Shaken to the Core

by Jae

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  Table of Contents

  Other Books from Jae

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  ABOUT JAE

  Other Books from Ylva Publishing

  Backwards to Oregon

  Kicker’s Journey

  Charity

  Cast Me Gently

  Coming from Ylva Publishing

  Finding Ms. Write

  Welcome to the Wallops

  Copyright

  Other Books from Jae

  The Hollywood Series:

  Departure from the Script

  Damage Control

  Just Physical

  Portland Police Bureau Series:

  Conflict of Interest

  Next of Kin

  The Moonstone Series:

  Something in the Wine

  The Vampire Diet Series:

  Good Enough to Eat

  The Oregon Series:

  Backwards to Oregon

  Beyond the Trail

  Hidden Truths

  The Shape-Shifter Series:

  Second Nature

  Natural Family Disasters

  Manhattan Moon

  True Nature

  Standalone Romances:

  Under a Falling Star

  Shaken to the Core

  by Jae

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As always, I would like to thank my wonderful team of beta readers, who helped make this book what it is: Alison Grey, Anne-France, Christiane Z., Concepta, Erin Saluta, G Benson, Katharina, and Tricia.

  A special thank-you goes to my critique partner RJ Nolan, who kept an eye on Giuliana’s dialogue for me, making sure she doesn’t sound like a native speaker.

  Thanks also to Michelle Aguilar, my editor; to Glendon, who created the wonderful cover for Shaken to the Core; and to all the people at Ylva Publishing for making publishing a “pack” experience.

  CHAPTER 1

  Italy Harbor

  San Francisco, California

  March 18, 1906

  Giuliana squinted against the brisk sea breeze and looked out across the bay. The fog was lifting, revealing glimpses of Alcatraz Island, but still there was no sign of the Bon Viaggiu’s brown, triangular sail. Most of the other feluccas were already back in. Water lapped against the small boats, bumping them against the pier in a gentle rhythm that contrasted with Giuliana’s growing anxiety.

  Where was Turi?

  Usually, her brother went out with the tide in the middle of the night and hurried back in the morning so his would be one of the first boats back and he could get a good price for his catch.

  Today, the other piscaturi had beaten him to it. A group of Genoese fishermen sat on the pier, mending their nets and singing arias, while several of Giuliana’s fellow Sicilians unloaded boxes of fish and crabs from their boats.

  Next to Giuliana’s crab stand, black-clad women had already set huge pots of water to boil. Clouds of steam billowed up, and the women huddled closer to ward off the chill. The aroma of cooking seafood and fresh-baked sourdough bread drifted over, mixing with the smell of fish and salty air.

  Without any crabs to cook, Giuliana hadn’t lit her fire yet. She shuffled her feet to keep warm and tried not to think about their father, who hadn’t returned to the village when his boat had gone out for sardines. On the one hand, the pain of losing him was still fresh, even after six years, but on the other hand, it seemed like a lifetime ago. Sometimes she could hardly remember his weather-beaten features.

  What if Turi didn’t come back either? Then she’d be all alone in Merica.

  The bellow of a foghorn interrupted her thoughts. Again she looked out at the bay.

  Crying seagulls circled above a lone boat. This felucca was painted white with green trimmings, the same colors her father’s and all other boats of their village had been.

  The Bon Viaggiu! Her heart skipped a beat. See? There he is. You worried for nothing.

  But Turi’s boat wasn’t sailing in front of the wind. It was being towed by a steam-powered fishing tug.

  At first, Giuliana thought that Turi had caught a ride back to the harbor, as he and the other fishermen sometimes did. But the boat wasn’t traveling low in the water. No catch was weighing it down. Something was wrong.

  Turi! She rushed toward the edge of the pier and hopped up and down to see over the masts of the other boats.

  When the Bon Viaggiu pulled in alongside the pier, she took just enough time to tie down the boat and then gathered her skirt higher and jumped on board.

