Chapter Two


Lying back in the bed, pain filling her chest with every beat of her heart, Aingelina examined the limited world she could see. It was a simple room, white walls with a wood border, door, and trim, a bureau in one corner, next to it a small table with a washbasin and pitcher. The bed was soft, a simple spread covering both it and her; pillows under her head were just as soft and smelled of lye and roses. Whatever room this was, was sparkling clean and void of anything personal, yet it had a homey-ness to it that was rare for Aingelina to feel. Here she knew she was safe, for now. The woman, Dr Mike, had told her that her brother had left, promising to return with her father. That meant she had at least two months before they would be back. By then she would be recovered and able to run once more. Until that day, she would be content to recover in this room, to make a friend with the woman who saved her life, and maybe begin to gather some happy memories from her life.

The door opened and she turned to see who was entering. A black woman Aingelina didn't know entered carrying a tray of food and a smile on her face. "Hi there. Dr Mike said you could try to eat something today so I brought you up some hot soup and a nice glass of iced tea. It has to be liquids for a while, at least until Dr Mike says it's okay for you to eat normal again." Setting the tray on the table next to the bed she sat down, propped a few pillows carefully behind Aingelina so she could sit up a little bit, and took the bowl into her hands, a cloth between it and her skin to keep from burning her hand. "Now I know you're in pain so I'm going to help you out with this soup." While she fed Aingelina the woman introduced herself. "My name is Grace, I run the café. Soon as you're feeling up to it you come on over and I'll fix you up a meal right 'n' proper. For now though you'll have to like my soup. It's real popular with Dr Mikes patients."

Aingelina swallowed the aromatic broth and smiled weakly. "It's good," she said to the woman, Grace, the owner of the café. Storing that fact in her memory she accepted the next spoonful.

"Why thank you. You hush now and let me do the talking; you need to eat. My man, Robert E, he's the blacksmith here in Colorado Springs and we have a boy named Anthony. He wanted me to let you know that your horse is safe and sound and you can collect him whenever you like." Grace watched the light that filled Aingelina's eyes at the mention of her horse. "Your saddle bags are there too, all tucked away in Robert E's shop."

Aingelina nodded. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Grace continued to talk about Colorado Springs, the town and a few of the people in it, until the broth was gone and it was time for her to get back to the café. As she stood and gathered her tray she cold see Aingelina drifting off to sleep already. By the time Grace had shut the door she was asleep. Smiling to herself Grace made her way down the stairs to Dr Mike's desk. "You were right. Out like a snuffed candle."

Michaela smiled. "Good. She's in so much pain but she doesn't want to sleep. I couldn't get her to take any medicine."

"I wonder why."

"It's the dreams, Grace. She has terrible nightmares. But she won't talk about them."

"You think she has a past?"

Meeting her friend's eyes Grace could see the seriousness in Dr Mike's eyes. "I don't doubt it. That man didn't tell us everything."

"Do you think there'll be trouble when he gets back?"

"I hope not. But I don't think she'll be here when he gets back. She was running from something and I think she intends to keep on running as long as she can."


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


She could feel someone lifting the covers from her bed, the shift in temperature and weight covering her body, a feeling she knew all to well as it had happened every night that she had lived at home. Every night she fought them off, locking the door after she had eventually kicked them out of her room. In her sleepy state she was back in that bedroom, needing to fight off their unwanted hands. With quicker than lighting reflexes Aingelina grabbed the hand that had grabbed the bed covers while her other hand flew towards their face. Only at the last second did something catch her fist, a hairbreadth away from its target. Fighting with what held her down a voice began to creep into her mind, calling her forth from her sleep. The first thing to return to her was her sight as she opened her eyes and saw that she was still in the recovery room of the clinic in Colorado Springs. The second was the pain that flooded her chest from the instinctive movements she had made, irritating the wound on her chest. Moaning in pain she stopped fighting and lay back against the pillow, her eyes squeezed shut as she fought to keep from crying out in pain. She heard Dr. Mike calling to her and opened her eyes once more to look at the woman.

"Lie still! You'll tear your stitches and be in even more pain!"

Her eyes, each a different color, were filled with worry but there was a tinge of fear that was there as well and Aingelina realized how close she had come to hitting the kind doctor. Looking to her other side Aingelina saw a man with long brown locks, holding her hands within his own giant ones, locked in a grip she doubted she could break if she was in good health. He, too, was concerned but she knew that his concern was not for her; he was worried about Dr Mike. "I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice small and filled with the pain she was feeling.

For the first time he looked at her, meeting her eyes with his own, and saw the pain, the fear, in her eyes and he recognized the look of someone who was haunted by nightmares so real and so vivid they were with them even when they were awake. It was a look he too woke with some nights. Releasing her hands he nodded; he knew that her apology was more for him than for Dr Mike. Aingelina knew that Dr Mike would forgive her, knowing she didn't mean it, but she also knew that this man, a man she didn't even know, would have done anything to protect Dr Mike, the woman he loved. Had she connected her fist to the woman's chin, he would not have forgiven as easily as Michaela would have and Aingelina knew it.

