Doctor Harper stood over the body of his patient. She was a woman in her forties, hard-lined and graying. She lay unconscious from the doctor’s ether, which was a good thing, since her abdomen was sliced wide open. Doctor Harper’s hands were covered in blood as he meticulously worked away at her insides, using all the skills his dental training had provided him. A mangy-looking housecat leapt up onto the operating table, sniffing at the body.
“Oh, come on, now, you know you’re not supposed to be up here,” Doctor Harper chuckled, scooping up the cat and placing him gently on the floor. “You run along now, Jesus, you hear?” The doctor’s hands left smears of blood on the cat’s fur, at which it eagerly lapped. Harper returned to his work, brushing the errant feline hairs off the table.
“Hello?” came a voice from the outer room. “Doctor Harper?”
Harper wiped his hands on a rag, tossed it on his patient’s leg, and strolled into the outer room. Albert had already seated himself in a chair, eager to take the weight off his injured limb.
“Hi, Doc,” he said. “I was wondering if—holy shit.” He stopped mid-sentence as he registered Doctor Harper’s hands, which were still shiny with fresh crimson blood.
“Oh, don’t mind this,” Doctor Harper reassured him. “I’m just in the middle of surgery.”
“I can come back,” Albert said, moving toward the door.
“No, no, she’ll be out for a while. It’s Mrs. Callaghan, poor woman. Her stomach devil was about to explode, so I had to take it out.”
It took Albert a beat to decipher that one. “Her appendix?”
“Yep, that’s the fella,” the doctor answered.
Albert wondered why he had even come here. A trip to the doctor’s office was likely to turn a hangnail into a desperate struggle for survival.
“Now, what’s the trouble?” Doctor Harper asked, allowing himself a swallow from one of the bottles on the shelf. No doubt such frequent behavior contributed to the heavily seamed face and unhealthy pallor that brought to mind Luke 4:23: Physician, heal thyself.
“Uh, it’s a bullet graze. Just need it checked out.”
“Oh, yeah.” The doctor smiled with a gossip-hungry glint in his eye. “I heard you turned yellow on Charlie Blanche.”
“Well, Doc, I know you’d rather be patching up a gaping chest wound than a minor graze, but unfortunately I value my life. Now, you wanna take a look at this, or should I limp out into the desert and let the fucking coyotes have at it?”
“All right, let’s have a look.” Doctor Harper laughed good-naturedly. The doctor rolled up Albert’s trouser leg, his hands leaving light bloody smears on the fabric, courtesy of Mrs. Callaghan.
“I notice you’re not big on the hand-washing,” Albert remarked listlessly. The doctor either ignored the comment or was too busy focusing on the injury.
“Ooh, that’s a nasty one,” he observed, examining the wound. “We may have to take that off, otherwise you could wind up with a case of toe-foot.”
Albert sighed. “Okay, first of all, I don’t think that’s a real thing, and second of all, it’s a graze, Doc. I’m not gonna let you cut my foot off.”
“Suit yourself. But I’ve seen toe-foot turn into knee-leg in less than a week.”
“Just a dressing, thanks,” Albert responded curtly, now even more anxious to get this over with as quickly as possible.
Doctor Harper pulled open a drawer and retrieved a roll of bandages as Albert surveyed the small office. The remains of a roast chicken were scattered on a plate next to an open jar of laudanum, and a recently lit cigar sat precariously on the edge of a side table, its pointy tip still darkened with saliva. As for any sign of official physician’s credentials, the sole candidate hung in a wooden frame on the far wall.
“Texas Territory Medical College,” Albert read the handwritten diploma aloud as the doctor went to work on his leg. “So, is that a pretty prestigious place?”
“Yessir, third in my class,” Harper answered with genuine pride.
“Ah. And was this an indoor medical school?” Albert asked without a trace of sarcasm or irony.
“All right, there we go,” said the doctor, straightening up and smiling down at the new dressing. “Try to stay off it for a bit.”
Albert looked at the results. “Just a dry cloth bandage? That’s it?”
“Well, what else would you like me to do?”
“Clean it, maybe?” Albert answered, feigning patience. “So I don’t get an infection and die?”
“Well, now, that’s up to the Lord God.”