Sage

by Cindy Caldwell

  She stared after him for a moment as he returned to his office and shut the door.

  She reached for a dust rag and cleaned off each bottle of tonic, placing it carefully on the glass shelf beside the window. Between Mr. Chapman and this, she felt a bit raw—she hadn’t even gotten to tell him what was happening with her tonics at the miner’s house.

  Well, considering how he felt about her tonics—sugar water, he’d called them—at least he wouldn’t be inclined to believe that she would—or even could—produce something with the ability to make anyone sick or better.

  She stared at the closed door to the office. She didn’t mind that she couldn’t go in—the only time she ever did, really, was to fetch more tonic or sometimes, in the evenings after he’d left, she allowed herself to read his big medical books, losing herself in the descriptions of the human body and how it worked. But knowing how he truly felt about her and her abilities stung.

  She sighed as she set the last bottle of tonic on the shelf. She’d hoped that Dr. Folsom might see that she could be more helpful than scheduling patients and apologizing that he wasn’t in. Maybe it was time that she just faced the truth. He didn’t think she was capable of more than that—certainly didn’t think that her tonics were helpful. And after he heard what she had to tell him about Mr. Chapman, her fate would be sealed. Studying to be a doctor, or even a nurse, had never been further from her grasp than it was in this moment.

  Chapter 14

  Clint set the picnic basket on the round oak table in the small kitchen. He took off his coat and hung it on the rack by the door, wondering why his stomach was grumbling as it was just past noon.

  He leaned over and lifted the red and white handkerchief covering the basket and, sure enough, his stomach in fact protested at the lack of food.

  “Ah, Maria sent empanadas,” Mrs. Baxter said as she backed into the room carrying a tray heavy with teacups and a pitcher.

  Clint reached out for it and she nodded as he hefted its weight out of her hands. She brushed her hand against her forehead, nudging some gray hair back where it belonged.

  “Are you all right?” He placed the tray on the kitchen counter and set the washing bowl and cloths in the sink. He pumped water from the sink into a kettle and set it on the stove that was still warm from earlier.

  “Thank you for that,” Mrs. Baxter replied as she plopped into a kitchen chair. “I’ll wash the dishes in a little bit. I’ve just bathed your father, and it’s a right challenge when he’s barely conscious.”

  “I’m certain it’s difficult,” Clint said. “Let me get you something to eat.”

  He set out the fare Sage had left and poured a cup of tea for Mrs. Baxter. This couldn’t be easy for her, between the difficulties of caring for an ailing man and the worry that came with it.

  Mrs. Baxter smiled wanly as he set a plate in front of her, gingerly unwrapping several things which were to him completely foreign from colorful linen napkins. He’d emptied the basket onto a platter when he finally sat down and glanced over at Mrs. Baxter, a smile dancing on her lips.

  “What is it?” he asked, a bit unnerved. He picked up a fork and poked at something that looked like a pastry but didn’t smell at all like the ones he was pretty positive contained apple filling, like a pie. These were different. They smelled almost like a roast.

  “You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted true Mexican food, Clint. I know it’s not something you grew up with in New York, but out here so close to the border it’s quite prevalent. And delicious. And Maria is one of the best cooks I’ve ever met. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

  He frowned, but he truly did trust Mrs. Baxter as she’d been his primary mother figure all of his life and had yet to steer him wrong. He’d always been a fairly adventurous eater, willing to try anything. Once, at least.

  A quick rap on the glass of the kitchen door bought him a little time, and he quickly stood to let Mrs. Allen in.

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t announce myself at the front door,” she said as she swept in, taking a moment to smile and nod at Mrs. Baxter. “I didn’t want to wake Mr. Jackson so I thought I’d take a chance you might be in here.”

  Clint nodded and waved his arm toward the table. “Of course. Thank you for stopping by. Would you like to join us for lunch? We’re having...well, I’m not quite sure what we’re having.”

  Mrs. Allen smiled as she pulled off her gloves and tucked them in her coat pocket that she’d hung on the rack.

