Page 14 of Bitter Heat
The line was a varied one but commonly marked with misery. There were a couple of green-around-the-gills and ill-dressed betas holding a vomit bucket between them, an alpha wearing a ratty shirt and gripping a bloody rag around his opposite hand, a terrified pater grasping a baby who kept turning purple with a violent cough, and a skinny, wailing omega supported by hisÉrosgápewhile blood soaked through his pants. These were only a few of the patients Janus glimpsed as he came off the forest path.
At first, he didn’t know what to do, stunned by this sudden and grotesque demonstration of humanity’s suffering, but then he lifted his shoulders, pushed on, and entered the stable in search of Dr. Crescent. And he found him straight away. A bear of a man with huge hands, a long beard, and a craggy face, he was working on setting a teenage boy’s broken leg. With barely a glance at Janus, he barked out, “Well, get to it. Do what you can. These folks don’t have all day, and I’ve only got this one pair of hands.”
Introductions were apparently unnecessary. Janus washed his hands in hot water kept over a wood-burning stove set up in a former horse stall, and then he did as ordered. He turned to the first man in line, wondering if he should go in order, or by need—worrying especially for the bleeding omega. But there was no time to ask because suddenly a patient was before him, an alpha—tall, impatient, and brutish—thrusting his injured hand out for help.
Janus cleaned out and then stitched up the alpha’s finger, though he’d only ever read about the technique in books before. The tug of the thread through skin unnerved him, but he pressed on, and the big man gritted his teeth, not letting out even a peep of pain. Eventually, he closed the cut, and Dr. Crescent flicked an approving glance Janus’s way before yelling at the patient, “Keep it slathered in honey, you hear me? If it gets infected, come back.”
Then the alpha, who’s name Janus had never even gathered, shoved a handful of nuts at him as payment. Janus accepted them and put them in his own pants pocket, unsure what else he might be supposed to do with them. Then he listened helplessly to the next man in line: a scrawny, young omega with bright yellow hair—the boy couldn’t have been more than eighteen—with a sick newborn baby. The man looked near tears as he described the onset of the infant’s illness.
“It was sudden-like, and all. My alpha said to bring ’im to doc. I’m scared.” His voice wobbled. “He’s so hot, and he won’t chestfeed, and…” He broke down in tears.
Dr. Crescent jerked his patient’s broken leg again, apparently having trouble getting the bone just right. Everyone shuddered as the teenager wailed. Then Dr. Crescent, having waited out the scream, called over his shoulder to Janus, “Elderberry syrup and willow tablet. In the stall by the end. You’ll recognize the bottle and tin?”
Janus nodded.
Dr. Crescent then flicked his eyes toward the young omega and said, “Charlie, chew the tablet for the babe, and spit the goo in his mouth. Careful he don’t choke on it. Brings the fever down. Syrup three times during daylight hours and two in the night. Sleep him sitting up. Keeps the mucus from his lungs. Rough few nights ahead for you and Dax, but hopefully, little Ellis here’ll live, and that’s what matters.”
Then he’d turned his attention back to setting and binding the broken leg with wooden splints and bandages, his movements deft and sure, while the teenage boy—probably a beta, since he hadn’t presented yet—whimpered, his young, blotchy face wet with tears.
The young omega, Charlie, looked to Janus with wide, dark eyes, his cheeks a bit hollow like he wasn’t getting quite enough food so he wouldn’t drain his own stores of nutrition while chestfeeding the baby. “Is that true, Doc? Ellis’ll live?”
Janus cleared his throat, about to deny that he was a doctor and to refuse any guarantees, when Dr. Crescent said, “Tell ’im it’s a good chance, Dr. Heelies.”
“I’m not a doc—”
“You work with me? You’re a doctor.”
Janus swallowed back further protest and smiled reassuringly at Charlie. He touched the baby’s soft, wet cheek, feeling the fever burn his hand, and said, “Dr. Crescent is confident that, if you follow his prescription, your son will come through this illness. Now let me round up the medicine for you.”
Charlie actually paid Janus with coin, and as soon as the young man took his still-squalling babe away, Dr. Crescent nodded toward a jar on a long table covered in gruesome-looking, though thankfully clean, doctoring tools. The jar had a few coins at the bottom. “Add it in there. Then get your next patient, son. The bleeding omega, please, in case he’s hemorrhaging. And watch that you don’t offend his alpha during the exam. You know how we can be.”
Janus blinked at Dr. Crescent. “Alone?”
“There’s a curtained off table there. Make sure no one sees his omega’s body ’cept you. Get on with it, Doctor. This isn’t a game. These people need help.”
Shaking with fear, Janus motioned both the bleeding omega and his huge alpha back behind the curtain where he did his level best to help without doing anything that would cause the alpha to beat him to bits.
Eventually determining that the miscarriage was complete, no lingering fragments to cause hemorrhaging, he gave the omega a small dose of a new clotting agent he was surprised to see Dr. Crescent had on hand. He delivered the sad news to neither of their surprise and prescribed rest and pampering until the bleeding had stopped. The alpha, obviously in love with his omega, seemed eager to comply, and so Janus decided to lean into it. Noting how weak the omega was, he suggested the alpha carry him home if no other means of transport was available. And after paying Janus with a handful of beans, the man proceeded to do just that.
Unsure what to do with them, Janus put the beans in the jar with the coins, dug the nuts from the first patient out of his pocket to add to the jar, and went on to the next patient.
By lunch, Janus was exhausted and confused. He’d never seen so many sick and hurt people, never imagined that so many folks populated the mountains. “Is it always this way?” he asked as Dr. Crescent led him toward his cabin set far enough away from the stables to provide some privacy, even though there were still a good number of less critical patients waiting for Janus or Dr. Crescent to see them after they finished eating.
“Only in the springtime,” Crescent said. “Plenty of folk have been holed up in their cabins waiting for the snow to go away, nursing sickness or injuries in their stubborn way. Pride keeps ’em from coming right at first, but they make it down eventually. Doesn’t hurt that I sent out a notice that I’d have a new doctor working with me starting today. Curiosity drew part of this crowd.”
Inside, Dr. Crescent’s cabin was neat and tidy. Janus was surprised, though he didn’t know why, when a small, black-haired omega turned from the old-fashioned wood stove wearing nice-fitting pants, a fresh, white shirt, black apron, and an assessing expression.
“Fan, this is that city boy I was telling you about. Janus Heelies, this is my Fan. Fan Dunigo.”
They wereÉrosgápe, Janus guessed, based on the looks that passed between them, and the shiver of pleasure that jolted through Fan at the doctor’s possessive declaration.
Quickly, Fan stepped forward, a steady, small hand reaching out to Janus. “I’m grateful you’ve come to help my Crow. He’s needed it for a long time now, but help is hard to come by.”
“He’s not helping me, dumplin’,” Dr. Crescent said with a tenderness he’d lacked with even the most suffering of patients. “I’m helping him, remember?”
Fan’s smile was nearly a smirk, but he ducked his head submissively, and said, “Oh, yes—my mistake. We’re happy to help you, Janus. Aren’t we, Crow?”
Dr. Crescent shrugged. “I could take ’im or leave ’im. What’s for lunch?”
