The Heirloom Brides Collection (44 page)

The door swung open, welcoming in a blast of cold air that set his back to stinging and stopped his progress.

“Please come in, ma’am.” Jocelyn was a capable woman of the household, but she was only ten and shouldn’t have to fill that role at such a young age.

“Are you certain it’s all right?” The voice belonged to a young woman.

“I’m certain, ma’am. My papa is expecting you.”

That wasn’t exactly true. He’d expected the gruff gray-haired nurse from his hospital ward. Not a young woman.

“Very well, then.” The woman who stepped over the threshold did look a bit angelic, dressed in white from her creased hat to her button-up boots. And familiar. When the door clicked shut behind her, she set her leather satchel on a chair, then glanced at the stove on the far wall. “The heat feels good on a day like today. Thank you.”

“You’re so pretty.” His youngest daughter was always generous with compliments.

The woman in white turned away from him, tucked her gloves into a pocket in her mantle and hung it on a peg near the door. “Thank you, Miss…”

“Julia.”

“You’re pretty, too, Miss Julia.” The young woman turned her attention to Nicolas.

He needed to get up… to show her he was fine without her help. He was scooting toward the edge of the cot when the nurse raised her hand.

“Please. Stay where you are.” She pulled a folder from the satchel. “You are Mr. Nicolas Zanzucchi?”

“I am.” He forced himself to lie still. “And you are Miss Taggart. Leastwise, that was your name when you and your father called on us after my Maria died.”

“Yes. My name hasn’t changed.” A slight frown curved her mouth. “I remember our visits.”

Nicolas nodded. He remembered being newly widowed with three daughters to care for. And he recalled Miss Taggart’s obvious misery at the time. Her father had insisted she join him on his calls in Poverty Gulch. Granted, she was only seventeen then and in school, but Nicolas doubted she’d find even this level of modest company housing any less distasteful.

“Mr. Zanzucchi, I am the nurse assigned to visit you. Here in your home.” She glanced around the room, then looked at him. “It is my job to see to your medical needs.”

If her name hadn’t changed, then she was not married. Except for bandages and a light blanket, he was naked from the waist up. Having her here taking care of him like this wouldn’t be right. “I’m afraid I’m not comfortable with that arrangement, Miss Taggart.”

Her eyes widened.

“You’re too young.” And Julia was right—the nurse
was
pretty.

Miss Taggart’s shoulders squared, bobbing the little folded hat perched on a pile of chestnut-brown curls. “Let me assure you, Mr. Zanzucchi, that I am old enough to be a trained nurse. Old enough to cross the country on my own. And plenty old enough to change your bandages and help you recover from your burns.”

Darla Taggart wasn’t crusty like his gray-haired nurse at the hospital, but she seemed no less determined. He drew in a deep breath. “I don’t doubt your training or your abilities.”

“You don’t?”

“No, ma’am.” Oh how he wished he could sit up without setting off alarms in his back. He rolled onto his hip bone and peered up at her. “I’m sure you’d do a fine job. It’s just that I’m not certain this arrangement would be proper.”

“I see.” The pink tint on Miss Taggart’s face deepened to rose. “I assure you, sir, I am a medical professional and would only do what was necessary to perform my medical obligations.”

Nicolas lay back down, resigned to the pain over propriety. His three daughters stood behind Miss Taggart like a row of chicks behind a mother hen, and the image gave him pause.

Jocelyn stepped forward and stood beside Miss Taggart. “We will all be here, Papa.”

That was his concern. He was trying to raise his daughters the way Maria would—with proper decorum. What if—

The nurse glanced around. “In addition, Mr. Zanzucchi, we are in the main room of the house.”

A valid point. He spent his days on the cot in the main room, not in his bedchamber.

“For your well-being, sir, I believe it best that you set your apprehension aside and let me look after your wounds and bandages.”

Nicolas raised his torso onto the ball of his right shoulder so he could look her in the eye. “It doesn’t seem I have any choice.”

All four of the women, the oldest two with arms crossed over their chests, shook their heads in unison.

