Coming Home for Christmas Read online

  “I need you, Laura,” was all he said. He gave her hand a tug and she followed.

  The presidio was well built, courtesy of Spanish engineers decades ago; the pueblo itself was another matter. Thomas saw the injuries he expected he would see: broken limbs caused by falling beams, lacerations and burns from overturned cooking pots. These were the worst, but Laura waded right in with him, her eyes fierce in their concentration. Only once did she throw up. As he wiped her mouth, Thomas assured her there wouldn’t be anything worse than burns.

  “How do you do this?” she asked, from the safe nest she had made of his shoulder’s hollow, as he held her tight.

  “How? I know how,” he said simply. “So do you, my dear.”

  With a quick squeeze of her shoulder and a pat on her hip—he had taken that liberty without a qualm—he sent her back to applying salve to the less-horrific burns as he did what he could for the others. As they worked, Father Hilario, his eyes serious and his lips set tight, followed them with prayers and, in two extreme cases, final rites.

  By the end of a day filled with frightening aftershocks, Father Hilario needed to remind no one that San Diego could have fared far worse. Although the tower in the partly constructed presidio chapel listed at a precarious angle, almost no crockery had survived anywhere and few windows with glass in them remained, San Diego itself still stood.

  Laura had changed. It was a simple transformation; Thomas doubted she was even aware of it. When the mayor’s wife had been found in her plaster dust-covered bed with her foot trapped under a beam, Laura had not hesitated, going quickly to the new mother’s screaming child—the one he had delivered barely two weeks earlier—and covering the infant with her own body in case the roof chose to cave in just then. The child’s helpless mother had watched, her eyes huge with fear. Crouching in the middle of destruction, Laura had crooned to the baby until he slept.

  When the baby slept, Thomas gestured Laura closer. Soldiers had moved the beam from the new mother’s foot and stabilized the leaning roof with their backs. Unmindful of her injury, the mayor’s wife held out her arms for her child and Laura made them comfortable with a pillow and a blanket.

  “You fit the space better, so you set her ankle,” Thomas said and she did, working more efficiently than he could in the small space to splint and bind up the woman’s ankle. Thomas smiled to watch the injured woman’s face when she first realized that her help was coming from the hated daughter of the man who had swindled her husband and other people of quality in the pueblo.

  The woman’s eyes softened as she watched Laura. When Laura finished and sat back, looking to him for approval, the new mother touched Laura’s cheek lightly, then closed her eyes in relief. “Bless you, Señora Wilkie,” she whispered.

  “Back out with the baby and we’ll move her now,” Thomas said, nodding to the soldiers propping up the precarious walls.

  With no coaxing, the mother handed her baby to Laura, who crawled out on her knees, the child held tight in her arms. After Thomas gently lifted the mother from the ruin, the men lowered the beams and leaped out of the way as the walls collapsed inwards.

  The mayor stood there now, tears streaking his dirty face as he thanked them for saving his darlings. “The thanks go to my wife,” Thomas said. “I couldn’t fit in that small space.”

  Without a word, the grateful hidalgo kissed Laura’s hand and burst into tears when she gently placed his son in his arms.

  “That wasn’t such a small space,” Laura whispered as she picked up the bandage duffel again and followed him down the street littered with adobe shards and roof tiles. “You could have squeezed in there.”

  Thomas only smiled. “I get sweaty in tight places.”

  She laughed out loud, then covered her mouth with her hand. He took her hand away. “You have a wonderful laugh, Señora Wilkie,” he said.

  “I’ll save it for a day when we do not have a catastrophe on our hands,” she said, looking around, obviously hoping no one had heard her.

  They had spent the rest of that long day in the pueblo patching wounds, and then later in the mission, where there had been less damage. He had returned to the presidio’s courtyard a few times to check on his bona fide patients. The bad cold had fled the scene and the broken leg snored peacefully. Ralph Gooding lay there with his eyes open and troubled. Thomas had sighed to see more blood on his nightshirt. He had applied styptic until the slow ooze stopped and had no hesitation in giving the man a dose of laudanum from his precious stores.

