by Lyn Cote
He reached forward to scoop up the pot. The small man leaped from his seat, shouting, “You can’t have dealt honestly. No one gets a royal flush like that!”
Lon eyed the man. He’d played cards several times with him over the past days, and the man had been consistently even-tempered.
“You’re right!” The dark-haired miner reared up from his chair and slammed a fist into Lon’s face. Lon flew back into the men crowding around the table. He tried to find his feet, but he went down hard on one knee. He leaped up again, his fists in front of his face.
The gold and silver coins he’d just won were clinking, sliding down the table as the miner tipped it over. “No!” Lon bellowed. “No!”
The miner swung again. Lon dodged, getting in two good jabs. The miner groaned and fell. Then the small mustached man pulled a knife from his boot.
A knife. Lon leaped out of reach again. He fumbled for the Derringer in his vest. The small man jumped over the upended table. He plunged his knife into Lon just above the high pocket of his vest.
As his own warm blood gushed under his hand, Lon felt himself losing consciousness. The crushing pain in his chest made it hard to breathe. He looked at the man nearest him, a stranger. He was alone in this town of strangers.
No, I’m not.
Lon blinked, trying to get rid of the fog that was obscuring his vision. “Get the woman doctor,” he gasped. “Get Dr. Gabriel.”
Chapter Four
Pounding. Pounding. Mercy woke in the darkness, groggy. More sights and sounds roused her—the sound of a match striking, a candle flame flickering to life, padding footsteps going toward the curtains. “Aunt Mercy, get up,” Indigo commanded in the blackness. “Someone’s nearly breaking down the front door and shouting for the doctor.” The curtain swished as Indigo went through it to answer the door.
Mercy sat up. Feeling around in the darkness, she started getting dressed without thinking, merely reacting to Indigo’s command. With her dress on over her nightgown, she sat down to pull on her shoes. She found she was unable to lift her stockinged feet. The listlessness which had gripped her over the past week smothered her in its grasp once more.
She had not left the mining office—in fact, could not leave it. She knew her lassitude had begun to worry Indigo. Her daughter had given her long looks of bewildered concern. Yet Mercy had been unable to reassure Indigo, had been unable to break free from the lethargy, the hopelessness, the defeat she’d experienced deep, deep inside. And somehow it had been connected with Lon Mackey, but why?
With the candle glowing in front of her face, Indigo came in with three men crowding behind her. “Aunt Mercy, Lon Mackey has been knifed in the saloon.”
Cold shock dashed its way through Mercy. As if she’d been tossed into water, she gasped and sucked in air.
“It’s serious. We must hurry.” Indigo set the candlestick on the potbellied stove and began pulling a dress on over her nightgown. Then in the shadows, she bent, opened the trunk at the end of the room and pulled out two black leather bags, one with surgical items and one with nursing supplies.
Mercy sat, watching Indigo by the flickering candlelight. Her feet were still rooted to the cold floor.
“Ain’t you gonna get up, lady—I mean, lady doctor?” one of the men asked. “The gambler’s unconscious and losing blood. He needs a doc.”
Indigo turned and snagged both their wool shawls from a nail on the wall. “Aunt Mercy?”
“Yeah,” one of the other men said, “the gambler asked for you—by name. Come on.”
He asked for me. The image of Lon bleeding snapped the tethers that bound her to the floor. Mercy stirred, forcing off the apathy. She slid her feet into her shoes and dragged herself up. “Let’s go.”
Outside for the first time in days, she shivered in the October night air, shivered at once more being outside, vulnerable. Thinking of Lon and recalling how he’d done whatever she needed, whatever she’d asked during the cholera outbreak, she hurried over the slick, muddy street toward the saloon. In the midst of the black night, oil lamps shone through the swinging door and the windows, beckoning.
The men who’d come to get them hurried forward, shouting out, “The lady doc is coming!”
Mercy and Indigo halted just outside the door. Having difficulty drawing breath, Mercy whispered, “Pray.” Indigo nodded and they entered side by side. The bright lights made Mercy blink as her eyes adjusted. Finally, she discerned where the crowd was thickest.
