by Regina Scott
Clint reached out and touched his brother’s forehead. “His fever’s down. That’s a good sign, right?”
She nodded. “But it will go up again. And can you hear his breathing?” It was impossible not to hear that harsh, wet rasping, she thought.
Slowly, Clint nodded, then asked, “Aren’t you ever afraid for yourself, Miss Alice? Pneumonia’s catching, isn’t it?”
Alice blinked, surprised that he had voiced the question. It was rare for a family member to even spare a thought for the one taking care of their loved one.
“It can be,” she told him. “But mostly pneumonia preys on the old and the young, and those who, like your brother, have caught a chill and are overtired.”
“Then you’d best take care of yourself, right? I’m going to fix you some breakfast, Miss Alice, and you’d better sit outside and get some fresh air while you eat it. I’ll sit with Elijah while you do that.”
She wanted to weep at the kindness in his voice.
“I think,” she began, taking care with her words, “Elijah will reach a crisis point tonight. Then he will either get better from there or…” She couldn’t say the words.
“Or he won’t,” Gideon concluded for her and left the tent, as if he couldn’t bear to remain in the same space as the words he’d just said.
Chapter Thirteen
Keith Gilbert came just before noon for an update on Elijah’s condition. Alice spoke to him as frankly as she had to his brothers.
“I’ll tell the church, and we’ll be praying,” he told her. “Mrs. Murphy said she’d be sending supper over for all of you,” he said, including Gideon and Clint in his words. “Alice, Cassie will be coming to relieve you again tonight.”
“I’ll be grateful for her help,” Alice said. “But I won’t be sleeping.” She wouldn’t be leaving Elijah’s side until the crisis had passed, and they had either won—or lost everything.
The deacon turned to go, but Alice reached out a hand to stop him. “Mr. Gilbert, how is Dakota? Is he… Does he seem content where he is or still restless?”
He sighed. “He seems to like Cassie and me, but before the reverend took sick, he kept saying his father’s name and studying everyone who passed, especially those Security Patrol fellows. I hate to bring it up, since Elijah’s so ill, but were you able to find out anything that day you went out and talked to those army officers?”
Alice took a deep breath. Their expedition to the border seemed like a decade ago, and yet it had been only two days ago.
She told him what Colonel Amboys had told them.
Keith Gilbert looked down at the ground for a long moment afterward. “I was afraid of something like that.”
“Mr. Gilbert, I’m telling you so that you and your wife will be prepared. But if you’re willing, perhaps it would be best to…wait a day or so before you tell Dakota? I know he’ll have questions to ask…us—” she stumbled over the word, praying she wouldn’t have to answer them alone “—through Lars, about what the officer said.”
“That might be best,” Gilbert said. “Honestly I don’t think he’s going to ask about it. Lars has stopped by a few times, in case the boy needed to talk, and he says Dakota’s worried sick about Elijah. He’d be underfoot here now, but Cassie made him promise to wait until the reverend was better, so he wouldn’t take sick, too.”
Alice nodded. A child like Dakota, who had so recently undertaken a journey fraught with danger and hunger, might succumb easily to such a dangerous illness. The Gilberts would be devastated if anything happened to him.
Just as they’d all be devastated if Elijah didn’t recover.
*
Hot again. And so tired, tired of the pain. The evil shadow was getting bolder now, closer…. His skin burned like fire—yet not fire. He burned as if there was ice coating his skin. So cold, but too exhausted to even shiver.
Perhaps he should get it over with, let the evil shadow overtake him. But whenever he would get this thought born of weariness, the presence of the Light grew stronger and held the evil in the shadow away.
A Voice in the Light murmured, “Not yet, Elijah. You have work to do yet.”
Cool hands. A soft voice. Cool water on his skin that banished the fiery heat, if only for a while. A few drops of water on his tongue, not enough for him to choke on, but immediately absorbed into fever-seared dry tissues. Gentle hands turning him, placing cool, dry sheets under and over him when he had sweated the heat away.
