Kate Bridges - The Surgeon

“This one’s fine. They told me I can start tomorrow.”

John came to a stop on the sunny boardwalk. The mist had lifted, leaving behind a blazing blue sky.

For the first time in twenty-four hours, her future didn’t look so bleak. Maybe she’d do well in this town. She’d found work and a place to stay, and she’d find her brother, too.

“You haven’t stopped for one minute since your arrival. Look how much you’ve accomplished today.” His smile was warm and true, and had a dazzling effect on her.

Her guard went up. She stepped away from him as shoppers squeezed by on the boardwalk. Sarah could still see through him. She’d found a place to live and a place of employment, so he was free of her. He was off the coals.

“Thanks for accompanying me. I’m sure your presence had something to do with Mr. Ashford hiring me. And now, I suppose you can rest your conscience.”

Now that she was here, she was going to make the best of her situation. Maybe she’d give herself a time limit to find Keenan. The money the Mounties had collected would go a little way toward paying her boardinghouse, but if she couldn’t make ends meet with her new job, she’d have to pack up and go somewhere cheaper.

She hadn’t worked at her father’s store for five years since she and her mother had sold it, and she wasn’t quite comfortable with everything at Ashford’s, but a little time and experience would polish her skills.

John insisted on following her right to the front desk.

“I can handle being on my own.”

“But I’d like to see you to safety.”

“Well, who do you think is going to walk me everyday to and from work? You won’t be around and it’ll be up to me anyway.”

“Stop arguing with everything I say.”

She groaned and kept walking. And groaned again as they entered the small doorway and encountered the two elderly women Sarah had met on the train. While Sarah had kept her personal business to herself for a thousand miles, she’d opened up to them halfway here, around Saskatoon. Sadly, it had been enough time to blab everything.

“Hello, Mrs. Lott, Mrs. Thomas,” said Sarah.

“Why, hello young lady,” said the thinner one, Mrs. Lott, with the kind wrinkled green eyes. “I see you’re here with your new groom-to-be.”

Sarah introduced them to John, who’d never met them. The sisters had obviously heard of him, though. Being the town’s only surgeon, it was understandable.

Sarah squirmed under the sisters’s scrutiny and John cleared his throat.

Mrs. Thomas, the one with the head of completely white hair, turned to John. The older women both looked tiny and frail standing next to his bronzed body. “Sarah told us on the train that she’d been corresponding with a lovely young man. Imagine our surprise when she told us it was you, Dr. Calloway. Have you set the date?”

Sarah swallowed hard and avoided looking at John. “There’s not going to be a wedding.”

“Dear me,” said Mrs. Lott, clutching at her throat. “Why?”

“There was a mix-up, it seems. Dr. Calloway wasn’t the…It wasn’t the doctor who…”

John stepped in, removing his hat. “It was a miscommunication is what it was. I’m helping Sarah to settle in. She just found employment at Ashford Jewelers. Won’t you congratulate her?”

The women gaily offered their best wishes, but Sarah knew she couldn’t avoid the questions forever.

“Perhaps you ladies might keep her in mind if you’re in the market for a lovely strand of pearls or a ring to adorn those pretty fingers.”

The older women giggled. They did look rather wealthy, judging by their fine clothes and necklaces. “Why, Dr. Calloway, we didn’t think you noticed such things.”

As the conversation mellowed, Mrs. Lott turned to Sarah. “Would you and the doctor care to join us for dinner? We could meet here, later, say around seven?”

Sarah craned her neck awkwardly up at John, wondering what he thought.

His response seemed smooth and well rehearsed. “I’m afraid I must decline.”

“But we insist,” said Mrs. Lott.

“Unfortunately, I’m needed in surgery.”

Mrs. Lott put her warm hands on top of Sarah’s. “But you’ll join us, won’t you, dear?”

“Certainly.” Sarah’s tension eased. Perhaps it wouldn’t be too bad living here. John’s standing beside her indicated his support and respect in this town, and unless the Mounties leaked the truth, no one needed to know that her arrival had been a hoax. Perhaps she could hold her head high. Perhaps the town would welcome her.

“And where might you ladies be off to, this fine morning?” John inquired as they passed in a cloud of perfume.

“Why, you might call it a family reunion. Our young nephew is here from New York City, and we’re off to visit our cousin, Mrs. Polly Fitzgibbon.”

“How on earth did you get a bullet lodged in your thigh?” In a sour mood and troubled by the man’s injury, John asked the question later that afternoon at the hospital.

Sprawled on the examination table with his trouser leg torn apart, Corporal Travis Reid groaned in pain. John had given him an opiate, but hadn’t wanted to sedate the man too heavily until after his anesthesia and bullet extraction.

“We were hunting. O’Malley thought he saw a doe scrambling through the woods. His shot ricocheted off a maple and hit me in the thigh.”

Irritation nipped at John. The hospital needed more medical officers. Standing beside him on the surgical ward, Logan, the veterinarian, was ready with his doused rag of chloroform. An animal doctor.

“And now you’re out of commission due to an irresponsible hunting accident.”

Travis grimaced, trying to make light of the situation. “No venison for supper tonight, either.”

John was beyond amusement. He was tired and hungry and mad at their carelessness. “Never mind the venison,” he snapped. “Out of eighty-eight men, we’ve got eleven out due to injuries. The others got hurt in the line of duty, but this injury was totally unnecessary. Couldn’t you be more careful?”

“Sure, Doc,” Travis snarled. “But not everything’s always right or wrong. A man’s gotta have distractions, not work all the time. But I reckon you don’t know much about that.”

John balked. No one had ever talked back to him. And then his temper dissipated as he realized he was berating an injured man. “Dammit, Travis, sorry.”

With a softer nod, Travis succumbed to the chloroform. John removed the slug then sutured the wound.

What was wrong with him lately? Why did he bark at everyone? When Travis was settled, John sought the privacy of his quarters. He tried to convince himself that he wasn’t the lone man Travis made him out to be.

But since Christmas there’d been no time to spend with women, no time to take a leave, no time to go hunting or fishing, no riding to the foothills. The police were busy.

Just last week the Grayveson gang had stolen forty-eight mustangs a hundred and fifty miles to the south. By the time the Mounties had given chase, the outlaws had faded across the American border. Cross-border gangs had been one of the main reasons the Mounties had been formed by the federal government sixteen years ago. That and the illegal whiskey trade with the Indians. But the Grayveson gang would probably be back, selling the Montana horses and cattle they would probably steal next to the folks in Alberta where the brands weren’t recognized.

Maybe Wesley had had the right idea. If it’d been John who’d died instead, would he have been satisfied with what he’d accomplished in his life so far? Poor Wesley had been robbed of his life; the loss had triggered John to think more about his own direction. Was work all that fulfilled him?