She headed straight toward the center of the gathering, her steps jerky, as if she were walking on frozen feet. “Nurse Indigo,” she said over her shoulder, “get the bar ready for me, please.” But a glance told her that Indigo was already disinfecting the bar in preparation.
The gawking men parted as Mercy swept forward.
One unfamiliar man popped up in front of her. “Hold it. A woman doctor? She might do him more harm than good.”
Before Mercy could respond, the dissenting man was yanked back and shoved out of her way, the men around all chorusing, “The gambler asked for her.”
Unchecked, Mercy continued, her strength coming back in spurts like the blood surging, pulsing through her arteries. Her walking smoothed out.
She had never doctored with such a large crowd pressing in on every side. She sensed the men here viewed this as a drama, a spectacle. Still, she kept her chin up. If they’d come to see the show, she’d show them all right.
Then she saw Lon. He had been stretched out on a table, a crimson stain soaking the front of his white shirt and embroidered vest. An invisible hand squeezed the breath from her lungs and it rushed out in a long “Oh.”
A young woman in a low-cut, shiny red dress was holding a folded towel over the wound. She looked into Mercy’s eyes. “This was all we had to stop the bleeding.”
Mercy nodded, drawing up her reserves. “Excellent.” She put her black bag on the table beside Lon and lifted out the bottle of wood alcohol. She poured it over both her trembling hands, hoping to quiet her nerves as she disinfected. To hide the quivering of her hands, she shook them and then balled them into fists. “Let me see the wound, please.”
The young woman lifted the blood-soaked towel and stepped back. She was the only one who did so—everyone else pressed in closer. “Please, friends,” Mercy stated in a firm tone, forcing the quavering from her voice, “I must have room to move my arms. I must have light. Please.”
The crowd edged back a couple of inches. The girl in the low-cut dress lifted a lamp closer to Lon.
Mercy wished her inner quaking would stop. She sucked in more air laden with cigar smoke, stale beer and sweat. She looked down into Lon’s face.
She had tended so many bleeding men in the war, yet her work then had been anonymous. She had never before been called to tend someone whom she knew and whom she had depended on, worked with. Seeing a friend like this must be what was upsetting her. She must focus on the wound, not the man.
In spite of her trembling fingers, Mercy unbuttoned and tugged back his shirt. She examined the wound and was relieved to see that the blood was clotting and sluggish. The wound, though deep, had not penetrated the heart or abdomen. That would have been a death sentence. Her shaking lessened. This was her job, this was what she had been called to do.
As she probed the wound, she felt a small part of the lung that may have collapsed. She had read about pulmonary atelectasis—once she closed the wound, the lung would either reinflate or compensate. But she needed to act quickly.
She turned toward the bar. “Nurse Indigo, is my operating table ready?”
“Almost, Dr. Gabriel.” While working in public, both women used these terms of address. The dean of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania had insisted on using their titles to imbue them with respect.
“Please carry the patient to the bar, and bring my bag, too,” Mercy asked of the men. “I will operate there.” Mercy turned and the way parted before her. She was accustomed to disbelief and disa
pproval, but never before had she been forced to endure being put on display. Her face was hot and glowing bright scarlet.
She had heard of circuses that had freak shows, displaying bearded women and other humans with physical abnormalities. Here she was the local freak, the lady doctor. But her concern for Lon’s survival outweighed her embarrassment and frustration. He was depending on her.
For a moment, she felt faint. She scolded herself for such weakness and plowed her way to the bar. Now Indigo was helping the bartender position the second of two large oil lamps.
“How bad is it, Doctor?” Indigo asked.
“Can you do anything for him? Or is he a goner?” asked the bartender.
The word goner tightened Mercy’s throat. “The wound may have collapsed part of the lung. I will need to stitch up the wound.”
There was a deep murmuring as everyone made their opinion of this known, discussing it back and forth. Mercy focused on Lon and her task. In the background, the voices blended together in a deep ebb and flow, like waves on a shore.
Indigo laid out the surgical instruments on a clean linen cloth. Mercy looked to the saloon girl, who was hovering nearby. “What is thy name, miss?”