"There's nothing to apologize for, I should have woken you up first. Goodness knows what kind of nightmare you were having."

Both of them turned to look at Dr Mike, silent. Let her think the apology was only for her, they knew better. The man left the room so that Dr Mike could check Aingelina's wound and returned when she was re-bandaged and back under the covers. He leaned against the wall while Dr Mike sat on the bed.

"This is Sully, my husband," she introduced the two when she remembered that they hadn't met yet. The door opened and a little girl walked in. Michaela smiled at her and opened her arms, which the little child climbed right into. "And this is our little girl, Katie."

Aingelina smiled. "Hello," she said, reaching out a hand to the little girl. "It's nice to meet you."

"Hi," she said shyly, staring at the woman before her. "How come you don't have a shirt on?"

"Katie!" Dr Mike exclaimed. "I'm so sorry, I don't know where she gets these things from."

Sully laughed. "She gets it from her mother." Pushing himself up from the wall he placed a gentle kiss on Michaela's hair and took Katie into his arms. "Come on Katie, let's go see the horses." Bribed with a trip to Robert E's shop Katie gladly switched to her fathers care and the two were gone from the room, closing the door softly behind them.

"Dr Mike..."

"Yes?"

"How did you get to be a doctor? I've never met a woman doctor before."

Michaela smiled. "My father was a doctor. I suppose I learned to love medicine from a very early age. I joined him in his practice but when he died no one would come to me. A little while later I saw an ad for a doctor needed here in Colorado Springs so I came. It was very difficult at first but eventually the town came to accept me as their doctor. As for Sully and I... he was a bit of a mystery to me. I knew he was special to me but it wasn't until another man proposed that I realized how much he meant to me. By then though I almost lost him. We were married some time later. We have four children, Matthew, Colleen, Brian, and little Katie."

"Matthew? The sheriff is your son?"

"Well sort of. You see when I first came here I was befriended by their mother, Charlotte. A snake killed her and asked me to take her children, care for them and raise them. We were a family; though there were times I thought I might as well have tried to move a mountain. Katie, though, is our daughter, Sully's and mine. All of us, except Matthew, live on our homestead outside of town that Sully built for us."

Aingelina smiled wistfully. "Sounds like you have a perfect life."

"I wouldn't say perfect, but I do love it very much." Michaela looked down at the woman lying in the bed next to her. "What about you? If I may ask, how did you get all those bruises and contusions on your body?"

"I think you already know," she said softly.

Growing serious Dr Mike met her gaze. "You were beaten. And that's why you ran away from your home?"

"That among other things." Wondering at the sudden urge to tell this stranger, Aingelina debated whether she should tell or should keep her life in the shadows. Taking a chance she decided to tell her tale, becoming lost in her memories.

"I was born to a pair of wonderful parents, my mother, Alexandria, and my father, Paolo. They were second generation Americans; their great grandparent had come to America from Italy. My father's family made a fortune selling pasta in a local restaurant that they started down in New Orleans. When my parents married my father took his share of the family fortune and moved to California. He opened a dance hall there and it flourished.
They were rich. My mother bore him two sons, Ricardo and Pietro. Ricardo was killed in the civil war; he would have been about your age I think, had he lived to see this day. Pietro you have already met. Peter he goes by now, the only one who dared call him Pietro was Ma."

"The next child was a girl, Maria. There were two more sons, Antonio and Victor, and there would have been a third but he died during childbirth. Pa wanted nothing to do with the dead child but Ma loved him anyway. She called him Ricardo for his older brother, whose steps he followed in by dying at so young an age. I was born next and then after me another son. Ma died giving birth to him so my father named him Alexander after her. I was six years old when she died; I still miss her so much. That was when everything changed."

"My father began to beat me and my sister. At first it would just be when he was angry with us and he would apologize for it later. But soon there were no apologies and no more reasons. He would beat us every night. Maria was old enough to marry and she did. She and her husband moved away and I haven't heard from them since. When she left Pa gave me all of her responsibilities. I was seven years old and caring for a household of four men and one little boy. Cooking, cleaning, caring for Alex, shopping... it was all my responsibility. And every night I would have to run from Pa, to avoid his fists. I would hide outside, no matter what the weather was like; it was the only place I knew he couldn't find me. Usually he was to drunk to remember if he didn't catch me but when he did catch me I was beaten."