  He had still been squatting on his haunches by Ralph’s stretcher when Laura returned to the presidio, looking as tired as he felt. She had patted his shoulder, which made him smile, then gone into the small hospital. In another moment he had heard her sweeping the glass and plaster.

  In companionable silence, they had cleaned up the ward, pausing only to stand in the doorway with each aftershock. Invariably she had leaned against him; just as predictably, his arm had gone around her shoulder. He had found himself looking forward to the aftershocks. By the time darkness had fallen, the broken leg was back in a newly made bed, and Ralph was comfortable again, propped up against a grain sack because his pillows were bloody and needed washing.

  Dinner had been nothing more than posole with more parched corn than pork, but delicious because they had eaten nothing all day. Summoned by more emergencies beyond the pueblo, he had left Laura spooning the stew down the carpenter’s ravaged throat and gently wiping his neck.

  When he returned hours later, all was peaceful in the ward. Laura had admitted three new patients in his absence, two soldiers and one mission Indian he had sent to her, escorted by Father Hilario. Everyone was clean, fed and sleeping. Goodness, she will work me out of a job, Thomas thought with satisfaction as he checked his patients.

  When his exhausted mind realized there was nothing more he needed to do, Thomas opened the door to his sitting room and peered inside. All was orderly now— Laura’s blue-wooden cabinet had even been righted, although its glass and china contents must have been relegated to the midden. The prie-dieu had a crack in it, but he thought he could fix it. Her heavier wardrobe still lay on its side, but there were plenty of men in the presidio who could help him tomorrow.

  Leaving his sandals in the sitting room, he tiptoed into the bedroom where Laura had left his ward lamp burning. For safety’s sake, she had set it in his battered metal basin, the one that had followed him from Portsmouth and around the world a time or two.

  He glanced at his wife, who had drawn herself into a ball, probably more from residual fear than cold, because the night was still mild. Quietly, he looked for his nightshirt, tossed somewhere that morning, hours ago. When he couldn’t find it he sighed, stripped and climbed between his sheets, weary right down to his Achilles’ tendons.

  He was almost asleep when he vaguely heard Laura pull back her bedclothes and pad across the space between their beds. He wanted to be more alert, but all he could do was yawn as she tugged back his blankets and crawled in beside him. He put his arm around her and pulled her close.

  “I can’t stop shivering and it’s not even cold,” she whispered.

  “You’re shocky,” he murmured, not sure of an approximate Spanish word.

  “Chalky?” she repeated.

  “Shocky,” he said again in English, then reverted to her language. “It’s what happens when hard-working wives are ignored during a major crisis.”

  “Is there a cure?” she asked, still shaking, but drowsy now.

  Both of his arms went around her and she clung to him, gulping down her tears and keeping them quiet against his bare chest.

  “Honey, you were magnificent,” he whispered. “You’ll warm up in a few minutes, I promise.”

  Then—churl or exhausted surgeon, she could decide which—he slept.

  He woke up once in the night, more from habit than anything else. He found his nightshirt and put it on, then took the lamp into the ward for a look around. All was orderly. He op
ened the door into the silent courtyard, piled high with ruined bits and pieces of people’s lives and destined to be carted away tomorrow. He stood there a moment, wondering what the next day would bring besides more work. He leaned against the doorjamb, overwhelmed by the longing to be home. Even if Dumfries was misty and gray and probably as unprepossessing as his wife suspected, he yearned for a place where the ground did not move.

  Here it was, December 9th, and he was no nearer home than he had been years ago, when he had received that Christmas letter from his father. In his mind’s eye, he saw his father making his own surgical rounds in dreary winter weather, while his mother probably knitted by the fire. He thought of his own wife, working so hard beside him all day, stopping for nothing, and then reduced to shivers and tears. Thomas Wilkie wasn’t sure he deserved someone as brave in the face of catastrophe as she was. And the funny thing was, she would never think of herself that way.

