“You can get dressed now, Mary. Come out to my desk when you’re finished.”
She gave him a hesitant nod and waited until he had gone out and closed the curtain behind him before stepping down from the table, her fingers fumbling as she tried to hasten her dressing.
When she was finally presentable again, she slipped through the brown curtains separating the small examination area from the rest of the office and smoothed her hair back from her face. Taking a seat in the chair in front of his desk, she tried to make herself comfortable.
The doctor was busy writing in what she assumed was her file, so she trained her attention on the window just beyond his chair. She watched passersby on their wagons and an occasional horse, and tried not to allow herself to fret over what he might say. Eventually, he glanced up and sent her a reassuring, but somewhat sympathetic smile.
Sympathy? Her stomach dropped as dread took hold. Oh, no…
“Mary…” he began, pausing as he bent his head to catch her attention because her eyes were darting around the room in a panic. In truth, she wanted to get up from that chair and run as fast and as far away as she could so that she wouldn’t have to hear his diagnosis—but she forced herself to sit still. Unconsciously, her fingers began to pick at the edges of her reticule where it lay in her lap.
“I think you probably have an idea what is happening to you…am I right?” He asked in a gentle tone. She did, but she was hoping and praying she was wrong. He waited while she merely stared at him, wide-eyed and dry-mouthed, with her heart racing so fast it had set up a buzzing in her ears. Please don’t be that…please…please…
“I gave you a thorough examination and…I’m certain that the cause of your fatigue and sudden aversion to food is that…you’re enceinte.” He saw her confusion at the unfamiliar word and rushed to clarify, “In the family way. About two months, near as I can tell.”
“No…” she moaned aloud, the weight of the news pressing down on her shoulders and chest with near suffocating force. The air whooshed from her lungs under the sheer magnitude of it as tears sprang to her eyes. “NO!!” She erupted, shaking her head before her hands came up to hide her face, achingly ashamed by the merciful look in the doctor’s eyes. What must he think of her?
The gentle, older man smiled understandingly and handed her a clean handkerchief, watching silently as she dabbed her eyes and nose.
“I don’t mean to presume, my dear, but…the father…was it the man who attacked you…the outlaw, Washington Hobbs?”
Shame was washing over her in ocean-sized waves. A fresh gush of tears flooded her eyes at his mention of the hateful man and she lowered her eyes, but managed a nod.
At that, he got up from his chair and circled the desk, perched on the corner, and leaned down to pat her awkwardly on the shoulder. “There, there, child. This is not the end of the world, I assure you.”
A white-hot surge of anger unexpectedly flared to life like a match struck on stone and she glared up into his benevolent countenance.
“That’s easy for you to say! You’re a man! You’re not a girl in the family way with no family, and gotten that way by a…a…lying, thieving, filthy…cur!” A shiver reverberated down her spine and she pressed the hanky against her mouth, mumbling around it, “Just the thought of him disgusts me. And it…it was only one time!” She peered up at him and shook her head. “I can’t…I can’t be having his baby!” she gasped the last word as the realization swept over her again with the force of a locomotive under full steam.
The doctor drew another chair close and reached for her free hand, holding it comfortingly against his chest and patting it in an effort to calm her down. That he was so concerned about her reaction alleviated a tiny bit of her angst, but not all.
“Often it only takes one time for the womb to quicken,” he explained. “But then, some women try for years and never experience the miracle of increasing.” Moving his head slowly to-and-fro with a sincere smile, he added, “Such are the mysteries of life, my dear. In a way, you’re one of the lucky ones.”
At the gentle words, Mary drooped back against the chair, her anger cooling as quickly as it had heated. From her point of view, however, her future looked anything but lucky. Woebegone would be a better adjective, and one that her friend, Pauline, had put on a recent spelling test in their ongoing, private lessons.
One straggling tear emerged and rolled down her cheek as her head slowly oscillated from side to side while she stared straight ahead and out through the window behind the doctor’s desk. The bright blue sky and calm day faded away as she remembered the day after her first night in town. She’d felt so insulted and upset when the church ladies had come to see her. Their questions and looks had made her feel dirty, like a soiled dove. She could just imagine the smug looks they’d get when they heard this news.
Turning her head toward the tenderhearted doctor, she took in the ginger blond hair tinged with just a touch of gray at his temples. The matching reddish eyebrows over empathetic gray eyes, gazed at her without censure through sparkling wire-rimmed glasses. His face was clean shaven with pleasant wrinkles that had come from a lifetime of smiling as he cared for others and tended to the sick.
Since that first awful night when Deputy Tobias had responded to her screams and carried her into the small hotel adjacent to where she’d been attacked out on
