Something Blue

Chapter 16

Katherine

"I don't have any skills."

Katherine blurted the words out before she could think them through, and Melissa looked up, bloody rag in hand.

"What?"

The two of them knelt together on the floor of Melissa's treatment room, scrubbing at the puddle of blood left behind by her latest patient-- a man with a festering wound on his hand, which her friend had been forced to amputate.

Through the months of her stay, they had established a tried-and-true system of maintaining secrecy. Because of the fences and the little homestead's distance from town, nobody came to Melissa except by way of the main house. Even before Katherine's arrival, it was standard practice for a runner to race ahead and warn Melissa of the patient's injuries or illness, so she could better prepare. Now, that runner also gave Katherine ample time to secret herself away with her daughter.

In the beginning, she had huddled in their room, keeping Isobel quiet with little games and stories, praying for the intruder to leave swiftly.

The more she healed, and the more her mind broke free from the walls around it, the more she wished she didn't have to hide. She wanted to help, with something more than the clean up.

"You work so hard," she told her friend, dunking her rag to clean it and wringing it out. "You all do. You take care of your patients, and Amelia helps Josh with the horses and the books. Josh runs the ranch. Even your pa has his goats. I don't have a job. I've never had a job."

"You take care of Isobel," Melissa said, frowning at her. "That's a job unto itself. I'm only responsible for my patients' lives as long as they're in my care. You always have the weight of another life on your shoulders, and you are an amazing mother. That's no small thing, Kat."

Katherine sighed, swiping at the leftover streaks of half-clotted blood. "But she's not going to be little forever. Another ten years or so and she won't need me anymore. And even before then, I need a means to support her."

"You can stay here as long as you need, Katherine," Melissa said firmly. "Don't rush out the door."

"I'm not rushing," she grumbled. "But I can't stay here forever. I'm going to have to go somewhere and start my life over, somewhere far away from..." she closed her eyes and pulled in a breath, summoning the strength to say the name. "Somewhere far away from Jacob," she said in a rush, clenching her teeth afterward on the wave of remembered sensations that rose up in the wake of his name. His oily voice, his soft hands, gripping her hard by the arms, by the hair. His body inside her, half-hard and painful as he shoved and rutted and turned red and sweat-slick with exertion. The smell of him-- incense and the sour musk of old sweat.

"Kat." She opened her eyes and saw that Melissa had come to kneel beside her, one hand on her arm. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she said truthfully, giving her shoulders a shake and letting Jacob's presence settle back into the dark recesses of her mind where he belonged. "I'm sorry. Just..."

"His name," Melissa finished for her, giving her arm a squeeze before letting go. "I understand. But back to the topic at hand..."

Melissa was so good at that-- at making her feel as if her crippling weakness was no great problem. That was what made her such an adept healer, Katherine had long-since deduced. Anyone could read books and study the body. Melissa had an inborn ability to sense what people needed in their souls, whether that be soothing compassion or a firm reassurance. The last thing Katherine wanted when she was already feeling weak and pitiful was the other woman's sympathy. Melissa always seemed to understand that.