  “Thomas, you could be a dumb cluck and moon about what you don’t have, or appreciate your current lot in life,” he said out loud, as he looked through the sala and into his bedroom. “Go to bed, you idiot, and keep Laura warm.”

  Thank goodness he wasn’t so stupid as to need to talk himself into going back to bed. He set the lamp back in the basin and returned to bed with a sigh. Laura huddled close to him again. He smiled in the dark, thinking of the improbability of spending another Christmas in San Diego with a beautiful wife. If my friends could see me now, he thought. He kissed the top of her head.

  She was warm now and heavy against his side. He liked the feel of her, especially the fragrance of her hair, even if she did smell of plaster dust, too. She woke up when he placed a tentative hand on her hip, but only long enough to murmur something, then sink into sleep again. It seemed like such a good idea that he followed suit, his hand still on her hip.

  Chapter Ten

  Dawn was breaking when Thomas woke. Startled, he wondered for a millisecond why Laura was sleeping in his bed, then remembered her fears of the night before. Obviously, she hadn’t taken the trouble to follow her usual bedtime routine, because her dark hair was spread across his chest, instead of confined in its usual chaste braid.

  He fingered the ends of her hair, admiring the way it curled. He knew he should get up, but he stayed where he was, unwilling to wake his sleeping wife. Still, duty called. Carefully, he slid out of his bed, dressed quickly and opened the door to the ward in time to see the mission Indian, head bandaged, leap out of the back window.

  “I’m surprised you stayed this long,” Thomas murmured in English to the retreating figure. “Look out for infection and take out those sutures in a hygienic place.” He smiled and shook his head.

  “I won’t take French leave,” Ralph said.

  Thomas hoped he kept his expression neutral. The earthquake had taken its toll on his oldest patient. “You had better not, or I’ll put you on report.”

  “Ooh, I’m all a-twitter.”

  Ralph could barely speak, but Thomas chose to overlook that fact. He swabbed gently around the tubercular lesion on his neck, wishing for cures where there were none. He knew he should be concentrating on Ralph, but he thought of his father and mother instead. He had been doing this increasingly since his sudden marriage, wondering how his mother would treat Laura Ortiz de Wilkie. Probably very well, he decided, as he quietly tidied his patient. Mama had not thought he would ever survive so many years at sea, much less find a wife. They don’t even know if I am alive, he thought. Or I, them, I suppose.

  “I wish we were home,” he said to Ralph.

  “Laddie, I think you already are,” Ralph said, after a long pause to either assemble his thoughts or merely find the energy to talk.

  Thomas looked toward the closed door to his bedroom. “A ship will come eventually.”

  “What then?”

  It was a fair question and he had no answer. “I know I can secure passage for her to England, but will she want to leave Alta California?” he asked out loud, even though he did not expect an answer. “What do you think?”

  Ralph’s eyes were closed, as though the effort to keep them open was too much. “Just ask,” he said finally. Eyes still closed, he gestured. “Don’t be so afraid.”

  “Is that what I am?” Thomas asked, surprised.

  “Mebbe.”

  He tried to think of a worthy retort, but he had none, because it was probably true. And only a moment later, there were far bigger fish to fry than his own romantic life.

  With no preamble, Father Hilario and the captain came through the outside door one after the other, both with eyes so serious that Thomas was on his feet and looking around for his surgeon’s bag before either man spoke. When the captain did speak, Thomas felt that familiar plunk in his stomach, where the worst news seemed to land.

  “Who needs me?” he asked the officer.

  Father Hilario answered, not bothered by protocol. “The entire mission of San Juan Capistrano,” he said.

  “Heavens above,” Thomas said, feeling the blood drain from his face. He had been to the lovely mission last spring, two days’ distance by horse, just for the pleasure of watching the swallows return. “What has happened?”

  “As you know—” Thomas didn’t “—yesterday was the Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin…” Father Hilario began. Emotion choked him and he could not continue, so the captain spoke.

