Читать книгу The Surgeon - Kate Bridges, Kate Bridges - Страница 10

For three days, sandwiched between his busy calls, John tried not to think of Sarah, the intimate evening they’d shared, or the tempting kiss. Why was it when it came to his work, he could make a judgment call in seconds, but when it came to Sarah, he wasn’t sure where he stood or what he wanted?

He was much safer dealing with his men.

On Monday he was busy changing burn dressings on the two constables who’d suffered in the forest fires. Fortunately the fire was under control and their burns healing.

On Tuesday and Wednesday John was critically busy with Constable Pawson, the man who’d sliced his thigh clear down to the bone in a train door while foiling a robbery attempt. The inflammation might have turned into gangrene if John hadn’t applied the poultices frequently and stayed up all night tending to the fever.

Finally, Thursday morning after a good night’s sleep, he was paying his routine weekly call to Angus McIver’s ranch. John was walking beneath the clump of pines with Angus as he headed to the buggy. He’d tended to Angus’s flaring gallbladder, treated the ranch cook for severe sunburn to the back of his neck, checked up on the blacksmith’s trembling hand—still puzzled over the symptoms—then treated the foreman’s youngest daughter for a patch of poison ivy.

“Anyway,” said Angus, pressing closer to John as he helped him to the buggy, “next time you come, maybe you could convince Sheila to let you examine her again.”

John tried to saying the words kindly, knowing how much it affected Angus. “We’ve been through this before. It’s not easy for you to hear, but you’re the one who’s likely sterile.”

Angus clenched his jaw. In his fifties, he was tall and brawny and as heavy as an ox. Widowed early from his first wife, he’d married Sheila in her twenties, but in their ten-year marriage, they hadn’t produced any children.

It was sad to see how desperately Angus wanted them. Sheila had resigned herself, content to mother her dozen nieces and nephews who lived down the road, but Angus owned one of the busiest cattle ranches in southern Alberta and had often told John he only wanted to pass it down to a son—or a daughter.

Someone tugged John’s knee. One of the blacksmith’s children peered out from John’s pant leg. “Are you gonna help my pa get better?”

John smiled at the slender eight-year-old boy. His name was Russell but most called him Rusty because of his orange hair. “I’m trying.”

“Why was his hand shakin’ so much this mornin’? It hasn’t done that for a long time.”

“I’m looking for the reason, son.”

“When are you gonna find it? What kind of doctor are ya?”

“Shoo,” said Angus with a laugh. “Us adults are talkin’.”

Angus tried to make light of what the boy had just said, but John sobered and watched Rusty run back to the stables in his dirty overalls and blackened bare feet. What was John missing in his readings? What couldn’t he see?

Sergeant O’Malley strode through the pine trees, ready to hop into the buggy beside John and return to town together, as they’d come.

“Any new information?” John asked him.

O’Malley shook his head and peered at Angus. “They got away with only one steer this time, but they attempted the entire herd.”