Caleb by Christine Sterling

Author:Christine Sterling [Sterling, Christine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-08-12T05:00:00+00:00

“What do you think, Doctor?” Caleb asked, eyeing the man who had just looked over the four passengers that survived the wagon ambush and Jimmy.

“The boy will be fine. Children are resilient.”

“He’s been having night terrors.”

“Perfectly normal given what he’s been through.”

“Did he say anything about the attack?”

“No. But I didn’t ask for details. He’ll talk when he is ready. I don’t understand why he didn’t even get so much as a scratch.”

“He hid in a crevice between some rocks.” Caleb thought back to Hart jumping from the rocks to save his pup. He was a strong little boy.

“Remarkable.” The doctor looked at the notes he had scribbled down. “Now, your scout will recover fully. It just might be a bit before he can fire a rifle.”

“He okay to ride a horse?”

“Don’t let him ride for long periods. Where you boys headed?”

“Nebraska.”

“He can ride for a few hours a day. That’s all.” Caleb nodded his understanding. “Mr. Robert’s family sent a telegram and they’ll be coming to get him. He and his wife were going to live with their daughter. He can stay at the clinic until they arrive.”

“What about the women?”

“Mrs. Miller, I’m afraid we can’t find her family. There wasn’t a response from the Sheriff regarding her. I’m afraid her mind is addled after the trauma she endured. I doubt she will ever recover.”

“What do you recommend?”

“There is an asylum hospital about 30 miles west of here. I would take her there.”

“We aren’t headed that way. We are headed north to Owl Canyon.”

“I suppose she can stay here until I get someone to pick her up.”

“I’d be much obliged.”

“I recommend that your wife be confined to the hospital as well.”

“She only thinks I’m her husband. We aren’t married.”

“You aren’t?”

Caleb shook his head. “I don’t know why she latched onto that.”

The doctor mumbled something under his breath. Caleb was sure it had to do with him.

“It could be something traumatic that happened before this and she is regressing to that place. It could be that it is a secret wish coming to the surface. I recommend you humor her until her memory returns. Or you send her to the hospital.”

Caleb winced. The last thing he wanted to do was to lie to the young woman. He didn’t want to send her to an asylum either. He had heard horror stories of the conditions. He was sure that going to an asylum would make her condition worse, not better.

Caleb put his hands up in a steeple and tapped his fingers against his lips; he recalled Slim saying something to that effect. If they left her alone in Pueblo, the doctor and sheriff would most likely send her off to an asylum.

“What’s her prognosis. You said her memory might return?”

“Well, the injury is what caused her to lose her memory. Amnesia, we call it. I imagine that once the bruising goes away and she begins to integrate into a normal way of living she will probably make a full recovery.”

“Do you think she’ll remember what happened to her?”

The doctor shrugged.

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