"Pa knew that his fists could only do so much damage to me and he wanted to hurt me. He said that it was because I reminded him of Ma, that she had left him the way Maria had and he was going to make sure I knew that he was the one who ran my life. So one night he took me outside with a pistol in his hand. I had been trained how to use a gun since I was five years old, Peter took care of that, and Pa knew it. He stood me in the yard a few feet away from the chain that held our family dog, Jacob, and ordered me to shoot him dead. Jacob was the only friend I had in my own home and I didn't want to do it so he hit me, knocking me to the ground. He stood me up, yelling at me to pull the trigger and shoot the dog. I was crying so hard and Pa knew I wouldn't do it so he crushed my hand in his and forced me to pull the trigger. That night I buried my friend in the field behind our house."

"I grew up to be very strong, I had to be. I also became a young woman. I was developing breasts by the time I was eleven and I had my first womanly cycle when I was twelve. A beautiful little girl living in a house full of men, it was only a matter of time until someone took notice. Antonio was first. He came to my room on night and tried to touch me. He would have had his way too had it not been for the fact that Pa also showed up wanting to beat me. From that night on I kept a hunting under my pillow and I learned fight them off. Usually they were too drunk to put up much of a fight. It wasn't long until I could hold my own against them without a knife, but having it there helped. Pietro was the only one of my older brothers who never entered my room. Of the three of them it was he who looked at me with any respect at all. He would still follow any order Pa gave, but he didn't like it. He taught me to defend myself with both a knife and a gun; he showed me all the weak spots a man has and how to use them to my advantage. After a few years of training I was even able to fight him off when he would try to drag me wherever Pa was, waiting to beat me."

"When I was seven I left school by Pa's orders and stayed at the house all day, going into town only when there was shopping for me to do. Alex, my little brother, knew me as his Ma since he'd never known our real Ma, but he was also Pa's son and it didn't take him long to adopt Pa's attitude towards me as well. By the time he was fifteen he tried to smack me around like Pa did. He learned that he couldn't wound me with his hands but he could still wound me with his words. Alex's attacks became verbal, and they inflicted more damage than his fists ever could."

"On the first day of school, back when I was six years old, just before Ma died, I met a girl my own age. Her name was Kathy; she was the daughter of a farmer and came from a poor family. We were the best of friends instantly. Pa hated our friendship and he tried to put a stop to it but he couldn't. He may have prevented us from seeing each other everyday but he couldn't control our hearts. We wrote each other letters and put them in out secret place, an old log with a hollow center. Sometimes I would put little treats in there for her and she would leave me a flower or an empty robin's eggshell she'd found in the forest. We grew up this way, always the best of friends. She never treated me any differently like some of the other kids did. The entire town knew what happened in our house but she was the only one who befriended me. She was the reason I was able to stay sane."

"When we were twenty-two Kathy met a man and fell in love. She was getting married and begged me to stand up as her maid of honor. So the day of her wedding I stole out of the house while Pa was at the dance hall in my best dress and stood up for her. I left right after the wedding and slipped back into the house but Pa caught me. He'd come home to get some papers he forgot and saw I wasn't there. Right then and there, while Kathy was celebrating her wedding, I was tied to a tree and whipped. I never screamed, not because I didn't want to, but because I didn't want to ruin Kathy's wedding day. It wasn't until a year later that anyone found out I had been whipped. Pietro was furious but he couldn't stand up to Pa. Pa'd kill him without hesitating and we both knew it. It wasn't until four years later that I knew I had to leave. If I didn't I would have died, either by his hands or mine."

Lost in her memories Aingelina was oblivious to the fact that Dr. Mike was still in the room, her eyes staring out the window at nothing. Tears were streaming silently down Dr. Mike's cheeks as she listened to the woman's story, the hell that was her life. Knowing she needed to leave the room, or break down in front of her patient, Michaela stood up from the bed, shutting the door behind her and fled to the main room downstairs. Shutting the door to the stairs and hallway she leaned back on it and her sobs escaped. Hands over her mouth, doubled over from the pain in her heart, Michaela wept.

Standing in the doorway Hank watched, not knowing what to do. He'd just entered the clinic to get medicine for his girls when she had shut the door and lost her control. Before he could move any closer he saw Sully and Katie approaching. Moving to intercept them he put his hand out to stop them before they reached the clinic. "I'll take Katie to Grace, you'd better get in there." He didn't say anything else; he didn't need to. Sully looked to the doorway and back to Hank before he told Katie to go with Hank to see Miss Grace. Giving Hank his daughter Sully entered the clinic. "Come on kiddo, let's you 'n' me go see what Miss Grace has cookin'."

Holding the girls hand he led the way to the café and sat them both down at a table that was somewhat out of sight. He didn't need the whole town to know he was doing this. Heading over to him with a pot of coffee Grace stopped short when she saw Katie sitting at the table with him, her legs swinging carefree under the table, her face a study of confusion. "Hank? What on earth...?"

"Me 'n' the kid are gettin' some pie," he said, his tone daring her to object. "But we need to keep it real quiet like, got it?"