  Turi sat in the stern of the felucca. His broad shoulders, their muscles honed from lifting heavy nets, were slumped forward.

  Giuliana scrambled over, spreading her arms for balance as the boat rocked. She fell to her knees in front of him and clutched his legs, which were encased in rubber boots up to the hips.

  His body shivered beneath her hands.

  “Turi? What’s wrong?” she asked in Sicilian. “Did you get hurt?”

  He coughed and looked up slowly, as if even that movement required a lot of strength. His skin, normally even darker than her own olive complexion, was pale; just his cheeks were blotched with red. He was shaking all over and clutched his chest as another cough rattled through him. “It’s just a cough,” he answered in their language.

  He’d said that for the last week. So far, she had believed him. Now she reached up and touched his forehead. Heat seared her cool fingers. “You’re burning up!”

  He didn’t answer. As he stood, he swayed a bit, clutched his head, and muttered a string of Sicilian curse words.

  Strangely, hearing them made Giuliana feel a little better. She pushed forward, under his arm, so he could wrap it around her shoulders. His linen shirt was damp. It smelled like sweat, not spray from the sea.

  He leaned on her as they climbed onto the pier.

  Bedda matri, he was heavy! For a moment, they both swayed. Giuliana stiffened her spine to take more of his weight.

  Another cough shook him. This close, Giuliana could hear a wheezing sound as he gasped for breath.

  Two steps down the pier, he stopped. He shook like a loose sail in the wind.

  Giuliana peered at him with concern. “Do you want to sit for—?”

  Without warning, he collapsed.

  She tried to hold him upright, but he was too heavy. They both went down onto the worn planks of the pier. Pain lanced through her hand as she caught herself, but she ignored it. Only Turi was important right now. She shook him frantically. “Turi! Wake up! You have to wake up. Please!”

  His eyes remained closed, but his chest was moving up and down with each labored breath.

  On her knees next to him, she looked around for help. “Ajutu!” she cried, then repeated it in English. “Somebody help, please!”

  Two fishermen jumped over their nets, which they had spread out to dry. Others climbed out of the boats they’d been cleaning. Within seconds, they were carrying Turi along the pier.

  “Wait!” Giuliana called in Sicilian. She hastened after them. “Where are yo
u taking him?”

  One of the men shouted something back, but the wind made it hard to understand. She caught the word ospitali.

  For a moment, she wanted to protest. They didn’t have the money to pay for treatment in a hospital. But she bit her tongue because she sensed that the hospital was Turi’s only chance.

  * * *

  Giuliana barely spared a glance at the majestic granite columns or the magnificent dome of City Hall as she rushed into the Central Emergency Hospital in the building’s basement, where a horse-drawn ambulance had taken Turi.

  Her leather lace-up shoes, which Turi had saved up for last Christmas, beat a rapid staccato against the marble floor.

  A nurse walked past her, pushing a wheeled metal cart with medical supplies.

  “Scusa…excuse me, miss,” Giuliana said. “I search my brother, Salvatore Russo. He is sick, so they brought him here.”

  “Unless they took him to the operating theater, he’s likely in the men’s ward.” The nurse pointed to the other end of the corridor.

  After a quick thank-you, Giuliana hurried in the indicated direction and squeezed past two orderlies carrying a moaning patient on a stretcher.

  The men’s ward consisted of a large room. Metal-frame beds lined two walls, while a nurse sat at a desk in the center of the room, writing down notes in the light from the gas chandeliers suspended from the ceiling.

  Giuliana started to walk up to her but then caught a glimpse of the patient in the bed to her left. Turi!

  He was sitting up in bed, propped up against several pillows. His eyes were closed.

  She nearly collided with a metal cart as she rushed over and perched on the edge of the bed. “Turi?” she whispered.

  His eyes fluttered open.

  “Oh Turi, it’s so good to see you awake,” she said in Sicilian.

