Chapter 1 - The Bloody Floorboards of Dry Hollow
She had her hands inside his chest before he even knew her middle name.
That was the thought that moved through Nora Hallett's mind as she knelt on the blood-slicked floorboards of the Dry Hollow saloon, pressing a clean cloth hard against the wound in her husband's side while the men around her stood with their backs against the walls and their hats in their hands and their faces the color of cold ash. She had been married to Cale Voss for exactly seventy-one hours.
"You're my wife," he said. His voice came out rough, scraped raw by pain, those dark eyes finding her face through the haze of blood loss. "Not a doctor."
"I am both," she said, and she did not waver, not her voice, not her hands, not her gaze. "And right now, only one of those things is going to keep you alive."
She opened her leather medical bag, her fingers instinctively identifying the cold, familiar steel of her surgical instruments amidst the chaos of the room. Around them, the saloon smelled of spilt whiskey, gunsmoke, and copper. The townspeople were paralyzed. Dry Hollow had a local apothecary who pulled teeth and handed out liniment for aching joints, but no one had ever seen a woman—let alone a delicate-looking mail-order bride from Philadelphia—reach into a man’s torn chest cavity with the cold, unblinking precision of a seasoned combat surgeon.
Cale gasped, his fingers clutching instinctively at the rough floorboards. The gunshot had come from outside, an ambush in the middle of the afternoon when Cale and Nora had been walking down Main Street to pick up supplies. A local cattle rustler named Vance Keller, whose illegal operations Cale had been investigating as the county's deputy, had stepped out from behind the feed store with a Remington revolver and fired point-blank before Cale could draw his own iron. Marcus, the town blacksmith, had put a bullet through Keller's shoulder before the rustler could fire a second shot, but the damage to Cale was already done. The heavy lead slug had torn through his ribs, lodging uncomfortably close to the pleural lining of his lung.
"Nora..." Cale whispered, his breathing growing shallower, the color draining rapidly from his sun-bronzed skin.
"Shut your eyes, Cale," she commanded gently, her voice carrying a quiet authority that brooked no argument. "You’ve spent thirty-two years being stubborn. Don’t pick today to die of it."
She poured a splash of high-proof whiskey over her steel forceps to sterilize the metal, her mind zooming in entirely on the anatomy before her. The men standing around the perimeter watched in stunned, terrified awe. They had whispered behind their hands when Cale brought her home, calling her a city girl who wouldn't last a month in the harsh Texas dust. Now, watching her nimble fingers work with terrifying speed and absolute calm, their collective silence was deafening.
Nora ignored them all. Her world narrowed down to the tear in the tissue, the rhythmic pulse of failing life, and the small piece of lead hidden beneath skin and muscle. With a sharp breath, she slipped the forceps into the wound. Cale arched his back with a stifled roar of agony, his hands gripping the wooden floorboards so hard his knuckles turned white.
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"I've got it," she muttered under her breath.
With a sharp, metallic clink, the bullet dropped into the curved steel kidney basin resting beside his hip. Blood welled up, but Nora was already moving, her suture needle flying with practiced grace, closing the tissue layer by layer while the saloon held its collective breath.