Still confused but seeing no real harm in the matter she said, "Okay then. Two pieces of pie coming up."

Staring at the little girl across the table from him Hank could see a lot of her mother in her eyes. The same honesty and knowledge that drove him mad at the same time that he respected it. They were silent while they waited for the pie and when it came Katie dug in while Hank ignored his, he didn't want pie; he wanted to know what got Michaela so upset. He'd never seen her lose it like she had in the clinic; well except for the times he made her angry. Then she was all spitfire and could raise hell like the best of them, but he couldn't remember seeing her weep the way she did just now. She only had one patient right now, that girl from the saloon that night, the one who was dressed like a man. Had she died? No, that didn't make sense. Hank had seen her loose patients before, yes she cried sometimes, but never like that. It had to be something else.

"Ma!"

Glancing up Hank saw Sully and Michaela walking towards them. Her face had been washed but he could still see tears in her eyes. Getting up he nodded to them and left, making his way back to the saloon. Once he was there he remembered that he hadn't gotten the medicine for his girls. "Damn!"


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


It was Sunday again and Michaela was ready to go to church. But first she wanted to stop in on Aingelina. Knocking softly she saw that the woman was already awake. Smiling she entered the room and sat down on the bed's edge. "Good morning."

"Morning, Dr. Mike. You look fancy today."

"Oh, its Sunday. We're on our way to church. I wanted to stop by quickly to make sure you were okay. I know you spent the night alone last night."

"I'm fine thank you. You were right to have gone home, its unfair of me to keep you here every night when you have a family to care for."

"Well I'll be back after church and I'll be sure to bring you some lunch."

Aingelina smiled. "Thank you."

When the door had shut and she was sure the doctor was gone Aingelina put her plans into motion. Moving the blanket off her she sat up slowly from the bed and stood to her feet, draping a shawl over her bare shoulders, her chest still bandaged enough to cover the important parts. Unsteady she put her hand to the wall and made her way to the doors that led to the patio. She'd seen the rocking chair there a few days ago when Grace had opened the doors to get some fresh air in the room, and knew she wanted to sit outside, if only for a little while. Wincing as she used her muscles to open the doors she left them open and sank carefully into the chair that stood in the corner. It was so peaceful, the town completely quiet as most everyone was in the church across the bridge, that the need to break the silence almost overwhelmed her. She began to hum to herself, rocking the chair slightly. Peace, for the first time in twenty years; Aingelina wanted to cry at the feeling of it.

Hank had heard the church bell ringing and knew that the next day had begun. When they stopped he emerged from his room, poured himself a drink, and went to sit on the porch railing. This was his favorite time of the day. It was so quiet you could hear the breeze as it ruffled by, going about its business. The town was empty and it was the only time he ever felt truly at peace, able to be himself. Oh he didn't mind keeping up the 'saloon keeper' image; it was fun to be brutally honest with everyone, to see his or her horrified reactions to what he had to say. He'd had some good laughs over the people in this town. But this time of the day, when the world was gone and he was free to relax and enjoy the peace; this was, by far, his favorite time.

Sitting on his porch railing, one leg up, the other dangling, he heard something. Hank couldn't quite place it at first but after a moment he knew that somewhere someone was humming. And he could hear a rocking chair creaking a floorboard that was beneath it. Glancing up and down the abandoned street he saw nothing. Curious his gaze drifted upward to the second floor of the buildings and he saw her, sitting on the patio of the clinic. Her long black hair was hanging loose and waving a little bit in the breeze as she rocked back and forth. Though her eyes were closed she was moving so he knew she was awake. She was beautiful. Hank remembered the night she'd fought her brother in the street and knew she was strong as well; and had a right hook that could knock down a man.

She was a mystery, and Hank loved mysteries. From what he'd heard she had run away from home a few months ago, on the run from her brother and the posse that was chasing her. Why she had dressed like a man was easy enough to guess. A lone man coming into town would barely get a glance, but a lone woman; that would be talked about for days. The fight that day had been interesting. Pete had laid it into her as much as she had him and yet when one of his men shot her he nearly beat the man to death. Why? Was he one of those people that would hit their own kin but if anyone else did they were as good as dead? It made sense from what he'd seen. Maybe that was the reason she'd run.

Hank was still speculating when he heard the bell ring again, signaling that church was over. After a quick glance towards the church he looked back to the woman who's name he'd heard was Aingelina, 'What the hell kind of name is that?', and saw that she had stood to move back inside. As she reached for the door handle the edge of her shawl slipped and Hank saw the bare, smooth, pale as snow skin of her shoulder and arm before she was gone from sight. It was a stark contrast to the bruises along her arm and shoulder, both fresh ones, colored deep blue and purple, and old ones that had faded to yellow and green. Interesting, very interesting.