CHAPTER FIVE - Dusty Pieces from the Bottom of a Bottle
Frank watched the bustle of the saloon go back to their business, some patrons leaving while a random few returned. And all the while, Frank's eyes were pulled to the closed door, first one on the left.
He rubbed at his bristled jaw trepidatiously for the longest time, fingering his blond beard as his mind shut out the noise around him. What was going on up there?
Suddenly, the door opened and Velvet stuck her head out, her face worried, roving to catch the eyes of Frank and stuck out her hand to motion to him. Rising without hesitation, Frank lowered his feet, and getting a palmed shoulder and sympathetic look from the slowly drying Bob, made his way slowly up the stairs.
Stopping at the door, he licked his lips as Velvet stuck out her hand, pulling him inside and shutting the door behind him.
Madame Hanna-Belle was stooped over the sleeping Jesse while Doctor Bierce was sitting on a chair that he'd pulled up to the bed, leafing through a book that was propped against Jesse's hip. He was asking questions while his finger hooked around his chin intently.
"And when has he last eaten something?"
"A couple days ago..." Madame Hanna-Belle was saying. "It's so hard to get him to eat."
"What'd you give him?"
"Fluid beef. It's all he can get down lately."
"Good." The Doctor roved back a couple pages, drawing his finger down the large page. "Has he drunken anything?"
"We give him water on occasion."
"I see, any whiskey?" the doctor said beneath his breath, untucking the blankets from beneath Jesse's chin and revealing his bandaged shoulders.
"No." Velvet said as she immediately went to the open window and shut it, leaving Frank to approach the bed. The doctor looked up to him objectively. "Who is this man?"
"He's Mr. James' brother sir." Velvet came up behind Frank and laced her arm in his, watching the doctor eventually nod and turn back to his book, still leafing.
"I see," he said to the book, reaching down into his rose wood box inscripted with an elegant gold inlay that spelled out Tieman and unclipped it, revealing a folded array of red-velvet tiers that held random surgical objects.
Frank swallowed hard as his eyes roved over the many sharp looking tools, shined and finished with their ivory white handles and clean faces, falsifying what they really were for.
The doctor continued unbothered, pulling out tier after tier of tools on outstretching gold hinges. Until a great assembly of surgical tools were at his disposal. Huge toothed knives that curled and shone bright lay snugly in the bottom of the box, along with bone chippers, saws, probes, cauterizing irons, bullet extractors, and amputation knives. While the upfolding tier held the more delicate of objects, a flint glass jar with black things in it, iron and leather screw tourniquets, a rolled up and secured spindle of long, thin bottles for pills and liquids, various sizes of little toothed blade bleeders, and an hand-updated stethoscope of sorts, plus a thin, black bag fitting snugly against the front. The two outstretching tiers carried the finer of the tools, long pointed picks and long, varying curve-pronged tenaculums.
The doctor reached in and grabbed the black bag, pulling out a pair of copper-framed wire eyeglasses with a hanging eyepiece attached to its side on a small frame. Fitting the second pair of spectacles over his nose in front of his other glasses and pushing the eyepiece into his eye, he scrunched his old brow around to hold it as he leaned into the box, extracting what he needed.
Unrolling the broad leather bottle case, he pulled out other such objects and set them at the fold of the roll, the flint glass jar, the bullet probe, the bullet extractor, two tourniquets, and varying sizes of pliers, tweezers, blade bleeders and brushes. All secured in their own individual pockets by little golden flip fastenings.
Suffice with his current supplies, Doctor Bierce pushed in the tiers and refolded his box back together, setting it on the floor next to him and leaning in towards Jesse, pulling back the covers further down to the man's waist. Then he turned up and eyed Velvet skeptically. "Would you mind stepping out of the room Miss?"
"Why?" Velvet suddenly took on an airy look as the room turned to her, cowering behind Frank.
"You should go, Velvet." Frank said gently, moving to take both her hands in his, looking into her dark eyes. And after a moment, she nodded in agreement, letting herself out.
After the door was shut again, the doctor turned to Madame Hanna-Belle. "If you would leave too Madame..."
"Aw hell! I ain't goin' nowhere's." The spindly woman coughed harshly. "There ain't nothin' I didn't see from back in the war."
Noting his judgement silently, the doctor then turned to Frank, inquiring. "Do you have someone to help you from downstairs, preferably someone strong with a good stomach?"
