RESCUED: CHAPTER 5
Author's Note:
I'm glad to know that so many of you like Joseph Brooker. He has a lot of screen time in this story, and just like Ava Dooley, he'll become a regular player in this series. There is no way I could have written his first "trial by fire" in this chapter without the expert technical guidance of fellow author "HelloMatt." Thank you so much for your skill, my friend! You taught me how to make the details come to life!
XOXOXO
They'd been all over Ford County together meeting people, delivering babies, setting broken legs and arms, treating the ague and even reassuring a few hypochondriacs. Joseph Brooker proved an outstanding physician, even diagnosing a tricky case of beriberi with the typical limited information these prairie people disclosed to a stranger. The more ground they covered, the more patients they saw, Doc knew he'd made the right decision. Joseph was energetic, and not the least bit afraid of practicing no frills medicine in the wilds of Kansas. Equally important, he had the uncanny ability to put people at ease with him. Just like his father, making a difference with these people seemed to invigorate him and give him purpose. There was only one more thing missing: He needed his own transportation. So, on this late September afternoon when they got back to Dodge, Doc parked his buggy at Matt's house.
"You need a way to get around, Joseph. I need my buggy when I want to go. Can't get on a horse very well anymore. Do you know how to ride?"
"Of course I do, Galen. I prefer a horse to a buggy."
"Matt has an extra horse here in the corral. He won't mind a bit if you take him. Name's 'Beau'. He's a nice one that Matt used to ride. Let's see what you think."
Joseph liked the horse right off, even if he was too big. The bay gelding more than made up for his size with his pleasant attitude, walking right up to the gate to greet his visitors.
"Matt's the size of a man and a half, Joseph. Anything smaller than Beau won't carry him for long. Go ahead and saddle him, try him out. Matt has the buckskin and the black, he doesn't need three. Beau's the one that always stands in the corral."
It was most likely because Matt Dillon had all but tamed Dodge City. Then again, it could have been because they'd gotten almost to the end of a hectic drive season with only a handful of gunfights. Whatever the reason, Doc was jolted back to reality when he heard the unmistakable sound of a gunshot coming from only a few streets away.
"Throw the saddle on the fence, Joseph. Hop in here with me. We've gotta go. They're playing our song!"
"What is it, Galen?" The young man asked as he hurried into the buggy.
"Gunfire. Nobody'll find us over here. We need to get to the office. Somebody's probably been shot."
Adrenaline coursed through the youngster's veins at the thought of an emergency requiring his skills. No one so much as fired a weapon in Philadelphia anymore. He hoped against hope that no one had been hurt, but if someone had, he'd be ready. While they trotted briskly uptown, he remembered the chills he got as a child when his father had described the challenges of frontier law.
There was a small crowd gathering in front of the freight office, watching over a man face down in the dirt. In his peripheral vision, Doc saw Frank Reardon swinging up onto his horse and heading down Front Street at a high gallop after some unknown perpetrator. He jumped nimbly out of the buggy and separated the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea.
"Let us through, here!" He barked on behalf of both of them. His triage was over so quickly that Joseph barely got to the front of the crowd.
"He's alive," Doc announced. "Couple of you boys carry him up to my office."
Joseph stood back and watched the cowboys who'd likely never met each other pick the man up carefully, working like a well-trained team. Doc took off after them, bag in hand, abandoning the buggy. Joseph retrieved his bag and hurried after, doing his best to look experienced and purposeful. His age of no consequence, Doc was already up the stairs, into the office, and bent over the victim by the time Joseph got through the door. He ripped the man's shirt open, revealing a steady pulsing of blood that was starting to trickle onto the exam table.
"Sponges, Joseph! Top drawer, green cabinet, you know where!"
Joseph's feet felt like they were stuck in tar as he made the roundtrip from the exam table to the cabinet and back again.
"Direct pressure please," Doc instructed softly. "Gotta slow that bleeding."
With unforeseen perfect timing, Festus Haggen came through the door and saw the horrible scene on the table.
"Doc, he said softly," What kin' I do ta' help?
