The Man and The Outlaw

Chapter Twenty Five

Clara felt the sticky warmth of Hector's blood start to seep through the back of her shirt as Riverport came into view. She urged her horse to move faster and prayed for a miracle. She couldn't lose him, not like this. Todd's bullets had taken too much from her already.
"Just hang on," she kept telling him, the words coming out almost unconsciously. Hector didn't reply. He'd stopped groaning several minutes ago and his grip around her waist had loosened. Clara just he would slump off the horse when she stopped. She couldn't tell if he was breathing anymore. She cried harder and rode faster.
She charged her horse right down the busiest street that she came to, shouting at the top of her lungs, "I need a doctor! I need a doctor!" until a good Samaritan that was walking down the sidewalk pointed her in the right direction as she rode by him. She made a mental note to go back and thank him later, if she could find him.
The sign next to the door of the small office building told her that it belonged to one Doctor Howard Kines, MD. Clara jumped off her horse and caught Walker as he fell behind her. She eased him down onto the ground out front of the doc's office as carefully as she could, gravity doing most of the work for her. Then, she burst into the building, shouting that she needed help and the doctor emerged from the back looking a little flustered.
He was a short, balding man with thick black spectacles that magnified his small brown eyes. Clara had to admit that he didn't look like much but there weren't any other options and she had heard good things from others. She just had to hope that they were true. Once again, she was reminded of what Walker (before she knew he was Hector) had said on their ride to Driscoll just a few short days ago. Everything was talk, wasn't it? Talk and rumors.
She and Doctor Kines brought Hector in from outside and he directed her into a room with a padded bed covered in plastic. They got him up onto the table and the doc cut his shirt off with a pair of silver scissors. Clara watched as he observed the bullet wound, making no comment and asking no questions. He seemed to want to get straight to work, he knew the urgency of the situation and Clara's mind began to change about him. When he ordered her to leave the room so he could work, she wanted to argue but the look in his eye told her she'd better not.
She waited in the little waiting room at the front of the building for as long as she could stand before she began to feel claustrophobic, and she'd torn the pages out of an entire magazine. She got up and went outside, loitering near the door, wanting to cry again but not able to produce anymore tears. She was dried out. Too much had happened in the last twelve hours, and she was mentally and physically exhausted.
On the sidewalk, near where Hector had fallen from the horse, she spotted a crumpled pack of his cigarette's. It must've fallen from his pocket when they'd drug him inside. She picked it up and turned it over in her hand. She thought about the first night they'd met, him smoking by the fire while she and Loren asked him questions. She thought about when he offered David Warren a smoke to help her get information from him. She'd never smoked a cigarette in her life, but she felt suddenly compelled to put one to her lips and, before she knew it, she'd smoked the last three in the pack, stifling a few coughs along the way while she tried to get the hang of it.
"You shouldn't smoke," Doctor Kines commented as he stepped out of the office door behind her, wiping sweat from his brow with a handkerchief and then using it to clean his glasses.
"Sorry," Clara replied, dropping the butt between her fingers and squashing it beneath her boot heel like she'd seen Hector do many times before.
"Apologize to your lungs, not me," he shrugged impassively.
Clara smirked and decided that she liked the bald-headed doctor.
"How is he? Is he going to be alright?" she asked after a silence had fallen between them. She was afraid to know the answer, but she had to hear it.
"I was able to repair most of the damage from the bullet and remove the slug completely. The wound will heal if given the time," the doctor said. This was good news and Clara's heart leapt but something was off. The doctor looked like he was holding back.
"Is there a 'but' coming here?" she asked tentatively, chewing the inside of her cheek and trying to swallow this new wave of fear that was bubbling up inside her, chasing away the fleeting moment of hope that she'd been given and that now was cruelly being taken away again.
Doctor Kines sighed and crossed his arms over his chest as he faced her fully, meeting her eyes with a professional stare that told Clara he'd given this kind of news many times before.
"The bullet's not what's killing him, my dear. At least, not the one he took today anyway. Were you aware that he's been shot before? By a .22 bullet, probably ten, fifteen years ago if I had to g—"
"Twenty years ago," Clara murmured, disbelief at what she was hearing causing her voice to sound like it was drifting.
"Alright then, twenty. Either way, that little bullet has corroded and, I'm afraid, the material has been leeching into his bloodstream all that time. Has he been vomiting? Coughing up blood?"
Clara gave a slow nod. She'd noticed specks of blood from time to time would come away with his hand after a particularly severe bout of coughing. The vomiting, of course, was obvious. An awful sense of dread began to engulf her. The doctor's tone was not getting any lighter.
"Ms. Thompson, your friend here has lead poisoning, the most severe case I've ever seen," Doctor Kines told her in a gentle voice. Clara took a deep breath.
"Is there anything you can do?"
He shook his head immediately and Clara found new tears as they dripped down her cheeks.
"I'm afraid not. We could remove the bullet, but it won't do any good. The material is already moving throughout his body and it's going to continue to make him sick as it causes damage to his kidneys and his nervous system. He'll start to have seizures, bouts of unconsciousness, if he hasn't already."
Clara remembered the ride from Kessinger. She saw him falling off his horse, pitching headfirst into the dirt, lying there as his body jerked and spasmed. She turned away from the doctor and stared off towards the horizon where the sun was starting to set. This couldn't be true. It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. She knew that life was inherently unfair, but this was too much.
"I'm really sorry miss," Doctor Kines said from behind her.
"How long does he have?" Clara asked over her shoulder.
"Six months, maybe, but I'd estimate closer to one or two. I'm sorry," he repeated. Clara turned back to him as he offered her an apologetic dip of his head and pulled the front door open, holding it for her.
"You can see him now if you'd like," he told her. "He looks rather familiar to me, if I'm being honest. What did you say his name was again?"
Clara met the man's eyes with a strong and forceful gaze, tears glinting in the lowering sunlight. When she spoke again, her voice was perfect and easy, inhumanely beautiful and unresistingly hypnotic.
"That's Walker Merrill, the man from Brandle. He's a hero."