  “When the earthquake struck, the chapel was full of worshippers, mostly mission Indians. The doors jammed and the roof fell in. There are at least forty dead, and Father Barona and Father Boscana are doing their best…” The officer’s voice trailed away.

  “We will go at once.”

  Startled, Thomas looked around to see his wife standing in the doorway to their sitting room, her hair still wild about her head, but her shawl and her bearing giving her considerable dignity. He looked into her eyes and saw nothing but calm there. How was it that she could even make herself look tall? What a mystery women were.

  “Anything you can do there will be a blessing,” Father Hilario said.

  “Very well.” Thomas looked at Ralph, then, and the broken leg in the other bed. He didn’t try to hide his doubt. “Laura should stay here to…”

  “No, Laura will not. Father Hilario will tend these men,” Laura said.

  There was nothing in her voice but steel and Thomas thought it wise not to argue. I’m learning already, he thought. “This is true; he can.” He looked at the captain. “How did the news travel here?”

  “By a coasting vessel. It was quicker than horseback.”

  “We will go that way, too,” Thomas said. “Laura, get the bandage box together. Maybe some food, too.”

  She obeyed him without a word, gathering up more bandages that she must have had the foresight to roll last night, when he was out tending last-minute victims and thought she was asleep. While Thomas gave instructions to Father Hilario for the care of his few patients, and the more difficult cases he might encounter in the pueblo, Laura finished her work and went back into their room to dress. When she came out she was tidy, dignified and neat as a pin, which made him smile. Laura Ortiz de Wilkie, you are a lady right down to the soles of your feet, he thought with admiration. He knew he had never met anyone like her in his life.

  The captain left to secure a cart to hurry them down to the harbor. Thomas sat beside Ralph for a moment. He took his hand and just held it. “I should leave Laura here,” he said, “but this is such a crisis. We will have to trust Father Hilario.”

  Ralph was too weak to move his head, but his eyes followed Laura as she gathered the bandages and set them outside the door. “I don’t think she would have stayed,” he managed to croak. “She is a determined woman, laddie.”

  When did you start calling me “laddie”? Thomas thought, his eyes on the patient who had, in some way, become his dear friend. Was it that moment when you realized I couldn’t do anything more for you? At least you know I have tried.

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bsp; He patted Ralph’s shoulder, dismayed to feel bone, sinew and little else. Tuberculosis was a bitch of a disease; he doubted there would ever be a cure. For a moment Thomas rested the back of his hand against Ralph’s always-warm forehead. “Vaya con dios,” he said.

  They made the trip to the harbor in record time, Thomas clinging to his surgeon’s satchel with one hand, and to Laura with the other. The wheeled cart was noisy on the dirt path, so Laura put her lips close to his ear, which made him shiver with pleasure.

  “I do not do very well in a boat, señor,” she told him.

  “I do even worse on horseback,” he said, speaking in her ear, in turn. “I would have embarrassed you.”

  “I fear I will embarrass you,” she replied.

  Perhaps she would have, if he hadn’t loved her so much. The usually placid water of San Diego Bay was choppy—perhaps because of the continuing aftershocks—and the small vessel tossed them about. He held his wife steady over the gunwale as she threw up. Her normally perfect complexion turned sallow. At one point on the voyage, he thought he heard her ask him to throw her overboard and let her die, but his Spanish wasn’t perfect, he knew.

  He found no fault with the sailors, fishermen who had been pressed into service in Mission San Juan and who knew the coast like their wives’ bodies. When Laura had seemingly thrown up everything she had eaten for the last six months, he held her tight against his side with his boat cloak around them both, their only defense against the salt spray. He listened with deepening alarm to the sailors’ stories of massive waves even farther north, near Mission Santa Barbara, and a ship that had foundered there.

  His mind was on the mission though, and the sailors told him what they knew of the nave collapsing on early-morning worshippers. Some had survived and others in the mission houses had been terribly burned by cooking fires, as in San Diego, but worse. The earthquake must have originated under the unstable soil at San Juan.