  He tried to speak, but a cough shook him, cutting him off.

  She tugged his white blanket a little higher. “Don’t try to talk.”

  Not that he could, even if he wanted. He continued to cough, and his shaking refused to cease. Exhausted, he slumped back against the pillows.

  Giuliana held his hand, feeling the familiar calluses. She chafed his cold fingers between both of her hands and looked around for one of the doctors in their vests and bowler hats.

  Her desperate gaze caught the attention of a nurse who had just entered the ward and was striding across the room toward them. One step before reaching them, she tripped over something and careened into a cart. Medical supplies went flying in all directions.

  An empty metal bowl hit Giuliana in the chest, and she caught it without thought.

  With almost catlike reflexes, the nurse managed to stay on her feet and even grabbed the cart before it could topple over.

  At the sound of the crash, another nurse hurried over.

  “For goodness’s sake, Miss Croft, how many times have I told you to put the bedpan beneath the bed, not in front of it?” the first nurse said.

  The other one blushed. “I’m sorry, Doctor Sharpe.”

  Doctor? Giuliana stared at the woman. Only now did she notice that the stranger wasn’t wearing a white, high-collared smock and a small cap, as the nurses did. Instead, she was clad in a dark brown skirt and a white shirtwaist that contrasted with her fiery red hair, which, instead of being swept up in the latest fashion, was neatly tied back.

  “It’s all right,” the doctor said to the nurse, now in a milder tone. “Everyone makes mistakes. Just see that it doesn’t happen again.”

  The nurse nodded and began to gather the scattered supplies.

  The lady doctor stepped closer to the bed.

  Giuliana was still staring at her. In Sicily, only men could become physicians, and she’d had no idea that there were women doctors in Merica. In her five years here, she hadn’t encountered any.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” the lady doctor said. “But I can assure you that I was trained by some of the best physicians in the country, and my medical skills are just as good as those of my male colleagues.”

  “Better, actually,” the nurse said with a smile.

  Dr. Sharpe laughed. “Don’t let them hear that.” She looked at Giuliana. “Your husband will receive the best possible care.”

  “He is not my husband. I am his sister. Giuliana Russo.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Miss Russo. I’m Dr. Lucy Hamilton Sharpe.” The doctor offered her hand.

  After a moment’s hesitation, very aware of any dirt or fish smell that might cling to her own fingers, Giuliana wanted to reach out and then realized that she was still holding on to the metal bowl.

  “Why don’t you give me that?” Dr. Sharpe took it from her and handed it to the nurse before shaking Giuliana’s hand.

  If Giuliana had expected soft skin and a dainty touch, the doctor’s handshake proved her wrong. This wasn’t the hand of a spoiled, wealthy lady who had never needed to work. It was the strong, slightly callused hand of someone who was no stranger to physical labor.

  Curious, Giuliana studied her, noticing the freckles on her nose that indicated that the doctor had spent some time in the sun without protecting her fair complexion with an umbrella, as the other ladies in San Francisco did.

  A cough from her brother reminded her that she wasn’t here to stare at the lady doctor, as fascinating as she was. Quickly, she wrenched her gaze away. “Can you help my brother?”

  Dr. Sharpe looked down at Turi, who had opened his eyes and peered up at her with a feverish gaze. With a steady hand, she pulled the blanket down a little and opened the top two buttons on his shirt.

  Giuliana watched with wide eyes. Back in Santa Flavia, opening the shirt of a man you weren’t related to would have been considered very forward. Of course, Miss Sharpe was a physician. How else was she supposed to examine him?

  The doctor took an instrument out of a leather case. Two black rubber tubes led down to a bell-shaped piece of ebony that Dr. Sharpe held to Turi’s chest.

  “What is that?” Giuliana asked.

  The doctor pulled the ends of the instrument out of her ears. “It’s called a stethoscope. It allows me to listen to his lungs and heart.” She gestured for Turi to open his mouth and peered into his throat. When she straightened, she looked from him to Giuliana. “He’s suffering from bilateral pneumonia.”

