Chapter Text
Doc had no clue how right he was, not until he was hunched over the saddle of his horse barely three days after he got shot. His side was not being forgiving about it, either, and each breath ached, let alone when the horse actually moved.
To give credit to Wyatt, he’d joined forces with Kate in a desperate attempt to keep him on bedrest from the comfort of his own bed in town. It was a losing battle, and Wyatt gave up shortly before Kate did. The idea of languishing away in bored convalescence while both of his favorite Earps rode across the desert on their suicidal mission without him to watch their backs made him sick. He may be dying, but he sure as hell wasn’t yellow.
Still, it wasn’t hard to feel a small measure of regret in his decision the longer he sat in the saddle, and that was just keeping pace with the wagons carrying Virgil’s body and the women’s stuff. He couldn’t say he was excited for when they truly began to ride hard.
Morgan had offered up his spot on the wagon for Doc, but he could see the dark circles beneath the man’s eyes and the grief on his shoulders, and so Doc had just politely declined. Silently, he mourned the opportunity of a more restful drive, and blamed his southern heritage. A man could leave Georgia, but Georgia won’t ever leave the man. He was a semi-living testament to that fact, bemused as he was by it.
Most of the ride up to Tucson was a hot and dusty blur, with him passing out the first night while the others were still unloading their bedrolls. He was also the last to wake, with Wyatt looking immensely guilty at the fact that he was the one in charge of waking Doc in the first place. If he didn’t feel like such shit, he likely would’ve laughed at how cowed Wyatt was by a dying man.
The second day was marginally longer, with them reaching the train station just as the sun was setting and the final departure for the day was loading its passengers for the long ride ahead.
Doc just about managed to drop out of the saddle, but he stayed beside his horse and hoped that the other men didn’t find him disrespectful for not seeing the women off.
It took the entire time of them loading up supplies and themselves before Doc managed to draw in a full breath that didn’t make him want to cough hard enough to tear his stitches. They didn’t need any more help to heal as slowly as possible; due to the nature of this ride of theirs, costly supplies would be few and far between, so Doc had resigned himself to rationing out his bandages and whiskey for as long as he could. By the way he felt faint any time he turned a little too fast, he didn’t exactly have high hopes for a great success.
All he truly cared about was making sure his absence wasn’t the reason another Earp was put in the ground, not again. Much as he wasn’t Virgil’s biggest fan, he knew he should have been with Wyatt to keep an eye on things, because the Cowboys were many things but subtle wasn’t one of them. They all knew something was coming, and Doc had still decided to drink alone in one of the saloons the Earps did not frequent in an attempt to distance himself from his feelings toward Wyatt.
Load of good that did him, was all he could think as he watched Wyatt shoot Stilwell while the train pulled from the station.
He put a shaking hand on one of his six-guns just in case, but Ike scurried off back from where he came with little fuss and a satisfying little trail of blood. Good.
He locked eyes with Wyatt from where he stood several feet away over the body of Frank Stilwell, and he knew that his decision to follow had been a good one. Morgan’s unusually silent presence on the other side of him solidified that idea.
He may not be good for much more than gambling and drinking, and perhaps dying on his more maudlin days, but he would do his best to keep those two hot-headed idiots alive, even if it did spell his death a little earlier than he’d originally hoped for.
No matter. He’d do his job, just as he’d signed on to do.
A week into their endeavor and six Cowboys dead and left to rot in the Arizona heat, Doc was beginning to feel as if he was grasping onto consciousness with the tips of his fingers, clinging on desperately with his nails. Each time he even so much as blinked, it took effort to keep from listing in the saddle.
And just his luck, he’d begun to develop some sort of infection that in turn irritated his cough. Probably the sand, and the fact that he couldn’t change the bandages to his wound as often as he should be. Judging by the faces of everyone else around him when they thought he wasn’t looking, he must look about as healthy as he felt.
It was a hotter day than usual, and Doc was even thirstier because of it. He found he’d gone through nearly the entirety of his canteen by noon, and forcing himself to ration it made him feel even worse.
By the time the sun was setting and Wyatt finally called for camp, each step the horse beneath him took made him feel like he was caught within a tornado. The sweat that was pouring down his face and between his shoulder blades was enough to even concern him, in a muted sort of concern. Everything felt kind of distant, really. Except for the aching heat and the sharp throbbing in his side. And of course the nausea. He hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast, or even supper the night before, but his stomach didn’t seem to care.
Climbing out of the saddle felt as if it took years, with all his joints creaking and his arms shaking at the strain of holding himself up. He felt so weak, all of a sudden, and he stumbled to the side while blinking black spots from his vision.
It didn’t work, but the nausea finally decided to commit, and the saliva pooling in his mouth had a distinctly acidic feel to it that burned up his sensitive throat.
Ducking beside the horse and gripping onto the saddle horn to keep his balance, he heaved once, twice, and nothing came up. But a third heave, strong enough to make the pain in his side feel as if it was tearing, finally brought up all the water he’d guzzled over the course of the day, with bile quickly following it.
His ears were ringing so loud and he was still gagging so hard on nothing, that he didn’t know Wyatt was there until a concerned hand pressed onto his shoulder.
He startled so bad at the touch that he shot up straight, immediately regretting it when his vision completely whited out.
When it faded back in, he was tiredly relieved to see only a few seconds had passed, even if he had somehow ended up on the ground, with Wyatt’s face above him overshadowed due to the setting sun.
