Benedict Hall Read online

  When she had done what she could, she drew Thea back into the front room. “There’s one other thing we can try, Thea. A physician named Haldane has been administering oxygen with an anesthetic mask. It may help. I’ll have to find a source for oxygen bottles.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And don’t worry about the office. Stay here with Norman.”

  Thea nodded wearily, and Margot asked, “Do you have anyone to come and help you?”

  “A neighbor. The one who telephoned.”

  “Good. I’ll come back tonight.”

  “What will you do about the clinic, though? You’ll need someone.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “And what about Dr. Whitely? Are you going to have to go before the board?”

  “I am. But I can manage that, too.” Margot touched Thea’s shoulder. Thea looked up, her eyes full of the grief that was drawing nearer by the moment. “I’m so sorry, Thea. I wish I could do more for him.”

  “I know. Thank you.”

  As Margot walked across the neglected lawn to the Essex, she drew a deep, rib-expanding breath. Such a simple act, breathing, filling her lungs right to the brim with sweet, fresh summer air. It was a sensation Norman Reynolds would never again experience. As Blake drove her away, she glanced back at the little house that looked so tired and worn. As worn as poor Thea. “Good God, Blake,” Margot said softly. “What human beings do to each other!”

  “I know, Dr. Margot. I know.”

  Suddenly, she didn’t think she could bear to be alone, to think about this all by herself. She wanted the company of someone who understood. Who liked her. She blurted, “Blake. Do you have a telephone number for Major Parrish? At his rooming house?”

  She heard the smile in Blake’s voice. “I believe I can find it, Dr. Margot. Would you like me to call him?”

  “No. No, just get me the number, if you please. I’ll call him myself.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Preston cursed, and kicked at a skinny mutt nosing around a trash bin near the Times building. He had succeeded in getting Parrish fired, but his other plan had gone awry. He had no one he could blame, in this case. He had ruined it himself. He must be getting soft, living the way he did, with his mother and Hattie fussing over him, and all the old biddies crowding around in hopes of a mention in his column. He should have let the stupid girl die.

  It had been a moment of weakness. Of believing his own press. Of wanting to remain the hero in his mother’s eyes, and not wanting his father to give him that measuring look, or Dick to eye him as if he had just popped out of a sewer.

  And now everyone thought Margot had saved Loena’s life! As if all of her witch doctoring could have done it—enemas, for Christ’s sake, or vinegar soaks. It was a great shame he couldn’t have just shown her the sapphire, told her its story, made clear to her that it was he who had allowed the little slut to live. Instead, Dr. Margot Benedict was now the great healer, the miracle worker! Resentment at the irony made his teeth ache.

  This morning, over breakfast, Father had fixed him with his gimlet eye. “Preston,” he said, “how are things at the Times? Going well?”

  Preston had looked up over his plate of eggs and ham, and grinned. “Just dandy, Pater.”

  His mother beamed from the other end of the table. She had a copy of the paper folded beside her plate. “Lovely column today, Preston,” she said. “You should read it, Dickson dear. Listen to this:

  Will Seattle’s Pine Street be the Western version of New York’s Fifth Avenue? If Frederick & Nelson’s devoted clientele is any measure, it could well happen, and happen soon. Ladies of fashion know that Frederick’s is the place to find the latest hat or frock, the finest gloves or stockings, in designs to rival anything New York can offer. Frederick & Nelson offers a ladies’ luncheon every Tuesday in their tearoom. When this reporter dropped by, he was treated to an elegant display of the latest modes worn by the leading ladies of Seattle fashion. The Misses Sorensen, of the West Seattle Sorensens, both sported long Parisian scarves of painted silk—”

  Dickson put up a hand, and Edith’s voice trailed off. She said, with a tentative smile, “But Preston writes very well, don’t you think? Everyone says so.”

  “Do they.” Dickson raised one thick gray eyebrow. He put one fist on the table as he turned his dark gaze back to his son. “I saw Bill Boeing yesterday. There was evidently some unpleasantness with one of his engineers. He tells me you saw fit to write about it in the paper.”

