Work Text:
Dawn crawls through Doc's bedroom like an infant on a dirt floor, the gray light glinting on dust bunnies floating through the air. The wooden floor creaks underfoot as Kitty pushes the door open wider, entering on the balls of her feet. Sparse decoration, fitting for a lifelong bachelor, with a patchy quilt she has mended too many times, a stained pillowcase from the times Doc has offered his own bed to his patients, just as he has done now. The sheer curtain flutters in the breeze from a window left cracked. Kitty knows the curtain well: she made it, hand-crafted as a gift many years ago, when she first came to Dodge and couldn't afford any other way to pay Doc for his care.
She also knows why the window is ajar.
Chester rests on Doc's bed, a tall oak frame and plush mattress formed from more than cornhusks. Blessedly, he is quiet, peaceful, different from the last time she saw him—his body caught in a futile fight against an infection from which he will never emerge. Septic pneumonia, Doc calls it.
Kitty has some words for it herself. Unfair. She sits beside him on the mattress. It sinks under her weight. Cruel. His breath catches in his chest at the shift. Evil. The crackle of fluid in his exhale sends goosebumps rippling down her arms.
Evil is the best word for it. His Bible juts out from under the mattress. She picks it up and places it on his abdomen. "I thought Matt would be here," she says.
He doesn't answer. His face is still, in the uneasy sort of peace a dying person gets. His pallor matches the plumbeous sky. His eyelashes no longer flutter. He breathes unevenly, his ribs sunken, pounding heart visible through his chest, opposite the gargles, a rhythm of a song she has heard before.
She remembers her mother like this. She remembers the rattle in her chest, the green slime dribbling from the corner of her mouth, the water blisters oozing on her arms. She remembers how the whites of her eyes yellowed, first slow, then all at once, until they matched the buff shade of her unwashed linen. Mostly, she remembers the second she died: open eyes, staring off into space, fixing on nothing, glassy with the film of death, until the pupils dilated black.
Sitting beside Chester now, she is seven years old again, hearing a distant cry of, "Mama, mama, mama."
His brow pours sweat, dark hair slicked to his forehead. She sweeps it back from his eyes. It's overgrown, past due for a haircut. The last time she gave him a beer, she offered to cut it for him. "Mr. Dillon says we ourghta go fishing tomorrow. Ain't no use getting unscruffy just to head down to the watering hole." It was the last time she saw him before the slaughter, before the gunfire drew everyone into the street, before she emerged from the saloon with her garter belt crooked and her john stumbling into his boots to find Matt carrying Chester's bleeding body toward Doc's office.
When Matt came out, she tried to clean his hands. He pawed her off and walked away with coagulated blood drying brown beneath his fingernails.
"Oh, Chester," she whispers, her thumb tracing his eyelid.
Beneath the touch, his eye twitches.
She freezes. He garbles another breath. No movement, nothing else to indicate he can feel her. It's her imagination, she decides. He doesn't know she's here. Matt wouldn't have left him alone if he knew. "We love you, Chester." Her voice chokes.
The front door squeals its rusted hinges as Doc enters. He nudges it closed behind himself with his foot. "Matt?" His palpable exhaustion lingers in the air, as proliferous as the Kansas dust hovering between them, coating everything, even Chester's sweat-glossed lips. Bundled up in his coat, Doc clutches a wiggling form, one she can't discern in the dimness of the impending weather.
"He's not here, Doc."
He turns to enter the bedroom. As he opens his coat, the shape of Chester's cat becomes visible. She thrashes in protest, all claws and teeth, flailing with righteous indignation at being carried away from her home. "Oh, blast it—you infernal animal!" The tabby rakes a foot down the sleeve of his coat and launches off of his chest, landing on the foot of the bed. "Matt's not here?"
Kitty strokes Chester's hair again. "I came up to spell him, but he was already gone when I got here." The cat licks down her ruffled fur, perching on her haunches.
Hands on his hips, a deep frown sets on Doc's lips. "He said he'd stay til I got back. He ought not to have left Chester alone." He flanks her. "How is he?"
"I—I don't know." She holds Chester's face in her hands. "I thought he tried to blink." With the hem of the pillowcase, she dabs at a tear forming in the corner of his eye. No movement as her fingertips caress his eyelashes. "It might have just been in my head." Chester has long eyelashes, the beautiful sort a person only ever sees on girls. She loves the way they frame his soulful doe eyes, milky with wonder like a newborn calf's, the dark reflection of herself with all the ardor of a man who loves his friends more than he loves the breath in his own lungs.
A halting breath catches in Chester's throat. For a long moment, she wonders if he is going to breathe again.
Doc tuts quietly to himself. "Wishful thinking, Kitty." He sinks onto the bed beside them, hands on his knees, hanging his head in defeat. "He's dying," he murmurs, like he can't bring himself to believe it. Perhaps if he repeats it, it will feel more real to him. It's surreal to Kitty, her best friend swallowed by death, the anticipatory grief of watching helplessly as sickness consumes a man whole.
Another breeze floats through the window. Outside, a rogue clump of weeds damps with the dew, squashed in the middle of Front Street. The hooves of a plough horse drawing a wagon flatten it underfoot.
Chester's cat perks her ears at the sound of the harness jangling below. She strolls over his feet in the bed and leaps into the windowsill to watch, fascinated by her higher vantage point. Suddenly, Doc's kidnapping her from Chester's cot in the jail is tolerable.