“Very well, then. If we’re going to give it a try, proper introductions are in order. Or reintroductions, as the case might be.” He pointed to his daughters, starting with the youngest. “Miss Taggart, you’re already acquainted with Julia, who is seven. The next oldest is Jaya, nine. And the oldest is Jocelyn, age ten, the one who let you in.”

“It’s a pleasure, girls.” Miss Taggart shifted her green-eyed gaze to him. “You won’t regret it, Mr. Zanzucchi.”

He already did.

She was a trained medical professional. She could do this.

Darla focused on those statements as facts on her way to the chair near the door. She retrieved her bag, then carried it and the spindle chair to the cot where Mr. Zanzucchi lay watching her every move.

He obviously remembered her priggish, dreadful outlook on him and his living conditions when she accompanied her father to Poverty Gulch. Something her father had given up on after only two visits. At the time, visiting the poor seemed a sharp punishment. Something she’d no doubt conveyed to Mr. Zanzucchi, who was now her reluctant patient.

Setting the chair about two feet from the head of the bed, Darla drew in a fortifying breath and opened her patient’s medical file. “Mr. Zanzucchi, I will need to remove your bandages and examine your back, but before I do that, I need to ask you a few questions for your hospital record.”

“If you must.”

“Good. Thank you.” But for an occasional wince, she couldn’t tell if he was angered by her presence, in pain, or just uncomfortable. His brown eyes weren’t giving anything away. She withdrew a pencil from her bag and pulled the first form she needed to complete from the file folder. “I understand Dr. Cutshaw brought you home from the Sisters of Mercy Hospital just two days ago, the twelfth of March.”

“Yes, Monday afternoon.”

“And you live here with your three daughters. No one else?”

“Not unless you count the possum living under the floor.”

Darla lifted her feet from the linoleum with such speed that the folder slid to the floor.

Her patient’s baritone chuckle sparked a round of giggles from all three of his daughters.

“Do we really have a possum, Papa?” Jaya spoke with unbridled enthusiasm. “It lives here?”

While Darla regained her composure, Jocelyn set a hand on her hip. “He was teasing.”

Darla planted both feet on the floor and met Mr. Zanzucchi’s gaze. He’d cradled his head in his folded right arm. A curl the color of Mother’s devil’s food cake draped his forehead. “I suppose I deserved that. You obviously well recall my visits from four years back.”

“I don’t know that you deserved it, but it was fun.” He peered over the side of the cot. “I do apologize, though. I didn’t mean to upset your paperwork.”

“No harm done.” Darla bent to retrieve the folder. She thought about making a note in regard to Mr. Zanzucchi’s lighthearted teasing as a sign of good humor, not something easy to come by in his condition, but she didn’t want Dr. Cutshaw to misunderstand her intentions toward her patient.

He straightened on the cot. “Time we got back to your questions, I suppose.”

“Yes.” Darla found her place in the notes. “The accident that caused the affliction took place down in the Mollie Kathleen Mine?”

His face went slack. “Yes. Two weeks this Saturday coming. I’m a steam drill operator. Or was.”

Darla’s hand stilled on the page. What was Mr. Zanzucchi to do if he couldn’t return to his work in the mine? He had to heal completely so he could provide for his family.

She’d see to it.

“A hose broke, spraying hot steam into the shaft. I jerked around so my back would take the brunt of it.” He scrubbed his whiskered cheek. “That’s probably more than you needed to know.”

Darla shook her head, hoping to rid her mind of the horrid image. “It’s helpful for me to know what happened to cause your injuries.”

“Your father said he was moving to New York. Is he still there?”

“Yes. Upstate.” She looked down at the list of questions. “Has anyone examined your burns or changed your bandages?”

“Dr. Cutshaw changed them himself on Monday. Not since then.” He glanced at his daughters, who had busied themselves with various chores. “They have more than enough to do since I’m not able to help.”

“Then you understand the risk should you try to do too much?”

He sighed, lifting the curl on his forehead. “The good doctor schooled me in the danger of ripping my scabs.” He spoke just above a whisper, no doubt for the benefit of his daughters.

“It seems you’re doing a good job of protecting your back.”

“I’m trying. But I can’t promise how long I’ll be able to lie around here doing nothing.”

