Shaken to the Core (29 page)

Hissing, the water spat back out.

Kate stumbled back, clutching her hand.

“Kate!” Giuliana jumped down from the automobile. Pain flared through her ankle for a moment. She ignored it, rushed around to Kate’s side, and clutched her shoulders. “Are you hurt?”

“Heavens, that was stupid. I should have let it cool off before pouring in the water.”

Holding on to Kate’s wrist with one hand, Giuliana gently turned her hand around.

Patches of red formed on Kate’s palm where she’d burned her hand, but luckily the skin didn’t blister. Impulsively, Giuliana lifted Kate’s hand, about to kiss it. She stopped herself at the last second.
Diu miu! What are you doing?
It must be because she’d treated the scrapes of her younger siblings the same way—kissing them to make them better. But Kate was an adult, and they had a competent doctor with them. Her cheeks burning, she stepped aside to let Lucy take a look.

Lucy pulled an ointment from her doctor’s bag and spread it gently over Kate’s palm.

The sight made the tiny hairs on Giuliana’s neck prickle. She wanted to take the ointment away from Lucy and treat Kate’s burned hand herself. How stupid. Maybe she should take a sip from the flask. The lack of water was doing strange things to her head.

From her position bent over Kate’s hand, Lucy grinned up at her patient. “That’s one way to find out what else is in my bag.”

One corner of Kate’s mouth lifted into a half smile. “A pretty painful way, if you ask me. You could have just told me, you know.”

They sat at the side of the street, waiting for the ointment to dry and the engine to cool off. Clouds of smoke from a fire a few blocks away wafted over, and the boom of dynamite interrupted the silence every minute or two.

“Gosh,” Kate murmured after a while, “it sounds as if they’re dynamiting entire blocks.”

Not that it seemed to be doing much good. In pessimistic moments, Giuliana thought the fire wouldn’t stop before it reached the ocean. But that was nonsense, of course. A city like San Francisco was no little fishing village. It had resources and competent people like Chief Sullivan to keep it from total destruction.

Kate got up. “I think it’s safe to continue now.”

Giuliana climbed to her feet. “Can you drive with the hand?” She pointed at Kate’s burned fingers and then peeked at the intimidating machine. “If you teach me to drive, I can—”

“I’m fine.”

Giuliana sent her a doubtful glance.

“Doctor, tell her, please.”

“She’s fine,” Lucy said. “A little pigheaded, but otherwise fine.”

Kate made a face. “I wasn’t aware that was a medical diagnosis, Doc.”

They got back into the automobile and continued their way south. Giuliana kept a close eye on both Kate and the hood of the vehicle. Both seemed fine.

As they reached the hospital, a wave of heat hit them, even though the fire was still a block away. Smoke made Giuliana’s already raw throat feel as if she were breathing in shards of glass.

Soldiers blocked the street and wouldn’t let them drive up to the hospital. “Turn around!” one of them shouted.

“We need to get to the hospital,” Lucy called. “I’m a doctor. I need to check on a patient there.”

The soldier shook his head. “The patients are gone. The hospital is being evacuated. We’ll blow it up in a minute.”

A patient was carried past them on a stretcher, his head and chest heavily bandaged.

From behind the steering wheel, Kate stared down at him. “Isn’t that…?”

“Yeah.” The soldier nodded grimly. “Chief Sullivan. He was badly wounded when the neighboring building collapsed onto the fire station.”

With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Giuliana turned and stared after him. The man everyone said would rescue the city looked as if he were clinging to life by a thread. San Francisco was doomed.

CHAPTER 15

Golden Gate Park

San Francisco, California

April 18, 1906

Kate could hardly believe that this was the place where she had ridden the merry-go-round as a child, had sipped tea in the exotic Japanese Garden, and had been rowed across Stow Lake by William Jenkins just a few weeks ago.

Now Golden Gate Park looked like a tent city. People huddled in the army tents, seeking refuge from the cool wind, while others had built shelters using sheets, blankets, and the odd piece of furniture they had saved from their homes.

As they strode past rows of tents, Kate searched the faces for anyone she might know.

People stared back with blank expressions. One woman, rocking her baby in her arms, met her gaze and smiled. The baby was completely still. Its eyes were closed, and its skin had a bluish tint.

