Doc Read online

  The stench of gore and necrotic lung tissue was suddenly overwhelming. Tom cracked the window open, in spite of the chilly rain. “Tell me when you get cold.”

  Eyes closed, John whispered, “Still hot.”

  That would change soon: anemia competing with fever for ascendancy.

  “Well,” Tom said, sitting again, “my guess is that we can rule out Rasmussen’s aneurysm.”

  “Dead by now,” John agreed. “So: Roki—”

  “Rokitansky’s hemorrhage, yes, I think so too, and dammit, I told you not to talk! The active bleeding’s stopped. That’s a good sign. If you can hold your own a while longer, we can try the lycopin extract, and you’ll be able to get some sleep—Oh, hell! Now what?”

  Out in the front room, Kate was in full cry. They heard Mattie Blaylock tell her sharply to shut up. The door to the bedroom opened. Two of the Earp brothers looked in. Morgan again. And Wyatt, who appeared to have been hit by a train. Already distorted by bruising and cuts, his face twisted when the smell hit him.

  Then he saw Doc. “My God,” he said.

  “You see?” Kate was yelling. “You see what you did to him, God damn you! You killed him, you lousy sonofabitch!”

  At the sound of Kate’s curses, John’s eyes fluttered open. “Wyatt,” he said, sounding pleased to see him. “Kate, darlin’ … Don’t fuss … Not his fault.”

  “John! Keep quiet!” the doctor snapped. “And Kate, if you can’t stop running your mouth, I’ll throw you out of this house myself. Calm down, all of you! Wyatt, I don’t know what in hell Kate’s yelling about, but nothing you did caused this. Bleeding episodes are not unusual in consumptives. This has been coming on for weeks—maybe months! The disease has eaten out part of his left lung. The resulting cavity impinged on an artery, but a clot has formed. For the moment, the crisis has passed, but if he starts coughing again, he could bleed to death or die of apoplexy.”

  Hugging herself, Kate doubled over with a little moan of fear.

  “Jesus, McCarty!” Morgan cried. “He’s sitting right there! He can hear you!”

  “He knows what’s going on as well as I do—better!” Tom said. “I’m just telling you people what’s happening, so you will shut up, and get out, and let him rest! Am I making myself clear? Everybody! Get the hell out!”

  Over the next couple of hours, the bleeding started up twice more. Kate was banished to Bessie Earp’s house. Morg and Wyatt and Mattie stayed at Doc’s. Around three in the morning, Chuck Trask came by to tell Tom McCarty he was needed to sew up a knife wound.

  “Spurting or oozing?” Tom asked.

  “Just kinda leaking,” Chuck said. “Wyatt? Morg? Are you coming to work? We’re real shorthanded.”

  “I quit,” Wyatt told him. This was news to Morg, but Wyatt said, “Nothing to do with you. Go on.”

  So Morgan left with Chuck, but before Tom McCarty followed them, he took Mattie and Wyatt to the kitchen and showed them how to measure out four grains of dried lycopin extract and stir it into a glassful of water.

  “It’s effective against the cough and mildly narcotic,” he told them, pulling his coat on. “When he wakes up, you make him drink a glass of the mixture, but no more than one glass every two hours. Mattie, can you write?”

  She nodded and shrugged: A little.

  “Well, try to keep track of when you give him a dose, so he doesn’t get too much. If he’s cold, cover him. If he’s hot, open the window again. I don’t think he’ll be hungry, but I’ll stop by Delmonico’s and have them send over some beef broth with plenty of salt. If he asks for anything, offer that.”

  Mattie said she’d keep watch the rest of the night. Wyatt knew he ought to stay, but this was so much like when Urilla was dying … So he went home and slept at last, but poorly. He was already up and dressed when Mattie came in a few hours later.

  “Kate came back after McCarty left,” she told him, hanging a damp shawl up on the peg next to the door. “Morg’s back, too. He’s staying with Kate so she won’t be alone when Doc dies.”

  “So, you’re sure? He’s …?”

  “Never saw anybody that sick who didn’t. Why’d you quit?”

  He almost said, Because you were right about George Hoover. Because my father is right and I’ve got shit for brains. Because I don’t know who my friends are. Because I don’t know who to trust anymore, except my brothers.