  “I can tell you. I could tell Maria’s cooking from a mile away. You’ll be a happy man shortly, I can promise you that.”

  She pointed to each item and described it, from the jar of fragrant beans to the reddish rice in another jar, and the several different types of wrapped pastries. Clint was delighted at the pleasure she clearly anticipated in eating them.

  “You seem to have a wide range of knowledge about rather exotic foods,” Clint said. “I wasn’t aware that Tombstone, here in the middle of the desert, was quite so cosmopolitan. Sage did explain a bit to me earlier about it’s rapid growth. Is that why there are so many culinary options?”

  Mrs. Allen closed her eyes in bliss as she took a bite of a beef tamale.

  “I suppose you could say that. There is a quite worldly restaurant in town—the Occidental—run by a New York-trained chef that has oysters, beef wellington, all kinds of wonderful delicacies. And oddly enough, there is a restaurant that specializes in Chinese cuisine along with other rarities. And, of course, the usual miner fare—good old American apple pie.”

  Mrs. Baxter lowered her fork and dotted her lips with her napkin. “And of course there are those of us who know how to cook very little, but can make a splendid pot roast if one happened to request it. But Mrs. Allen didn’t need to come to Tombstone to find all kinds of fancy fare,” she said as she folded up the colorful napkins and placed them back into Maria’s basket.

  “No?” Clint asked, his eyebrows raised at both the information and the new food he was enjoying.

  “No,” Mrs. Allen repeated. “My late husband was a concert pianist and we traveled around the world for years with our two boys. We had many opportunities to try the cuisines of other countries, so Tombstone suits me quite well. I will say, though, Maria is a native talent that could rival the chef’s in Mexico City. You are fortunate.”

  The kettle sang and Mrs. Baxter jumped up, pouring the warm water in a bucket in the sink. She pumped additional water in it and plopped the dishes in.

  “Mrs. Allen’s son, Sam, is also a very fine pianist and plays here in Tombstone. Along with his wife, who sings.”

  Mrs. Allen’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yes. Sam married Sage’s sister, as a matter of fact. Sam and Meg do sing at the Occidental on occasion where he is the bartender.”

  “Goodness,” Clint said as he finished his lunch with a heavy sigh of satisfaction. Between Sage and her tonics, Mrs. Allen and her son married to Sage’s sister...Tombstone was turning out to be quite an interesting place. But the weight he couldn’t ignore settled once more and he returned to the primary topic on his mind.

  “Mrs. Allen, I see that you are a dear friend to my father. Can you tell me about his illness? Its progression, and what from the doctor that we might be able to work with?”

  She sighed, and he noticed that Mrs. Baxter gave her a quick glance before turning back to the dishes in the sink.

  “I wish I knew, my dear. I would say that I became very fond of your father through our work together on behalf of the library, and his tireless dedication to grieving families. I’m sure I’m not telling you something you don’t know in saying that he is one of the kindest, most compassionate men I’ve ever met.”

  Clint nodded slowly. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—disagree with her on that point. He’d known that from a very young age and admired his father greatly for those traits.

  “He’d been in fairly good health but developed a slight cough. For the most part it was not a great difficulty. However,
things changed, and quite suddenly I might add.”

  “And how long ago was that?” Clint asked.

  “Not long ago—maybe six weeks?” she continued, glancing at Mrs. Baxter, who nodded in agreement. “He began to cough more and more. Over the course of maybe a week, it got much worse. He finally agreed to visit Dr. Folsom, and he returned with a regimen to follow that included a tonic from Sage. He began to improve—didn’t he, Mrs. Baxter?”

  Mrs. Baxter nodded again but wiped a tear from her cheek with the tip of her apron.

  “We were so pleased. And then after he finished that first bottle of tonic we thought we were out of the woods. His fever was gone, his cough lingered but wasn’t too bad and he was back at the library with a fair amount of gusto.”

