Her Healing Ways by Lyn Cote

her. “Aunt Mercy, Lon Mackey has been knifed in the saloon.”
    Cold shock dashed its way through Mercy. As if she’d been tossed into water, she gasped and sucked in air.
    â€œIt’s serious. We must hurry.” Indigo set the candlestick on the potbellied stove and began pulling a dress on over her nightgown. Then in the shadows, she bent, opened the trunk at the end of the room and pulled out two black leather bags, one with surgical items and one with nursing supplies.
    Mercy sat, watching Indigo by the flickering candlelight. Her feet were still rooted to the cold floor.
    â€œAin’t you gonna get up, lady—I mean, lady doctor?” one of the men asked. “The gambler’s unconscious and losing blood. He needs a doc.”
    Indigo turned and snagged both their wool shawls from a nail on the wall. “Aunt Mercy?”
    â€œYeah,” one of the other men said, “the gambler asked for you—by name. Come on.”
    He asked for me. The image of Lon bleeding snapped the tethers that bound her to the floor. Mercystirred, forcing off the apathy. She slid her feet into her shoes and dragged herself up. “Let’s go.”
    Outside for the first time in days, she shivered in the October night air, shivered at once more being outside, vulnerable. Thinking of Lon and recalling how he’d done whatever she needed, whatever she’d asked during the cholera outbreak, she hurried over the slick, muddy street toward the saloon. In the midst of the black night, oil lamps shone through the swinging door and the windows, beckoning.
    The men who’d come to get them hurried forward, shouting out, “The lady doc is coming!”
    Mercy and Indigo halted just outside the door. Having difficulty drawing breath, Mercy whispered, “Pray.” Indigo nodded and they entered side by side. The bright lights made Mercy blink as her eyes adjusted. Finally, she discerned where the crowd was thickest.
    She headed straight toward the center of the gathering, her steps jerky, as if she were walking on frozen feet. “Nurse Indigo,” she said over her shoulder, “get the bar ready for me, please.” But a glance told her that Indigo was already disinfecting the bar in preparation.
    The gawking men parted as Mercy swept forward.
    One unfamiliar man popped up in front of her. “Hold it. A woman doctor? She might do him more harm than good.”
    Before Mercy could respond, the dissenting manwas yanked back and shoved out of her way, the men around all chorusing, “The gambler asked for her.”
    Unchecked, Mercy continued, her strength coming back in spurts like the blood surging, pulsing through her arteries. Her walking smoothed out.
    She had never doctored with such a large crowd pressing in on every side. She sensed the men here viewed this as a drama, a spectacle. Still, she kept her chin up. If they’d come to see the show, she’d show them all right.
    Then she saw Lon. He had been stretched out on a table, a crimson stain soaking the front of his white shirt and embroidered vest. An invisible hand squeezed the breath from her lungs and it rushed out in a long “Oh.”
    A young woman in a low-cut, shiny red dress was holding a folded towel over the wound. She looked into Mercy’s eyes. “This was all we had to stop the bleeding.”
    Mercy nodded, drawing up her reserves. “Excellent.” She put her black bag on the table beside Lon and lifted out the bottle of wood alcohol. She poured it over both her trembling hands, hoping to quiet her nerves as she disinfected. To hide the quivering of her hands, she shook them and then balled them into fists. “Let me see the wound, please.”
    The young woman lifted the blood-soaked towel and stepped back. She was the only one who did so—everyone else pressed in closer. “Please, friends,” Mercy stated in a firm tone, forcing the quaveringfrom her voice, “I