  Edith’s smile faded, and she turned a confused look on Preston. “What unpleasantness? What happened, dear?”

  Dick, across the table from Preston, laid down his fork.

  Ramona said, “Oh, it was nothing, really.”

  Dick said, “You read it, Ramona? You didn’t tell me.”

  “Or me,” Edith said. She frowned. “When was this?”

  Ramona said, “Mother Benedict, I didn’t think you would—that is—well, I liked it, because it was interesting to read something that wasn’t just parties and dresses and things. I didn’t think you’d care for it, though.”

  “I would hardly call it nothing,” Dickson said. “Bill Boeing certainly thinks it’s something. It caused him a lot of difficulty with the city council. It should have been kept private, in any case.”

  “Why private?” Preston said. He strove to keep his tone light. “I’m a journalist. I write the news as I see it.”

  “Journalist.” Dickson waved his hand, brushing the term aside.

  Preston had to breathe to release the pressure building in his gut. When he dared trust his voice, he said, “I don’t see how this concerns you, Father.”

  “Everything to do with my family concerns me.”

  Dick said, “I told you to watch your step, Preston.”

  “Mind your own fucking business, Dick,” Preston snapped.

  Edith gasped, and Ramona said, “Preston! Please!”

  His father glared, and Preston said hastily, “I’m sorry, Mother. Ramona. Too much time with soldiers.” He contrived an innocent, round-eyed look of chagrin.

  Edith said faintly, “I suppose so, dear. But that word. My goodness.”

  “You’re absolutely right, Mater. I hope you’ll forgive me.” He pushed back his chair, hoping to escape the whole absurd scene.

  His father, however, like the bulldog he resembled more every day, persisted. “Preston, our family business stays out of the paper in the future.”

  Preston stared at his half-finished breakfast. Tension grew in his belly, an explosion waiting to happen. His breastbone throbbed with it. “Father. I think you’re overreacting.”

  “I still don’t know what happened,” Edith said in a plaintive tone.

  Dickson said, “Preston was in a street fight with Major Parrish. A one-armed man! Then he wrote about it in the paper where anyone could see.”

  “He attacked me,” Preston protested, and then wished he hadn’t. He sounded like a wounded child.

  “You cost him his job,” Dickson said. “Bill Boeing is none too happy about it. And neither am I.”

  Ramona glanced sideways at her mother-in-law. “Does Margot know?”

  No one answered her.

  Now, remembering that scene, Preston yearned to break something, to bash someone, but he didn’t dare. Not after his pose of innocence in the whole Parrish altercation. He had his column to write, and a deadline looming, but he couldn’t go to the Times in this mood.

  He turned away, striding back the way he had come. He would go down into the Tenderloin, to that flophouse where Carter was living. He would pay up, maybe take the silly sod for a drink. It was probably best to let everything blow over, calm down for a while. He had time.

  He pressed the sapphire against his chest, and let its weight ease the tension in his belly. Yes, he had time. Of course. He had plenty of time. It could wait.

  Margot swept the floors of the examining room and reception, and stowed the broom and dustpan in the ba
ck storage closet. She had run the autoclave, and disinfected the examining table. She washed her hands, and went around turning out the lights. It had been a quiet afternoon, but she had seen three patients. She felt a modest sense of satisfaction.

  She was putting on her hat when Frank stepped in through the front door. His eyes were a vivid blue beneath the brim of his Stetson, and he looked very tall in the cramped clinic.

  “I hope I’m not late.”

  She smiled at him, and pulled her gloves from her pocket. “Your timing is perfect. I’ve just finished.”

  He held the door for her to pass through, and took her medical bag from her as they turned down Post Street. She stepped to his left side. He flinched, but she let her fingers rest, with the lightest of touches, just under his upper arm. His gaze came down to hers, and she leaned a little closer. “Just enough to hold on to,” she said. He blinked, and then laughed.