Frank searched his brain for the man that could hold his liquor like no other and fell upon the person within seconds. Going to the door, he pushed his head out and whistled, the crowd below him growing quiet and turning up to him.
"Tom?" Frank yelled, and the Comanche stuck his head out from beneath the stairs. "Could you come up here and help?"
Without pausing, Tom headed for the stairs and was up in a matter of moments. Following Frank inside while the sounds below slowly started to swell again.
The doctor turned up to the Indian with hope and turned back down to Jesse's body, fixing up his stethoscope for use, briefing them.
"You say he was shot?"
"Yes sir, once in each shoulder." Frank answered, taking off his hat and placing it on the foot of the bed.
"Anywhere else?"
"No sir."
The doctor's face twisted as he pried his fingers beneath the cloth around Jesse's neck, pulling it away to reveal the purple scar of the rope. "How long ago was his hanging?"
"Three weeks sir." Frank kept spitting out answers.
"Was he conscious when you found him?"
"No sir."
"Was he breathing?"
"No sir."
The doctor cocked his head peculiarly. "How, then, did you get him to breathe?"
"I grabbed his belt sir and a- pulled until he started breathing. I figured it'd force in air."
"Interesting..." The doctor took a pencil from his pocket and jotted a little note to himself down, before turning back to everyone. "So you say one bullet in each shoulder, correct?"
"Yes sir."
"I see, well, I'll have to extract them and I'll need you men to hold him down." He said apathetically, placing the hooked iron Y of his stethoscope into his ears. The bulgy, ivory bottom screwed into wide, ivory funnel, and he placed it against Jesse's chest, looking down to flip a couple pages forward in his broad book.
Uncapping one of his thin bottles, the doctor lifted Jesse's head gently in his hand and waved the bottle beneath his nose, getting a disturbed sniff from Jesse, a fit of coughing, and a fight, immediately wrestled down by the doctor. He glanced towards the men and they immediately came over, grabbing what they could of Jesse and following the doctor's directions to "lift". They propped him upwards, his head hanging against his chest as he fought exhaustion, Doctor Bierce placing his stethoscope at different spots along Jesse's chest and back, stopping to consult his book before turning to Madame Hanna-Belle. "How long has this boy been on his back?"
"Three weeks and four days, why?"
"Fluid has gone into his lungs." He said matter-of-factly, turning back to reevaluate his consideration and nodding in agreement with himself.
"From now on keep him propped upwards, so as to clear the fluid." The doctor suggested, rejecting the stethoscope back onto the side of the bed and began peeling off all the sticky, blood-soaked bandages from Jesse's torso, revealing the many healing wounds, letting the bloody cloths fall to the floor uncaringly.
Then, pausing, he smoothed his hands over the pillow now behind Jesse's back, feeling the warmth wetness where Jesse had been laying, coming to another decision. "Had he a fever?"
"He did once," Frank informed him, holding onto one of Jesse's arms to keep his weak frame upright, "but I put ice on his chest to bring it down from his head."
The doctor stiffened. "Are you a physician?"
"No sir, I read it in a book."
"Very good." He nodded towards Frank then jotted another note down to himself, before turning to Madame Hanna-Belle. "Would you mind your covers getting bloody?"
"Yes sir, I would." She confessed.
"Very well, lift Mr. James to the floor, we will perform the operation there."
Frank moved without rebuttal, grabbing Jesse beneath the arms as Tom grabbed his legs, beginning to lift. Jesse moaned, half awake as his head flopped back, his eyes halfway open.
"I'm to search for bullets that may find their way into his heart." The doctor sufficed and pulled back his chair, stepping out of the way as they moved Jesse to the floor.
As she rolled away the vast carpet, she looked to the ground with contempt. "I don't want my floor bloody either, our customers won't take too kindly to blood all over my floorboards." Madame Hanna-Belle protested, only to get a reassuring grasp of her old, thin shoulders by the doctor. "You can put the bed and the carpet over it when I'm done."
Sighing dissatisfied, she shut her mouth and moved around behind Jesse's head, wishing to put a pillow beneath it, but did not do so.
"Am I dead yet?" Jesse asked in barely a whisper, the first words he'd spoken in a long while and Frank turned to him after setting him down. "No, not yet."
"Tell me when I'm gettin' close." Jesse nodded slowly and began to slip again, only to get a quick slap from the doctor at his cheek, reddening his pale skin. "Stay awake Mr. James."
