The Outcasts A Novel (Kathleen Kent) by Kathleen Kent

Author:Kathleen Kent
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2013-09-30T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

The crisis for Dr. Tom came the day after Nate’s return from Lynchburg in the form of a roaring fever and frightening visions that left him moaning and disoriented. Nate and the doctor sat with him through the night, nodding occasionally into sleep, only to be awakened again by the ranger rambling and calling out several times, “Watch it, watch it…”

The doctor warned Nate that the patient could be dead by morning, but by daybreak, the fever had broken, and Dr. Tom gave himself ten days to recover sufficiently to ride with Nate to Lynchburg.

The doctor shook his head but conceded, “I’ve known stranger things to happen. God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.”

“God, and a lot of opiates,” Dr. Tom countered.

He gestured to Nate to help him out of bed, and the two of them shuffled around the room for a few minutes. Winded, Dr. Tom crawled back into bed. An hour later, he leaned on Nate again to walk out of the sickroom and into the doctor’s visitation room. By the fifth day, Dr. Tom could walk slowly, with only a little assistance, to the stable to see after his horse.

He ran one hand down the horse’s neck and then pointed to his old partner’s bay in the next stall. “He looks good, Nate. Few people could handle him. Has he reached around and bitten you yet?”

Nate smiled. “He tried it a time or two.”

“George had a scar on his thigh as big as Cleveland that he got from the very first day he was out with that big boy.”

Dr. Tom lowered himself onto a crate, supporting his lower ribs with one hand. “This lingering pleurisy is going to be a problem for me.” He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing shallowly, then reached into his back pocket and pulled out a vial of dark liquid from which he drank. Holding the vial up to Nate, he said, “As could this.”

Nate frowned. “The doctor said you needed it.”

“The question is for how long, though.”

Dr. Tom sat for a few minutes looking out of the open stable door. “I got wounded at Dove Creek during the war. Caught a ball in the left shoulder. The camp surgeon dug it out but it had broken the collarbone and was painful as hell. We didn’t stop until we got to Mexico, and the only way I could ride was if I had enough laudanum to take the edge off the hurt. It wasn’t but a week before it got its hooks in me. I spent the next few months taking the edge off everything with those little vials. George caught wise and threatened to shoot any doctor who gave me any more. He took me into his home south of Austin and let me stay there until I got well.”

Nate placed another crate next to Dr. Tom and sat down. “Did you ever meet his daughter?”

“Yes.” Dr. Tom looked at Nate. “I married her.”

Nate blinked a few times and raked his hat off his head.

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