Alice’s voice. His brothers’ voices. This time when he dreamed, he saw his mama and papa—but only from a distance, and only indistinctly. “Wait!” he called to them. “Have you seen Marybelle? Isn’t she with you? I saw her yesterday….” But they didn’t turn and answer, and then they, too, faded away.
*
She’d heard him call out for Marybelle again, and all at once, she had to know.
Clint sat on his cot watching his brother. They were alone in the tent, Gideon having taken refuge outside at the campfire again.
“Clint, who’s Marybelle?” she asked, her gaze shifting to him.
Clint’s eyes never left Elijah. “His fiancée. She died of influenza a month before the wedding, along with Gideon’s wife and child.”
So Elijah had loved before, only to lose his love to death. No wonder he’d devoted himself to serving God and building his church. And Gideon had lost a wife and a child. It was impossible for her to imagine surviving such losses.
If Elijah lived, was there ever going to be room in his heart again for the love of another woman?
*
At dusk Alice left the bedside, at Cassie’s insistence, only long enough to nibble at the roasted chicken and mashed potatoes Molly Murphy had sent for their supper. She chewed mechanically, not really tasting the food, her gaze going constantly to Elijah’s supine, sheet-covered form on the cot a few feet away.
She knew with everything in her that what she had said was true—tonight would be the turning point. She would use every bit of nursing skill she had ever possessed, every ounce of faith, to help him back away from the steep cliff he was heading for and to return him to health.
The sweet sound of two women singing “Rock of Ages” drifted inside the canvas from nearby. Curious, Alice lifted the tent flap and saw that the singers were Carrie and Cordelia Ferguson, the talkative sisters she’d met the first time she had gone to chapel. They stood at the edge of the firelight, holding a hymnal between them.
“We’re just here to encourage the reverend,” Cordelia told her. “Some of the other chapel folks are gonna join us in a while, and we’re going to surround the tent all night with prayers. You don’t have to pay us any mind—just let us know if there’s news.”
Alice felt tears sting her eyes. “Thank you,” she murmured and let the tent flap fall.
Behind her, she heard Gideon groan. “I’ll keep ’em supplied with coffee—I’m sure not going to refuse anything that might help my brother, but they’d better not expect me to talk to ’em when I go outside and sit by the fire.”
Poor Gideon. He’ll be like a caged wolf without his solitude.
But before she could spare another thought for Elijah’s brother, Cassie called from the bedside. “He’s starting to get restless, Alice. I think the fever’s going up again.”
This was it—the crisis was upon them.
Father God, if You have ever listened to me, please listen to me now, she prayed. Please save Elijah, Lord. I know now that You never intended for me to lay aside my nursing skills, and I promise I never will. I pledge to You that I will nurse anyone who needs it from this day forward. Just please save Elijah, for all our sakes, and so he can go on to do the good I know he can do for You. I ask this in Jesus’s name.
She went to join Cassie at Elijah’s cot. The battle was begun.
He flailed about for a while, and Alice felt the tears running down her cheeks as Gideon and Clint held him to keep him from turning over the cot. Then, when Elijah calmed, she and Cassie
sponged him down.
They had a brief interval of peace before the bed creaked and shook from the force of his shivering. It was so fierce and prolonged that it seemed his bones must surely shatter and the teeth rattle from his mouth.
Earlier she had been aware of the voices raised softly in prayer outside, punctuated with the occasional hymn and the soft shuffle of feet walking around the tent. Now her world narrowed to the cot beside her and the man who lay on it, fighting for his life.
Lord, if You’re not going to save Elijah, take him Home, she prayed at one point. Just don’t make him keep suffering. I can’t bear this!
The answer came back just as fast: Alice, you can do all things because I have strengthened you. Be still, and know that I am here with you.
She opened her eyes to see that Cassie’s eyes were closed, her lips were moving in silent prayer.
All right, Lord, we are all asking in faith that You heal Elijah. You know the good Elijah can do in Oklahoma if he lives. But Your will be done.
