Once again, thanks to everyone who has PMd me or left comments. They get me thinking about writing a sequel...

CHAPTER 9 - KILLING TIME

Doctors cut, burn, and torture the sick, and then demand of them an undeserved fee for such services.
~ Heraclitus, c. 500 B.C.

Despite his confident demeanor, Sam Jenkins could do nothing but worry for the young man who lay in the narrow hospital bed. As soon as he had started delving into Johnny's back, he had known it was going to be far more involved than anticipated. Johnny was unaware of his plight and the difficult recovery he would very likely be facing. Murdoch Lancer was putting on a brave face, and Scott, who stood behind him, had apparently mastered the art of putting on a deceptive mask.

"Johnny," said the doctor, "the bullet in your back had fragmented into three parts. One was near the surface - the one I could feel. A second was deeper but small and was removed easily with a probe. The last one though, had moved perilously close to your spine." He faltered for the first time and took a breath, putting off the task of telling his patient the bad news.

Scott moved around his father to sit on Johnny's bed. He laid an encouraging hand on Johnny's arm, then exchanged glances with Murdoch and the doctor. Nobody spoke.

Johnny uttered, "If someone don't spit it out real soon I'm gonna get up and find out what's goin' on for myself." He saw a look of alarm pass over his brother's face and a niggling suspicion wormed its way to the surface. "Scott?" he whispered, "Tell me. . ."

The doctor laid a steady hand on Johnny's shoulder and looked him in the eyes. "I'm sorry, son, but there was a fragment lodged in your spine and when we. . .when I tried to remove it . . . I'm afraid there may be some paralysis."

/No, it can't be, it can't. . .he's wrong, he's lying./ Johnny stared at the doctor, waiting for him to refute his words, but even as he waited, he knew, just knew that Sam had revealed the truth. Johnny's eyes slid over to his father to seek some kind of assurance, but Murdoch had a look about him that was a mix of sadness and hopelessness. A glance up at Scott told him nothing.

Without a word, Johnny withdrew his hand from his brother's and flipped the blanket and sheet back to expose his legs. He was about as weak as he'd ever been, but he was able to lift his head enough to look down the length of his body. His legs were still there, sticking out from the hem of the nightshirt. They looked the same as always. He could feel them, or could he? He ran his hands across the top of his thighs. Yes, he could feel his relaxed muscles with his hands. But could his legs sense the palms that were touching them? "I can feel them," he insisted.

It was as if the three other men in the room had been holding their breath, only to let it out in unison. Johnny's right hand touched his hip wound, the one that had started all of this fuss, and a sharp pain shot through him. Without a doubt, the men witnessed that as well. Johnny smiled with satisfaction and let his head fall back on the pillow. "See? I told you I was all right." He was sweating and breathing hard, as if he'd run up a steep flight of stairs in a big hurry.

Murdoch asked what the others could not say aloud. "But Johnny, can you move your legs?"

"Sure I can." He lifted his head a bit and pain coursed down his neck and across his back.

Murdoch ran a supporting arm under his shoulders to ease the burden. "Take it slow, son."

For some reason, it seemed to require a monumental effort just to tell his legs to move. Johnny sent the signals, ordered them to shift, if only a little bit, just to prove he was fine. He tried again and again, and a grunt escaped his lips. His neck muscles were tense, his back burning, sweat pouring off his brow. . . and then he collapsed with a moan.

They didn't move. I can't move my legs. Oh my God why can't I move my legs why oh my God oh mi Dios! Me lisian, yo no puedo caminar!

"We have to inform his wife," Murdoch said with dread.

"Oh my God . . .I forgot about telling Natalie," said Scott. "I'll. . .I'll send a telegram. What should it say? How much should I tell her?"

"No." Johnny spoke as loudly as he could, but the word came out in a muffled croak.

Scott came close. "She has to know, Johnny. She'll want to be here, by your side."

Johnny closed his eyes for a moment, the opened them and appealed to his brother. "Don't. . . don't tell her." He swallowed. "She can't travel. Been sick. I don't want her to. . ."

Murdoch put a hand on Scott's shoulder and said he agreed with Johnny. For the moment. "We'll see how he is tomorrow and talk about this again."

