Free Fire Along the Sky by Sara Donati

into the light. “Curiosity told me you had not improved in the niceties. She also said that you are ill.”
    He glanced at her over his shoulder. “I expect you want to talk about your dead son and missing husband as much as I want to talk about my health.”
    “The dead cannot be helped,” Hannah said, hearing the irritation in her own voice but not trying to hide it. “The sick are another matter.”
    From the desk Ethan said, “He wants you to diagnose him from twenty paces, cousin. It's a test he puts to every doctor he comes across.”
    “And how do his colleagues meet that challenge?”
    “Poorly, for the most part,” Richard Todd said, turning to face her. He held up his glass in a toast. “But then they were not trained by me. What do you see, my girl?”
    “It is your liver,” Hannah said in as neutral a tone as she could manage. “I expect there's at least one palpable tumor, most probably more, in your abdomen and chest as well. You're taking laudanum for the pain, I can smell it. You need quite a lot of it.”
    He grunted in satisfaction. “You see how well I trained her, Ethan? She not only sees in the dark, she sees through skin and bone. Not to say anything of that sense of smell.” He raised a glass in her direction.
    From the darkened hallway came the sound of Curiosity's sharp laugh, the one she reserved for people who might deserve some sympathy but who would do best without it. “You didn't train her all by yourself, Richard, and you sure as sugar cain't take any credit for her nose.”
    He squinted in Curiosity's direction and waved his free hand dismissively. “After I'm dead you can take all the credit, Curiosity, and there will be nobody left to correct you. Well done, Doctor Bonner. Well done indeed.”
    Hannah was surprised at the satisfaction his approval brought to her, the thrill of the words from a man who had not often thought to praise.
    She said, “Shall we talk about treatment? My first advice would be to empty that bottle into the pig trough.”
    “Advice he has heard before,” Ethan said dryly. The expression in his eyes, something between resignation and sorrow, told Hannah more than anything that had been said thus far.
    “Advice I will continue to ignore.” The doctor's voice lifted and wavered just short of breaking. He fell into a chair so heavily that the glass rattled in the windowpanes.
    When he spoke again he had regained control of his voice. “You came just in time. Tomorrow you'll go on rounds with me, and then I wash my hands of this godforsaken place, once and for all.”
    “And where will you go?” Hannah asked. “Back to Johnstown? You prefer the medical treatment you get there?”
    “The only journey I have left to make is to my grave,” Richard Todd said, taking a last swallow from the glass and wiping his mouth on his cuff. “Hopefully before the last of the laudanum runs out.”

Chapter 3
    In the rising heat of a new day, Nathaniel Bonner sat on the edge of his bed and thought of waking his wife. She would come to him happily if he reached for her, but for the rest of the day there would be shadows underneath her eyes and a slowness to her speech.
    A curl of hair lifted in the breeze from the open window and swept across the curve of her cheek. There was little gray in her hair, but age had touched her in other ways. The faint lines between her brows had become a crease, and the flesh at her jaw was softer, just as all of her was a little rounder and softer and prettier.
    He could wake her just to tell her all this—as he had told her many times before—because it gave him pleasure to see her blush. She would hush him and grumble and point out that it was the height of silliness for a woman of her years to make any claims on beauty. But it would please her nonetheless, and she would come to him flushed with embarrassment.
    It was more than twenty years since Elizabeth had left England but many of the ideas she had been raised with still