Doc thrust his hands out to the dying stove, as if to absorb the last of its warmth. “Butler, I’m working out of a tent. I show up looking like a ragamuffin. People don’t trust a physician who looks like a bummer. And finally there is you. In Saint Louis, you didn’t seem as delusional. Yes, you cadged a little work in the brothels, but I want more here. I want to build a quality surgery. To take on challenging cases. Better our—”
“Taking that bullet out of Arne Stovensen’s belly was pretty challenging. And he’s still alive.”
“Damn it, Butler, you can drag in all the penniless drunks and broken miners you want. Arne Stovensen? He had twenty-five cents to his name. That drunk you had me patch up last night? I set his broken arm, used up my last sling, and what? He’s gone. With my sling. And not a penny to show for it. You and I can’t survive giving away free medicine to the indigent and broke.”
Butler blinked vacantly, his lips twitching.
“Then, this morning, I think there’s a chance I can make a couple of dollars delivering a baby, and halfway through, I hear screams in the street, only to find you getting the lights beat out of you by two howling drunks! A physician’s trade is dependent referrals and reputation. I’m known as ‘that man with the crazy brother … the one who wears rags and has drunks for clients.’”
Doc dropped his head into his hands. Weary and desolate.
“Maybe in Golden City,” Butler said softly. “Kershaw says that good things are being said about it. It might become the capital someday. And then there is Central City and Idaho Springs up Clear Creek.”
“And what will be different there?” Doc asked, his stomach gnawing at his ribs. They’d had less than a cup of oatmeal each that morning. What remained in the tin might make them each another cup for supper that night.
“Mines are dangerous places to work,” Butler said solicitously. “Lots of injuries. I’m sure that physicians are always in short supply.”
Doc endured a coughing fit, then whispered, “I had that one golden year in Memphis. You should have seen it, Butler. A real surgery, and a partner. I had a nice room. Fine clothes. What a difference it made knowing that I had a future. I felt young, bright, and alive.”
“Phil Vail says that—”
“I don’t give a damn!” Doc snapped. “Just shut up! I can’t deal with your insanity now.”
Futility. That was him. Cored out and empty.
Butler blinked, huddled defensively. His swelling lips moved soundlessly as he avoided Doc’s eyes. His hands were twitching spasmodically, eyes darting this way and that, as if fixing on his imaginary men where they crowded around the cold and cramped tent.
The immensity of it overwhelmed. Came crashing down on Doc’s shoulders. Fact was, he wasn’t going to have his surgery. His life was going to be spent caring for his crazy brother. Keeping him from being the brunt of jokes in the streets, and subject to beatings by bullies and ruffians.
He had had his happiness. His one moment of respectability. During those brief days in Memphis, life had bloomed, each day a wondrous new possibility. He’d seen the totality of his fluorescence as a surgeon, teaching and being taught; that was medicine as he had only dreamed it could be. A mutual collaboration of like-minded colleagues, creating miracles with their scalpels and sutures.
Ann Marie had filled his heart with hope and promise. Every last ounce of his love and being. Hers. Without reserve. She would have been the cornerstone of his entire life, her smile and freckles, the children they would have produced, and the home they would have built.
“Sergeant, not now,” Butler whispered, breaking Doc’s reverie.
He should have been wept out. Empty. But he fought tears. Wondered how, in this cold, miserable, and disgusting excuse for a city, they could manage to replenish.
“I swear to God, Butler,” Doc whispered, “you are a living Greek tragedy. Something straight out of one of those plays you used to read. Sophocles. That’s who. We’re brothers that the gods, for whatever peevish reason, have sworn to destroy. Probably for some thievery or seduction Paw committed. Something so offensive the gods had to wreak their vengeance on you and me.”
“Philip, I just need to get the men home.”
“They were home, you lunatic fool! Why didn’t you dump your madness right there in the farmyard? Leave it to infest those shotgun-toting hicks? Why didn’t you stay to befuddle them with your invisible men as payback for taking our home?”
He drove his fingers into the sides of his face, adding, “I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t want it. I wanted away! Away from Paw and the pain he caused. Away from the memories. I didn’t want anything to do with family, and now you’re a damn millstone around my neck!”
There, he’d said it. The thing he’d buried down deep inside his heart. And he’d uttered it with all the vitriol and anger that swelled and pooled like a pestilence within him.
Silence.
Doc’s anger crested, broke, and drained. In its wake lay only a sense of despicable guilt and desolation. That was followed by self-disgust. Damn it, it wasn’t as if the bullies in the street were the only ones to mistreat his mad brother. And ultimately, Butler was his brother.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Oh, you didn’t hurt me none, but you should have seen how the men took it. You might as well have bucked and gagged them.”
“The men?” Laughter took Doc by surprise. “I hurt the men? Your damned and infernal ghosts? Bruised their incorporeal sensitivities?”
I’d do more than wound their egos. I’d flay them, scourge them, drive them from your soul, brother.
But how did he attack phantoms when they hid inside his brother’s skull? The only alternative was to chop them out with an ax. But what ignorant and medieval