  She liked walking next to him down the street. She liked him being taller, and she liked the tilt of his hat brim and the length of his steps. He smelled like soap and fresh air and, just faintly, of whisky. Once or twice someone turned a head to watch them pass, and Margot didn’t mind that at all.

  He led her toward Pioneer Square, to the Merchant’s Café. “I booked a table,” he said. “Hope it’s all right.”

  “Of course,” she said. She wondered if he knew the upper floor of the building was a brothel, and decided he couldn’t. He would never have brought her here if he did. She hoped he wouldn’t find out. She said, “You’ve seen what the food is like at home! We all love Hattie, but the Benedicts eat out a great deal.”

  Holding her bag in his right hand, he struggled a bit with the door handle. Margot stood back, resolutely leaving him to it. In a second he had the door open, and he propped it with his shoulder as she went through. As the waiter held her chair, she noticed how deft Frank had become, setting her bag down quickly beneath the table so his hand was free to help her with her coat. He shrugged out of his own overcoat, and smoothed his empty sleeve into the pocket of his jacket before he sat down.

  “You’re getting used to it,” she said.

  He glanced at her in surprise. “Used to what?”

  “Doing everything one-handed. It’s hardly noticeable.”

  “About time, I guess.”

  “I would imagine, in the hospital, the nurses did everything for you.”

  “They did a lot.”

  The waiter bent to ask if they cared for a drink. Margot said, “Are you serving?” He nodded, pencil poised over his pad. “Not Vine-Glo, I hope?”

  The waiter laughed. “Not here, ma’am. I promise.”

  Frank said, “If you have scotch, I’ll have one.”

  “I’ll have the same,” Margot said. She hoped Frank had enough money, but she didn’t dare ask. She would not repeat her previous mistake.

  He murmured, “So much for Prohibition.”

  “The farmers in the valley are making more money on moonshine than on their crops.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “A milk bottle full of gin for three dollars. It’s a lot worse than letting people buy legitimate alcohol at a decent price. And a lot more dangerous.”

  He looked away, as if there was something interesting on the wall behind her. There was silence until she ventured, “How’s the job search?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Frustrating.” She waited, eyebrows raised. He seemed to fumble for words. “No one will talk to me. It’s as if—”

  “As if what?”

  He looked around the room at the other diners, then to the window, where the lights of Pioneer Square flickered in the long summer twilight. “Never mind,” he said. “No point in talking about it. Tell me about your day instead.”

  She said ruefully, “I didn’t think anyone wanted to hear about a doctor’s work. My family certainly doesn’t. Ramona thinks it’s disgusting. My mother always changes the subject.”

  Frank shifted his left shoulder, as if trying to ease it, and smiled a little. “I wouldn’t ask if I weren’t interested.”

  “Father thinks I should turn the large parlor at Benedict Hall into my office. He offered to put in a separate entrance, and he says I would have a better class of patients on Fourteenth Avenue than on Post Street.”

  “And would you?”

  She grinned. “Probably. But can you imagine Mother tolerating a lot of sick people marching through her house?”

  Their drinks came, neatly disguised in teacups and perched on saucers. Margot lifted her cup, and the gesture seemed to mirror the lifting of her heart. It was lovely to be sitting here with a handsome man. It made her feel girlish and young. Happy. “Here we go, then, Frank. I’ll tell you about my day, and when you’ve had enough, stop me.”

  He drank from his own cup, then set it down, slightly too far from his hand. “Tell me.”

  “Without Thea, it’s a bit difficult,” she began. He watched her with an intentness that was both flattering and a little unnerving. “I didn’t realize how much I depend on her.”

  His fingers twitched, reaching toward his cup, then resisting. Margot noted the movement, and filed it away to think about later. “I did have patients today, though.”

  “You don’t always?”

  “Not private ones. Plenty of them at the hospital.” She sighed. “Mostly poverty cases! They give me the leftovers, I’m afraid.”

  “Because you’re young.” His restrained smile gave her that burst of giddiness again.