  What came out was “Politics.” Which was true enough.

  For the first time since she moved in, he wished that Mattie would talk more, for his own thoughts were loud in his mind. Maybe McCarty was right. Maybe what happened to Doc wasn’t Wyatt’s fault, just like it wasn’t really Wyatt’s fault when Urilla got typhus, but it sure felt like it was, and Mattie wasn’t one to tell him different.

  “I’m going next door,” he said.

  Morg answered the knock. Kate was slumped at the table, her head in her hands, too weary to look up. Wyatt’s eyes went to the bedroom where Doc lay, dead white and so motionless beneath the covers Wyatt thought that he’d been laid out. It took a moment to see that Doc was breathing in shallow little gasps, but breathing all the same.

  Morg said, “If you can stay with him awhile, I’ll take Kate back to Bessie’s so she can get some sleep.”

  Probably the first time a woman ever got any sleep in that place, Wyatt thought, but he told Morg he’d sit with Doc, and that Morg should get some rest, too.

  “You know about the medicine?” Morg asked.

  “Yeah,” Wyatt said. “Go on.”

  “Wyatt … you really quit?”

  “Yeah,” Wyatt said. “Go on.”

  For the rest of the day, he kept watch by himself, listening to the clock tick, dozing sometimes in the chair. Late in the afternoon, there was a short, quiet dream about Urilla, probably brought on by sitting in a sickroom like this. He was telling her, “If I made more money, I coulda done better by you,” and in the dream, he felt more than heard her say, “Don’t fret, Wyatt.”

  He woke up slowly, feeling calm. Then he saw where he was, and straightened, and winced, aware of every bruise and cut and aching joint.

  Doc was awake, his face expressionless.

  “You snore,” he told Wyatt, sounding feeble and aggrieved.

  Wyatt started to smile, but it hurt too much and he quit.

  Doc seemed to gather himself to say something important, and spoke as firmly as he could, though his voice was somewhere between a whisper and a whine. “Wyatt, I cannot make you another denture. No more fights. You get that mad again, shoot the bastard. Promise me.”

  “I promise. How do you feel, Doc?”

  Doc’s eyes closed. “Anyone makin’ book?”

  “Luke Short was giving ten to one you wouldn’t make it through the night.”

  It was a joke. Luke was a gambler who wasn’t even in town anymore, but Doc murmured, “Bet against me? I would’ve.”

  Wyatt made him drink a glass of water with lycopin and got him settled back down. A few minutes later, Doc roused again.

  “God damn Henry Kahn,” he said, sounding briefly normal. “If he’d been a better shot, he’d have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

  There was nothing more for a while, and Wyatt supposed Doc had fallen asleep until a tear formed in the corner of the sick man’s eye and slipped sideways toward the pillow. Wyatt got a handkerchief to dry the pale, bony face. Doc’s eyes opened at the touch, but he was looking at something beyond the room.

  “My poor mother …”

  This is it, Wyatt thought. When they start talking about their mother, it’s over.

  A few minutes later, Doc spoke again.

  “Oh, Wyatt,” he whispered, too breathless to sob. “This’s a terrible way to die.”

  He said very little during the week after the hemorrhage. “What’s the date?” he asked once. Told it was October 13, he said clearly, “I was supposed to go to St. Francis. Wire my regrets to Alex von Angensperg.”

  There was a return te
legram the next day. NIL DESPERANDUM STOP 152 CHILDREN 3 PRIESTS 7 NUNS PRAYING STOP MAY I VISIT STOP

  It was Morgan Earp who answered. NO VISITORS YET STOP KEEP PRAYING STOP

  A routine developed. Kate and Mattie took the nights. Morgan and Wyatt split the days. Lou kept them all fed. Tom McCarty came by to check on Doc, morning and evening.

  No one else was permitted into the sickroom, but China Joe appeared each afternoon with a bowl of noodles and left instructions that Doc should eat them for a long life and to fatten up. The first time that happened, Doc came close to crying again.

  “How thoughtful,” he said. “Thank him for me, please.”

  On the first of November, China Joe showed up at the door as usual, only this time he insisted on waiting until Doc was awake. Morgan offered to take a message in, but the Chinaman would not go away until he was allowed to speak to Doc personally, and when he went into the bedroom, he shut the door behind him to keep the conversation private.

