’ve got some doctoring to do. I’ll have fried chicken and mashed sweet potatoes tonight, so come on back and see me.”

  “It’s a date,” he said, and gave her another quick peck on the cheek.

  His mood slightly more hopeful, Rand maneuvered the buckboard past farm wagons lined up by the feed store. Past the congestion, he urged the mare onto the road leading from town to the resort and ate his breakfast on the way, his patients occupying his thoughts.

  One patient in particular, at the moment.

  He’d seen Rachel yesterday afternoon and was pleased with how her incision was healing. What pleased him almost as much was the friendship, for lack of a better term, that seemed to have been forged between them. He wasn’t fool enough to think she’d changed her opinion about him personally—Rachel Boyd was not a fickle woman. Her mind, once stayed on something, wouldn’t be easily swayed. He knew that well enough.

  But her opinion about him as a doctor had changed.

  He found it hard to put into words, yet he felt it when she looked at him, when she asked questions about the procedure he’d performed on her leg, and about the surgery they would perform together on Ben Mullins. As best he could define it, Rachel had respected his abilities before.

  Now she respected him . . . as a doctor.

  She’d asked for information on Ben’s upcoming procedure, and he’d given her a paper a colleague had written detailing the steps and the possible complications, as well as what to watch for during recovery.

  Ben’s breathing had worsened in recent days. A wheeze had set in, signaling more fluid on his lungs, but his strength wasn’t what it needed to be to undergo the procedure. As of yesterday, Ben still hadn’t told Lyda the truth of his situation. Ben insisted that he was waiting for the right moment. Rand sighed. He’d told Ben that, come Monday, if Ben hadn’t told Lyda the truth, he would.

  Rand rounded a curve and spotted a man on foot up ahead. Recognizing Charlie Daggett and his lumbering gait, Rand slowed the wagon alongside him. “Morning there, Charlie. Headed out to the resort?”

  “Morning, Doc.” Nodding, Charlie patted his coat pocket. “I got me some—” he paused, squinting until his eyes almost closed— “documents of great import for Mr. Tolliver.” He sighed, his whiskered face relaxing in a grin. “Least that’s what he called them.”

  Rand smiled at Charlie’s astute assessment. “Would you and your . . . important documents like a ride?”

  Charlie lifted a muddy boot. “You sure you’re offerin’?”

  Rand waved him up to the bench seat, knowing it would be a tight fit. “Come on up.”

  The buckboard creaked beneath Charlie’s weight, and even before Charlie settled in beside him, Rand smelled liquor thick on the man. He gave the reins a flick.

  Charlie belched, and the taint of soured bourbon pressed closer. It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. Either Charlie had started early this morning or he’d gotten a late start last night.

  “So tell me, Charlie, how are things going for you?”

  “Good, I guess. Got more work than I know what to do with and a body that can do the work. That’s a good pairin’ in my book.”

  “Indeed. I’d have to agree.” Rand glanced down at Charlie’s hands. Huge hardly described them. Work-worn and thick-fingered, Charlie’s hands looked as if they could snap a piece of lumber clean in two. He remembered Charlie doing something similar to a man’s wrist last fall. But according to Sheriff McPherson, the fella had deserved it. “You’ve been in Timber Ridge for, what . . . seven years?”

  “Eight. Come August.” Charlie fidgeted with one of the remaining buttons on his coat.

  “How long have you been helping out Ben Mullins?”

  “Ever since I came. I walked into his store that first day, asked if he needed help unloading the wagon out back. Mr. Mullins . . . he looked at me”—Cha
rlie mimicked the actions—“looked back at the wagon, then looked back at me again, and hired me right where I stood.”

  Rand smiled, able to imagine that scene quite well, from both sides. “How’s Miss Lori Beth Matthews these days?”

  Charlie went quiet. “She’s good, I guess. Last I saw her.”

  For a time, Rand had seen Charlie and Lori Beth together on occasion and could tell Charlie had it bad for the woman. And Lori Beth looked equally enamored. But he hadn’t seen them together in a long time and had begun to wonder. “From where I sit, she sure seemed to enjoy your company, Charlie. And you, hers.”