Darla’s spine stiffened. “For as long as necessary to assure your complete recovery.”

Another sigh of resignation escaped her reluctant patient. “You left Cripple Creek not long after your last visit to the Gulch. You took your nurse’s training in the East?”

It was her job to ask the questions, but if asking her a few put him at ease before the examination, she’d happily answer as many as it took.

“I lived with my aunt in Philadelphia and trained at St. Luke’s there.”

“I have no doubt the refined city holds more opportunity for a young woman such as yourself.”

“A young woman such as yourself.”
Single? Prissy? Scheming? Darla added a period to the page a bit too forcefully, then looked up. “I’m not the same girl who followed her father around.”
Or Dr. Cutshaw.

“I’m sure not. But why would you choose to return to the wild mountains of Colorado? Alone?”

“I called Cripple Creek my home for most of my childhood.” No one needed to know her other reasons for returning. She’d answered enough of Mr. Zanzucchi’s questions. She had two more homes to visit today. Other patients to get to know.

Darla closed the folder on the list of questions and stood. If she didn’t move this along—

“Forgive me,” Mr. Zanzucchi said. “I think I’m a bit nervous. Maria was the one who was sick. Until now, I’ve never been the patient.”

“That’s understandable.” She set the folder on the chair. “You will get past this, Mr. Zanzucchi.”

“If I follow orders.”

“Precisely.” Darla lifted her leather bag off the floor and set it on the chair. “I’d like to remove your bandages now and take a look.”

He flattened onto his stomach against the cot, his arms at his side. Darla opened her bag wide, then took slow steps to the stove, where a kettle of water simmered.

“I have a clean bowl ready for you.” Jocelyn pointed to the sideboard. “There. The lye soap is in the dish next to it.”

“You already knew I’d need to sterilize my hands?”

“Yes, ma’am. I paid close attention to every word Dr. Cutshaw said to Papa when he brought him home.”

Jocelyn Zanzucchi had the body of a child but had assumed the responsibilities of someone much older. While the girl busied herself pulling a towel from a basket at the end of the counter, Darla poured hot water into the bowl.

Her hands thoroughly washed and dried, she went to Mr. Zanzucchi’s side and lifted the thin blanket. Cloth strips covered the bandages that spanned from his shoulders to the waistband on his trousers. Myriad footfalls sounded behind her, drawing her attention to three pairs of matching brown eyes.

“I don’t want the girls to see… any of it.” Mr. Zanzucchi didn’t move.

“You heard your papa.” Darla motioned them away.

“It stopped snowing.” Jocelyn placed a hand on Jaya’s and Julia’s shoulders, directing them toward the door. “Let’s bring in more coal before it starts up again. Then we can see to our lessons for school.”

When the girls stepped outside and the door clicked shut, Darla turned to her patient. “Unwrapping the cloth holding the bandages in place is going to be the hardest part. I’ll need you to raise up off the cot some. Carefully.”

“I can do it.”

Tucking his elbows under his chest, Mr. Zanzucchi slowly raised his torso. Bent at the knees, he kept his back straight. Darla quickly rolled back the strip of cloth, revealing the crusted gauze bandages. As soon as she pulled the last of the cloth from his back, her patient sank onto the cot with a groan.

She could only imagine what his damaged nerves had to say. She sprinkled some warm water onto the yellowed gauze to soften it, then gently pulled it off, layer by layer. Removing the last layer, she was relieved to find a solid coating of brown scab, though shocked at its extent.

“Does it look as ghastly as it feels?”

Darla pulled the jar of petroleum jelly from her bag. “I’m certain it looks far better than it did when it was buried beneath angry blisters.” She traced the edge of the scabs with her fingertips, then gently rested her palm on top of it, checking for any sign of fever. “Actually, there’s a solid covering of scabs, with no open wounds, and we want to keep it that way.” She spread a light amount of the jelly at the outer edge of the scabbing to keep it soft and prevent pulling. “As difficult as it must be to remain inactive, that’s going to be your saving grace. We don’t want any rips or tears in the scabbing.” As she laid clean bandages atop the scabs, Mr. Zanzucchi relaxed into the cot.