Elijah had stopped shaking, and he lay sleeping. This had happened before—he would rest for a time after the chills, and then the fever would start to build again. In between, his breaths would come harshly, and his body would be racked with spasms of coughing.
Wait—was it her imagination or was his breathing easier now, free of that rasping wet sound? Didn’t his color seem more normal, neither flushed nor with that icy pallor?
Alice watched for a long time, afraid to believe her eyes, while the older woman across the bed kept praying silently, her eyes closed.
Finally, when she could stand it no longer, she reached a hand over Elijah’s chest and touched Cassie.
The old woman’s eyes flew open.
“Is he—?”
“Look, Cassie, look. I think he’s better. Listen.”
Cassie’s eyes widened, then she bent her head to listen. “He—he’s breathing normally, isn’t he? Oh, Alice…”
Shaking, Alice reached for her stethoscope. Both Clint and Gideon had gone outside to make more coffee, so she wouldn’t alert them until she was sure. She placed the bell of the stethoscope over Elijah’s chest and held her breath.
The blessed sound of normal in-and-out breathing, free of all but faint traces of the congestion, greeted her ears.
“Thank You, Lord,” she whispered, and the tears flooded her eyes and ran down her cheeks.
Cassie cried, “Hallelujah!” which made it unnecessary to call Elijah’s brothers. They came running in from outside, wild-eyed. One look at Alice’s happy tears and Cassie’s grin told them the news before they even looked at their brother.
“He’s better?” they both asked at once, even as their eyes found the answer for themselves.
“Yes,” said Alice in a tear-choked, shaking voice. “He’s going to be weak for a long time but yes.”
“Well, I’ll be…” said Gideon.
“I’ll tell the folks outside,” Cassie said, and Alice saw Gideon give a surreptitious, relieved sigh.
“Tell them there’ll be no visiting with the reverend till I give the word,” Alice called after her. She knew how well-meaning folk could exhaust a fever-weakened convalescent. There were many in Boomer Town who loved Elijah Thornton, and she and his brothers would have to keep them at bay for a while. It was a blessed problem to have.
Cassie insisted Alice sleep for a while after that. Though Alice protested, she sank into a boneless slumber until dawn, when the older woman roused her to say she was going back to her campsite to sleep for a few hours.
“There’s someone who wants to talk to you,” she said with a smile broader than Alice had ever seen on anyone. She stood aside, so Alice could see Elijah. He was awake and gazing at her, his eyes tired but clear.
Alice wasn’t even conscious of jumping to her feet and flying to the bedside. Clint and Gideon were there, too, beaming down at their brother.
“I hear I…have you to th-thank,” Elijah said. His voice was but a shadow of its usual resonant, deep volume, and he had to pause to catch his breath, but she’d never heard a sweeter sound.
“Not me, the Lord,” she said, again feeling the sting of happy tears. When had she turned into such a watering pot?
“Of…c-course,” Elijah said. “But…thank you…for being His hands.”
“Oh, Elijah…” she murmured, so happy she thought she might burst. In spite of her exhaustion, she felt like dancing through the dusty streets of Boomer Town. “Do you think you might be able to eat some broth?”
“S-sounds…good.”
He drank a good bowlful, with Alice spooning it into his mouth, and his eyelids drifted shut right after the last drops. She continued to sit by his cot, so happy just to watch his chest rise and fall without the shuddering effort.
“Alice, go on back to your tent and get some rest,” Clint said gently after a while. Somewhere during the crisis, he and Gideon had dropped the “Miss” attached to her name, and she didn’t care.
“I’m all right…” She tried to protest, to point out she had slept some and her patient’s condition was still too fragile for her to leave, but her fatigue-fogged brain couldn’t even find the words.
“Gideon and I will take turns watching him, and I promise we’ll call you if there’s any change.”
“All right,” she said, “I’ll be back in a few hours. But remember, no—”
He held up a hand. “No visitors, I know.”