  Charlie’s expression remained carefully guarded. “Sometimes a person can’t see everything from where they’re sittin’, Doc.”

  Surprised at his response, Rand toyed with how to phrase his next question, having waited a long time for the right setting in which to ask it. He could be subtle when needed, but being a doctor gave him license to dispense with that subtlety on occasion. Especially when it involved the welfare of a friend and patient, whether or not that patient knew yet that they were sick. “How long have you been drinking, Charlie?”

  Charlie’s hand stilled on his coat button. He looked off over the fields covered with snow. “A long time, Doc.”

  The creak of wagon wheels and the steady thud of the horse’s hooves marked off the silence, lengthening the moments. Most people couldn’t abide the quiet when they were with someone else, but Rand welcomed it. With the right person, even the quiet became a kind of conversation.

  Charlie kept his head turned, still gripping the button on his coat. Clearly, he was done talking.

  Rand had spoken with Charlie on many occasions in the past two years, but this was the first time he could remember Charlie Daggett shutting down the conversation, which told him Charlie was hiding something. Not surprising. Every person he’d known who was dependent on liquor or morphine or some other substance had a secret hurt. It provided a way to dull the pain, be it from a physical ailment or an emotional one.

  One look at the emptiness in Charlie’s face and hearing the way his breath came quick, Rand grew even more certain—Charlie’s wound was emotional.

  He left Charlie to his silence, and as they rounded the final curve leading to the resort, Rand found his gaze being drawn upward. Impressive was the first word that came to mind. Money was the second.

  From a stately stand of spruce and aspen, the main hotel of the Colorado Hot Springs Resort rose in four-storied splendor. An expansive porch, braced with thick honey-colored pine beams, encompassed the front and sides of the structure and appeared to extend all the way around the building. Shuttered floor-to-ceiling windows, trimmed in black and burgundy, sat evenly spaced on each level, row after perfect row, accentuating the stunning white-painted timber. No expense spared.

  It looked more like a painting than real life. As if this little pocketed valley hidden deep in the Rockies had been waiting, carved out specially for this occasion, since the mountains were formed.

  Rand pulled the buckboard to a stop in front of an ornately carved hitching post.

  A young boy dressed in finery worthy of a Southern cotillion ran to meet them. He grasped the mare’s bridle. “Welcome, Signore Brookston. Signore Daggett.” He had a special smile for Charlie, and no wonder, with the animated wink Charlie gave him.

  Rand set the brake and climbed down. He dug into his pocket for a coin and pressed it into the boy’s hand. “Grazie,” he said softly, silently thanking Angelo again for teaching him a few phrases in Italian.

  Triple pairs of French doors, decorated with fragrant evergreen boughs, stood like sentinels on the front porch, waiting to welcome guests. He gave a low whistle. How had Brandon Tolliver managed to build such a place? Much less fund it?

  “You ain’t never been out here, Doc?” Charlie joined him at the edge of the flagstone walkway.

  “Not in a few months. It looked impressive then, but . . . this.”

  “It’s fancy, all right.” Charlie nudged him in the arm. “Wait ’til you see the innards.”

  Smiling at Charlie’s phrasing, Rand watched a man and woman exit the hotel through one of the French doors. Dressed as if they were headed to an evening at the opera in New York City, the couple continued down one of the many strolling paths that meandered around the trees and boulders. “I didn’t think the resort was open yet.”

  “It’s not,” Charlie answered. “We’re having what Mr. Tolliver calls a dry run. He invited in all the higher-ups who gave money to help build this place, them and their families. They’re staying here for free. Tryin’ things out and makin’ sure everything works before the payin’ folks arrive.”

  Rand nodded. A good idea, and what a way to be thanked.

  The door opened again, and two more couples, equally opulent and graceful, shadowed the previous couple’s steps, then took a path leading down to one of several smaller buildings dotting the grounds—the hot springhouses where patrons could partake of the area’s famous mineral pools.

  Rand took it all in, unable to deny the fact that he was impressed with Tolliver’s accomplishment, while knowing full well that the contagious nature of typhoid fever would not be.

  16

  Brandon Tolliver greeted them on the porch stairs, looking every bit the exclusive resort host. “Welcome, Dr. Brookston.” He offered his hand, and Rand shook it. “I’m honored you’ve come for a visit. Perhaps you’ll let me give you a tour of our facilities this morning.”

