Adam moved carefully around abandoned crates as he neared the window. The scene that slowly came into distorted focus through the broken glass made him question his vision.
A woman, pale and fever wet, lay on a small bed. The beggar boy sat on the floor offering her the plate of food.
Taking a step closer, Adam stared at the third person in the room. A nun. Her spotless habit was snow white and raven black in sharp contrast to everything around her. She looked like an aging angel as she wiped the dying woman’s brow.
Adam couldn’t resist moving closer. As his foot took the first step, a dog the size of a colt jumped up from the shadows and barked an alarm. Adam froze.
After a long pause, the boy opened the door only enough to peer out. “Yes?” he whispered in a brave little voice that said he’d protect those within as best he could.
Adam didn’t waste words. “I’m a doctor,” he said. “I’ve come to help if I can.”
“I ain’t got no money.” The boy lifted his chin slightly.
“We’ll talk of payment later.” Adam smiled. He’d often heard of folks paying in services or chickens, but he’d never practiced medicine except during the war.
The boy hesitated, then opened the door.
When Adam’s gaze met the nun’s stare, he couldn’t move. She had the most knowing eyes he’d ever seen. The kind of eyes an artist would try to paint for a saint. Ageless eyes in a face that shattered into a thousand wrinkles when she smiled.
Without a word, she opened her aging hand and pointed to the woman on the bed. “Please,” she whispered. “Help this child of God if you can, Doctor.”
Leaning forward, Adam felt the patient’s forehead, the side of her throat, then her hand.
“Boy,” he snapped. “You know that café where you got the food?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go to the front door and look in. You should see a man about my size with a scar on his left cheek. Tell him Adam said to bring the medical bag.”
“But I can’t go into that place. Not the front.”
Adam smiled, wishing he could see Wes’s face when the boy ordered him. “Don’t worry. Just tell the man with the scar to hurry. He’ll see no harm comes to you.”
As soon as the boy left, Adam pulled the covers back. “We’ve got work to do.” He looked up at the elderly nun, knowing she would help. “This woman’s fever is dangerously high.”
Wes was somewhere into the fog that comes in the bottom of a whiskey bottle. The waitress was starting to look slimmer and less moley. The banging on the piano had almost evolved into a tune when a dirt-covered kid stepped out of nowhere and yelled at him.
Wes shook his head and tried to understand the words as a bartender grabbed the boy up and swung him toward the door.
“Wait! What did you say, boy?” Wes hated it when people seemed to talk in some kind of code leaving out every other word. They tended to do it when he’d had a few too many drinks, but he refused to allow them to get by with it.
“He told me to tell the man with a scar to bring Adam’s medical bag.” The boy tried to wiggle from the hairy hand that held him captive.
Wes looked around as if expecting to see others with scars. When he turned back, his eyes had sobered slightly. “Let go of the kid,” he ordered as he stood and paid his bill. “I’ll get the bag. Take me to Adam, son.”
NINE
DAWN FINALLY FOUND its way to the alley and brightened the back windows of a building that had once been part of the original fort, Adam guessed, from the wide middle hallway and the square frame. Someone had taken the time a few years ago to add improvements, but now the place needed a fresh coat of paint and a bag of nails.
“Want another cup of coffee, Doctor?” asked the old nun, who’d helped him during the night, as she poured without waiting for a reply.
“Thanks.” Adam stretched back in his chair. “I think the boy’s mama might have a chance of making it.” He looked at the woman who’d been working by his side. “Thanks to you.”
She shook her head. “You were the blessing. I sent the boy to seek a doctor two days ago, but he said there was none to be found. I did what I could to help her. Which was a yard short of enough in this case.”
Adam watched her closely. She hadn’t had any sleep, but she looked the same as she had last night, spotless and efficient. She had a way of guessing what was needed a moment before he asked for it. “Are you with the mission here, Sister?”
She glanced away. “There is no mission near. I travel alone.” She straightened as if testifying before a judge. “I belong to a church no longer though I still hold the beliefs. I greatly dishonored my order. I’ve worn a habit for fifty years. I no longer belong in it, but this is all I have to wear.”
Adam clamped his jaw down to keep from asking the dozen questions that came to mind. How could this perfect image of a Sister of Mercy appear in the middle of nowhere and claim to have committed some great sin?
Before he could think of which question to ask first, she raised her head.
“Thank you for not demanding more of my story, for I can say nothing else.” The flavoring of a foreign accent added another unanswered question to his list.
“The boardinghouse belongs to Mrs. Jamison and her son, but I don’t know for how much longer.” The nun switched the conversation topic. “I’m told she and her husband managed to scrape out a living here before the war. With the war, there was no business. She told me he turned to outlawing.
“In ’63, he went to prison and died of a fever within a month. When they sent his clothes back to her, there was not a valuable among them.
“She tried to keep the boardinghouse going, but couldn’t. She’s not a strong woman and now without enough food or heat she grows sick.”
“How long have you been helping them?” Adam found it interesting that she could be so silent about her life, yet so talkative about Mrs. Jamison.
“Two weeks. I came to ask if I could stay a few days for I’d heard of the Jamisons and this house. When I saw how ill she was, I had to help. I’ve used up what little supplies I had. When the coffee’s gone, there will be nothing.”
The old nun crossed her hands in front of her and waited. It took Adam several seconds to realize, like a patient teacher, she was waiting for him to give her the answer.
“I’m sorry. I don’t have any answers, Sister.” He stood and walked to the door. “I’m just passing through. The widow will need good food for weeks to get all her strength back.”
The nun didn’t move, she only waited.
Adam touched the doorknob. “I don’t even know where I’m headed.” He reached in his pocket. “I can leave enough-”
He stopped, realizing the little amount he could leave would only delay starvation, not prevent it.
“I’ll try to find someone.” Even as he said the words, he doubted there would be anyone to help. The entire country was full of widows and children without means.
“I’ll think about it,” he finally said, and managed to break the invisible hold this nun had on him. “I’ll be back later.”
He almost ran up the alley to the street. By the time he reached the hotel where he and Wes had taken a room, he was breathing hard and frustrated that he couldn’t do more to solve her problem.
When he opened the door to the room he’d rented, a bottle rolled out of the way and Wes’s snoring greeted him. Adam unstrapped his gun belt and pulled off his coat, telling himself he needed sleep. He’d worry about the nun’s problem in a few hours. Right now, all he wanted to do was relax in the first bed he’d seen in months.
As he pulled off his boots, he looked around the place they’d rented after dark. The room had two beds and an old dresser missing a third drawer. The washstand was grimy and the pitcher empty. Both windows had been nailed closed. It was hard to believe, but this operating hotel was dirtier than the abandoned one the boy’s mother lay dying in. Someone had yellowed the wallpaper in one corner to save going to the outhouse. Light, about bullet-hole size, shown through the walls in several places.