*
Elijah now knew the meaning of the phrase “weak as a kitten.” He’d barely had strength enough to open his mouth to accept the sips of chicken broth Alice had offered. Now, Clint told him, she had departed for her own tent to rest awhile, and all he could do was lie on his cot in a sleepy haze and think about what had happened, and how the Lord had used her to save his life.
He remembered snatches of the past couple days—feeling the sudden blackness coming over him at the chapel and knowing he was powerless to stave it off. The racking chills and the bone-deep, agonizing aching all through him, the sensation of his lungs being clogged with something so thick he couldn’t get a decent gulp of air, the stabbing chest pain every time he tried to. The spasms of coughing. Alice’s cool hands, bathing the fire away, her beautiful face bent low, furrowed with worry. The sound of her murmured prayers.
Sometimes in her ministrations, she was joined by Cassie Gilbert. Other times, the faces of his brothers hovered into view over him. But always he was conscious of Jesus in their midst.
He realized what a profoundly good woman Alice was. Any man would be lucky to have her, but he didn’t want just any man to win her. He’d given up the idea of marrying, but would the Lord release him from that and let him court her? If He did, would she consider giving up her prized self-sufficiency to become his wife?
*
Elijah’s congregation was obedient to the no-visitors rule, so they showed their love in the only way they could. Covered dishes and pots of soup began appearing that first morning after the crisis had passed, left at the campfire, most of the time deposited when Clint and Gideon weren’t even outside to receive them and thank the givers.
And Alice brought her own offering later in the day, a bowl of egg custard with nutmeg topping—“To help you get stronger,” she said. She must have been to the Fairhavens’ mercantile tent, and bought out their supply of fresh eggs and sugar, and used Mrs. Murphy’s oven, he thought, but even the delicious custard wasn’t as sweet as the sight of her.
The first visitor permitted the next day, when Alice deemed Elijah strong enough, was Dakota. He entered the Thornton tent shyly, escorted by Cassie and Keith, his dark eyes shining with excitement and joy. Alice was already present.
“Preechah, you are better, yes?” he said, pronouncing each word with care. “I have cookies for you.” He held out a dish piled high with them. It was obvious he had practiced the speech.
“Lars has started working with him, teaching him some English words,” Cassie explained, with as
much pride as if she were his mother.
“Yes,” Elijah said. “I am much better. And I’m glad to see you, Dakota. Thank you for the cookies,” he said, nodding toward them, not sure how much the boy understood.
“Cassie,” the boy said, pointing to her, plainly wanting to give credit where it was due.
They didn’t stay long, and afterward, Elijah insisted he felt strong enough to go sit outside for a while. With Gideon supporting him, Clint walking alongside in case more help was needed and Alice following, he made his way slowly beyond the canvas walls of the tent for the first time in four days.
They sat in the shade of the tent, but it was good to see the sun and feel its warmth. There had been times, during his shaking chills, when he’d have given an arm for its heat.
“I want to go to chapel tomorrow,” he told Alice, who was seated on a camp chair opposite him. “Not to lead it,” he said, holding up his hand when he sensed she was about to object. “Keith will do that, as he has been doing. I already spoke to him about it when you and Cassie were talking.”
“I see my patient’s getting ornery,” Alice said with an amused smile. “A sure sign of recovery. All right, if you’ll agree to return here for some rest right afterward. No lingering for one of the Ferguson sisters’ endless stories.”
“Yes, Nurse,” he said meekly, but he let her see the twinkle in his eye.
Chapter Fourteen
Lars came to call on Elijah the next day, promising Alice as he took a chair that he would keep his visit brief.
“You are welcome, Lars,” Alice said. “The visits from those Elijah is closest to seem to make him stronger—as does the fresh air,” she added, for they were sitting under a length of canvas Elijah’s brothers had erected so the sun wouldn’t beat down too heavily on him.
“So what’s your sister doing this afternoon?” Elijah asked him, after Lars had caught him up on the news around the camp.
“She is with Mrs. Murphy, teaching her how to make kartoffelbrot in exchange for slices of baked ham, potatoes and apple pie for our supper,” the Dane said.