  “Well, that all sounds marvelous. Maybe just a cold, or a spot of chill,” Clint said, rolling around the symptoms in his head. People did get colds and recover.

  “So what happened? What happened to render him bedridden?”

  Mrs. Allen shook her head, her dangling diamond earrings waving back and forth.

  “We can’t for the life of us figure it out. He went back to the doctor, whereupon he settled into one more round of tonic as the doctor said he may as well continue. He seemed fine for quite a while and we were very hopeful that he would recover. The doctor brought more tonic, promising a full recovery, and then over the course of a week or so, he just seemed to...”

  Her voice trailed off as she looked out the window and then over to Mrs. Baxter.

  “He just seemed to get weaker and want to sleep all the time. It wasn’t as if his cough came back right then...he just wanted to sleep. And he got a strange rash up his neck for a bit. That comes and goes. But now, it’s almost impossible to keep him awake for long.”

  Mrs. Allen covered Mrs. Baxter’s hand with her own and squeezed as the older lady sat back down at the table.

  Clint looked down the hall toward his father’s room. He pinched the bridge of his nose, wishing he was a full-fledged doctor and knew more, but he’d heard that Dr. Folsom was a highly-respected doctor from back East and if he wanted answers, that was likely the place to start.

  He stood and reached for his coat.

  “Thank you for the company, ladies, and the delicious food. I suppose I should thank Miss Archer for that, and I’ll return the picnic basket. At the same time, I hope to have a word with Dr. Folsom to see if maybe we can get to the bottom of this illness.”

  Mrs. Allen shook her head.

  “Things don’t look good. I hope you have better luck than we’ve had getting any information out of him.”

  Mrs. Baxter nodded. “Right. All I can do is keep him comfortable and warm and fed. I don’t know what’s going on, to be honest.”

  Clint nodded at the ladies. “Thank you for the information. I won’t be long.”

  He reached for his hat and hung the basket on his arm. He stepped out on to the boardwalk of this unusual town, wondering how he could help his father. He set out toward the doctor’s office, determined to find out everything he could. About both Sage’s tonics and the doctor.

  Chapter 15

  Sage scooted away from her position near the door when she heard chairs scrape against the floor, assuming that Clint and Dr. Folsom’s conversation about his father’s condition had ended. She hadn’t really been eavesdropping—well, maybe a little—but she couldn’t make out heads nor tails of their conversation.

  When Clint had come into the office with the empty picnic basket, she’d quickly dabbed at her eyes. She hadn’t even had the opportunity to tell him that Dr. Folsom didn’t yet know about the miner’s condition before the doctor had come out from his office and stared at Clint with a cough or two and a glance around the office before he ushered Clint in, closing the office door behind him.

  Before the door had closed, Clint had turned to glance at Sage. He looked at her questioningly, as if expecting her to follow, and she shook her head quickly and turned away, taking a deep breath as the latch fell with a clink of metal.

  Since then, she’d strained to make out what they were saying, telling herself that she’d been tending to Mr. Jackson and had every right to know. But Dr. Folsom’s words about patient privacy also rang in her ears, and when Carol and Will had come in, she’d been glad of the diversion.

  “Thank you for the information, Dr. Folsom,” Clint said as he exited the office, the much taller doctor close behind him.

  “I do hope you understand, even with your limited education as a medical student, that these things take time. And are never truly an exact science. Your father’s condition has been in ebb and flow, and I continue to search for new information that might be helpful.”

  Clint cocked his head and held the doctor’s gaze for a moment before he said, “Uh-huh. I do understand.”

  The doctor gave a rushed smile.

  “Of course you do. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must be off.”

  He reached for his coat and shrugged it on, nodding to Clint before turning to the door. Before he could get out, the ample form of the Widow Samson in the doorway blocked his retreat.

  “Oh, Dr. Folsom, just the man I want to see,” she said. It had been long past her year of mourning her deceased husband, but she still wore the mourning brooch with her husband’s hair in it and never left her house in anything but completely black clothing.

  She tapped her cane on the floor as Dr. Folsom attempted to brush past her.

