TWO
Laine could hardly wait for a soak in a hot tub. That and a decent cup of tea. She straightened up from washing her hands and arms under the tap in the surgery sink.
Her neck ached after assisting Jai Kaur in the Caesarean he had performed on Chandra. Shortly after she’d brought Chandra to the mission she’d known the baby would never take its first breath of life. Though that the mother—a child herself—lived was a miracle, the whole wretched situation bore down on Laine. She ran a hand around her neck to massage it. Unlike Eshana, she didn’t believe she could change the world. But in the face of such suffering, one simply had to do their bit.
She needed to unwind these tired muscles though if she was going to be any good to her patients at the hospital tomorrow. More likely her neck screamed from the strain of kidnapping that poor girl this afternoon. She pursed her lips together to hold back a laugh. It wasn’t the lead temple woman that had scared her. It was the terror of releasing those two snakes.
Another shiver slid like ice down her back. She hated snakes. Vile, despicable, malevolent things. She would never understand why God created them. If she ever got to Heaven she’d ask the good Lord about that. If the Lord let her through the pearly gates, which she sorely doubted. Not with her bad temper and irreverent manner of speaking. Her father had told her often enough her sauciness would bring her to a bad end. Good thing her parents had passed on and couldn’t see her father’s prediction coming true.
Jai Kaur had finished suturing the mother, while Tikah wrapped the poor little scrap of humanity in a white cloth and took the baby girl away. Laine held in a sigh. She’d learned early in The Great War to hide her pain when one of her patients died. And there’d been so many.
The doctor gave Chandra a shot of morphine for the pain she would have when she came out of her anesthetic. He sat waiting at the girl’s bedside for this to happen, tapping her cheek and rubbing her hands. Eshana stood next to him, putting the final touches to the patient’s bandages.
Laine listened to the two of them talking in low tones, and her ears perked.
Eshana had never shown the slightest interest in any man except Geoff Richards, and he filled the role of big brother in her life. She treated every other man who came to the mission simply as patients. The grown-up boys from the mission who returned home every once in a while to visit, she treated like brothers.
But today Eshana didn’t bustle about the surgery, mildly ordering the other girls about, or setting things right the way she normally would. She, who never wasted a minute of any day that could be used to aid another, stood gazing up into the doctor’s almost black eyes. Little Eshana was hanging on the words of this tall, slender Sikh as he gave instructions for the patient’s care.
And his gaze frequently returned to Eshana’s for much longer than necessary.
Laine didn’t bother to hide her grin and sent a pointed glance to Eshana.
Not surprisingly, Eshana refused to acknowledge her. But when the patient gave a small moan, simultaneously as if they were two halves of the same person, Jai and Eshana turned to the girl. A moment later doctor and devoted nurse breathed the same breath of satisfaction at the girl’s status.
Oh...my...goodness. Laine’s laughter threatened to erupt. About time someone fell in love. Certainly never again for her. Once burned was enough in that department, thank you very much. It was the life of spinsterhood for her. But really, she ought to take up something a little safer these days to help out the populace. Slipping snakes under doors and kidnapping distressed temple girls was getting a bit risky. Perhaps instead she should take up knitting.
Jai readied himself to leave and nodded in Laine’s direction. “It was good to work with you again, Matron. Although I desire to give you the same word of caution I gave to Eshana. As soon as this child is well you must return her to the temple. She is their property, and they are legally in their rights to have her back.”
Laine removed the pins that attached her nursing veil to her hair and let her hand holding the veil flop to her side. “Where of course her syphilis will flare up, and she’ll die in a few years. I thought you as a Sikh did not approve of girls from the untouchable class being used as Hindu temple prostitutes.”
“As a Sikh I abhor the caste system and the way Hindus treat those lowest in their sight. But I am speaking of the danger in which you and Eshana place yourselves. If caught, the Hindus have every right to have you prosecuted. We can only hope the British courts will give you a mere slap on the wrist for interfering, but Eshana, being an Indian woman, would be punished severely for any such crimes.”
He moved to the door of the surgery. “I beg of you....” His gaze dismissed Laine and sought Eshana’s. “I beg of you to be taking my words to heart.”
As if drawn by a magnet, Eshana went with him to the front of the house to see him out, and Laine trudged up the four flights of stairs to the room at the top. Miriam had been dead almost two years, and still the household referred to this floor as her room.
The glass-paneled doors stood open to let in the evening air. Scents from the city below invaded—spices, dust, the smoke from cooking fires carried on the breeze along with the fragrance of Miriam’s roses and lilies on the balcony. The last wash of sunset outlined the shapes of the city, the minaret of a mosque, the gopuram of a Hindu temple, and the spires and domes of the Golden Temple of the Sikhs.
Inside, a smoking lamp in the corner lit portions of the room that glowed like warm marble. Miriam’s single, rope-strung bed still took up the corner. And on a reed table next to the bed, her Bible written in Hindustani lay open where the girls gathered each morning and evening to read.
Eshana and the other young women used to be Miriam’s girls, like the rest of the inhabitants of this house—poor children or newborn girls discarded by their families, cast-off child Hindu widows like Eshana. Or like Tikah the Muslim woman whom Eshana had brought to this house during the recent trouble between England and Afghanistan. They’d all found peace for their troubled hearts in this house. Even Abby Richards had.
But not Laine. No, definitely not her.
If she hurried though, she might make it to the going-away party for Abby and Geoff. Have a few laughs, throw off this millstone hanging about her heart.
She had planned on going home to the nurses’ residence to change into party duds, but her no-nonsense tailored skirt and white shirt suited her mood better than a dancing frock. A cloudy mirror on Miriam’s armoire afforded her a glimpse of her hair caught in a roll at the back of her neck. She patted the bobbed waves she’d worked so hard to shape out of her long, straight tresses. Well, that was as good as it was going to get.
But the grin she flashed at her reflection died. There would be no one at the party tonight to look at good old Laine Harkness as if he’d swallowed the moon and it shone out of his eyes, like Dr. Jai Kaur when he looked at Eshana.
Laine slung the strap of her nursing bag over her shoulder and took the stairs down to the main floor. At each landing the sound of splashing water, the squealing laughter of children, and a few sorrowful wails at having to go to bed filled the narrow house. Tikah and Mala, assisted by the older orphans, strode through the rooms lined with cots and dealt with each tiny mite.
One little tot darted out of a room and almost made it to the stairs before Laine nabbed her. It was the little girl who’d been born shortly before Miriam had died. They’d called her that deplorably long biblical name, Hadassah.
