Twin of Fire (Montgomery/Taggert 7)

“I ain’t stayin’ here. I thought this was gonna be a real hospital with real doctors.”

Before Blair could say another word, the woman was out of the door and hurrying toward the street. Blair kept her anger under control as she ushered in the next patient.

The second woman flatly said that Blair couldn’t possibly know what was wrong with her because her illness wasn’t pregnancy. Blair had difficulty understanding this until she realized the woman thought Blair was a midwife. The woman left before Blair could explain. The third woman left after she found out that the handsome Dr. Westfield, who she’d met last summer in Denver, wasn’t going to examine her.

For hours after the third patient left, no one came to the clinic, and Blair had visions of the telephone catching fire from all the scorching gossip that was passing across its wires. At four o’clock, a salesman touting a pink liquid made for “female problems” came by. Blair was polite but ushered him out quickly. She went back to straightening towels that were already straight.

“They want a man,” Mrs. Krebbs said. “They want a trained doctor like Dr. Leander.”

“I am a trained doctor,” Blair said through her teeth.

Mrs. Krebbs sniffed, put her nose in the air and went into another room.

Blair locked the door at six o’clock and went home.

At home, she didn’t tell Lee about her lack of patients. He’d gone to so much trouble and expense to start the clinic that she didn’t want to bother him. Besides, he was worried enough as it was.

She filled the tub for him, then prepared to leave as he undressed.

“Don’t go. Stay and talk to me.”

She felt a little shy at first as he stripped and got into the tub. Somehow, this was more intimate than making love.

Lee leaned back in the tub, a faraway look in his eyes, and began to tell her of what he’d been through that day. He told of pulling two bodies out of the mine rubble, of having to amputate a man’s foot while in the pit. She didn’t interrupt him and he went on to describe the feeling of being inside the mine: the weight of the surrounding walls, the lack of fresh air, the total darkness, no room to stand, no room to move.

“I don’t know how they do it, how they can walk into that day after day. At any moment, a roof may fall on them. Each day, they face a thousand ways to die.”

She had his foot out of the water and was washing it. “Houston says that for the men to join together in a union is the only way they’ll accomplish anything.”

“And how would Houston know that?” Lee snapped.

“She lives here,” Blair said, surprised. “She hears things. She said that someone is bringing union activists into the camps, and there’s going to be a revolution before long. And—.”

Lee snatched the cloth from her. “I hope you don’t listen to gossip like that. Nobody—neither the miners nor the owners —wants a war on his hands. I’m sure things can be handled peacefully.”

“I hope so. I had no idea you cared so much for the miners.”

“If you’d seen what I saw today, you’d care, too.”

“I wanted to go with you. Maybe next time…”

Lee leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “I don’t mean to snap. I wouldn’t want you up there and, besides, you have all your many patients in the clinic to heal. I wonder what our pretty little housekeeper has for supper tonight?”

Blair smiled at him. “I hope you don’t think I had courage enough to ask. I’ll go down in the deepest mine with you and face falling roofs, but deliver me from Mrs. Shainess’s kitchen.”

“Falling roofs—that reminds me. How are you and Mrs. Krebbs doing?”

Blair groaned, and as Lee dressed, she launched into a soliloquy about Mrs. Krebbs. “She may be an angel in the operating room, but elsewhere she is a witch.”

By the time Lee was ready to go downstairs to dinner, he was smiling again and gently arguing about whether Mrs. Krebbs’s good qualities outweighed her bad.

That night, they snuggled against each other and fell asleep together.

The second day the clinic was open was worse: no one came. And when Blair got home, Lee received one of his cryptic phone calls and was out the door and didn’t return until midnight. He crawled into bed beside her, dirty, exhausted, and she experienced male snoring for the first time. She gently touched his shoulder a couple of times and had no effect on him, so, with one big shove, she pushed him onto his stomach and he quietened.

On the third day, as Blair sat at her too-neat desk, she heard the outside doorbell jangle, and when she went into the waiting room, she saw her childhood friend, Tia Mankin. Tia was suffering from a persistent dry cough.

Blair listened to her complaints, prescribed a mild cough syrup, and was smiling broadly when the ne