Johnny could hear the two doctors, Sam and Dr. Beauregard, talking out in the hallway with Murdoch. Quarreling, more like it. It was late and the clinic was closed, but he was their guest of honor. Scott suggested they could take him home the next day, rig up a wagon with bedding, but his caretakers had said it would only make matters worse. How could anything be worse?

Murdoch came in to say good night. Scott would be staying, sleeping on a cot nearby. He wasn't to worry.

Beauregard tried to give Johnny an offensive-smelling medicinal drink, but the patient swatted it away and kicked up such a fuss the doctor gave in rather than force it on him. He finally went away. Sam checked Johnny over again, not that there was much of anything he could do, and he, too left for the night, although he instructed Scott to come up and wake him if anything changed.

Finally, only Scott remained. The pain became agony and Johnny suffered it for as long as he could. It hurt so much he almost wept from the exhaustion of fighting it, but if Scott saw his frailty, he gave no sign. When the constant pain grew unbearable, Johnny allowed Scott to give him the dose of medicine prescribed by the doctors.

As the medicine took over and the world became dull, Johnny's only remaining sense was his sight. It was as if his body had gone to sleep and left his eyes open. Scott was a dark shape, asleep upright in a chair close by. There was a lamp alight in the corner, the wick turned down low, and it cast menacing shadows on the ceiling. Johnny wondered if the rest of his life was going to consist of watching shadows moving slowly around his room. One thing was for certain: if that was to be the case he'd make damn sure that his life was going to be as short as possible.

The next morning, bright and early, Teresa came by with Val. Johnny's old friend had a hard time saying anything at all. He hovered with a gloomy look on his face, only occasionally remembering to appear optimistic. Teresa cried over Johnny, which almost made him cry right along with her. But she mopped up her tears and hugged him, and then sat and talked about everyday things until he fell asleep, his hand held in hers.

The routine of his care was both a comfort and a pain in the ass. The nurses - there were three of them on rotating schedules - were brisk and efficient and impersonal, which was fine by Johnny. If one could call aiding a bedridden patient with a bedpan impersonal.

But the nurses, all young women from the East, were too often in attendance when he wanted to be alone, and they asked him questions that he could not answer. 'How was he feeling?' became the most annoying of them all. He wasn't about to tell anyone, especially a woman, that he was feeling just about as bad as a man can feel. That he was not only in pain, but that his pain stemmed from frustration almost as much as physical trauma. That he was so afraid of what the future held that he wished he had no future at all. He knew it made no sense and that he was just feeling low because of what he'd been through, but that didn't make it any easier to swallow. After only two days of being in the Spanish Wells clinic, Johnny had had enough.

He wanted to be in his own bed in his own home, with his family around him. "Murdoch," he announced in a small voice, "I want to go home."

The caring hand on his shoulder almost brought him to tears, as any sign of sympathy seemed to do, but he put that down to too many of Sam's potions.

Murdoch didn't argue. He simply replied, "I'll make the arrangements, son, but it will be too much of a journey for you at this point. You'll need to get stronger first. And Natalie, is she well enough now. . . will she be able to care for you?"

Johnny realized that his father thought he meant he was asking to go home to his own house in San Francisco, to be nursed by his wife. "No, I want to go home to Lancer," he said huskily.

His father consulted with the doctors, but Beauregard was adamant against moving the patient. Sam took the younger doctor aside, and within minutes they emerged from his office with Beauregard appearing properly chastised. Sam had the last word. "He may go home, but only with certain restrictions." Murdoch agreed to his terms and then accompanied Scott to arrange for comfortable transport for Johnny.

Sam went in to see Johnny and pulled the chair up close to his bed. He had closed the door behind him, a sign that he did not want them to be disturbed. "Johnny, this is a bit premature, you know. You really should rest up here and heal up more before travel of any kind. However," he said as he held up a hand, "I am trusting you to follow my directions."

"I will, Doc." His expectations raised, Johnny immediately felt better.

"You will have to let others do everything for you for at least a week. And I mean everything."

Johnny nodded. "I can do that."