Groaning, Jesse did so, scowling at the old man as he moved his instruments back down next to Jesse and sat with a huff and a crack of his old body.
He handed the small, thin bottle filled with the waking smelling salts to Madame Hanna-Belle and assured that Tom and Frank were ready at Jesse's arms and legs.
Nodding their certitude in return the doctor pulled the lid from the flint jar and reached in, pulling out a couple of thick, black leeches that writhed between his two fingers chaotically before he set them near the bullet wound in Jesse's left shoulder, rearing up to find a good place. The doctor then took out a large pair of blade bleeders and unfolded them to reveal the leaf-shaped, toothed blade. Jesse flinched as the leeches took hold with their teeth, beginning to feed. And he could feel the doctor walk his two fingers beneath the back of his shoulder, feeling for an exit wound, and when none could be found, took the blade bleeder up into his hand, pinning his shoulder against the ground with his free hand while he pushed down the blade into Jesse's shoulder.
Madame Hanna-Belle held down his head with some difficulty as he contorted at the sudden pain, the doctor working diligently to cut a three-inch long incision into his shoulder. He then took up the long, thin, bulge-ended bullet probe and shoved it into the new cut, ignoring the blood that rolled out in beadlets and puddled against the floor. Jesse gritted his teeth against the pain as he fought against the restraining hands.
The doctor's hand shifted around in the spitting blood, his head up in the air facing the ceiling as he searched for the bullet through touch, bumping what he guessed were bones and such until he found what he was looking for.
Jesse's head was all the way back, his mouth open wide but no sound coming out, tears clouding his eyes.
"Hold on," the doctor said to the room, putting his finger over where he touched the bullet and retracting the probe, he replaced it with the pronged extractor and shoved it into the wound, Jesse gave out a agonizing cry before collapsing unconscious.
"Watch his breathing, if it gets low, wake him with the smelling salts." Doctor Bierce commanded to Madame Hanna-Belle, who nodded quickly and cradled Jesse's head, wiping at the sweat while the doctor worked his way through Jesse's shoulder. He had to dig deep, so deep that he was almost afraid that he'd reached Jesse's back by now, but with a snap of the extractors, he caught hold of the bullet and pulled it out.
Everyone collapsed back as the bullet came out, the doctor wiping his arm across his nose before pulling a little capped flask from his side and dropping the bullet into it with a clunk, announcing that other bullets were in their as well.
Without hesitation, the doctor moved himself to Jesse's other side, taking another three leeches and placing them around his intentional incision spot, letting them all grab hold. And within seconds, he was inside Jesse's other shoulder, probing around for the second bullet, Jesse twitching spasmodically all the while.
"Madame?" the doctor spoke through the situation like they were having tea, coughing slightly at the stench of the blood. "Could you ready the fireplace?"
"Yessum." Madame Hanna-Belle spoke, hesitantly uncradling Jesse's head from her hand and running to do her biddance. She did so, getting a flaming orange fire going, then was instructed to insert the end of the cauterizing iron into the base of the flames, getting it red hot.
Extracting the final bullet from Jesse's other profusely bleeding shoulder, the doctor dropped it into his flask and replaced it against his side, wiping at the sweat away from his forehead with his arm and reaching into the leech jar again to set more writhing leeches onto the bleeding wounds, trying to slow the gushing blood.
When it wouldn't be slowed for some time, he opted for the tourniquets and pulled the leather straps loose, working them up Jesse's arms and over his shoulder, leaning them towards his neck with the screws pressed towards his jaw.
With a quick turn of his wrist, he squeezed the tourniquets tight, cutting off all forms of circulation to his arms. Jesse's fingertips began to turn purple as his biceps turned deathly white, his face masked in a milky gray pallor.
"Hold him steady." He warned as he went over and pulled the cauterizing iron from the heart of the fire, the end glowing red and hissing at the cold air of the room. And, without faltering in his old hands, pressed it down against the wound.
Jesse came up screaming with all his might, jolting the iron slightly to slide against a leech that immediately pulled out of him and rolled up, tumbling off his shoulder as the doctor replaced the hot iron to his skin once more, melting his flesh together. "Hold him steady!"
"Jesus Christ!" Jesse screamed as it was brought against his other shoulder, coming down with a hiss and a sizzle. Continuing to scream horrifically.
