The Tender Vine (Diamond of the Rockies #3)(117)

Quillan scowled from one to the other. “I want my arm unbound.”

“Do you.” The doctor spoke dryly, obviously not at all concerned with his wants. He walked over to the bed. “Let me see.” He pressed with one finger on the collarbone and Quillan hollered. The doctor straightened. “Maybe not just yet.”

If his arm had been loose Quillan would have coldcocked him, even if it broke the collarbone again. Carina looked reproachfully at her father. So now she understood?

Dr. DiGratia shook the thin glass tube he’d been sticking into Quillan’s mouth every day, several times a day. He poked it in once more. “Under your tongue.”

“It’s a clinical thermometer, Quillan.” Carina patted his elbow. “It tells us your body temperature.”

Us. The dottore and her. Quillan sank back against the stiffly stuffed backrest she had placed behind him. At least with the thermometer in his mouth she couldn’t keep spooning soup at him. Simmering, he endured the time that he had to hold the tube under his tongue.

Carina was right. The pain was persistent. His gut felt like fire, the muscles too offended to lift him at all. Carina had to raise him up and prop things behind just to elevate him enough to eat broth without choking. Any motion at all made the ribs throb, and shifting the weight from his rear sent pain into the hip. His leg might as well be blown off at the knee for all he could do with it. Several times a day he was rolled to one side or the other like a piece of meat on a spit. And the greatest horror was the swaddling. Was he no longer a man?

Carina was right again; he had pity aplenty. But, Lord! What am I supposed to do? You told me you were the vine. If I remained in you, rejecting everything else . . . Hadn’t it said that? Jesus said remain in Him. Didn’t that mean forsake the rest?

He opened his mouth so Dr. DiGratia could remove the clinical thermometer. How had Carina known he’d never seen one before? He had almost never been sick, and the two times that he could recall, no one had poked thermometers at him, bathed him, and . . . Well, Augusta Tabor had spoonfed him, but only the once. Quillan’s frown deepened.

The doctor held the tube between his fingertips and studied it. “Hmm.” No more explanation than that. Quillan had had enought of “hmm”s and “we’ll see”s. Dr. Gratia went to the glass-faced cabinet and opened the door, fingering through the small bottles. He took down two—one that looked like dried leaves and smelled sweetly pungent when he unstoppered it, and another grayish white powder. He pinched a couple grains of the powder into a porcelain cup, then put a few of the leaves into a square of muslin and tied it shut with thread.

Quillan watched in spite of himself as the doctor poured boiling water over both, dissolving the powder and steeping the leaves. He looked up suspiciously when the cup was held out to him. “What is it?”

“Sassafras and monkshood.” A tremor at the corners of his mouth clued Quillan to ignore what came next. “Not enough to poison, I hope. Just to control the fever.”

“Is it rising?” Carina took the cup and held it to Quillan’s lips.

Quillan sipped. Not enough to poison . . . he hoped. Very funny. He made a face.

“From his sour temper, no doubt.”

Carina glanced at her papa, then back to him. Quillan refused to look ashamed. “Be kind, Papa,” was all she said, and she urged a second sip of the steaming concoction between Quillan’s lips. Her eyes softened. “I think something for pain, as well.”

The doctor turned, and Quillan met his quizzical glance with undisguised resentment.

“Yes,” the doctor said.

Quillan flushed at the implication that pain was making him cross. But the thought of the warm, formless effect of laudanum softened his resistance. He’d told Carina he didn’t want it, but the thought worked on him now like a seductress.

“Not opium, I think.” Again the doctor reached into his cabinet, bringing out a larger bottle half filled with powder, then stirred it into another batch of tea. “Willow bark.”

Quillan shook his head. Was Dr. DiGratia some herbalist from the dark ages? He wanted to demand laudanum. Only his pride kept him silent, and the next gulp of sassafras tea. The fewer trips Carina made to his mouth with the cup the better. Every one reminded him of her words, “Maybe you need to surrender your independence.” She wiped a dribble from his chin, shaved that morning by Vittorio.

Quillan drank the willow bark tea, certain he would need the opium tincture anyway. But in a while it did seem to dull the edge. After the doctor left, he said, “What does your father have against laudanum? He was free enough with it at the start.”

“He doesn’t want you habituated.”

Quillan leaned his head back. Habituated. Was he? He knew smoking the drug made addicts; he’d seen the Chinamen weaving home from the dens, but . . . He swallowed his disappointment. He should be thankful Dr. DiGratia was not the sort to be draining his blood and dosing him into a stupor.

Maybe he was in better hands than he wanted to admit, in spite of the dry, terse comments and tyrannical pokes. Then there were Carina’s hands, working the tension from his brow and temples. Healing hands, nurturing hands, human hands. He closed his eyes, letting her fingers ease his pain. He was tired. His annoyance and fear drained him. Carina stroked the weariness from his brow, then leaned close and whispered in his ear, “T’amo.” And she kissed the same ear. No opium was necessary to spread that kind of warmth.