The Surgeon

“Stop arguing with everything I say.”

She groaned and kept walking. And groaned again as they entered the small doorway and encountered the two elderly women Sarah had met on the train. While Sarah had kept her personal business to herself for a thousand miles, she’d opened up to them halfway here, around Saskatoon. Sadly, it had been enough time to blab everything.

“Hello, Mrs. Lott, Mrs. Thomas,” said Sarah.

“Why, hello young lady,” said the thinner one, Mrs. Lott, with the kind wrinkled green eyes. “I see you’re here with your new groom-to-be.”

Sarah introduced them to John, who’d never met them. The sisters had obviously heard of him, though. Being the town’s only surgeon, it was understandable.

Sarah squirmed under the sisters’s scrutiny and John cleared his throat.

Mrs. Thomas, the one with the head of completely white hair, turned to John. The older women both looked tiny and frail standing next to his bronzed body. “Sarah told us on the train that she’d been corresponding with a lovely young man. Imagine our surprise when she told us it was you, Dr. Calloway. Have you set the date?”

Sarah swallowed hard and avoided looking at John. “There’s not going to be a wedding.”

“Dear me,” said Mrs. Lott, clutching at her throat. “Why?”

“There was a mix-up, it seems. Dr. Calloway wasn’t the…It wasn’t the doctor who…”

John stepped in, removing his hat. “It was a miscommunication is what it was. I’m helping Sarah to settle in. She just found employment at Ashford Jewelers. Won’t you congratulate her?”

The women gaily offered their best wishes, but Sarah knew she couldn’t avoid the questions forever.

“Perhaps you ladies might keep her in mind if you’re in the market for a lovely strand of pearls or a ring to adorn those pretty fingers.”

The older women giggled. They did look rather wealthy, judging by their fine clothes and necklaces. “Why, Dr. Calloway, we didn’t think you noticed such things.”

As the conversation mellowed, Mrs. Lott turned to Sarah. “Would you and the doctor care to join us for dinner? We could meet here, later, say around seven?”

Sarah craned her neck awkwardly up at John, wondering what he thought.

His response seemed smooth and well rehearsed. “I’m afraid I must decline.”

“But we insist,” said Mrs. Lott.

“Unfortunately, I’m needed in surgery.”

Mrs. Lott put her warm hands on top of Sarah’s. “But you’ll join us, won’t you, dear?”

“Certainly.” Sarah’s tension eased. Perhaps it wouldn’t be too bad living here. John’s standing beside her indicated his support and respect in this town, and unless the Mounties leaked the truth, no one needed to know that her arrival had been a hoax. Perhaps she could hold her head high. Perhaps the town would welcome her.

“And where might you ladies be off to, this fine morning?” John inquired as they passed in a cloud of perfume.

“Why, you might call it a family reunion. Our young nephew is here from New York City, and we’re off to visit our cousin, Mrs. Polly Fitzgibbon.”

Chapter Five

“How on earth did you get a bullet lodged in your thigh?” In a sour mood and troubled by the man’s injury, John asked the question later that afternoon at the hospital.

Sprawled on the examination table with his trouser leg torn apart, Corporal Travis Reid groaned in pain. John had given him an opiate, but hadn’t wanted to sedate the man too heavily until after his anesthesia and bullet extraction.

“We were hunting. O’Malley thought he saw a doe scrambling through the woods. His shot ricocheted off a maple and hit me in the thigh.”

Irritation nipped at John. The hospital needed more medical officers. Standing beside him on the surgical ward, Logan, the veterinarian, was ready with his doused rag of chloroform. An animal doctor.

“And now you’re out of commission due to an irresponsible hunting accident.”

Travis grimaced, trying to make light of the situation. “No venison for supper tonight, either.”

John was beyond amusement. He was tired and hungry and mad at their carelessness. “Never mind the venison,” he snapped. “Out of eighty-eight men, we’ve got eleven out due to injuries. The others got hurt in the line of duty, but this injury was totally unnecessary. Couldn’t you be more careful?”

“Sure, Doc,” Travis snarled. “But not everything’s always right or wrong. A man’s gotta have distractions, not work all the time. But I reckon you don’t know much about that.”