  Giuliana bit her lip. She hated letting on that she was just an uneducated girl from a tiny little fishing town in Sicily. But, as her mother would have said, family was more important than pride, so she asked, “What does this mean?”

  “It means that he has an infection in both of his lungs. They’re filling with pus and other fluids. That’s what makes it so hard for him to breathe.”

  “But you can help him, yes?”

  Now it was Dr. Sharpe’s turn to bite her lip. “We can try, but it’s a very serious illness, Miss Russo.”

  Turi weakly squeezed her hand and sent her a questioning gaze. Unlike Giuliana, he had never learned more than a few words of English. Not necessary, he’d said. He didn’t need it out on the boat, and they would return home to Sicily in a year or so anyway.

  “She says you’ll be just fine,” she said in Sicilian and tried not to flinch as she looked into his eyes.

  He nodded and closed his eyes again. His sweat-dampened hair, as dark as her own, fell onto his face, emphasizing how pale he was.

  Gently, she reached out and swiped an errant strand from his forehead.

  “You’re hurt,” Dr. Sharpe said, pointing.

  Giuliana peered at her own scraped hand. It was like looking at a stranger’s appendage; she didn’t feel any pain at all. “Oh.” It had probably happened when Turi had collapsed and they had tumbled to the pier.

  “Let me take care of that.”

  Shaking her head, Giuliana hid her hand behind her back. Bad enough that they would have to pay the ward fee for Turi; if there was to be any money left to send home to their family this week, they couldn’t afford treatme
nt for her too.

  “It’s all right,” Dr. Sharpe said, the expression in her green eyes kind. “I won’t charge you for it. I’ll have to wait until Miss Croft returns with the mustard plaster for your brother’s treatment anyway.” She gave the nurse a nod, which had her hurrying off.

  Reluctantly, Giuliana brought her hand out from behind her back.

  The doctor pulled over a stool, sat, and gently cradled Giuliana’s hand. She took a tiny medical tool from the cart next to her and, with a light touch, started pulling wood splinters from Giuliana’s skin. When she was finished, she spread ointment over the scrapes and covered them with gauze. “There. Keep it dry for a few days, and you’ll be fine.”

  “Thank you.” Giuliana wasn’t worried about herself. Her only worry was for Turi. She put her hand in her lap and looked over at him. Oh please, Madonna. Help him.

  The nurse returned, her arms piled high with supplies.

  Dr. Sharpe used a metal bowl and a spoon to mix some yellow-brownish powder—probably the mustard she had mentioned—with a white substance that looked like flour. Then she poured in a little water from a pitcher next to Turi’s bed. Finally, she added a few drops of a liquid that smelled like the kerosene they used to light their lamps at home. After stirring everything into a smooth paste, she spread it over a clean piece of cloth, which she then placed on Turi’s chest. As she turned away from him, she gave the nurse a stern glance. “Watch the mustard plaster closely, please.”

  “Is it dangerous?” Giuliana asked.

  “No. But if we leave it in place for too long, it will burn his skin.”

  “I’ll keep a close eye on him,” the nurse said.

  So would Giuliana. She was determined not to leave his side until he was well.

  “Miss Sharpe?” a man in a three-piece suit called from the entrance of the ward. “We’re waiting for you in the operating theater. Or have you finally seen reason and admitted that assisting in a surgery would be too much for a woman’s delicate sensibilities?”

  “While I appreciate your concern for my ‘delicate sensibilities,’ Dr. Ferber, they are much more insulted by your attempts to keep me out of the operating theater than by witnessing a man being cut open to save his life.” Dr. Sharpe looked him straight in the eye, her voice never wavering. “By now, you should know that I’m not the sort of woman who’s prone to fainting spells. And, by the way, it’s Doctor Sharpe, not Miss.”