Oh Lord! Is it…?

Lucy gave her a grim nod.

Bile rose in Kate’s throat. She swallowed it back down as they entered one of the tents with a big red cross.

Chaos immediately engulfed them. Doctors were bent over blood-soiled operating tables that had been improvised using sawhorses and doors or shutters. Nurses with dark shadows beneath their eyes hurried from cot to cot.

One of them saw Lucy and hurried over. “Dr. Sharpe! We’re running out of morphine. We don’t have anything left to give them for pain.” With a flutter of her hands, she indicated the moaning patients surrounding them.

Lucy dug into her ever-present doctor’s bag, but this time, she came up empty. “Looks like my bag is not as magical as you thought,” she said to Kate, her features set into hard lines.

Helplessness gripped Kate—a feeling she had always hated. “There has to be something we can do.”

“The drugstores.” Giuliana looked from Kate to Lucy. “They have the kind of medicines you need, no?”

Lucy nodded. “They do. But how will you—?”

“We’ll get it for you. Come on.” Kate gripped Giuliana’s elbow and hurried to the tent’s flap.

“Wait!” Lucy stopped one of the nurses, unpinned the Red Cross badge from her blood-stained blouse, and stuck it to Kate’s shirtwaist. “Otherwise, the soldiers will take the automobile from you as soon as they spy you. Do you still have my revolver?”

Kate had hidden it beneath the driver’s seat. She nodded, but the mere thought of using it made her queasy.

“Good. Bring me whatever you can carry. Splints and bandages too. But don’t get yourselves shot in the process.”

“I’m not planning on it,” Kate called back over her shoulder.

As they drove east, back to the city, they tried to remember where they had seen a drugstore. They combed the streets, keeping an eye out for any place that looked promising.

Other people seemed to have had the same idea. A man ran out of a store with a box of canned goods—either the store’s owner trying to save his wares or just a hungry person who had helped himself to some food. It wasn’t really stealing, was it? If the fires weren’t stopped, the store would soon burn down anyway, with everything in it.

But the man never made it to the corner.

Three soldiers marched down the street, rifles at the ready. “Halt!” one of them shouted.

The man with the box threw a harried glance over his shoulder but kept running.

A shot rang out.

The man took one more step, then wobbled and fell. He lost his grip on the box as he landed on the cobblestones. A can of peaches rolled down the street.

Kate braked before the automobile’s tires could crush it. Her entire body went cold, then a white-hot rush of anger swept through her. She stared across the street at the man who lay without moving, a puddle of blood spreading beneath him.

The soldiers looked up from the fallen man and over at them.

“You shot him,” Kate said. “How could you just shoot him? He wasn’t harming anyone.”

“We’ve got orders to shoot looters on sight,” one of the soldiers said. He was barely more than a boy. “There are people who’re cutting the fingers off the dead to steal their rings. It’s our duty to stop that. See?” He gestured at a piece of paper which had been hammered onto a telegraph pole.

Kate leaned toward it so she could read it.

“What does it say?” Giuliana whispered next to her.

“It’s a proclamation by the mayor,” Kate said, still reading. “The federal troops and the members of the police force have been authorized to kill any person found engaged in looting.” At the questioning look on Giuliana’s face, she added, “Stealing from others.”

“That’s right,” the young soldier said. “We’ve got to restore order.”

Mayor’s proclamation or not, Kate didn’t think it was right. “But how can you be sure he was looting? Maybe he owned that store or had permission to take whatever he wanted.”

“Then why did he run?” the soldier said.

Because you were aiming a rifle at him,
Kate wanted to say but thought better of it.

Another soldier took a step forward and gave a dismissive wave with his bayonet-topped rifle. “You’d better move on, miss.”

“Kate,” Giuliana whispered. “Please.”

With the soldiers giving her warning glares, Kate had no other choice if she didn’t want to endanger Giuliana and herself. She took her foot off the brake and stepped onto the gas pedal.

“This is madness,” she said to Giuliana when they had safely rounded the corner. “Haven’t enough people died today?”

Instead of an answer, Giuliana slid her hand on top of Kate’s fist, clenched around the steering wheel, and squeezed gently.

