Until the steamer pulled into the July station, Vanessa sat enchanted as Langston dazzled her with simple tales of his encounters with bandits and criminals. He spoke with a certain flair, and though he was humble he liked to make elaborate descriptions in his stories. There were men with guns and strange, deformed things of men, and he mentioned a few times about the lost technology that people were learning to find new uses for, though there was much history and science that was gone from the minds of the current generations on Gunsmoke. Using a soft, deep voice meant not to bother the other passengers, he described events at length.

Langston was a man who'd lived in many places, who'd traveled to very distant towns and knew how to navigate the sands on foot. He spoke of the growth of major cities, that had boomed in recent years to nearly doubling in places.

He spoke of gunfights and bar brawls and injuries, and she could see some scars on his big, bare arms, and one on his cheek, and she could barely help but be astonished immensely by him.

In only a moment's instance, he let slip that he'd been treated as though not a person for most of his life, that he was naturally such a large man, so tall and strong, and that though being the muscle of a business or individual was a living to make, it was not what he truly wanted.

By second noon, she had one of his large hands in hers, and she was absentmindedly studying and fiddling with it as he spoke.

But only an hour after, they were in July, and Langston mentioned that they were late, and his family was worrying about him. He carried both their bags and walked in long strides towards the doctor, whose door was not far from the station. Upon knocking, a nurse-assistant came to greet them, expecting them. He took a bundle (most of the money, she assumed) from Langston. Before departing, Langston repeated that he would be back for the departing steamer in two week's time, and, hesitating, also slipped her a note with his family's information, should she need it. "Good luck," he bid her, and strode away.

OXO

Vanessa listened to the instructions of the assistant as she was led to her quarters. He was Nurse Anderson, though he wanted her to call him Andy. She was going to stay in a little room in the clinic, and would be brought meals, since she'd need to stay 24-7 where the doctor could find her. The room was small, but the bed comfortable.

"Doctor Moriko is gone for the evening," Andy continued, yawning, "I'm closing up. Goodnight."

Nodding, Vanessa took to staring at the white, plain walls of her room and daydreamed until she could sleep.

OXO

Her door burst open suddenly, and it must have been morning, though she hadn't a window to know.

"Vanessa, is it. Follow me to the exam room, we'll have a look at things."

Standing groggily, she stepped quietly to follow, eyes adjusting. She was led to a room lined with books on two walls, and found that she could only stare at these.

"Never seen so many at one time, I imagine," noted Dr. Moriko, a stout man with very shiny, cropped black hair and a thin mustache. "Go on, undress then, let's have a look," he added, shutting the door for privacy.

Staring at those books, reading their titles, Vanessa could barely feel the cold metal and such that touched her.

He snapped his fingers before her nose, for attention. "Now, miss, we'll be doing this in stages," he began, clearing his throat. Walking to a large slate against the wall, he chalked out his intentions simply. "Capping the front teeth on top and bottom, we can do that today, once I've gotten my supplies from the dentist down the road. It looks as though they've been crudely filed, but it's opened your inner tooth and the enamel is no longer where it needs to be. The molars we'll do next week, after the surgeries; want to leave you something to chew with while that's going on. The ears will be a delicate thing, yours are very much misshapen, so we'll do that in 2-3 surgeries, depending upon how many it takes, and I'd prefer to do that later next week. The one I'm concerned most with – your back – I would like to do an exploratory this afternoon, and depending upon the number of vessels feeding into it, and its nerve connection to the spine – well, we can perhaps do it in one fell swoop and then go back in a few days later to pretty up the edges of the graft. I'll be grafting skin from the mound to cover you back there, you see."

Now dressed, Vanessa sat in a strange, adjusting chair in the next room, and watched Andy arrange dental supplies. Daydreaming to ignore the discomfort, she sat while her teeth were capped. She thought of the books.

After a simple lunch, Vanessa found herself in the exam room again, staring at books as she lay under a half-sheet on the table, awaiting the exploratory. She was pricked with a needle to dull the area, and continued to gaze drunk at the volumes, letting them dance and swirl in her vision. Andy and Dr. Moriko mumbled things to each other as they poked and probed at the hump in her back, and the little streams of blood and fluids dripped down her ribs from the thing. She winced now and then, but was otherwise entranced by the bound papers.

Once the base of the hump had been thoroughly gone over, Dr. Moriko announced to Vanessa, where she lay still, that her deformity seemed a simple enough thing to extract. "I've a busy load this week, an emergency came up, so you'll have to wait until next Monday for surgery." With that, he was gone.

Andy remained, to bandage up the little wounds on her back. "Sorry for the wait – Moriko's 'emergency' is a wealthier woman than you, who's paying a lot for eye and forehead and cheek and neck-tightenings. People needing plastic surgery the most come second to the ones who have money and don't need it at all."

"May I read the books?" Vanessa asked as she dressed. "A week is a long time."

"Don't tell the doctor I said yes." Andy led her to her room. "I lock up at night and open in the morning; I'll keep this one open, but if Moriko sees a book missing, or mussed, I'm blaming it on you, OK?"