Mary Russell - Doc

Hearing it made Wyatt feel ashamed somehow, though none of it was his fault. “All these girls have some story,” he said, to make it less important.

“Yes, sir! Yes, they do,” Doc said, suddenly hot. “Every one of them has a story, and every story begins with a man who failed her. A husband who came home from the war, good for nothin’ but drink. A father who didn’t come home at all, or a stepfather who did. A brother who should have protected her. A beau who promised marriage and left when he got what he wanted, because he wouldn’t marry a slut. If a girl like that has lost her way, it’s—because some worthless no-account—sonofabitch left her in—the wilderness alone!”

When he was done coughing, Doc stood abruptly and dropped a dollar on the table, which was far more than he owed. Still, he didn’t leave, tarrying instead to watch a crib girl make a deal with a drover out on the boardwalk right in front of them. Misdemeanor , Wyatt thought, and he’d have gone to arrest her, except for what Doc said next.

“They break my heart, these girls. They are so brave. Wyatt, you have to admire their nerve, at least! They go off alone into alleys and small rooms with violent, dangerous, lustful men twice their own size … Shall I confess my crime, Marshal?”

Wyatt looked up.

“City ordinances be damned,” Doc told him. “I am never entirely disarmed. And I just play cards with the bastards.”

Personally, Wyatt didn’t think it took all that much nerve to lie back and let a man do what he wanted for a minute or two. The whores at his brother’s place seemed to him hard and mercenary, or loose and indifferent, or silly and stupid, but he had to admit he didn’t know much about any of them.

Doc Holliday was an educated and thoughtful man, so Wyatt made an effort to match up what he’d seen with what Doc said. There might be something to it, he guessed.

Later on, he asked Mattie Blaylock about her life before, and what her story was. At first she just looked at him like she couldn’t decide if he was dumb or trying to trick her.

“Honest,” he said. “I want to know.”

“Well, they was doing it to me anyways,” she told him. “Might as well get paid.”

It wasn’t much to go on, but he did his best to treat her like she was a lady, the way Doc treated Kate.

I sent to San Francisco for yue hua wan for Doc. I did this at my own expense , Dong-Sing thought while he worked, though he never would have written such a boastful thing to his father. Doc was grateful. He thanked me for my generosity, but he does not want me to go to such trouble. He has asked for the pharmacist’s address in San Francisco and promised to obtain the medicine for himself .

According to the Chinese pharmacist, Doc’s illness was complicated and difficult to treat. Deficiency in yin accounted for the cough and the frothy pink sputum, while deficiency of yang and damaged Jing Luo combined to produce a tidal fever and night sweats, but also coldness and poor appetite and general weakness.

The pharmacist sent dried milk thistle, sage, kelp, licorice, lavender, ginseng, and sorrel, to be steeped in boiling water with black tea. Jau Dong-Sing brewed the medicine up and encouraged Doc to drink it when he came by to eat noodles.

I am happy to help him, since he has always treated me with respect. I hope that he will be better soon , Dong-Sing thought, pouring more bleach into the wash water. Sometimes his handkerchiefs are difficult to clean .

“It may have been the most vile, undrinkable, horrifyin’ beverage in the history of mankind,” Doc told Morgan, who felt bad for laughing so hard but couldn’t help himself. “And Mr. Jau—poor soul—he is watchin’ me with such eager anticipation! ‘How you like dat, Doc?’ he asks me. And at that very instant, I was thinkin’: I sincerely believe I would rather die than choke this down three times a day … But I could hear my mamma’s voice. Now, sugar, it was very kind of Mr. Jau, and if you can just get through the next twenty seconds without up-chuckin’ …”

For the third time in half an hour, Doc laid his dental tools on the office table and turned away to cough and curse for a while, which gave Morgan time to catch his own breath. Somehow Doc made having consumption seem funny; Morg was damned if he understood how, but when the two of them were alone like this, he ended up laughing himself blue about half the time.

He poured Doc a drink and knew to wait until Doc could answer before he asked, “You ever tried Wistar’s? That’s supposed to be pretty good for a cough.”

“Morgan,” Doc said, “I have tried them all … Balsam of Cherry. Borax water. Kerosene and lard. Turpentine and sugar. Calomel. Bunchberry juice. Fish liver extract. Root of pitcher plant. Everything but eye of newt—which may have been in Mr. Jau’s concoction, now that I think of it.” He paused to clear his throat. “Laudanum stops the cough, but it stops everything else, too. Can’t work when I’m that fogged.” Doc picked up his tools. “Bourbon does the job, and I tolerate it better. Light?”

Morgan lifted the lamp again and held it so there was no shadow on the denture Doc was finishing: two front teeth, cleverly linked in a gold setting.

“It’s like a little sculpture,” Morg marveled. “Or … jewelry, almost.”

“Jewelry is mere adornment,” Doc said, peering through a magnifying glass that was clamped into a brass stand on his desk. “This will change your brother’s life in a small but significant way. If it’s the last work I do, I’ll die a happy dentist.”

Consumption was one thing. Death was another. Morg banged the lamp down.

Doc looked up, surprised; he sobered when he saw Morgan’s face. “What?”

“You keep joking about dying, and I wish you’d quit. It’s like you’re trying to get used to the idea,” Morg said. “Making friends with it, almost.”

Doc stared, but he sounded impressed when he finally said, “Well, now, ain’t you somethin’.” He lifted his chin toward the lamp. Morg held it up, and Doc went back to work on the denture. “There was some bleedin’ after the race,” he admitted quietly, “but it wasn’t arterial. And it’s over. Took time for things to settle down afterward, is all.”

True enough, the cough didn’t sound as awful as it had right after the fall. Doc’s color was better, too, but Kate said he still wasn’t sleeping well, and that made him cross.

Cross ain’t the half of it, Morg thought. Doc would tear into folks, sudden as a dogfight, and he was taking some real chances during card games. He swore he wasn’t starting anything, but Doc’s idea of “clarifyin’ a point of contention” came awful close to spitting in a man’s eye. “Doc,” Morgan had warned a few nights ago, “you gotta be more careful. I won’t always be around—” To protect you, he was going to say, but Doc cut him off and snapped, “Well, neither will I, and I am damned if I will spend my time listenin’ to ungrammatical, repetitious, imbecilic nonsense without a challenge!”

Still, he was cheerful enough right now, whistling softly while he smoothed away an almost invisible burr on the gold bezel that held the teeth.

It was interesting to watch the work, and Morg was glad to be allowed back into the office. He’d been banned after Wyatt’s first appointment. Doc only let him come back today because it was the final fitting for the denture.

Wyatt didn’t feel a thing when that first tooth was pulled, but Morgan still had a knot on the back of his head from where he hit the doorknob going down. When he came to, Doc was furious with him. “Dammit, Morgan, I didn’t know whether to shit or go bust! There’s Wyatt in the chair, and there’s you on the floor, and there’s the Eberhardt boy with eyes like saucers, sayin’ ‘I pump drill now, sir?’ I can’t have it, Morg—not while I’ve got a patient under ether. It’s too dangerous!” So Mattie Blaylock came with Wyatt for the next three appointments. She was real good about things, too, cooking him soft stuff like eggs and soup for a few days after each session, while his mouth was sore.