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Snow Angel

By Davalynn Spencer

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October 1884
Piney Hill, Colorado
Cinnamon. Cloves. Oranges, for heaven’s sake. A heady perfume with a hefty price.
Lena mentally tallied her purchases. Such indulgence. But Christmas came only once in twelve months, and if she spread her extravagance out over the next eight weeks, they could manage.
She thanked Mr. Fielding at the mercantile and headed home, a quarter-of-a-mile trip in good weather. Today it felt farther. The sky hung low, goose gray, and promising rain, which meant mud. It should be snowing this time of year, with the cottonwoods flashing yellow along the road, their aspen cousins trickling gold down the hillside at the end of town.
Smelling the storm’s approach, she hiked her skirt and quickened her pace.
The one thing she could count on this time of year was her heart flip-flopping between cherished memories and painful recollections. Between excitement and dread.
Anticipation swept her along when she was shopping or planning meals or decorating cookies for the children at church. But at night, while cleaning up supper dishes after Tay went to bed, apprehension hung like stubborn cobwebs in the corners of the dim kitchen. Fear that a horribly painful accident would happen again.
And she’d lose something else.
A fat rain drop hit her shoulder, and pain shuddered down her left arm to her hand. She cradled it protectively against her waist as she crossed the yard and climbed the porch steps. Lord, would this seasonal sensitivity never end? Twenty years. Twenty years was enough!
After dressing the hall tree with her cloak and hat, she took her bag of spices and fruit to the kitchen. Nothing was going to change. God help her, when would she accept that?
An hour later, the front door crashed inward.
Lena scrubbed her hands on her apron and ran down the hall.
Tay was dragging a man into the surgery, and two muddy feet trailed over the threshold, toes up. One booted, one bare.
As she reached to close the front door, a gray sharp-eared dog darted through.
“Grab his legs.” Tay’s voice hardened with urgency. “Be careful with the left one. Fibula’s broken and the ankle’s dislocated.”
As usual, he excelled at overstating the obvious.
The rag-doll man hung limp, head lolling as Tay lined him up with the narrow surgery table. She stepped between the mismatched feet, linked her left arm around the right leg, and grabbed a fistful of woolen trouser on the other. Careful not to bump the bare foot that flopped at an unnatural angle.
“On three,” Tay said. “One, two, three!”
The poor fellow landed on the table with a thud, and his dog uttered a near-human groan. Just so it didn’t bite. She had enough to think about with its owner’s legs hanging off the end of the table, perfectly even with the broken bone.
“Hold him and I’ll get the board.”
As if she could.
Ignoring the dog, Tay bolted through the door, down the hall, and out the back door. Headed for the barn, she knew, where he’d been working on an extension for his table. Last week, Joseph Cooper and his mangled arm had also been too long. Tay had to figure out a solution or order a new table.
Lena wrinkled her nose at the mix of muddy clothing and wet dog hair. Standing between the stranger’s feet, she gently lowered the booted one to more steadily hold the other with both hands. Her starched apron was soiled now, but that was easily corrected. Much easier than setting this man’s bones end on end and securing them that way.
His left arm dangled over the edge of the table, and the dog stood directly beneath it, watching her from between long, still fingers. One eye was honey-colored, the other like a blue opal, both challenging her to shoo it away.
She dared not. Holding the foot upright and praying the man didn’t come to was challenge enough.
Footsteps hammered down the hall, and Tay rushed in holding a wide, thin board. He aimed it toward her end of the table, and she lifted the crooked leg higher.
The man moaned.
“His weight should counter-balance the board and keep it on the table.” In spite of October’s early chill, sweat trickled from Tay’s tawny hairline and slid in rivulets down his temples.
Wedging the board beneath his patient, he pushed it, then lifted the right leg onto the board and pushed some more. “All right, ease that leg down.”
Like a tongue worrying a broken tooth, her eyes kept returning to the crooked foot. She’d force them away and they’d whip right back, curiosity overruling her tumbling stomach.
She tried again, tacking her gaze to the man’s dark matted hair and roughening beard. “You need a longer table.”
“We can’t afford it.”
“If people paid you with real money, we could.”
Tay shot her a we’ve-been-over-this-before scowl and gave the board a final shove. They tugged a clean sheet beneath the man, covering the board.
Tay rolled up his sleeves. “Take off his trousers and I’ll wash up.”
Hers was always the indelicate work.
Regardless of a patient’s gender or injury, the appearance of rarely seen skin startled her every time, aside from Cecilia Valdez. The dressmaker had somehow stabbed herself with a pair of scissors last year and hadn’t the stomach to stitch up the wound. Lena didn’t blame her.
Most people’s covered flesh was startlingly pale beneath their clothes and smooth as a baby’s belly. Cecilia’s skin had been rich and satiny like rolled-out gingerbread dough.
This stranger was most people.
But for the dark hair on his shins, his lower legs were white as boiled chicken, as was his brow, where a hat must have spent most of its time. His sun-browned face and hands more closely matched his boot leather than his body.
Lena tossed his trousers and single sock to the corner where she collected soiled sheets and bandages. Then, hands on her hips, she assessed his faded under-flannel.
Well worn, and a bit short, as if he’d grown out of them. But he was too old to have grown that much lately. His chin whiskers indicated more than twenty years, but not enough to salt his muddy mop with white strands.
As far as she could tell, he had no leg injuries above the knees, so that was where she made the first cut. At the knee. And then the other. No point in having mismatched drawers.
His was not the first broken bone she’d helped Tay set, but it was the most challenging. Bunched muscles and tight tendons fought against her as she wrestled with his pale foot, flinching each time it twisted to the side. She braced one foot against a chair wedged under the makeshift extension, wrapped her left arm around his right ankle, and gripped the bare foot with her other hand.
But when Tay pulled from the man’s shoulders, the entire man moved—broken leg, crooked foot, and all.
Tay growled his frustration but wouldn’t look at her. He never blamed her for her inadequacies, and sometimes she wished he would. His failure to address the issue was tantamount to ignoring a bison standing square in the center of the room.
“I have an idea,” she said.
Tay closed his eyes and rubbed the sides of his head, frustration clear in his clenched jaw.
“You could loop one end of a rope around his chest and under his arms, then run the other end out the window, and tie it around Winnie’s neck.”
Tay’s shock alone was worth the suggestion, except she knew it would work.
“Winnie could jerk him right through the window!”
Lena sucked in one cheek, the side her brother couldn’t see, and bit off a snort. “Not if I hold her head and you pull his leg into place from this end, then holler when you’re finished.”
Tay frowned at his patient.
“Or we can keep this up until he wakes from the pain.”
The frown dissipated, and her brother’s jaw shifted sideways in surrender.

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