Read Online Good Medicine by Bobby Hutchinson - Free Book Online Page B

to the bedroom open as far as it would go.
    He imagined her sleeping there, curled under the blankets. It must have been an exhausting day for her. Silently, he walked around the building, bending over to hush a dog that came loping out of nowhere. Pausing a moment outside her bedroom window, he imagined he could hear her breathing softly, in and out.
    Going in the front door of the center, Silas headed for the room where Louie slept deeply. Roberta was lying on a cot close beside her husband’s bed. Her eyesopened and she started to get up, but Silas waved her back down again and made a sign for silence.
    He stood beside Louie and put a hand gently on the top of the man’s bandaged leg. Closing his eyes, he hummed softly, a healing prayer, one of the first Grandmother Sandrine had ever taught him.
    Louie slept on, and Roberta nodded her thanks.
    Silas left as quietly as he’d come.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    S ILAS HEADED DOWN to the water. Just out of reach of the incoming tide, he stopped and crouched down on his haunches.
    He felt disturbed. This woman wasn’t for him. The culture she came from was the same one that had almost destroyed him. Tonight he needed to remember that, as much as he usually needed to forget it. He wanted her, but he could control his desire.
    The ebb and flow of the water slowly quieted his mind, and after a while it felt as if his blood were flowing in rhythm with the ocean’s current. He began to hum, a monotonous deep thrumming in his chest, clearing away the emotions that swirled in his bloodstream like fireflies. The sound centered him, connected him to the earth and water, the wind and sky, and at last a measure of peace touched the place where his hunger raged.
    J ORDAN WOKE TO THE SOUND of crows waging a territorial war outside her bedroom. Her bedside clock said6:00 a.m., and the thin curtain covering her open window did little to keep out the light and cool, fresh air.
    There was no confusion about where she was; ever since her intern days she’d come out of deep sleep fully alert. This morning, her first thought was for her patient. Surely she’d have been awakened during the night if anything had gone wrong, but she wanted to check for herself, right now.
    In under ten minutes, she was showered and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Shivering, she pulled on a hoodie. Her kitchen was chilly, the fire long burned out. The food on the counter and the dishes in the sink made the room look like the day after a party, deserted and lonely. She made her way through the connecting door.
    â€œHe slept like a baby,” Roberta reported with a smile, coming out of the bathroom. “He woke up just once and I gave him a drink of water. I checked the bandage—it’s clean and dry. That stuff dripping into his arm’s going down, though. Christina said she’d come by and change it if you didn’t wake up by seven.”
    Louie was still sleeping, but he woke when Jordan said his name. Rolling the sheet aside, she removed the bandage to check her handiwork. The wound was pink and healthy looking, with far less seepage than she’d expected. Miraculously, it was already beginning to heal.
    â€œI’ve seldom seen a wound heal this fast,” she told Louie and Roberta. “You must be incredibly healthy, Louie. I’ll put on a fresh dressing and, if it continues to improve this way, we can soon do away with the IV drip.”
    â€œAnd then I can go home,” Louie said with a wide grin.
    â€œNot for a few days. You’ll have to be able to make it to the bathroom on your own first. You can’t expect Roberta to empty bedpans.”
    â€œYou got that right.” Roberta rolled her eyes at Jordan. “Yuck. Mind if I go make some coffee?”
    â€œYou’ll have to light the stove first.” Jordan added an automatic coffeepot to the list of things she was going to order from Tofino. “Maybe you could teach me how, while