Healing Hearts (Easton Series #2) Read Online Free Page B

the door.
       “I’ll get that,” Sheriff Easton
cut him off at the pass, and he ran to the kitchen like a wolf racing for cover.
       Jed backtracked to hold Pete on
the table, and before he could get much farther in asserting his dominance, he
heard the rapid fusilage of boots on the wood floor. It was Roy Easton, returned
with another patient, and he was visibly upset.
       “Doc, you gotta help Elijah.” A limp
man leaned against the sheriff. Blood trickled from a gash on his head.
       Jed wearily turned to the publisher
of the Wounded Colt Dispatch , the
town newspaper. Elijah Jones had seen his share of dust ups with angry readers,
but it was usually threats or nicks and bluster. This, however, looked bad.
       “He took it in his head to break a
cheating husband in the paper, and the man broke him instead,” the sheriff
explained.
       Jed nodded, recalling Elijah’s
thinly veiled slap at the adulterer in his weekly morality column. Damn it, why
was Elijah bent on cleaning up the town?
       Jed sat stout, middle-aged Elijah
in a chair along the wall. “You smell of blood and brawl, man. You’re getting
too old for this nonsense,” Jed admonished. He examined Elijah’s head wound as
he shot a glance at the woman who’d competently set an arm and was now
splinting it. “I’m busy here. You’re driving your own coach, Dr. Sutton.”
       “Yes sir,” she called from her
station at the table. She was nearly finished with her efficient wrapping of
boards on the broken limb.
       The sheriff set his hands on his
hips and cleared his throat. “Jed, with this crowd it’s a darn good thing
you’ve got Doctor Sutton.”
       “More like a darn good thing I
sleep with my clothes on,” Jed grumbled.
        The sheriff grinned and
Hannah’s cheeks flamed red.
       “Hell. I meant so I can be ready
to treat patients at any hour.”
       “Yah, sure.” Easton’s chest began
to rumble with laughter.
       “Often I do the same,” Hannah
interjected, “because a doctor has to be ready to serve at a moment’s notice.”
       “Hmmm, that keeping-the-clothes on
scheme explains the mystery of why you doctors don’t have mates or children,”
Easton teased.
       The flush on Hannah’s face
deepened.
       “We’re too busy taking care of
everyone else’s wives and kids,” Jed barked.
       Easton raised his hands in mock
surrender and laughed. “Whoa there, Doc. That’s my excuse for neglecting
marital duty.”
       Roy Easton proceeded to move
between Hannah and Jed as his services were needed. He fetched bandages and
water, and he held back Elijah’s hair as Jed sat on a three-legged stool,
facing the patient, preparing to stitch the man’s cut head.
       “You got whiskey for the pain?”
Easton asked.
        “I gave him morphine, “
Hannah shot from behind.
       “I’m talking about Elijah,” Easton
clarified.
       Jed looked up from his work. “Top
shelf, left side.”
       Easton searched and found the
bottle as Jed cleaned the wound with carbolic acid.
       Hannah’s patient was drifting off,
and she turned to observe Jed’s case.
       “Will you give him the cure-all pill?”
       “What’s that?” quipped Jed.
       “Calomel. Mercury chloride. The
blue mass. Don’t you regulars use it for everything?”
       He paused his stitching in mid air.
“I did studies on it for Hammond.”
       Her gray eyes flew wide. “William
Hammond? The Surgeon General?”
       Jed noted her delicate lashes and
wondered how she’d hold up if she had to travel in a dust storm. “The same. He
came around every now and again. We struck up a correspondence. He was
concerned about the drugs.”
       “Wasn’t Hammond court martialed
and fired in ’64?”
       Jed nodded. “The calomel we
prescribed to sick soldiers gave them diarrhea. In truth, it made them sicker.
I observed the bad effects on patients. I did a trial on it. Some I gave the
drug and some I