Then, it was all over. The doctor removed the iron and Jesse fell back, writhing in pain as he tried to clutch as his burning shoulders. "Quickly, remove the leeches and tourniquets and wrap his shoulders." The doctor instructed and they all did as they were told, Tom finding it safe to let go of Jesse's legs and coming up to help Madame Hanna-Belle, checking periodically to see if Frank was alright with Jesse's fighting arms.
With his head bowed to the floor, Frank fought against Jesse, but couldn't bear to look at his tortured brother.
While Tom began re-bandaging his shoulders, Madame Hanna-Belle was working at Jesse's forehead with a soaked cloth, washing his face with the cool water and running it along his chest.
Suddenly, with a slam, the door was open and Clel, Cole, Bob, and some others were shouldering their ways past each other through the doorframe, no doubt having heard the screams from downstairs.
"What the hell's going on Frank?" Cole asked, holding back the onslaught of the pressing crowd with his spread arms at the doorframe. He flinched back at the smell and the sight of the pooling blood beneath Jesse.
But Frank didn't look up from the ground. So Comanche Tom answered for him. "Nothing Cole. Go back downstairs." There was a look of defiance before it retreated into a respected head nod and he pushed himself back against the crowd, forcing them back.
"Everyone back downstairs!" Bob yelled loudly, Jesse contorting suddenly to wrap himself into a ball against the noise and the pain, pulling free from everyone's hands. He pulled his legs against his chest and hugged gently at his shoulders, trying not to move much in the fetal position.
Standing, and wiping at his bloody hands with a towel, the doctor solemnly put away his wiped-down tools and replaced everything back into his surgical box, removing his specialized spectacles and locking the rose wood box, then went towards the door with a floating comment over his shoulder. "He'll be better in about a week."
"Where are you going?" Madame Hanna-Belle asked, the doctor turned slightly.
"Downstairs. For a drink." Then he left.
Madame Hanna-Belle and Comanche Tom stood and looked to Frank, who still sat silently over the curled Jesse.
Silently Frank reached out and gathered Jesse up into his arms, holding him close, Tom and Madame Hanna-Belle taking each other's arms and going out the door solemnly.
Leaving him alone with Jesse.
Frank watched the bustle of the saloon go back to their business, some patrons leaving while a random few returned. And all the while, Frank's eyes were pulled to the closed door, first one on the left.
He rubbed at his bristled jaw trepidatiously for the longest time, fingering his blond beard as his mind shut out the noise around him. What was going on up there?
Suddenly, the door opened and Velvet stuck her head out, her face worried, roving to catch the eyes of Frank and stuck out her hand to motion to him. Rising without hesitation, Frank lowered his feet, and getting a palmed shoulder and sympathetic look from the slowly drying Bob, made his way slowly up the stairs.
Stopping at the door, he licked his lips as Velvet stuck out her hand, pulling him inside and shutting the door behind him.
Madame Hanna-Belle was stooped over the sleeping Jesse while Doctor Bierce was sitting on a chair that he'd pulled up to the bed, leafing through a book that was propped against Jesse's hip. He was asking questions while his finger hooked around his chin intently.
"And when has he last eaten something?"
"A couple days ago..." Madame Hanna-Belle was saying. "It's so hard to get him to eat."
"What'd you give him?"
"Fluid beef. It's all he can get down lately."
"Good." The Doctor roved back a couple pages, drawing his finger down the large page. "Has he drunken anything?"
"We give him water on occasion."
"I see, any whiskey?" the doctor said beneath his breath, untucking the blankets from beneath Jesse's chin and revealing his bandaged shoulders.
"No." Velvet said as she immediately went to the open window and shut it, leaving Frank to approach the bed. The doctor looked up to him objectively. "Who is this man?"
"He's Mr. James' brother sir." Velvet came up behind Frank and laced her arm in his, watching the doctor eventually nod and turn back to his book, still leafing.
"I see," he said to the book, reaching down into his rose wood box inscripted with an elegant gold inlay that spelled out Tieman and unclipped it, revealing a folded array of red-velvet tiers that held random surgical objects.
Frank swallowed hard as his eyes roved over the many sharp looking tools, shined and finished with their ivory white handles and clean faces, falsifying what they really were for.