"PRESSURE, DAMMIT SON, PRESSURE!" He shouted a call to action to the young doctor, and then in the next breath lowered his voice to a calm, reassuring tone and answered Festus without even looking up. "Festus, go get Ma Smalley please." In an instant, the hill man was out the door on his errand.
"Let me show you. LIKE THIS!" Doc threw the blood-soaked sponge on the floor, grabbed a couple of clean ones, and put all his upper body strength into direct pressure. Barely conscious as he was, the victim let loose a scream at the pain. Doc ignored it all.
"Now you do that while I get my instruments laid out," he harumphed at his helper.
The young man complied, doing his best to follow orders while the patient struggled against the force. The blood may have slowed but he couldn't tell, his head spinning and his stomach in a knot as the warm, sticky substance oozed through his fingers and onto the table. The iron stench of it was overwhelming. He'd seen plenty of blood, but nothing like this. Carefully and methodically setting out what he needed on the tray, Doc took a quick moment to look up.
"PRESSURE! MORE PRESSURE! CLEAN SPONGES! MORE PRESSURE!"
"Don't think he can stand it, Galen!" Joseph offered in his defense.
"HE STANDS IT OR HE DIES! Do as you're told!"
Joseph swapped sponges, tossing the blood soaked one on the floor, which landed with a splat in the sticky mess that was already forming there. A wave of nausea overcoming him, he pressed as hard as he could on the wound as long as he could, before he simply had to let go and bend down next to the table, adding the contents of his stomach to the blood. Doc got back to the table just in time to see the whole thing and wordlessly ushered the young man gently to the side, only to hear him heaving again. He ignored the distraction and went to work, probing the wound with his fingers, then withdrawing and applying pressure again with more sponges. After three satisfactory probes, he'd made his decision, and he was more than pleased to sense Joseph standing over him, lantern in hand.
"Good. Thank you. Now see here: The bullet is in his shoulder, but it nicked the axillary artery on the way in. I need to get some sutures in there if we're going to save his life. Get my bullet extractor, too."
Ma walked right in, too experienced at helping Doc over the years to give a second thought to knocking. She put herself in his field of vision and called his name softly.
"Hello, Ma, thanks. Get set up with chloroform please."
"Yes Doc."
Joseph was taking it all in. Cowboys were the ambulance crew, Festus was the aide, and the woman who owned the boarding house was Doc's skilled nurse. So far, all he'd done was fail at direct pressure and vomit all over the floor. In one quick moment of truth he scanned Doc's tray and picked up a forceps, holding the skin and muscle back so Doc could take one of the clamps and deftly apply it to the artery. As soon as he did, the pulsing spurts of blood stopped. Joseph sensed the new emergency perfectly and took another clamp to replace his forceps, then another, and another, until his mentor had a clear field in which to work. Skillfully, Ma had the patient under just the right chloroform plane, so she took a moment to wipe both doctors' brows with a cool cloth. Doc took a deep breath, then continued teaching while he worked.
"Major blood supply from that artery, Joseph! We have to get it sutured quickly or he'll risk losing his arm." But Joseph already had the forceps in his fingers, with needle and suture loaded, determined to help save this young man's life. Doc immediately sensed his readiness, and without asking a single question simply said "go ahead."
Steadily, carefully, Joseph placed the first suture and tied the knot. "Good. Great, actually!" Then Doc picked up a probe and pointed with the delicate tip of the instrument. "Now another right here." Again, Joseph skillfully sutured the artery wall. The third time Doc didn't even point, trusting the young doctor make his own choice, while he eared his stethoscope.
"Heart rate elevated," he spoke calmly to his colleague, trading the scope for a grasp of the man's hand. "Skin is clammy. Pulse weak. Ma, get two blankets on him and stoke the stove, please."
"OK, Joseph." He turned to the young man. "You ever use a bullet extractor?"
"No sir."
"You watch this one. Plan to do the next one. And I'm not 'sir.' I'm Galen. Elevate that lantern again so you can follow this."