“Sunny, ma’am—I mean, Doc.”
“Sunny, will thee help me by unbuttoning the shirt and vest the rest of the way and helping the bar tender remove them? I must scrub my hands thoroughly before I begin surgery.”
Sunny nodded and began undoing Lon’s vest buttons.
Mercy moved farther down the bar, where Indigo had poured boiled water and alcohol into a clean basin. She picked up a bar of soap and began scrubbing her hands and nails with a little brush, hating each moment of delay.
“Hey, Lady Doc,” one of the men asked, his voice coming through the constant muttering, “shouldn’t you wash up after you mess with all the blood and stuff?”
Mercy kept scrubbing as she addressed his question. “A young English doctor, Joseph Lister, has discovered that mortality rates decline in hospitals that practice antiseptic measures before surgical procedures.”
“Really? Is that a fact?” the man said. “What’s antiseptic mean?”
“Sepsis is when a wound becomes infected, and it usually leads to the patient’s death. Anti means against, so antiseptic measures try to prevent sepsis.”
“My ma always said cleanliness is next to godliness,” another man spoke up.
“Thy mother was a wise woman. In my experience, women with cleaner houses lose fewer children to disease.”
Mercy held out her hands, and Indigo poured more boiled water and then wood alcohol over them. Mercy took a deep breath and turned to her task. “Nurse Indigo, will thee please spray the patient with carbolic acid?”
Using the large atomizer, Indigo sprayed carbolic acid over Lon’s broad chest and then directly over the wound, which she had already sponged clean of gore. Mercy proceeded to inspect Lon’s wound, feeling for the deepest point. There was silence all around her—thick, intent silence—as everyone watched her every move. She located the point, reached for her needle and silk thread and began to close the wound with tiny stitches.
“Hey! Look!” a man called out. “She’s doin’ it. Look!”
Mercy felt the press of the crowd. “Please, thee must all move back. I must have room to work.” To breathe.
The men edged back. She drew in air and prayed on silently. She could only hope that Indigo’s pressure, plus natural clotting and healing, would help seal the wound and allow the lung to reinflate.
Mercy set and tied her final stitch and blinked away tears she couldn’t explain. She was thankful that Lon hadn’t stirred during the probing or suturing.
“You done, Lady Doc?” the bartender asked.
“Yes. Now we must hope that Lon Mackey will sleep a bit longer, then wake and begin to heal. Do any of thee know where Lon has been staying?”
“He’s bunking in the back room,” Sunny said.
Mercy had wondered where Lon roomed. And though his living arrangement fit his gambling, she could not like Lon in this place. She pursed her lips momentarily.
“I suggest that he be carried to his bed, then,” Mercy said. “Nurse Indigo and I will take turns staying with him.”
A censorious voice came from behind. “Decent women don’t hang around bars.”
Mercy turned and recognized the speaker as the same man who had tried to prevent her from treating Lon. “I am a doctor. I know my job, and I do it wherever my patient is.”
She turned her back on the disapproving man, who had a distinctive shock of gray hair. She wouldn’t forget him any time soon. “Please, some of thee carry Lon to his bed very carefully. I don’t want sudden jarring to disturb the wound.”
Several men lifted Lon from the bar. He moaned. The men halted. Though Lon’s eyelids fluttered, he didn’t revive. Mercy waved the men on and she followed them. It wasn’t uncommon for a person to remain unconscious for a long while after surgery, but Mercy prayed that Lon wouldn’t remain asleep for many more hours.
She had just displayed her abilities to many. The outcome of her surgery must be positive, or she might be forced to leave this place in disgrace.
This cold thought brought back the trembling deep inside. She had done for Lon what he needed her to do, and now she needed him to get well. I need thee to wake up and move, Lon Mackey, our only friend here. Please wake up.
Lon realized that he was breathing, just barely. Something wasn’t right. He felt pain, like his chest was on fire. Like it had been crushed. He recalled loud voices and a table tipping. Something bad had happened. He tried to open his eyes but the lids were heavy, so heavy. Finally, he managed.