The doctor continued unbothered, pulling out tier after tier of tools on outstretching gold hinges. Until a great assembly of surgical tools were at his disposal. Huge toothed knives that curled and shone bright lay snugly in the bottom of the box, along with bone chippers, saws, probes, cauterizing irons, bullet extractors, and amputation knives. While the upfolding tier held the more delicate of objects, a flint glass jar with black things in it, iron and leather screw tourniquets, a rolled up and secured spindle of long, thin bottles for pills and liquids, various sizes of little toothed blade bleeders, and an hand-updated stethoscope of sorts, plus a thin, black bag fitting snugly against the front. The two outstretching tiers carried the finer of the tools, long pointed picks and long, varying curve-pronged tenaculums.
The doctor reached in and grabbed the black bag, pulling out a pair of copper-framed wire eyeglasses with a hanging eyepiece attached to its side on a small frame. Fitting the second pair of spectacles over his nose in front of his other glasses and pushing the eyepiece into his eye, he scrunched his old brow around to hold it as he leaned into the box, extracting what he needed.
Unrolling the broad leather bottle case, he pulled out other such objects and set them at the fold of the roll, the flint glass jar, the bullet probe, the bullet extractor, two tourniquets, and varying sizes of pliers, tweezers, blade bleeders and brushes. All secured in their own individual pockets by little golden flip fastenings.
Suffice with his current supplies, Doctor Bierce pushed in the tiers and refolded his box back together, setting it on the floor next to him and leaning in towards Jesse, pulling back the covers further down to the man's waist. Then he turned up and eyed Velvet skeptically. "Would you mind stepping out of the room Miss?"
"Why?" Velvet suddenly took on an airy look as the room turned to her, cowering behind Frank.
"You should go, Velvet." Frank said gently, moving to take both her hands in his, looking into her dark eyes. And after a moment, she nodded in agreement, letting herself out.
After the door was shut again, the doctor turned to Madame Hanna-Belle. "If you would leave too Madame..."
"Aw hell! I ain't goin' nowhere's." The spindly woman coughed harshly. "There ain't nothin' I didn't see from back in the war."
Noting his judgement silently, the doctor then turned to Frank, inquiring. "Do you have someone to help you from downstairs, preferably someone strong with a good stomach?"
Frank searched his brain for the man that could hold his liquor like no other and fell upon the person within seconds. Going to the door, he pushed his head out and whistled, the crowd below him growing quiet and turning up to him.
"Tom?" Frank yelled, and the Comanche stuck his head out from beneath the stairs. "Could you come up here and help?"
Without pausing, Tom headed for the stairs and was up in a matter of moments. Following Frank inside while the sounds below slowly started to swell again.
The doctor turned up to the Indian with hope and turned back down to Jesse's body, fixing up his stethoscope for use, briefing them.
"You say he was shot?"
"Yes sir, once in each shoulder." Frank answered, taking off his hat and placing it on the foot of the bed.
"Anywhere else?"
"No sir."
The doctor's face twisted as he pried his fingers beneath the cloth around Jesse's neck, pulling it away to reveal the purple scar of the rope. "How long ago was his hanging?"
"Three weeks sir." Frank kept spitting out answers.
"Was he conscious when you found him?"
"No sir."
"Was he breathing?"
"No sir."
The doctor cocked his head peculiarly. "How, then, did you get him to breathe?"
"I grabbed his belt sir and a- pulled until he started breathing. I figured it'd force in air."
"Interesting..." The doctor took a pencil from his pocket and jotted a little note to himself down, before turning back to everyone. "So you say one bullet in each shoulder, correct?"
"Yes sir."
"I see, well, I'll have to extract them and I'll need you men to hold him down." He said apathetically, placing the hooked iron Y of his stethoscope into his ears. The bulgy, ivory bottom screwed into wide, ivory funnel, and he placed it against Jesse's chest, looking down to flip a couple pages forward in his broad book.
Uncapping one of his thin bottles, the doctor lifted Jesse's head gently in his hand and waved the bottle beneath his nose, getting a disturbed sniff from Jesse, a fit of coughing, and a fight, immediately wrestled down by the doctor. He glanced towards the men and they immediately came over, grabbing what they could of Jesse and following the doctor's directions to "lift". They propped him upwards, his head hanging against his chest as he fought exhaustion, Doctor Bierce placing his stethoscope at different spots along Jesse's chest and back, stopping to consult his book before turning to Madame Hanna-Belle. "How long has this boy been on his back?"