"You will have to take the medicines I send home with you. If you don't take them, then you will end up back in here, and I know you won't like that."

"But they make me feel poorly, Doc."

"I know that, son, but your body needs time to recuperate and they keep you relaxed. If the muscles tense up too much, it will just lead to problems that I don't think you can tolerate right now."

"Doc?" Johnny played with the edge of the blanket as he asked, "Are you sure about this? That I won't be able to walk again?"

"Quite sure," Sam said as kindly as he could.

"Will I be able to do anything at all?" Johnny had a firm grasp of the situation but his mind refused the enormity of the whole thing. He couldn't picture it, couldn't face the changes it would bring to his life.

Dr. Jenkins pondered for a moment, then offered, "You should be able to sit upright. You have full use of your arms, of course, and regular exercise should keep your upper body hearty. You might regain some feeling in your lower extremities, but as far as expecting your legs to support you. . . No, not that." Sam watched Johnny's eyes; the small amount of hope the boy had been clinging to died in them, and the doctor knew that he'd remember that death for the rest of his life. To have caused such harm to anyone, particularly this young man, pained him beyond belief.

Johnny turned his head away and said through gritted teeth, "I guess I should thank you for being straight, Doc."

"I try to, Johnny, because you're my friend as well as my patient."

Johnny did not turn his head back, so Sam touched him briefly on the arm, then left.

They gave Johnny a massive injection of morphine and he remembered nothing of the journey back to Lancer the next morning. He awoke in his bed, just as he had wished for, but he felt groggy and sick and couldn't even speak to anyone until the following day.

Although Teresa and the children were still staying at the hacienda, they were due to leave. "Val will be working days again, and I need to get back home," she told Scott. "Unless you want me to remain and help out with Johnny's care."

Scott stood by Johnny's bed and replied, "We have everything under control. We're taking shifts and I've hired a couple of nurses for some of his care. And Cipriano will help me with any lifting."

More than anything, Johnny hated the way his suddenly miserable life had become the center of everyone else's existence. Scott didn't belong here, stuck inside tending to his every need. Cipriano should be out working the ranch, not moving around an invalid's limp body. He hoped that his wounds would heal fast and that he would be allowed to sit up as soon as the prescribed week was over and done with. Johnny almost laughed at the way his mind had accommodated to his situation. Here he was wondering if he would be allowed to do things, awaiting permission, when he was the kind of man who did things first and often dealt with the consequences afterwards. How fast things had changed.

Scott constructed a backboard that fitted on the bed. It had a slight slant so that Johnny, when lying on it, was not flat out. Not staring at the ceiling, Johnny thought. Although it was well padded, half-reclining put pressure on his lower back and after a couple of hours he'd had enough and was back to staring at the ceiling once again.

The last thing that Teresa did before leaving for her own home was to sit at Johnny's bedside and help him write a letter to Natalie. After an unsuccessful attempt to write while flat on his back, Johnny asked her for help. He hadn't wanted to write the letter, but if he didn't tell Natalie about his present situation, Scott would do it for him. Johnny did not want anyone else corresponding with his wife. It was his responsibility and he would just have to compose a letter to her in his own words.

Teresa sat with a pencil poised over the writing paper. It took Johnny a while to start the letter, but once he began to recite it, he knew what to say. "Natalie," he started.

Teresa was surprised at his lack of loving salutation but apart from raising her eyebrows she said nothing.

"I have had a slight injury." Johnny saw Teresa glance up disapprovingly but he continued, "My family is taking very good care of me."

She smiled.

Johnny thought for a moment then said, "Don't worry about my health. I am under the care of Dr. Jenkins and I will be fine. I hope that your health is improving. I will be in touch with you soon. I am dealing with the business from Lancer." He looked over at what Teresa had written so far. "That's all."

Teresa frowned as she finished writing down his words. "This is all you want to tell her?"

"Just write in my name. No, I can sign it, but hold the paper steady," Johnny ordered.

"You haven't told her you love her. Wives need to hear that, even if you've been married for a few years, Johnny."

His lips compressed with annoyance at being told how to write to his own wife. "Natalie knows how I feel about her. Just give it to me to sign." He scribbled his name on the proffered piece of paper and then closed his eyes with a deep sigh. How could such a small task wear him out?

