Vivid (18 page)

"Sure, she lets us chop
wood—and slaughter the hogs."

"Sometimes," one brother noted
sarcastically.

"But mostly we stay out of her way.
She says she can do in ten minutes what takes us an hour, so she does mostly
everything herself. Dr. Lancaster, we love our sister very much. We'd help if
she'd let us."

The men seemed sincere, Vivid noted as she
surveyed them. Vivid looked into Mr. Crowley's eyes and felt humbled. Now would
be the best time to remove her foot from her mouth. "Mr. Crowley, I owe
you and your sons an apology. I made a wrong assumption.

"Yes, you did, young woman, but I'm
going to forgive you because you took what you thought was Jewel's side. I like
that."

"Feisty little thing, ain't she,
Pa?"

"She sure is," Mr. Crowley said,
smiling for the first time. "Which one of my sons you want to marry up
with?"

Vivid grinned in return. "I'm here
for doctoring, Mr. Crowley, not marrying."

"Pity. You remind me of my Margaret
when she was young, all spirit and determination."

"Then I'll take that as a
compliment."

"When will she wake up, Doctor?"

"When her body's ready."

Vivid spent the night at the Crowley home,
and in the morning everyone pitched in to help clean the place.

"Jewel's not going to like us doing
this, Dr. Lancaster," one of the brothers said.

"I'll handle Jewel, you get that
laundry started." Vivid took over cleaning the kitchen. It required the
better part of the morning for her to make the kitchen usable again, and once
done, she went out to help with the laundry. She learned that, despite their
giant frames, the Crowley sons were as fun-loving and playful as a batch of
puppies. They spent as much time wrestling around and teasing one another as
they did doing the chores. The work went smoothly. However, all of them, Mr.
Crowley included, were too scared of Jewel's wrath to go anywhere near the
garden, so Vivid spent the afternoon on her knees weeding and planting the
spring vegetables. During the course of the day's activities, she looked up
more than once to find Adam Crowley watching her from afar. He never said
anything, so she didn't, either. Upstairs, Jewel slept.

Briefly, she regretted missing church. She
had been looking forward to acquainting herself with the congregation. Well,
maybe next Sunday, she thought with a sigh.

Vivid was washing her hands at the pump
when Adam Crowley walked up and asked, "Young woman?"

"Yes, Mr. Crowley."

"I've been watching you all day, and
you're not a cotillion girl, are you?"

"No, Mr. Crowley, I'm not."

"That's good. Cotillion girls don't
fare well here." Then he added, "If you doctor half as good as you
worked here today, you'll be a fine addition to the Grove."

Vivid looked up at him and asked,
"You're not saying that just because you want me to marry one of your
sons, are you, Mr. Crowley?"

He laughed heartily. “A sense of humor,
too. I like that. No, I'm not, though it would be nice if you consider it; they
eat like a regiment."

"I am not here to marry," she
said, laughing.

"Pity," he said. "So tell
me all about yourself."

Vivid did. Over the course of the evening
she found that Adam Crowley didn't actually have a wooden head at all. He was
intelligent, well-read, and blunt about his opinions.

"Frederick Douglass represents only
Frederick Douglass," came Mr. Crowley's response to Vivid's inquiry about
whom he would designate as the true spokesman of the race. "Oh, Fred's a
great orator, probably one of the best the race has ever seen, but he always
waits for someone else to test the water first. He was one of the last on the
wagon for taking up arms to end slavery.

Never much respected his opinion after
that, and his private life is a mess."

The five sons eventually drifted out to
the porch. Vivid sat talking to the Crowley men until way past candlelight
Finally, Adam Crowley asked, "Should I have one of the boys take you
back?"

Vivid shook her head no. "I believe
tomorrow will be soon enough. I really would prefer Jewel be awake before I
leave."

“Fair enough. Well, you can bed down in
her room again tonight. The boys and I will see you in the morning."

Jewel awakened the next day. Vivid, who
had come in to check on her, smiled when the young woman's dark eyes met hers.

"Who are you?" Jewel asked in a
weak voice.

"I'm Dr. Lancaster, Jewel. How do you
feel?"

"Like I've been asleep for a hundred
years."

Vivid smiled and placed her hand on her
patient's forehead. "It's been more like three days. Does anything hurt or
ache?"

"My chest hurts a bit, probably from
all the coughing I was doing. And my head feels like it's full of moss. Did my
father and brothers bring you here?"

"Yes, they were very concerned. What
was the last thing you remember?"

"Well, I'd been sick for about a
week. I was too weak to do my chores, I remember that. Then—" She
seemed to take a moment to think back. “Oh, yes, I remember not wanting to put
the washing off any longer. It was starting to pile up. So even though Zekiel
told me not to, I was carrying water in and I started to feel real
queerlike—"

She looked at Vivid, who nodded for her to
continue.

"Then I dropped the buckets and
that's the last I know."

"How old are you, Jewel?"

"It'll be my nineteenth summer come
July. Doctor, you don't look any older than me, and you're a doctor?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Why am I a physician?"

Jewel nodded.

"I always wanted to be a doctor. What
do you want to be, Jewel?"

"Oh, I don't know. I can't really
think about it until my brothers marry."

Vivid, puzzled by that remark, asked, “Why
not?''

"I promised my mother."

"I see," Vivid said, although
she didn't really see at all. However, now was not the time to pursue the
matter. Instead, she asked, "Do you want anything to eat or drink?"

"Maybe a drink of water."

Vivid poured some from the pitcher on the
stand beside the bed, then handed her the cup. "Drink slowly now,"
Vivid cautioned.

