“You remember that?”
“I remember good work.”
The compliment landed somewhere she had forgotten could still feel warmth.
She pushed it away quickly.
“I will not show you.”
His expression did not shift. “Then I cannot treat you properly.”
“You are not a doctor.”
“No.”
“Then why should I trust you?”
He looked toward the window, where rain streaked the glass and the mountain beyond was lost in gray.
“Because I do not need your shame to make myself important.”
The room grew very still.
Juniper’s fingers trembled beneath the quilt.
Men had looked at her all her life as if her body were public property. Too round. Too plain. Too soft. Too large for delicate chairs, too hungry-looking at church suppers, too visible in a town that preferred women narrow and quiet. Then the rashes came, red and angry and weeping, and people who had once mocked her shape began fearing her skin.
She had learned to cover herself in layers even when summer made the air wet and choking.
Silas turned his back.
“I’ll face the stove,” he said. “You uncover what needs cleaning. I’ll look only when you say.”
That courtesy broke her more than pity would have.
Slowly, with clumsy fingers, Juniper unbuttoned her sleeves. The cloth stuck where dried blood had hardened. She bit down on a cry as she peeled it free. Red patches climbed from her wrists to her elbows. Some places were cracked and shining. Others were raw from scratching in her sleep.
She opened the collar of her dress. The skin along her collarbone burned in raised, inflamed streaks.
“I’m ready,” she said, though she was not.
Silas turned.
His eyes did not widen. He did not flinch. He did not make the small, cruel sound people made when they thought disgust was sympathy.
He looked like a man facing a problem.
“Wool?” he asked.
“My dress.”
“Burn it.”
“It is my only dress.”
“Then we will find you something that doesn’t bite.”
“I can’t walk around in a man’s clothes.”
“You can walk around alive.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one that matters tonight.”
He cleaned her wounds with water boiled hot and cooled to mercy. He worked slowly. His hands were large, scarred, and astonishingly gentle. When she gasped, he stopped. When she lied and said it did not hurt, he ignored her and waited until her breathing steadied.
“What have you touched?” he asked.
“I sew. I touch everything.”
“Think.”
“Cotton, linen, wool, lace, buttons, mourning crepe, ribbons, thread.”
“Dyes?”
Juniper looked down.
Silas noticed.
“There,” he said.
“It was nothing.”
“Nothing rarely makes a woman look like she swallowed a scream.”
She closed her eyes.
“Mrs. Fenwick brought me a jar of green powder from Dr. Crane’s private stock. Her daughter wanted a dress the color of spring leaves. Not sage. Not olive. Bright green. She said Crane ordered it special from St. Louis.”
“When did the itching start?”
“Two days after. My palms went red first.”
“And you kept working.”
“I had rent.”
“And food?”
She said nothing.
Silas’s mouth hardened.
“Did Crane know?”
“I went to him when the blisters came.”
“And?”
“He said my body was corrupt. Said women like me often carried hidden weakness. He gave me a tonic.”
“What was in it?”
“It burned.”
His eyes sharpened. “Inside?”
“Like swallowing lamp oil.”
Silas stood so abruptly the chair behind him scraped the floor.
Juniper flinched.
He saw it and forced himself still.
“That green dye may have been cut with arsenic or copper salts. Maybe worse. Those powders make pretty cloth and poisoned hands. If Crane sold it without warning, he either did not know what he was handling or did not care.”
Juniper could barely hear him over the pounding of her pulse.
“I did this to myself?”
“No.”
“I touched it.”
“You were paid poverty wages to handle danger no one named.”
“I should have known.”
“By what magic?”
She stared at him.
For the first time in months, blame moved out of her chest and found another place to stand.
Dr. Elias Crane.
His clean office. His silver spectacles. His cold fingers lifting her chin with the end of a pencil because he would not touch her skin. His voice telling the boardinghouse keeper she must be isolated before she infected the entire town.
Not mistaken.
Convenient.
Silas wrapped her hands in strips of clean linen.
“You’ll stay here,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“People will talk.”
“They already do.”
“They’ll say I’m ruined.”
“Were they treating you like a queen before?”
She gave him a sharp look.
He tied the bandage at her wrist. “Rest. Eat. Heal. Then decide whose opinion deserves a grave in your mind.”
For six weeks, Juniper lived above Timberline Ridge.
The first week humiliated her.
Silas gave her two cotton shirts, trousers tied with cord, and a pair of socks too big for her feet. He placed her wool dress in the yard, struck a match, and burned it while she watched.