John balked. No one had ever talked back to him. And then his temper dissipated as he realized he was berating an injured man. “Dammit, Travis, sorry.”

With a softer nod, Travis succumbed to the chloroform. John removed the slug then sutured the wound.

What was wrong with him lately? Why did he bark at everyone? When Travis was settled, John sought the privacy of his quarters. He tried to convince himself that he wasn’t the lone man Travis made him out to be.

But since Christmas there’d been no time to spend with women, no time to take a leave, no time to go hunting or fishing, no riding to the foothills. The police were busy.

Just last week the Grayveson gang had stolen forty-eight mustangs a hundred and fifty miles to the south. By the time the Mounties had given chase, the outlaws had faded across the American border. Cross-border gangs had been one of the main reasons the Mounties had been formed by the federal government sixteen years ago. That and the illegal whiskey trade with the Indians. But the Grayveson gang would probably be back, selling the Montana horses and cattle they would probably steal next to the folks in Alberta where the brands weren’t recognized.

Maybe Wesley had had the right idea. If it’d been John who’d died instead, would he have been satisfied with what he’d accomplished in his life so far? Poor Wesley had been robbed of his life; the loss had triggered John to think more about his own direction. Was work all that fulfilled him?

When he was a younger man, he’d envisioned himself in the future with a wife and children, maybe grandchildren in his retirement years. But he hadn’t had the time or the inclination to look for a wife. There wasn’t much choice, unless he went for a fifteen-or sixteen-year-old daughter of one of the ranchers, or the occasional European immigrant, or a daughter of one of the Metis Indians. And the years kept passing by.

John was forty years old today. Like most of his private affairs, he kept his birthdate to himself. But what had happened to his vision of family?

He sifted through the medical journals that he’d picked up from the train depot. He leafed through them with disappointment. It looked like this month’s British medical journals wouldn’t supply any answers to his other problem, either. During the twelve months he’d been treating the blacksmith on Angus McIver’s ranch, John hadn’t been able to pinpoint the man’s illness. The blacksmith was only thirty years old yet sometimes he walked with a shaking palsy, like an old man.

Rubbing the back of his neck, John looked up at the wall clock. Six-fifteen. Sarah would be having dinner soon.

She could be a major distraction. Hell, she was already.

If marriage was what she wanted and why she was here, he was certain she’d soon find a husband. With her pretty smile and ready attitude for hard work, she’d have suitors begging for her company. Some men might consider her to be a handful, but her amusing tongue lashings reminded John of his younger sister. He and Beth had been closest in age and they’d argued night and day. After she’d passed away so suddenly, he’d felt guilty for years about their constant bickering, but as he’d matured, he’d realized they had only been children and the arguments hadn’t meant he’d loved his sister less.

He missed Beth. And his younger twin brothers, Hank and James…Much to his mother’s annoyance, John had been the only child who hadn’t eaten any of the food at the fairgrounds that Sunday. He’d had an upset stomach and couldn’t eat, but wouldn’t admit to the nausea or his ma wouldn’t have allowed him to ride the carousel. The rest had stuffed themselves with sausage and bread and vegetable soup and corn on the cob, then licorice and walnuts and mints. And lots and lots of water. Contaminated water. That’s how they’d contracted the typhoid that had killed them. He and his ma and pa had been the only ones left standing. Ten other children had died that week, as well.

The wall clock chimed six-thirty. Why hadn’t Sarah married before this? Why had she been so desperate to answer a newspaper advertisement and why so far away from home? Or was she simply as alone in the world as he was?

His stomach growled with hunger. Rising out of his chair, he strode to his closet. Donning a newly ironed dress shirt and his Sunday pair of pants, he headed out the door. It was his fortieth birthday, and what did he have to lose?

“Mrs. Lott, here I am!” Sarah rushed down the carpeted stairs, hoping to catch Mrs. Lott and her sister before they escaped into the milling crowd. The boardinghouse owner had established a reputation as an excellent cook and there was often a lineup for her dining room.

Lifting the fabric of her finest blue twill skirt so she wouldn’t trip down the stairs, Sarah waved again but the two women ignored her as they headed to the front door. They were going in the wrong direction.

Sara shouted louder. “Mrs. Lott! Mrs. Thomas!”