"Three weeks and four days, why?"
"Fluid has gone into his lungs." He said matter-of-factly, turning back to reevaluate his consideration and nodding in agreement with himself.
"From now on keep him propped upwards, so as to clear the fluid." The doctor suggested, rejecting the stethoscope back onto the side of the bed and began peeling off all the sticky, blood-soaked bandages from Jesse's torso, revealing the many healing wounds, letting the bloody cloths fall to the floor uncaringly.
Then, pausing, he smoothed his hands over the pillow now behind Jesse's back, feeling the warmth wetness where Jesse had been laying, coming to another decision. "Had he a fever?"
"He did once," Frank informed him, holding onto one of Jesse's arms to keep his weak frame upright, "but I put ice on his chest to bring it down from his head."
The doctor stiffened. "Are you a physician?"
"No sir, I read it in a book."
"Very good." He nodded towards Frank then jotted another note down to himself, before turning to Madame Hanna-Belle. "Would you mind your covers getting bloody?"
"Yes sir, I would." She confessed.
"Very well, lift Mr. James to the floor, we will perform the operation there."
Frank moved without rebuttal, grabbing Jesse beneath the arms as Tom grabbed his legs, beginning to lift. Jesse moaned, half awake as his head flopped back, his eyes halfway open.
"I'm to search for bullets that may find their way into his heart." The doctor sufficed and pulled back his chair, stepping out of the way as they moved Jesse to the floor.
As she rolled away the vast carpet, she looked to the ground with contempt. "I don't want my floor bloody either, our customers won't take too kindly to blood all over my floorboards." Madame Hanna-Belle protested, only to get a reassuring grasp of her old, thin shoulders by the doctor. "You can put the bed and the carpet over it when I'm done."
Sighing dissatisfied, she shut her mouth and moved around behind Jesse's head, wishing to put a pillow beneath it, but did not do so.
"Am I dead yet?" Jesse asked in barely a whisper, the first words he'd spoken in a long while and Frank turned to him after setting him down. "No, not yet."
"Tell me when I'm gettin' close." Jesse nodded slowly and began to slip again, only to get a quick slap from the doctor at his cheek, reddening his pale skin. "Stay awake Mr. James."
Groaning, Jesse did so, scowling at the old man as he moved his instruments back down next to Jesse and sat with a huff and a crack of his old body.
He handed the small, thin bottle filled with the waking smelling salts to Madame Hanna-Belle and assured that Tom and Frank were ready at Jesse's arms and legs.
Nodding their certitude in return the doctor pulled the lid from the flint jar and reached in, pulling out a couple of thick, black leeches that writhed between his two fingers chaotically before he set them near the bullet wound in Jesse's left shoulder, rearing up to find a good place. The doctor then took out a large pair of blade bleeders and unfolded them to reveal the leaf-shaped, toothed blade. Jesse flinched as the leeches took hold with their teeth, beginning to feed. And he could feel the doctor walk his two fingers beneath the back of his shoulder, feeling for an exit wound, and when none could be found, took the blade bleeder up into his hand, pinning his shoulder against the ground with his free hand while he pushed down the blade into Jesse's shoulder.
Madame Hanna-Belle held down his head with some difficulty as he contorted at the sudden pain, the doctor working diligently to cut a three-inch long incision into his shoulder. He then took up the long, thin, bulge-ended bullet probe and shoved it into the new cut, ignoring the blood that rolled out in beadlets and puddled against the floor. Jesse gritted his teeth against the pain as he fought against the restraining hands.
The doctor's hand shifted around in the spitting blood, his head up in the air facing the ceiling as he searched for the bullet through touch, bumping what he guessed were bones and such until he found what he was looking for.
Jesse's head was all the way back, his mouth open wide but no sound coming out, tears clouding his eyes.
"Hold on," the doctor said to the room, putting his finger over where he touched the bullet and retracting the probe, he replaced it with the pronged extractor and shoved it into the wound, Jesse gave out a agonizing cry before collapsing unconscious.
"Watch his breathing, if it gets low, wake him with the smelling salts." Doctor Bierce commanded to Madame Hanna-Belle, who nodded quickly and cradled Jesse's head, wiping at the sweat while the doctor worked his way through Jesse's shoulder. He had to dig deep, so deep that he was almost afraid that he'd reached Jesse's back by now, but with a snap of the extractors, he caught hold of the bullet and pulled it out.