"Matt was sleeping with the cat," Kitty says thoughtfully.
"Hm?"
"The morning after the shooting, when you sent me to fetch him. He wasn't in his room."
"He wasn't?"
Slowly, Kitty shakes her head.
Clicking his tongue, Doc beckons the cat with two curling fingers. She turns from the window. She chirps. With an elegant leap, she lands on the bed again. She steps across Chester's body, preoccupied with the alert humans, the ones who might offer her some affection. Thrusting her cold nose into the palm of Kitty's hand, she earns a dismissive pat on the head. Doc, though, reaches to stroke her. He scratches along her tail.
The cat nuzzles into Doc's hand, her whiskers on his soul lines. "He was in Chester's bed. Hugging his pillow. With the cat right next to him."
The cat crawls into the crook of Chester's shoulder, where she nestles, her tail wrapping neatly around her body, paws tucked up under herself. A purr rattles in the depth of her chest, a hollow sound reverberating. Drool drips from the corners of her mouth, her eyes half-closed with a squint of affection. "He put on Chester's shirt," she says, dwelling in the memory, how Matt rifled through Chester's trunk as if to choose his favorite garment, his hands batting away the suspenders.
"I noticed the shirt." Doc pats the cat. "Pidge." She lifts her head, chiming a sound.
"Is that her name?"
"That's what Chester calls her." Pidge rubs her face against Chester's arm. When she doesn't elicit a response from him, she creeps nearer to his face, smearing her happy drool on his union suit. "He thinks an awful lot of her. Not for any good behavior on her part, mind. Right there with that pony."
Kitty raises her eyebrows. In spite of herself, she gives a rueful smile, caressing Chester's cheek. "He takes to animals who don't suffer fools. That's what he told me."
A single dimple flashes in Doc's cheek. "Funny, considering he is one."
It's nearly too painful to ask. "How much longer would you say, Doc?"
He places a hand on her shoulder, massaging a soothing circle into her scapula. Ripping her gaze from Chester's troubled face, she faces Doc. With his hand raking down his maw, he shakes his head. Pearlescent light of the wilting April morning brightens the silver in his hair. He has never looked more old. "Matt left the window open for a reason."
Her stomach flips. "I know." Chester's skin scalds her like an iron. Not heat; his fever died sometime yesterday, his body too exhausted to fight any longer. Just a twist of anguish in her gut that stabs the palm of her hand. She can't bear to touch him. "Doc—" She chokes on her own words, tension clenching in her throat. Tears blur her vision, her lower lip wobbling.
Doc embraces her. She flings her arms around him, burying her face in the crook of his neck to weep. The collar of his shirt catches every tear, rings of salt stains damp, like Chester's union suit, soaked dark at his armpits. She pulls back to apologize, but Doc hides his face in her hair, and she knows she, too, is wet with his sorrow.
Dull flickers of heat lightning illuminate the horizon, swallowed by misty clouds. The sounds: distant thunder rumbling nearer. The cat purring. Their sniffles and cracked tones, not enough logic to form whole words. Chester's ragged breathing.
Abruptly, it picks up: faster, deeper. One lip creases deeper, like he's tasted something bitter.
They withdraw from one another, both facing him. "Oh, Chester," Kitty breathes. She places her hand on his dewy forehead. "It's okay. It's okay."
Two fingers press to the inside of Chester's wrist. Reaching for his watch chain, Doc flicks open the dial, counting out his pulse, silently mouthing the numbers. A crease appears between his eyes, a troubled purse to his lips. "What is it, Doc?" She combs her fingers through his wet hair again.
He shakes his head. "Nothing, Kitty." He closes his watch, tucking it into his pocket. Then he picks up Chester's hand, placing it on top of his Bible where it rests on his belly.
Chester's hand closes around the touch. Loose fingers grasp at Doc, a brief clasp. His grip breaks. The limb relaxes atop the holy book.
Doc stares, his face unreadable. "Doc?" Kitty whispers.
He leans over, catching Chester's lower eyelid beneath his thumb. Wordless, he peels it down.
The brightening dawn conflicts with the storm clouds rolling over Dodge. In the bloom of light, pale shadow, the dark hickory of his iris glints like a gemstone, the darkest topaz Kitty has ever seen. The pupil constricts. "Doc, is he—" He focuses on them, the inexpert honing of a man who never chose to live behind a gun. Kitty butts her head nearer.
A lock of ginger hair loosens from her plait and falls from her shoulder, waving near his face. It drifts in the cool, humid zephyr. Chester's eye tracks it, following the movement, before shifting up. He stares blankly at her face. His lips buffer against one another once, a long shape, nearly a hum. A faint hiss breeches the back of his throat. "Msss."
It's nearly familiar, nearly recognizable, nearly her name in Chester's purview: "Miss Kitty."
Doc allows his eyelid to fall shut. He doesn't open his eyes again.
"What does that mean, Doc?"
His mouth twists, grim. But his eyes crease at the corners, something of a ruthless smile, a soldier trembling and wounded after a victory that feels nothing like a victory. "It means Chester isn't quite as dead as we thought he was."
Kitty picks up Chester's hand from his Bible. He squeezes. She folds their palms against one another. Then, gingerly, she allows his hand to rest on the cat. Her meow vibrates. Chester's fingers curl into her fur.
Outside, it begins to rain. Doc rises from the bed.
He closes the window.