  “Doctor, I’ve been here several times to see you now, for a scheduled appointment, and you have forced Sage, here, to reschedule me. I won’t be turned away again.”

  Sage exchanged a glance with Clint before she headed over to the appointment book, reaching for her eraser.

  “Mrs. Samson, I’d be happy to—”

  The widow’s voice raised almost an octave a she said, “I will not repeat myself. I will be seen now.”

  She hadn’t budged from the door frame, and there was no other way out for the doctor. His shoulders sagged and he placed his hat back on the rack and turned toward his office door.

  A triumphant smile spread over the widow’s face as she nodded at Sage and followed the doctor back into the office, the door closing once again.

  “That was quite a spectacle,” Clint said slowly as he hung his thumbs in his vest pocket. “She’s quite a force to be reckoned with, it seems.”

  Sage smiled and nodded. “Yes, she is. And not always in a very pleasant way. She had a point, though. He has missed her scheduled appointment several times in the past. And she’s not the only one.”

  Sage glanced at the appointment book and placed the pencil back in the can where she kept them. There were so many erased and rescheduled appointments that she could barely read it.

  “Sounds like you need more erasers than pencils around here.”

  She ran her fingers over the book and nodded. It was true—the doctor missed more appointments than he kept. But there were lots of emergencies in Tombstone and he had to be available. At least that’s always what she’d told herself. And everybody else.

  She closed the book. If privacy was an issue for Dr. Folsom, it certainly wasn’t her place to discuss his office habits with anyone else. And after their conversation, she wasn’t even sure if she should ask Clint about his visit. But after their morning with the miner, and the conversations they’d had about medicine in the short time they’d known each other, she did hope he would bring it up, and she took in a deep breath when he did.

  “The doctor seems to think that it’s some sort of overall degeneration of his condition, due to the memory loss,” he said slowly as he looked at the closed door. He ran his hand through his hair and tapped his hat on his thigh.

  Sage tapped her fingers on her chin as she thought.

  “I’ve known many people whose memories have gone south—old-timer’s, my mother called it. And some of them have lived very healthy lives even with that. I haven’t noticed that their bodies decline along
with their minds.”

  Clint looked out the window at the horses and carriages bustling by.

  “Nor have I,” he said before he placed his hat back on. “In fact, my grandmother lived a very long life, even though at the end she barely knew who we were.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Sage said. “That must have been very difficult.”

  Clint turned back toward her and smiled.

  “It wasn’t. She was very jolly, always. She’d just tell us she was a happy old lady and start peeling potatoes.”

  “Potatoes,” Sage asked with a smile.

  “Yes. She grew up in Ireland, and lived through the potato famine. Vowed never to have supper without potatoes ever again if she could help it. We ate a lot of potatoes in those days.”

  They both looked toward the door as the bells jingled and Clint’s eyes widened at the sight of the two ladies who entered. His eyebrows rose as Sage’s sisters, Saffron and Tarragon, crossed the waiting room, both ladies’ arms heavy with boxes.

  “Look who I ran into at the post office. When I said I was coming here, I was enlisted into service.” Saffron set the box down on one of the patient chairs and Tarragon did the same.

  “What are those?” Sage asked, peering at the boxes. “I didn’t order anything.”

  Tarragon straightened her skirts and ran a handkerchief over her cheeks. “Well, I don’t exactly know. They’re addressed to Dr. Folsom, but as there is no return address, I really can’t say.”

  By this time, Saffron had smoothed her own skirts and was nodding her head toward Clint as if to beg an introduction.

  Sage had forgotten he was there as she’d studied the boxes, curious what Dr. Folsom had ordered.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. Clint Jackson, these are my sisters, Saffron Benson and Tarragon Archer. Clint is here to see his father, Mr. Jackson.”

  He took off his hat and gave them both a little bow.

  “Oh, your father is Mr. Jackson. We are so sorry for his illness. He is such a kind man,” Tarragon said as she gave him a nod.