  Dong-Sing had heard about the rebellion of Doc’s lungs, of course, and now a single glance was enough to tell him that all Doc’s yin organs were functioning poorly. He was as white and fragile as a porcelain bowl, and you didn’t have to be an herbalist to see that he was in a dangerous condition.

  “Mr. Jau,” Doc said softly. “How kind of you to visit.”

  “You no talk!” Dong-Sing ordered. Coming closer, he sat on the edge of the chair by Doc’s bed. “You no worry!” He looked around the little room and waved his hand at the roof and walls. “I no charge rent.”

  Doc’s eyes widened.

  Dong-Sing held his head up proudly. “All these my house. You no tell!” Leaning close to Doc, he whispered, “That nigger boy? He rich: he dead. Teach me big damn lesson. Colored fella get rich in America, no good! George Hoover, he front man! Nobody know China Joe rich fella. So I safe.”

  Having unburdened himself of more English than he had ever successfully strung into a single speech, Dong-Sing took a deep breath and let it out abruptly. Then he nodded once, emphatically, like an American. There. I said my piece, by God.

  “Kill a chicken …” Doc remembered. “Scare a wolf …?”

  “Wolf more damn smart than chicken! Me? I know what what. Now I tell George Hoover, No rent for Doc!” Dong-Sing got even quieter. “You no tell Kate! She got big mouth, tell everybody.”

  “You have my word, sir,” Doc told him. “And my gratitude.”

  Jau Dong-Sing stood up and made ready to go, but Doc was looking at him with the strange intensity of the very weak, and Dong-Sing was moved to add one thing more.

  “I do you big damn favor,” he said, his eyes full of pride and pleasure. “This one big damn happy day for me!”

  A little while later, Kate came in with a mug of beef broth. “What did the Chink want?”

  Doc was looking out the window, watching a cloud move across his field of view. “Nothin’,” he said, in tones of wonderment. “Nothin’ at all.”

  She set the mug down on the dresser and helped him sit up so he could drink the broth without choking, holding the cup for him, making sure he drank it all. When he was done, she fixed the pillows and bustled around, straightening the room.

  “Kate.”

  She stopped what she was doing and looked at him, her lovely aquamarine eyes shadowed, the skin around them spidered by fine lines of worry and fatigue.

  “Viens te coucher,” he said.

  She frowned, the lines deepening, but he asked again, so she came to his side and lay down, nestling under his right arm, her hand cool against his chest.

  “Talk to me awhile,” he said. “Tell me about … tell me about a day when you were happy.”

  For a long time she was quiet, her breathing regular and deep. Poor soul, he thought. This has been hard on her … When he felt the chill of her tears, he said again, “Talk to me. Tell me about it.”

  “It was right after the baby was born. Silas was gone, that bastard.” She sat up, and reached for one of his handkerchiefs, and blew her nose, and smiled briefly. “Anyway, I was working again. The baby kept crying and crying. I didn’t know what to do! Nobody wants a whore with a crying baby,” she said wearily. “One of the girls said, ‘There’s a hospital that takes charity kids. You can bring him there, and the nuns’ll take him.’ So we went to the hospital, and I gave the baby to one of the sisters. I knew what she was thinking, but I was so tired … I didn’t give a damn what she thought of me. And it was such a relief. Somebody who knew about babies was going to take care of him!”

  Her face was pale and scrubbed. Her fine, fair hair was pulled back artlessly. He could see the scared girl she’d been at fifteen, and the hard woman she would be at fifty.

  “The other girls took me out drinking, after,” she told him. “We pooled our money and bought a bottle. For the first time since I was a girl—since before we left Mexico—I was happy. All us girls got drunk and we laughed and laughed, and I thought, I can’t remember when I was so happy! This is the happiest night of my life!”

  Kate stopped and cleared her throat. Her voice was ordinary when she went on. “I went back to the hospital, a couple of days later. To visit him. One of the nuns came out. She told me the baby was dead. He died the night I left him. While I was having such a good time.”

  Poor child, he thought. Poor child.

  The baby. Kate. Either. Both.

  “You did the right thing, to bring him to the nuns,” he told her. “And you were happy because that little baby stopped by to bless his mamma on his way up to heaven.”