  Tour of the facilities? Rand stared, thinking again of what Tolliver had written in his note. “I’m sorry, but I thought I was requested because one of your—”

  Tolliver’s grip tightened around his hand, and Rand caught his host’s subtle glance at nearby patrons. A woman standing poised by the marble fountain in the front courtyard smiled invitingly, inclining her head in Rand’s direction, as did two other women with her. Rand smiled in return, finally understanding what Tolliver was doing. He valued discretion as well, up to a point.

  “Mr. Daggett.” Tolliver’s gaze shifted to Charlie’s mud-clad boots, then trailed the large tracks marring the flagstone walkway. The smile that already wasn’t reaching his eyes dimmed further. “Do you have the papers I requested?”

  Charlie shifted his weight. “Yes, sir, Mr. Tolliver. I’ve got ’em right here.” He looked down. “Sorry about the mess, sir. I’ll get it cleaned right up.”

  “That would be appreciated.” With a curt nod, Tolliver gestured for Rand to follow him.

  Rand did so, grudgingly, feeling for Charlie and disliking Tolliver more by the second.

  Inside the lobby, Rand was tempted to stare at his surroundings— which rivaled, if not surpassed, the exterior of the hotel—but he didn’t want to give Tolliver the satisfaction.

  Without exception, every employee was Italian. Though Rand was thankful the newly arrived immigrants had secured employment, something not everyone in Timber Ridge could say, he already knew Tolliver wasn’t the most generous, nor the fairest, employer.

  He transferred his medical bag from one hand to the other, eager to examine his patient and praying he, or she, wasn’t sick with typhoid. While he didn’t care much for Tolliver, he did care about the guests in this hotel. One person contracting typhoid in this setting would be even more serious than in town because the guests here ate from the same kitchen and drank from the same water source. Not to mention the close confines the guests shared in the hot springs.

  If even one guest or employee became ill with the fever, or was already sick . . .

  Tolliver paused in the lobby. “Perhaps you truly would enjoy a tour of the resort, Doctor. I believe it would render you even more impressed than you currently are.”

  “While I’m grateful for your hospitality”—Rand lowered his voice—“perhaps it would be most prudent if you’d take me to see the guest you wrote me about.”

  Tolliver’s eyes narrowed. Then he smiled. “You’re right, of course. Let’s begin
in the Health Suite, shall we?”

  The Health Suite . . . That had an interesting ring to it.

  Rand followed Tolliver down a spacious hallway. Polished hardwood floors gleamed beneath his dusty boots. He sidestepped a Persian rug and thought of his precious mother, God rest her soul. How many times, in younger years, had he tromped all over her nice rugs without a second thought. And how often in recent years had he wished he could go back and relive moments with her. His father too, despite the differences they’d had.

  Tolliver paused by a door bearing a placard with the name Health Suite. Beneath it was a second placard. Dr. Newton Rochester. Tolliver’s hand rested on the door latch. “Thank you for filling in at the last minute, Dr. Brookston. The resort’s private physician, the distinguished Dr. Newton Rochester, is scheduled to arrive before the grand opening. You’re familiar with Boston General, I presume?”

  Rand nodded, aware of Tolliver’s tone. “Of course.” Boston General was the most prestigious teaching hospital in the country. But then, that was Tolliver’s point.

  “I can see you’re a man dedicated to his profession, Dr. Brookston. I appreciate that. I also appreciate your responding so quickly after you received my note this morning. . . .”

  Rand couldn’t be certain, but he didn’t think he was imagining Tolliver’s hint of displeasure. Most likely the man was frustrated at his lack of response to earlier requests for a meeting. Under the circumstances, and seeing how Tolliver had treated Charlie Daggett, Rand felt no obligation to apologize. He glanced down the hallway to make sure they were alone. “What symptoms has your guest been experiencing, Mr. Tolliver? And when did they first appear?”

  Tolliver turned the polished latch. “I believe those questions would be best answered by the guest, Doctor. But perhaps when you’re done, we could meet to discuss your findings. My office is down the hallway.” He opened the door and motioned for Rand to precede him.