Page 24 of Healing Hazel

He considered sitting at the table but changed his mind and remained standing. He thrust his fists into the pockets of his white coat. “Miss Thornton, as a member of the hospital staff—my staff—you have a responsibility, not only to the patients but to all of us. I must impress on you the seriousness of what you did today.” Jim knew his voice could be intimidating, and he felt a pang of guilt for using it, especially toward a gentlewoman in a semidarkened room.

Miss Thornton flinched—the slightest tightening of her eyes—but she did not look away.

“You disobeyed a direct order, putting yourself and the life of a patient in danger. That house could have come down with no warning.” The anger he’d felt earlier returned, as did the memory of her face as she’d defied him. Just like his brother. “What do you have to say for yourself?” His words were sharp.

“There was a baby. Ababy.” Her voice was soft, but it was strong. “I couldn’t leave her alone to die in that—” She shivered, visibly upset by the memory. “In there.” She shivered again but appeared to gather herself tightly, as if she refused to think of it. “I’m not sorry that I went in after her, but I am sorry that you, as a doctor committed to saving lives, would just leave her.” Her chin trembled and she crossed her arms, but her gaze never wavered.

Jim had expected emotion, but he’d thought she would display guilt or anguish. This—she was afraid. But he didn’t believe it was directed at him. She’d been terrified in that house. What had happened to cause her reaction? Had it been the darkness? The fear that the roof would collapse? He thought back to her panicked reaction and tried to hold on to the last bits of anger, but they slipped out of his grasp. He sighed, feeling suddenly exhausted. “I need to trust the people I work with, Miss Thornton.” He leaned back against the table, crossing his ankles. “I need to know that you will follow through when I give an order. Lives depend on it. Including yours.”

“I understand, Doctor Jackson.” She looked down, for the first time showing a hint of remorse. “I am sorry that I disobeyed your directions. But I cannot say that I wouldn’t do it again.” Her voice was soft.

Jim waited for her to look up, but she kept her gaze firmly on the ground.

“I will speak to Lucía concerning your discipline,” he said. “She will likely assign you to laundry or bedpan duty.”

She gave a slight nod.

“And you will not be invited to the next rescue mission.”

“Is that all, Doctor?”

“Yes. You are dismissed.”

She started toward the door.

“Miss Thornton,” Jim called after her. “I would not have left the baby behind,” he said. “We would have found a way—a safe way—to get her.”

She didn’t turn, but Jim could see by the tilt of her head that she was listening.

“I wanted to make sure you understood that,” he said.

Miss Thornton gave another nod and left.

Jim hooked his foot around the leg of a chair, pushing it out from beneath the table, and sat heavily. He stared at the empty doorway as an uncertainty itched at him. He let his memory return to that moment, the instant right before Miss Thornton had rushed into the gap. To the look in her eyes that was so like his brother’s. Was he really angry that he’d been defied? Or was it something different altogether? His emotions, the shaking of his limbs, and the hard rock in his belly couldn’t be attributed completely to anger. Or to fear. He was hurt that the two of them had so easily gone against what he’d told them. That they hadn’t trusted him. His own brother and now this woman, whose conception of him mattered more than it should.

He rubbed his eyes, resting his elbows on his knees. Miss Thornton had considered him a monster willing to leave an innocent baby to be crushed when a building inevitably collapsed. And what she thought mattered to him. That was the real surprise. For the first time in years, he cared about someone’s good opinion. And that scared him.

Chapter 7

Hazel left Dr. Jackson’s officeand hurried down the shadowy passageway toward her bedchamber. Or, rather, she stormed down the passageway. Or perhaps she retreated down the passageway. It was difficult to tell. Her emotions ran the gamut. Anger, embarrassment, hurt. Here was another man telling her what she could and couldn’t do. That moment in the alley—it had simply been too much.

Echoes of her panic in the dark house made her breathing come in bursts and her skin tighten. The building had been, for the most part, undamaged, but the bombings must have shaken it, spilling the contents of cupboards and toppling furniture. Dust had hung in the air, making the rooms appear dark, even in the afternoon light. A curtain rod had broken on one side, and it hung at a strange angle, with the curtains crumpled in a heap at the bottom. Hazel had moved carefully, stepping around pieces of dishes.

She’d found the baby easily enough. The cries had led Hazel into the back bedroom, to a wooden cradle at the foot of a bed with turned posts stained a dark umber color. There had been a moment, right after she picked up the baby, when she became completely turned around and couldn’t tell which direction led to the gap where she’d entered. Even before her mind had fully realized what was happening, Hazel could sense it. Her lungs compressed and her skin flashed from hot to cold as the feeling of being trapped made the room spin.

Just the memory made her stomach turn.

And worse than the panic was the worry that Dr. Jackson had seen it. She already feared disappointing him, and now she’d done it, and more efficiently than she would have believed possible. Her cheeks burned at the memory of their conversation a few moments earlier. He had already been hesitant about allowing Hazel’s presence on the hospital staff. If he knew she fell apart with such regularity, he’d banish her from the hospital for certain, and then where would she be? The nearest town was in pieces. She had no idea if the train tracks had been mended, and of course she couldn’t leave without Nella and Captain Bryant.

She grabbed a candle lamp from an alcove, irritated with herself that she still hadn’t located any striking matches to use in the morning. She held the lamp aloft, letting it illuminate her path. When she arrived at the door to her bedchamber, she reached into her pocket for the key. But before drawing it out, she stopped, and all other thoughts went from her mind when she saw that the door was ajar. Had she been robbed?

She stepped back and counted the doors in the passageway to make certain she was at the right room. An uncomfortable feeling tingled her nerves. But perhaps she was being silly. Was she certain she’d pulled the door completely closed when she left earlier? Straining her ears, she pushed the door with her fingertips. It opened just over halfway and stopped, bumping into something hard. Hazel hesitated. But hearing no movement, she took a step inside and raised the lamp.

A dark shape occupied most of the room. When the light fell on it, Hazel’s worries disappeared. Her traveling trunk had arrived. And so, she saw, had Nella’s, along with Captain Bryant’s portmanteau.

Hazel closed the door, noting that the chair had been removed. There wasn’t room for it with all the luggage. Her trunk sat on the floor beneath Nella’s, their travel bags, and the hatboxes. The portmanteau was between the trunks and the wall.

She scooted along the narrow space between the cot and the trunks and set the lamp on the table, glad that at least that one bit of furniture remained, and she considered the puzzle of how to access her trunk. There was not sufficient space on the floor for both trunks to sit side by side—unless she took away the cot. And she wasn’t sure she could lift the trunk back up if she did manage to push it off onto the floor anyway. In the end, she put the lamp on the trunks, lifted the little table onto the wooden cot, along with the hatboxes, and pushed and pulled until the cot was flush against the trunks. Then she put the table and hatboxes in the small space between the cot and the wall and pulled Nella’s trunk onto the cot.

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