Starvation Heights by Gregg Olsen Read Free Book Online

believers in nature cures to help her build it. Nellie was interested and flattered. It seemed the two women shared many fascinations, many beliefs. They both shared an interest in horoscopes and matters of the spiritual, as well as the physical, world. Nellie had fancied herself a medium of sorts. Sances were not otherworldly parlor prattle; she held such incarnate gatherings at her home in West Seattle and at the Lillie farm in Olalla. Nellie also relied on her spirit guides whenever she made an important decision. She once had a “spirit miner” check into the potential success for a copper mine in which she had considered purchasing shares.
    As the steamer eased into a slip alongside Colman Dock, the doctor asked if the nurse would consider assisting with a case involving two sisters.
    Nellie didn’t take the time to consult her spirit guides that day. She told herself she could do that later.
    “Yes,” she answered quickly. “I’ll handle the case for you, though I have other commitments that will tax my time.”
    “It is two English girls at the Buena Vista,” Dr. Hazzard told the nurse as they crossed over the gangway. “They’re in a bad way. I’m afraid it shouldn’t be long.”
             
    PAULINE FEIN’S father, Charles, was a man of tragic mystery. He went to work in Tacoma one day and never returned to the family farm at the edge of Olalla Bay. Not a soul ever heard from Charles again. Some locals wondered if financial burdens had been too much and he had escaped his responsibilities; others wondered if he had met with foul play. No one ever knew. It left Pauline and her mother, Gladys, and the smaller kids to make do on their own. Pauline, born in 1907, trained at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tacoma to become a nurse.
    It was during her nursing student days that Pauline called Dr. Hazzard to request a tour of her sanitarium. Pauline had heard the rumors about what had happened there. A person would have to have been deaf and blind to miss the hissings of the gossip line that ran between Olalla and Fragaria and back again. Everyone knew something had happened up there, years before, but no one seemed ready to challenge the woman who ran the place. No one would say anything to her face. None of their business. Not at all.
    Pauline led a group of young women to the sanitarium’s big oak front doors. It was a field trip of sorts.
    “She had a sanitarium and we were nurses and we wanted to see what her place looked like, what she did. We were wondering what was going on in it. It was legitimate as far as we knew. She had patients there. She showed us all she did, which was mostly giving people enemas, flushings, and things like that and feeding them certain foods, which didn’t amount to much at all probably. It was all clean. It was fixed all up like a ward would be. We weren’t there very long.
    “Dr. Hazzard was very glad to show us around, very pleased that we came to see her. She thought that it was wonderful that someone was interested in what she was doing. That’s what always stuck in my mind all these years.”

         
    Four
    A t last, the treatment. Finally, the promise of unsurpassed health. Claire could barely contain her joy over their good fortune to be treated by Linda Burfield Hazzard. Though the country sanitarium was not yet ready to receive them as patients, the sisters were delighted they still had the fasting specialist to care for them personally. Visits to Dr. Hazzard’s offices assured personal attention, five days a week.
    Their flat, as they still referred to their modest accommodations, was functional and clean. Upon entering, off to the right was a narrow hall and private bathroom. In back was the bedroom Dora claimed. Claire’s bedroom was through another doorway that could be screened off with a dark curtain. A small kitchen was located off Claire’s room. And though the two could converse while in their beds, neither could be seen by the