The instrument was like nothing he'd ever seen, but he was more than proud that he'd trayed it. He watched while Doc inserted it into the tract and deftly follow the bullet's path, not wanting to damage any more tissue. Halfway in, the patient groaned.
"Five more drops please, Ma." Doc waited for what seemed like an eternity, then moved on into the wound successfully with a quiet patient. Joseph watched behind the lantern light while Doc inserted the bullet extractor into its target, retreated, and came up empty. His second try yielded resistance so he applied pressure, then slowly turned the handle. When he was satisfied he had good contact, he slowly retracted the long instrument, bullet in its grasp, until he had it completely removed, and plopped it with a decisive clunk into his basin.
Joseph didn't need to be asked. He set the lantern down and reassessed vitals. Nothing had changed. At least the patient hadn't lost any ground in the fight for life. He reported it to the surgeon immediately.
"Good, thank you. Will you close, please?" Doc asked.
"Of course, Galen."
A wave of relief washed over the young doctor as he released the clamps and watched the newly freed flesh return to its rightful position over the wound. Ma Smalley repeatedly wiped his brow while he dexterously used both hands in his methodical suture pattern. Only once did he briefly look toward Doc, likely to see if he was being observed, but Doc was busy cleaning instruments and re-stocking the drawer with clean sponges, not even pretending to hover. A sense of self-worth washed over him like a spring breeze.
"We're finished with the chloroform now, thank you Mrs. Smalley." She nodded and smiled, the gratification he desperately needed from the woman, with the matter of all that vomit mixed in with the blood on the floor. Ma busied herself with replacing the chloroform bottle and then went to work helping Doc with his instruments. He'd almost forgotten to check vitals again, so he took a quick break and did, reporting a stable albeit cold patient to Doc. "He has good sensation in his fingers though, Galen."
"Excellent!" Doc looked up and smiled. "Probably no nerve damage, then. Good thinking, Joseph! Now all he has to do is live."
When he finally finished closing, Joseph plunked his forceps and needle into the tray for Ma and turned to his mentor. "Please inspect my closure," he said quietly.
Doc did so quickly, mindful of the patient's pallor and clammy skin. "Looks great. Get him sponge bathed and dried. Just mix a few drops of carbolic into the wash water please, not too much." And then in the next breath he was barking orders to Ma. "Ma, find the warmest pajamas we have in back, let's get this guy bundled up before he comes to." Ma did an admirable job of complying, and then all three of them eased the man into clean pajamas and covered him. The clock on the wall said six.
"Joseph, you get some air. Here's a dollar. Walk over to Delmonico's and get us each whatever the special is. Bring it back here and we'll review this case while we eat. Fair?"
"More than fair, Galen." He ignored the dollar on the table and was out the door before Doc could argue.
Galen Adams sat down at his desk, for a few minutes watching Ma Smalley scrub up the mess on the office floor with not a single complaint. She was a saint among women in Dodge, especially with Kitty out of town. When Ma had the mess scrubbed away, he thanked her, added a dollar to the one Joseph had left, and pressed the money into her palm.
"Doc, I don't expect a thing. I'm glad to be of help. You might not have saved that man with just the young doctor to help."
Amazed at her cunning perception, he replied softly, "He'll grow, Ma. Now you go. You have hungry boarders to feed."
As she walked out the door, the coins made a "clink" on the floor. Ma turned back apologetically toward Doc.
"Sorry I dropped those, Doc. But the floor's clean. You won't have any problem picking them up."
He rubbed his hand across his mustache, his eyes gleaming at the now closed office door. The friends he had in Dodge were without compare. He shuffled over to the table and checked his John Doe, whose color and pulse were better. He took a minute on his way back to his old swivel chair to say a short prayer in his head that Frank would find and arrest the perpetrator with no problem. The deputy had endeared himself, every bit as relentless and selfless as Matt Dillon when it came to enforcing the law. Matt's words came back to him, that night they'd talked in the snowstorm up at the Biddle farm: "Frank and I've learned to respect each other and take care of each other. That doesn't happen in a day. A guy has to play nursemaid for a while and build on it. Real hard to fix the roof in a rainstorm, Doc!"
