My Home From Home (ManxMan)

Chapter 6

Calgary, Alberta 1920

The steam from the locomotive engines dissipated through the air as the sound of the train's whistle sounded and cut through the bone chilling November air. For young Constable Thomas Wilson, he was quite used to the cold prairie Autumns and the utterly frigid winters that were to follow. 

Thomas was born and raised in Fir Creek, as a kid he'd walked to his single room schoolhouse as a child, trudging through the snow in snowshoes and bundled up in a parka, toque, and gloves. But now that he's twenty seven years old and a Constable with the Royal North West Mounted Police, Thomas' life was quite different from that child who trudged through the snow in a fur lined coat.

He came from a small, close knit family; just him and his older sister Sarah raised by their loving parents who'd emigrated from England before the children were born. They didn't have much as a family, but they had one another and that was all that mattered to him. His father was a quiet man who worked hard, toiling away in the town's coal mine to give the children whatever luxuries they could, which was a fraction of what he himself had during his youth. Nonetheless he toiled just as Thomas' mother had as a seamstress; but like many immigrants who struggled in a new land they always tried their best to provide as much as they could for their beloved children even if it meant sacrificing their own happiness in the process.

"Hello there, Constable." Thomas heard a familiar voice, glancing up past the rim of his brown Mountie hat to see Mr Terrence, the station master nodding politely at him.

"Hello there, Mr Terrence, I trust you're well." Thomas said with a smile as the older man reciprocated.

"Oh, not too bad. Bit of a busy day." Mr. Terrence said sarcastically, glancing around the nearly empty railway platform. "So what brings you to Calgary today, Constable?"

"Ah yes, the new doctor is coming in on the afternoon Canada Pacific from Montréal." Thomas pursed his lips with a nod.

"I heard what happened to the last doctor." Mr. Terrence raised his eyebrows, suppressing a chuckle; it'd been quite the scandal and clearly news had travelled to Calgary from the little town of Fir Creek.

When the old town doctor tragically passed away during the Spanish Flu outbreak that'd swept through and decimated much of the world's population the year prior and in his place, the Alberta Ministry of Health sent a replacement doctor; a young strapping city lad from Toronto who often flirted more than was good for him. Though many of Fir Creek's girls found him charming, it was the mayor's wife who ultimately ran off with him, leaving the town steeped in scandal and without a doctor. But all that was to change very soon as Constable Thomas, the young handsome mountie in Fir Lake received a telegram from the Ministry of Health in Edmonton telling him that a new doctor was arriving.

"I feel at this rate half the country will have heard about him." Thomas flashed the man a knowing look with a cheeky smile as the distant sound of a train whistle as it travelled steadily towards the station...

And on that train was none other than young Henry, or as he was now known, "Dr Henry Dunmurry"; the new doctor in a small Alberta mining community called Fir Creek. Adrien asked around and within a week it'd been sorted that Henry would be able to commence work in the small underserved community as soon as humanly possible. Adrien tried to keep Henry in town, he was so terribly fond of him; but ultimately the idea of being nothing more than a dirty little secret waiting for his 'lover' to pay him mind whilst away from his wife and kids wasn't exactly how he'd hoped to live.

Henry didn't know much about the town, though then again he didn't know much about Canada in general. He knew that it was a part of the Empire, but that the people sounded almost American though from the few he'd encountered thus far they seemed like polite and agreeable people. And the beauty of the landscape he watched rolling past mesmerised him to no end as he gazed out the train window at the fleeting views of the golden steppe and burning autumn colours dotting the horizon. He leant over the table before him, resting his elbow on the table as his hand tugged at a handful of his dark hair, smiling as he remembered his little niece whilst his hand grazed over a blank page of his leather-bound diary; the red silk ribbon tucked neatly into the gutter.