  She looked at him, and barked a bitter laugh, and wept. They slept together afterward. Side by side.

  All through November, whenever anyone came to sit with him, Doc would say, “Talk to me. Tell me about a day when you were happy.”

  In the beginning, nobody was sure that Doc was really listening. The lycopin kept him asleep a great deal of the time, but hearing people talk seemed to soothe him, and it seemed harmless enough. Eventually, Morg realized that Doc was saying that same thing to everyone. Talk to me about a day when you were happy.

  “What did you tell him?” Morg asked Wyatt.

  “Oh, hell,” said Wyatt. “I don’t know.”

  He had spoken of Urilla. How she was stronger than he expected, looking at her. More determined to get her way than he’d imagined when he fell in love, but good-natured and good-hearted. When he gave up trying to read the law, she didn’t hold him a failure for it. The happiest day was when he found out about their baby. Urilla’s eyes were shining, like she was giving him a gift.

  “And getting my teeth fixed,” he told Doc. “And Roxana. That was good, too.”

  Doc didn’t say anything. He gazed at Wyatt. Just … waiting.

  “The good of things is always kinda mixed,” Wyatt said then.

  Looking out the window in Doc’s room, he had tried to remember Urilla’s laughter, but the sound of it was lost to him. Truth was, she and the baby were gone almost before he knew he had them. And getting his new teeth reminded him of losing the real ones. And riding Roxana always made him think of Johnnie Sanders.

  That was when it came to him that the only unmixed happiness he could think of was when he quit his job with the city after that fight with Bob Wright. So he told Doc that, too, and said, “I never meant to be a lawman. Stumbled into it, really. When I quit, it was a weight off.”

  Dealing faro was better. No politics. Just the cards and the money. Nice of Bat to give him a job like he did. Not a lot of business this time of year, but even with winter coming, there was enough going on at the Lone Star to keep one dealer working full-time.

  He was embarrassed to think so much about his own life, and embarrassed that he’d told so much to Doc. He asked Morg, “What’d you say?”

  Morg got that big, boyish grin of his. “Oh, I said it was hard to name something particular. I’m happy a lot of the time. James said it was when Bessie agreed to marry him. Bessie said it was the third time James told her
, ‘Don’t worry, honey. I’ll take care of it.’ First time he told her that, she didn’t believe he would, but he did. The second time, she still expected him to forget or not do it, but the third time, she thought, I can count on him. I don’t have to do everything myself. She said that was the first time in her whole life she believed she could count on a man. And Lou? She told Doc she’s happy every morning when I get home safe from work. Isn’t that sweet?”

  “Mattie say anything?”

  Morg hesitated. He wanted to tell Wyatt that Mattie was happy on the day Wyatt said she could stay with him, or something like that. But Wyatt could always tell when Morgan was lying.

  “She’s still thinking,” Morg said.

  “Seems kinda strange, Doc asking people to talk about things like that.”

  Morg thought it over. He and Doc were the same age, and Morg tried to imagine being so sick, but it was hard. When you’re young and strong, it seems like you’ll live forever just the way you are, but Doc probably couldn’t even remember what it felt like to be healthy.

  “I guess—You know how people say, Don’t borrow trouble? Well,” said Morgan, “I guess it’s the opposite of that. Doc is borrowing happiness.”

  The weeks passed. The patient’s color improved. His chest pain abated.

  Tom McCarty eased off on the lycopin; John still managed to sleep a good deal of the time. When he sat up, he didn’t cough much. The cough itself was drier. His appetite began to return.

  When the dentist felt well enough to complain about being bored, McCarty partially lifted the embargo on visitors, but restricted him to no more than one a day. It was imperative that the boy not tire himself out just as he’d begun to make some gains.

  Eddie Foy was the first to visit, but it was to say good-bye. His contract at the Commie-Q was over. He was going back to Chicago, where he had work lined up at a theater over Christmas and New Year’s.

  Isabelle Wright came by as soon as she heard it was permitted. She offered to read books to Dr. Holliday during his convalescence, but for some reason he wasn’t willing to let her see him. When Morgan asked why, Doc said, “I am the ghost of Christmas yet to come.” That didn’t make any sense, but Doc wouldn’t explain. “Just thank her for me,” he said. “Tell her I am not yet fit company for a young lady.”