And now his own deputy young Joseph Brooker had faced his first real devil and stood to the test. The three fingers of whiskey he poured from his personal stash transported him to another place, another time, reminiscent of the young man's struggle this day.
It seemed like a lifetime ago when he'd mustered out in January of '65, leaving his hometown Biloxi medical practice for his first look at the horrors of war. Trained physicians were in short supply, so many having succumbed to the diseases wrought by eighteen hour days tending the sick and wounded. His first field hospital was staffed by three doctors and two nurses, the nurses being one short-order cook, one parson, and one postal clerk by profession. It was the first time he'd felt less qualified than a short-order cook to care for a human being. They'd moved him to five more field hospitals after that, each one more bleak than the one that went before because of the continual pounding of the war and the impending sense of loss. At the last one, he was the only trained physician, assisted by anyone the major or the captain recruited. Most often these recruits were derelicts who only wanted to escape the field of battle, and in every case they'd walked from the gates of hell directly into it.
The relentless heat was oppressive, as were the ravages of malaria and dysentery it brought. Measles was everywhere, even more common than the daily barrage of gunshot wounds, with typhoid holding a close second. The hideous smells from decaying organic matter permeated the small encampment. It was overshadowed only by the odors of fetid discharge from wounds that had gone untended in the field for days. There were grotesque leg fractures requiring amputation and too often double amputation of limbs from boys . . . just boys . . . who would never be able to work or lead a normal life if they survived. He used chloroform sparingly, often leaving patients to a pitifully light plane of anesthesia in order to have enough for the next group that was inevitably dragged in. The minute they were conscious enough to swallow, they got laudanum as long as it lasted. The only things that seemed to come on every supply wagon were whiskey and morphine, which they liberally administered to anyone who survived. On one bright, sunny day in this hospital, his most valuable helper dipped into the supply and killed himself. There was very little food and almost no flour, which they'd mixed with water for nourishment until the water proved contaminated. Fruit and vegetables were a surprise only when a local farm was commandeered, but there was never enough to go around. Scurvy shadowed him like a cloud. None of the cases was memorable. They couldn't be, or a man would go stark raving mad. Nevertheless, there was the farm boy turned soldier who'd taken a bullet right through his bladder and another whose direct hit to the left eye resulted not only in hideous malformation, but the inability to speak. It was a miracle that they'd both died within two days.
He'd learned to sleep whenever he could, most times sitting up, bent over a temporarily empty worktable, head on his folded arms. There seemed to be no end, no peace to be had, no difference to be made.
And that's where young Joseph Brooker found him when he returned with their hot meals from Delmonico's. Doc woke instantly to the rush of cool air, ready to go to work, standing to be ready for the next patient.
"Hey, it's just me Galen." Joseph noticed Doc's blank look. "Got plenty of food here."
"Good, good," Doc snapped to the present. "Put it on my desk here and pull up a chair."
They ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Doc broke the ice.
"I completely forgot to ask if you'd ever tended a gunshot wound. That oversight is on me. So how did you know what a bullet extractor looked like?"
"I knew what you already had on your tray. Had no idea what a bullet extractor was, but that thing seemed ominous enough for the job at hand. Figured it was better to have and not need than to need and not have. Just a lucky guess."
"More like an educated guess," Doc smiled. "We used those all day every day in the war, Joseph. When a bullet's too deep for a forceps or when it's lodged in bone, it comes in real handy."
"Today was like a lesson from the war."
"No, Joseph, it wasn't. Not even close. Thankfully, the war's been over for a long time. Problem is, a lot of these guys lived through all the hate and fear of it, and they don't know anything more than pulling a gun to solve a problem. Matt Dillon's done a helluva job changing that, but we're sure not Philadelphia yet."
"May I stay, Galen?" Joseph looked up pensively.
"What do you mean 'stay'?"
"I figured after today you'd fire me."
"Now why in thunder would I want to do that?" The gleam in Doc's eyes was unmistakable as he gave Joseph a gentle swat on the shoulder.
"Thank you. I promise to do better every day."
"I know you will, son. That's all any of us can do."
tbc