  She took another sip. “And female.”

  He gave a measured nod. “I didn’t see a single female doctor in the army.”

  Margot raised her eyebrows. “Really? There are a few, but . . . Actually, there were more women physicians in America twenty years ago than there are now.”

  “Didn’t know that.”

  The waiter put a menu in her hands. She held it without opening it, frowning. “You know, Frank, they’ve made it harder for women to get into medical school, deliberately harder. Rules and restrictions, reduced hospital privileges, all sorts of things. They want women to be nurses, not physicians.”

  He seemed to consider this for a time. He picked up his cup and took a shallow sip. As he set it down, he said, “All the more credit to you, then, for making a success of it.”

  “I’m not there yet!”

  “You will be,” he said. “You had patients today, after all.”

  “None with any money. That’s what Father would point out.”

  Margot watched as he took another careful sip of scotch. Rationing it. She wondered if it was because he couldn’t afford another.

  The waiter came and Margot hastily opened the menu and scanned it. They ordered, baked salmon for both of them, with fried potatoes and fresh greens from the valley. When the menus had been whisked away, Margot put her elbows on the table and cupped her chin with one hand. “Tell me more about Montana,” she said. “And don’t say there’s nothing to tell.”

  Frank dropped his eyes, and his fingertip traced the edge of his cup. “Dad runs around five hundred head of cattle, mostly Angus with a few Herefords. He keeps about two hundred acres for seed stock, too, kind of a specialty of our ranch.” He pushed the cup in a circle, then released it, tapping his fingers on the tablecloth. “His ranch.”

  Margot resisted an urge to take his hand, to still those restless fingers. “And your mother?” she asked.

  “She works just as hard as Dad. Always has. They want me to come home, but . . .” He lifted his left arm, as if that explained everything.

  “Frank,” Margot said. “Amputees do all sorts of jobs. You’re getting better at handling things with one hand every day.”

  He turned his face away from her, and the lights from the square glistened on his profile. His jaw flexed, and his fingers stretched toward the teacup again.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He was silent for a moment. She watched his profile, saw the twist of his mouth. Whe
n he began to speak, his voice was so low she had to lean forward to hear him. “I had a pony when I was small,” he said. “An Icelandic pony, about twelve hands, black as coal. My dad bought him cheap at an auction somewhere, probably because he was so small no one wanted him. He wasn’t big enough to do much work. But I rode that pony everywhere, every day.” He chuckled, but it was a mournful sound. “I would have slept in his stall if my mother had allowed it.

  “We were riding in the snow one day, and the pony stepped in a gopher hole. Broke his leg.” His mouth twisted again, a look Margot was coming to recognize as the only reaction to pain he allowed himself. “I ran back to the house, screaming all the way. Dad made me go back with him, and watch as he put my pony down. Shot him in the head with his rifle. I had hysterics.”

  Margot hardly dared breathe for fear he would stop talking.

  “He waited till I stopped crying enough to hear him, and he told me, ‘Real life, son.’ That was all he ever said about it.” Frank sighed, and opened his hand, as if to let the story go. “A ranch is no place for soft hearts, Margot. It’s a place for men with two arms, two hands. It’s no place for a cripple.”

  She could barely find her voice. “That’s a terrible story, Frank. But you’re not a cripple. You have so much—”

  “Don’t.” The expression on his face was like iron, his vivid eyes gleaming in the candlelight. She would have bet his father looked just like that when he made a little boy watch him shoot a beloved pony.

  Their food arrived, and Margot let the matter drop. She finished her drink, and Frank, finally, emptied his as well. The salmon was drenched in good dairy butter, and sprinkled with chopped parsley and chives. The potatoes were crunchy with fried onions. Frank seemed to throw off his moodiness, and they both ate with good appetite.

  Over coffee, she told him that Loena would be going home from the hospital soon, and that her mother, under pressure, had agreed to have her back at Benedict Hall. She didn’t tell him about having to face the board of directors in the morning. She wanted to speak of cheerful things, casual things.