A bit later Teresa came in with her two very active little children to bid Johnny goodbye, and when they had finally left he felt as though a tornado had blown through. There had been too many people looking at him and fussing and he was relieved to be alone. Unfortunately, any peace he'd been expecting was short-lived. Scott and a nurse, a tall, dark woman named Marybeth something entered with purpose in their eyes.

Johnny knew what they were up to and he wasn't about to give in easily. "Go away," he ordered in a voice that wasn't as robust as he had intended.

"Mr. Lancer," the nurse said with a smile, "we must turn you over and change the dressing."

Johnny didn't hear anything after that, what with anxiety rushing around in his mind and the pounding of his heart somehow causing temporary hearing loss.

It took Scott's firm grip on his arm to bring him back to earth. "Johnny, listen to me." Scott leaned over, his hands pressing down on the mattress. He spoke for only Johnny to hear. "Just take it slow and do what we tell you to do and you'll get through this fine."

Johnny nodded and closed his eyes, blocking out what was to come. It didn't help any when a needle was jammed in his inner arm, and even though the medication started working, it hadn't fully taken hold by the time they began to turn him onto his stomach. He gritted his teeth and endured the pain as well as the indignity of someone he didn't know manhandling him. Scott gave him directions; where to place his arms; not to move when they rolled him; to take deep breaths.

"Can't breathe," he mumbled. He blinked heavily at Scott, and his brother's face melted. The room was spinning and the light from the lamp they had just lit was burning his eyes. Finally, belly down, with his nightshirt hiked up, his backside exposed to the air, he gave up and went limp. Johnny could hear them speaking, one or the other giving orders to peel back the dressing, to swab the incision, but they sounded so far away. He didn't care about them at all, really, so long as he could just float along . . .

A couple of days later they cut back on the injections and Johnny felt a great deal better for it; his head cleared and the nausea the medicine caused all but disappeared. Although he still felt very weak, Johnny knew that too would pass. Dr. Beauregard sent over a vial of pills that he had ordered to be made up by the apothecary, and those took place of the morphine injections. Johnny didn't know exactly what they were, but he figured out they must be another form of opiate. Just one small pill made him woozy so he resisted taking them whenever possible.

Murdoch set it up so Johnny could shave, with some assistance. The older man stayed around the house all day, checking in on his son like clockwork, sitting near him and sometimes reading aloud. Shortly before the doctor came to check on his patient, Murdoch gave Johnny water and watched him swallow a pill. When Sam arrived, the two men rolled Johnny onto his belly and cut off the heavy bandage that was wrapped around his middle.

Johnny hid his face in the pillow to refrain from crying out. "Why's it hurt so much, Doc?" he gasped.

"Your nerve endings are waking up, which is a good sign. This won't take long," the doctor assured his patient. He peeled back the sticky tape that held a thick pad in place over the incision on Johnny's back, then hummed and hahed a bit.

"How does it look?" Murdoch asked, peering over the doctor's shoulder.

"I'd know better if you weren't blocking my light, Murdoch," Sam responded testily. He rummaged around in his black bag then pulled out a bottle and some cotton. Dabbing at the raw wound was enough to cause Johnny to groan, but Sam assured him it was coming along nicely. With assistance from Murdoch, the doctor re-bandaged the tender incision, had a look at Johnny's bullet wound on his hip, then said, "I think I've tormented you enough." To Murdoch, Sam said, "Turn him slowly, this way. He'll feel better lying on his back."

Surprisingly, Johnny found that Sam was correct. By the time the patient had answered all of the doctor's questions about his aches and pains and had his legs inspected, he was feeling surprisingly relaxed.

Sam looked pleased. "I think Dr. Beauregard's little pill is doing its job. He's a good man." He leaned over Johnny and said, "But we'll go easy on them, my boy. They're very strong." Sam saw Murdoch's questioning look, so he explained that Beauregard worked closely with the apothecary to formulate the medications they dispensed. "In the old days you'd have bitten down on some leather and endured the pain."

"Good thing times have changed," nodded Murdoch.

***–***TBC