Kate’s death grip instantly loosened as the warmth of Giuliana’s hand soothed her rattled nerves. She glanced over at Giuliana, glad for the normalcy she provided in all this craziness.

Giuliana pointed at something down the street. “There is a store. What does the sign say?”

Slowly, Kate drove past it so she could read the big, white letters on the glass front. “Yes! It’s a drugstore.”

There was no one behind the counter. A
closed
sign dangled from the door.

Kate steered the automobile around the next corner so it wouldn’t attract the attention of any soldiers or policemen and then set the brake. “I’ll go in and get what we need. You stay here.”

Giuliana grabbed a handful of Kate’s shirtwaist and held on. “No. I come with you.”

No need for both of them to head into danger, and Giuliana looked as if she could use a break. Kate vehemently shook her head. “I’ll go alone. I need you to keep an eye on my camera. Make sure no one steals it.”

Giuliana’s gaze veered down to the carrying case at her feet and then back up. She hesitated, still holding on to Kate’s shirtwaist.

“Please.”

Huffing out a breath, Giuliana let go. “Benu. You be very careful, please.”

“Of course. Be right back.” Kate left the engine running and climbed down. After one last glance back over her shoulder to make sure Giuliana was staying put, she peeked around the corner.

The street was empty, the path to the drugstore clear.

Kate gripped her skirt with both hands, pulled it up a little, and ran. She tried the door, but it was locked. Both hands shielding her eyes, she peered through the glass front. Shelves full of bottles and other supplies lined two walls while a soda fountain was set up behind a marble-topped counter. Some of these bottles had to hold the medicine Lucy’s patients so desperately needed. She rattled the door again.

It didn’t give.

She looked around. The earthquake had shaken loose some bricks from the neighboring building. Kate picked up one of them and hefted it in both hands. Eyeing the drugstore’s glass front, she hesitated. Should she really…?

You’re wasting time. Time Lucy’s patients don’t have. Do it.
She inhaled deeply, held her breath, and then hurled the brick through the glass front.

Glass splintered, and the brick crashed against one of the metal stools in front of the counter, toppling it over. The noise sounded deafening in Kate’s ears.

Heart pounding, she looked left and right.

Nothing moved. No angry store owner came running.

Kate used a second brick to clear the doorframe of glass shards and then stepped through.
Father would be so proud if he could see me. Now I’m breaking into a drugstore.
She hurried past the long counter and searched the shelves. Toothpastes, cigars, hair tonics. No. She moved on to the next shelf.

Colic remedies, foot balms, and cocaine toothache drops. Nothing she needed either. Then a brown bottle with an orange label caught her attention.
Laudanum! Yes!
Next came several transparent vials of morphine.

Kate looked around for something to carry it in. When she didn’t immediately find anything, she took off her petticoat and started piling bottles and bandages on top of it. Finally, she added a bottle of iodine tincture and tied off her bundle.

It wasn’t enough. Lucy and the other doctors would need more to treat all the injured people in the park. After a minute of searching, she found a wooden crate filled with hair tonics. She tossed out the bottles and filled the crate with more bandages and all the morphine she could find. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as much as she’d hoped.

She grabbed her bundle and headed for the door. Either she or Giuliana would go back for the crate in a minute. When she passed the counter, she paused. The sight of the soda machine made her painfully aware of how thirsty she was. Her tongue seemed to stick to the dry roof of her mouth. She imagined the ice-cold soda gushing forth from the spigots and then wetting her tongue. Her mouth started to prickle as if she were tasting the gingery drink already.

She set her bundle down on the counter. When she’d seen the soda jerks operating the spigots, it had always seemed so easy, but she couldn’t figure out how the soda water apparatus worked. The bottles of grape juice behind the counter were a safer bet. Just as she leaned forward to grasp a bottle for Giuliana and one for herself, glass shards crunched beneath heavy boots—too heavy to belong to Giuliana.

Kate froze, her arm extended. Her heart pounded as if it were trying to escape from her ribcage. Even before turning, she already knew what she would find.

The young soldier from earlier stood in the shattered doorway, his rifle aimed at her. “So that’s why you were defending the looter. You’re one yourself.”