The Great Grey

He awoke slowly. The first thing that pierced the darkness of his sleep was the ache in his head, and an answer ache in his arm. There were other pains making themselves known as well – his knuckles, his knee, his ribs – but all seemed secondary to his head and arm. A dry stickiness slowed his tongue, and the firmness beneath him left him further confused. Cash remembered the fight. He remembered hurting his arm – breaking it, came the grim memory – and then...

Opening his eyes showed the interior of the clinic that he half-remembered. Whether it was the bitter laudanum, or the injury to his head, the American's remembrance of the night before (which was more like a few hours ago, he amended blearily) was intact, but cloudy. Mortimer had let him in, questioned him about his injury, and set the bone. That much he remembered very clearly. Grimacing, he slowly pushed himself up to a sitting position.

This did no kindness to his head, but as long as he didn't move his arm, that much stayed quiet. There was only a low light in the room; the gas lamp turned low, and dawn's light starting to break through the windows. Still, it was enough for his dark-accustomed eyes to see the splint and bandaging upon his arm. The lighting was less suited to examine the bruises along his ribs and stomach, and Cash couldn't even begin to fight his trousers to look at his knee. Vaguely he was aware of having tripped on his journey here, which probably explained the knee.

Scrubbing at his face, he tried to summon the wherewithal to quit the table that had been his bed for the past few hours. He would need to find his clothes, he decided, and it would probably be wise to also inform the surgeon that he was awake and yet again in his debt. The first step, though, was to do something about his awful mouth. At least the surgeon had seen fit to leave a glass on the near-by table. Presumably he'd seen plenty of people suffering from this particular side-effect.

Cash would've preferred a bit of whiskey, but beggars and so on. A few sips to wet his mouth and chase away the bitterness and the stickiness, and he moved to set it down – his fingers loosening at the wrong moment, though, and his other hand instinctively moving to try and catch it. Instead it shifted the break, and he was left leaning over the table, sweating and momentarily breathless for the pain of it. The glass survived, at least, though it was forgotten now; slammed with a hollow noise against the wood of the tabletop.

The surgeon Mortimer Blake could not say of himself that he was wholly surprised about his nightly visitor. Mr. Boone did not seem the type to listen to precautions about taking things slow. While setting his broken arm had not given Mort much trouble, the laudanum might have been measured with too moch good will and generosity. It had sent the cowboy out to the dark sea of nothing. He had fallen over on the examination table and was fast asleep when Mort bent over him to check his breathing.

Mort had stood at the table and thought if it was worth his trouble to try to carry the tall and heavy man to the bed in the small chamber of the clinic. He decided against it. His arm might not permit it without waking him. And the man could sure use the rest. The American was dirty. He left stains on the tablecloth.

Mort thought about it while he tidied up his rooms, how things had the habit of coming around again. Tables and hurt men, washcloths and paper walls and dark alleys — Life was closing in on Mort in peculiar ways. He did not know what to do about it.

It had been some time since he had last met Cassius Boone. The American had traversed his thoughts from time to time — they did not know much of each other. Mort could not help but wonder nonetheless, if what he had allowed that man to do to him that one night had changed something about himself — surely it was a small and insignificant event in the scale of the life of Mr. Boone — and Mort did not know if it really was a mark on his own history, or if he just made it into one. It was perhaps simply convenient to say that the American was to blame.

Mort glanced over to him; he was a dark and still mound on the table. Mort turned the man on his side, put a woolen blanket over him against the chill of the winter night and extinguished the lights.

When he returned with the morning, Cassius Boone was awake. He was hunched over the table in pain.
"Morning to you, Mr. Boone," Mort said. He stepped closer and picked up the empty glass of water that had fallen from the man's hand onto the countertop. "Can't say that you look like you're having a good go of it."
The room was cold but there was a sweaty sheen on the skin of Mr. Boone. Mort laid a warm hand on his back. "Let's get you sorted then. What's it going to be? Get you dressed and a stiff drink? Or a stiff drink and getting you dressed?"

Mr. Blake seemed in far better spirits, but that was only to be expected, Cash supposed. After all, Mr. Blake did not have a broken arm, hadn't slept on a table (probably), and in general seemed as in good health now as the last time they had seen each other. Were Cash more inclined towards feeling guilt about such things, he might have felt it for the time that had passed since he had inducted the surgeon into the world of the homosexual. There was no real obligation to follow up, to stay in touch, but even still.

Likely any guilt, or feeling of obligation, only raised its head now that he found himself once again receiving the tender the ministrations of the other man.

But Cash still managed a tight smile, especially as the important things were offered. "I'll take the stiff drink now," he accepted thankfully. There was no thought that it was offered for anything but the pain; then again, Cash had been drunk now both times he'd spent time with the surgeon. It would be easy enough for assumptions to be made – and they wouldn't be too far from the truth, in all honesty. "And maybe one after, too."

Careful of his bad arm, Cash scrubbed at his face, chasing away sleep and the way the pain left him feeling drawn and wane. It wasn't the worst injury he'd suffered, not by a long shot, but it was the first time he'd broken a major bone. The alien feeling of it was bad enough, but it had left him shaken in a way he was long since unaccustomed to, even with the injuries he'd suffered in the past. That his head still ached didn't help at all, either.

"We gotta stop meetin' like this, Mr. Blake. I fancy I'm runnin' up quite the bill, here." It was a joke, tired as his voice was, and the smile he managed had less of that tight pain to it; merely betrayed his exhaustion there, too. It wasn't entirely a joke, either; fo all that Mortimer was willing to be charitable last time, this had been a proper visit to a professional, and given where the clinic was – and the quality of it, as much as Cash had seen – no doubt Mortimer usually charged his clients a pretty penny. Cash would pay it, of course, one way or another, but it was an expenditure he hadn't been anticipating nor wanting.

(Then again, did anyone want to have cause to visit a surgeon?)