Everyone collapsed back as the bullet came out, the doctor wiping his arm across his nose before pulling a little capped flask from his side and dropping the bullet into it with a clunk, announcing that other bullets were in their as well.
Without hesitation, the doctor moved himself to Jesse's other side, taking another three leeches and placing them around his intentional incision spot, letting them all grab hold. And within seconds, he was inside Jesse's other shoulder, probing around for the second bullet, Jesse twitching spasmodically all the while.
"Madame?" the doctor spoke through the situation like they were having tea, coughing slightly at the stench of the blood. "Could you ready the fireplace?"
"Yessum." Madame Hanna-Belle spoke, hesitantly uncradling Jesse's head from her hand and running to do her biddance. She did so, getting a flaming orange fire going, then was instructed to insert the end of the cauterizing iron into the base of the flames, getting it red hot.
Extracting the final bullet from Jesse's other profusely bleeding shoulder, the doctor dropped it into his flask and replaced it against his side, wiping at the sweat away from his forehead with his arm and reaching into the leech jar again to set more writhing leeches onto the bleeding wounds, trying to slow the gushing blood.
When it wouldn't be slowed for some time, he opted for the tourniquets and pulled the leather straps loose, working them up Jesse's arms and over his shoulder, leaning them towards his neck with the screws pressed towards his jaw.
With a quick turn of his wrist, he squeezed the tourniquets tight, cutting off all forms of circulation to his arms. Jesse's fingertips began to turn purple as his biceps turned deathly white, his face masked in a milky gray pallor.
"Hold him steady." He warned as he went over and pulled the cauterizing iron from the heart of the fire, the end glowing red and hissing at the cold air of the room. And, without faltering in his old hands, pressed it down against the wound.
Jesse came up screaming with all his might, jolting the iron slightly to slide against a leech that immediately pulled out of him and rolled up, tumbling off his shoulder as the doctor replaced the hot iron to his skin once more, melting his flesh together. "Hold him steady!"
"Jesus Christ!" Jesse screamed as it was brought against his other shoulder, coming down with a hiss and a sizzle. Continuing to scream horrifically.
Then, it was all over. The doctor removed the iron and Jesse fell back, writhing in pain as he tried to clutch as his burning shoulders. "Quickly, remove the leeches and tourniquets and wrap his shoulders." The doctor instructed and they all did as they were told, Tom finding it safe to let go of Jesse's legs and coming up to help Madame Hanna-Belle, checking periodically to see if Frank was alright with Jesse's fighting arms.
With his head bowed to the floor, Frank fought against Jesse, but couldn't bear to look at his tortured brother.
While Tom began re-bandaging his shoulders, Madame Hanna-Belle was working at Jesse's forehead with a soaked cloth, washing his face with the cool water and running it along his chest.
Suddenly, with a slam, the door was open and Clel, Cole, Bob, and some others were shouldering their ways past each other through the doorframe, no doubt having heard the screams from downstairs.
"What the hell's going on Frank?" Cole asked, holding back the onslaught of the pressing crowd with his spread arms at the doorframe. He flinched back at the smell and the sight of the pooling blood beneath Jesse.
But Frank didn't look up from the ground. So Comanche Tom answered for him. "Nothing Cole. Go back downstairs." There was a look of defiance before it retreated into a respected head nod and he pushed himself back against the crowd, forcing them back.
"Everyone back downstairs!" Bob yelled loudly, Jesse contorting suddenly to wrap himself into a ball against the noise and the pain, pulling free from everyone's hands. He pulled his legs against his chest and hugged gently at his shoulders, trying not to move much in the fetal position.
Standing, and wiping at his bloody hands with a towel, the doctor solemnly put away his wiped-down tools and replaced everything back into his surgical box, removing his specialized spectacles and locking the rose wood box, then went towards the door with a floating comment over his shoulder. "He'll be better in about a week."
"Where are you going?" Madame Hanna-Belle asked, the doctor turned slightly.
"Downstairs. For a drink." Then he left.
Madame Hanna-Belle and Comanche Tom stood and looked to Frank, who still sat silently over the curled Jesse.
Silently Frank reached out and gathered Jesse up into his arms, holding him close, Tom and Madame Hanna-Belle taking each other's arms and going out the door solemnly.
Leaving him alone with Jesse.