Jewel took a few swallows. "I think I
want to sleep some more. Can you hold off my pa and brothers for just a tad
longer?"

"Certainly," Vivid replied,
smiling. "At the moment they're out fishing for supper, so you can enjoy
your solitude for as long as you require."

"Thank you, Dr. Lancaster. And
welcome to the Grove."

"Thank you," Vivid replied
genuinely. "Get some rest. I'll be back to check on you later."

Jewel was once again asleep before Vivid
left the room.

The men returned later in the afternoon,
their poles and baskets fat with fish. They greeted the news of Jewel's
recovery with wide smiles and would have run pell-mell up the stairs to her
room had Vivid not cautioned them to let her rest a bit longer. They all
appeared disappointed as they cleaned the fish for the evening's meal.

Jeremiah had taken over in the kitchen and
proved to be a surprisingly good cook. The meal-dusted fish he fried was tender
enough to melt in the mouth. Vivid had just begun to tell him that her father
would pay excellent wages to a man with Jeremiah's abilities, but she was
interrupted by Noah, who was standing by the window. "Nate Grayson's
riding up, Pa. He looks mad."

A couple of the brothers went to the
window and echoed Noah's observation. "He's mad about something."

Mr. Crowley went to the door to greet the
visitor. "Nate, how are you this evening, son?"

"Fine, Adam," Nate answered.
"Have you seen the damned doctor in the last couple days? I seem to have
lost her."

Adam stepped aside to let Nate enter.

The "damned doctor" in question
stood in the center of the front room, hands on hips. "I'm right here, Mr.
Grayson," Vivid said.

She thought she saw relief fill his eyes,
but that expression quickly vanished when he asked quietly, "Where the
hell have you been?"

"Here. Mr. Crowley's daughter has
been ill."

"Do you know I have been searching
the Grove for two whole days? I didn't know if you'd been shanghaied by a
lumber beast or were lying dead in a ditch somewhere."

Vivid was touched by his concern.
"What is a lumber beast?" she asked gently, hiding her smile.

One of the Crowley sons supplied the
explanation. “You probably know them as lumberjacks, Dr. Lancaster. Here, some
folks call them beasts because of the way they carry on when they come into
town with their pay."

She turned back to Nate. "I didn't
mean to worry you, Mr. Grayson."

"Next time leave a note."

Adam Crowley spoke up then. "It was
my fault, Nate. I was so worried about Jewel, I had one of the boys fetch Dr.
Lancaster in the middle of the night."

Nate continued to stare into Vivid's eyes
as he asked Adam Crowley, "How's Jewel doing?"

Vivid held his gaze.

"The doctor says she'll be fine with
a little rest," Mr. Crowley replied. Then Vivid heard him say, "I'm
hoping the doc's going to marry up with one of my sons."

Nate smiled, saying, "But Dr.
Lancaster isn't going to marry anyone, are you, Viveca?"

Hearing him address her by her given name
for the first time sent her senses spinning.

"No, I'm not marrying anyone,"
she answered in a voice far softer than she'd intended. She tore away from the
undertow in Nate Grayson's eyes. "I...should go check on my patient,"
she said and quickly headed for the stairs.

Nate's voice made her stop.
"Viveca?"

She turned.

"When you're done, I'll take you
home."

She nodded nervously and fled.

Upstairs, Vivid found Jewel up and dressed
and gathering laundry in the hallway.

"What in Jessy are you doing, Jewel
Crowley?" Vivid asked. Up close Vivid could see the perspiration beaded on
the young girl's brow. "Back to bed. Now."

"But—"

"Now, miss, or I'll call your
father."

They had a standoff for a moment, then
Jewel dropped the sheets, trudged back to her room, and climbed under the
sheets. "Now I expect you to spend the next few days in bed. You need rest
if you are to recover."

"There's too much to do."

"Then let your father and brothers
help."

"And spend all the day undoing what
they've done? It's easier to do it myself."

Vivid said softly, "They are a lot
more competent than you know, Jewel, and believe me, they were very worried
about you when you fell ill. Let them help so this doesn't happen again."

"You don't understand," Jewel
replied sadly. "I promised my mother."

"Promised her what?"

"On her deathbed she made me promise
I would take care of Pa and the boys."

"How old were you?"

"Almost twelve summers."

Vivid thought back to when she was twelve
and how devastated she would have been had her mother died. "Did you love
your mother, Jewel?"

In answer, Jewel turned her head on the
pillow, and Vivid could see the sadness in her eyes. “Very much. I still miss
her."

"Then think about this. Would she
have wanted you to work yourself to death? When she made you promise to take
care of your father and brothers, I don't believe she meant to the detriment of
your health. There are six strong men in this house. Please let them show you
how much they love you by letting them help out."

Jewel lay with her head on the pillow,
looking at the ceiling. Vivid asked her, "Will you at least consider
it?"

After several silent moments passed, Jewel
finally gave a small nod of affirmation.

"Good," Vivid said, smiling.

"But what if they make a mess?"

"Then show them how to do what you
want without making a mess. They'll listen, I promise. Every one of them is
scared to death of raising your ire. They'll behave."

Jewel appeared to mull over the
suggestions, then said, "Well, I suppose it won't hurt to give it a
try."

For the first time Vivid saw her smile.
Beneath all the thinness and exhaustion, Jewel was a very beautiful young
woman.

"Good," Vivid replied genuinely.

"Thank you, Dr. Lancaster."

Vivid smiled. "You're welcome. And
now that you're on the road to recovery, I need to get on the road home."

Jewel turned her head on the pillow and
asked, "Was that Nate's voice I heard downstairs?"