He blinked several times to rid himself of the fog that clung to his senses. Then he saw her. Just a few feet from him, Mercy sat in a chair, her eyes closed. He squinted. What was Mercy doing sitting beside his bed? In the back of the saloon? Was he hallucinating?
He tried to speak and couldn’t. What had happened? He couldn’t gather his thoughts. They were like popcorn sizzling in a hot pan, hopping and jumping out of reach. His face felt like it was that hot pan. A fever? Had the cholera got him this time?
He looked to Mercy. Maybe she would speak to him and then he would know what had happened, why his chest hurt, why he couldn’t speak. But Mercy’s eyes remained closed. Her thick, golden-brown lashes fanned out against her pale skin. She’d taken off her bonnet. Her flaxen hair had slipped from the tight bun at the nape of her neck. Her small nose was pointed downward; her pale-pink lips were parted slightly. He couldn’t look away. How lovely she was. How untouched.
He drew a deep breath. Pain stabbed his chest. He stopped the flow of air, then let it out slowly, slowly. He lifted his hand, or tried to. “Mercy,” he whispered. “Mercy.”
Her eyelids fluttered and opened. “Lon.” She leaned forward in her chair. “Lon, how is thee feeling?”
He moistened his mouth and tried to speak again.
“Thy mouth is dry, Lon Mackey.” She reached over, lifted a castiron kettle and filled a cup. “Here. Drink this. It has more to it than water and thee needs strength. If thee can stay awake, I have venison broth ordered for thee.”
He drank the lukewarm, bitter coffee with gratitude. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was until he had seen her pouring coffee into the cup. “More.”
She refilled the cup and he swallowed it down, lay back, gasping as if he’d just sprinted a mile.
“What happened?” he whispered.
“Thee suffered an injury. Does thee want some venison broth?”
“Yes.” He wasn’t hungry, but he knew eating was necessary.
Mercy rose. “Sunny!”
He heard footsteps and turned his head. The petite blonde came down the stairs. “Yes, Doctor?”
“Will thee go to the café and ask for broth for my patient? The proprietress said she would keep some on the stove for me.”
“Of course, Doctor.”
“I thank
thee. I don’t know why Indigo hasn’t returned.”
Lon remembered then. This blonde girl had been there when—what had happened? “What kind of injury?” Hearing his own words startled him.
“Thee was stabbed.” Mercy’s voice was matter-of-fact.
“Stabbed? By whom?”
“I do not know. I did not see it happen. I was called to the saloon to doctor thee.”
He rolled her answers around in his mind like marbles, but he could call up no memory. Mercy wouldn’t lie, so it must be true. Anger flickered in him. Had the man been apprehended? The fog was blowing into his mind again. No, no, let me think…
Lon woke to Mercy’s coaxing voice. “Lon, Lon, thy broth has come. It’s nice and hot, and smells delicious. Please open thy eyes.”
He looked up into her face and was swamped with the comfort of seeing her. He stiffened himself against the pull toward her. I’m weak and getting strange thoughts. It’s just good to have a friend, and one who’s a doctor. He tried to raise himself. Pain lanced down his left side. He couldn’t stop a groan. “Help me sit up.”
“Friend,” Mercy said in that tone people used with children and invalids, “thee were stabbed, remember? That will pain thee on the left side. Let me raise thy head and I will help thee with the broth.”
“I’m a grown man. I don’t need help eating,” he snapped. The words exhausted him. If he’d had the strength, he would have cursed. No, not in front of Mercy.
“Thee is weak from thy wound. Thy blood loss was considerable. Thy strength will return if thee will only let me help.” Mercy slid another pillow under his head and shoulders. Then she picked up the bowl and spooned some broth into his mouth.
The broth was salty and hot. It made him feel better as it coursed down his throat. He wanted to tell her again that he could feed himself. Then he realized he was wrong.
“How soon,” he asked, swallowing between spoonfuls, “will I be up again?”
“I cannot say. All I know is that thee will need careful nursing. Thee will need to eat as often as thee can and drink plenty of liquids. Thee has a fever, which is completely normal under these circumstances.”