“Doc, what’s wrong?” Wyatt pressed, gripping tight to Doc’s shoulder. Doc shivered, despite being drenched in sweat.
“I…” His thoughts felt slow and his tongue too big for his mouth. He swallowed, barely able to hold back a gag at the taste. Without thinking, his right hand reached up and grabbed at his side, hissing through his teeth at the fire that sparked through his chest at the contact.
He turned his head away from Wyatt and coughed, hacking and wheezing and digging his fingers into the coarse sand, desperate for some sort of reprieve from the overwhelming amount of sensations occurring all at once.
Wyatt didn’t say anything, he just reached behind Doc and rubbed between his shoulder blades, and while physically it didn’t do much to fix Doc’s cough, it made him feel some sort of way to know Wyatt cared enough to try.
It took a long while for his coughing to abate, and after it did he just slumped back into the sand and listened to himself wheeze while Wyatt watched him with a concerned gaze.
“Think it’s my side,” Doc finally managed to mutter out, feeling the throbbing along his ribs each time his heart beat. The fact that he was also unduly cold when he’d spent the entire day sweating through his clothes also felt like a bad sign.
Wyatt peered down at him for another moment before climbing to his feet with a groan and walking back toward his horse. The sun was low enough that Doc had to strain his eyes to see anything with any depth. Twilight was the most annoying time of day, in his humble opinion.
Doc closed his eyes and attempted to breathe through the pain of his wound, his usual chronic pain, and the swirling nausea that still lingered despite there being nothing left in him.
Thankfully, it didn’t take Wyatt long to return, this time with a lit lantern and his saddlebags.
“Have you been takin’ care of that hole in your side?” Wyatt asked, dropping the saddlebags at his feet and setting the lantern at Doc’s.
Doc grimaced. “Er. No. I didn’t want to be the reason we had to stop in town for more supplies,” he admitted grudgingly. “Been as sparing with the bandages as I could be.”
Wyatt sighed loudly and kneeled back down. Without even looking in Doc’s direction, he began rifling through his bag for a moment, quickly holding up a full bottle of whiskey.
“Thought you might pull somethin’ like this,” Wyatt remarked, popping it open with steady hands. “I came prepared, of course.”
“Of course,” Doc repeated in a sarcastic mutter.
At Wyatt’s pointed stare, Doc rolled his eyes and unbuttoned his vest and pulled the hem of his shirt from where it was tucked into his pants, baring his bloody and bandaged side to Wyatt’s attentive gaze.
Wyatt set the lantern a little closer to Doc and came closer as well, cutting off Doc’s bandages with the knife he pulled from his belt.
They both sucked in a bit of air at the sight of Doc’s wound, though Doc couldn’t help but wheeze a little when the action irritated his lungs.
The stitches along his side were red and swollen, leaking a bit of pus and blood as well, since a few of the stitches had torn open.
“Christ, you don’t do things in halves, do you?” Wyatt huffed, turning back to his saddlebags and procuring a needle and thread.
“I feel as if I should find it demeaning that you thought to bring all of these supplies since you believed me incapable of taking care of myself,” Doc said, glancing back down at his side with a frown.
“I feel as if you should know me better than to trust you to take care of yourself when I’ve seen Kate doing it for years now,” Wyatt retorted. He set aside the needle and thread and brought his knife back up, looking apologetic.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to be using that on me.”
Wyatt shrugged. “Wound’s infected. Gotta get the whiskey in there to clean it out, and you’ve already torn half of ‘em. Might as well finish the job.”
Doc tipped his head backwards into the sand with a long sigh, listening to the sounds of the rest of the men making camp.
“You didn’t happen to bring laudanum along, did you?” Doc asked without much hope.
Wyatt looked sheepish.
Doc could only think to sigh again. He wasn’t in a state to do much more than that.
“Get Morgan over here to hold me down. You’re gonna need it,” Doc said tiredly.
While Wyatt looked unhappy about it, he couldn’t seem to disagree as he called for Morgan without hesitating.
The younger Earp jogged over in no time, stopping a few feet away and gaping a little at the state Doc was in. He was partially hidden from the rest of the posse due to his horse, for which he was thankful.
“Geez, Doc. How’d you let it get this bad?” Morgan admonished, falling to his knees beside Doc and Wyatt in the same breath.
“I find myself asking the same thing,” Wyatt said back dryly. Doc decided not to respond.
“What do you need me for?” Morgan finally asked, turning to Wyatt.
“I gotta cut these stitches out and clean out the wound. You’re gonna hold him down since we don’t have any way to manage his pain,” Wyatt explained.
Morgan looked a little disturbed at the prospect of holding another man down, but he clearly understood the importance of his task as he wasted no time in shuffling behind Doc and pressing his shoulders into the sand.
With a grimace of sympathy, Wyatt moved forward to sit on Doc’s shins to keep him from kicking out.
With a questioning look from the man, Doc just closed his eyes and nodded.
Between one breath and another, that dull throbbing pain in his side exploded into an inferno of agony once Wyatt began cutting through the stitches.
Through teeth gritted to the point of creaking, an aching groan escaped Doc’s throat despite his best attempts otherwise. He could feel his feet twitching in an attempt to kick out, and he was grateful Wyatt had thought ahead.
Several agonizing seconds that Doc did his best to breathe through later and Wyatt was throwing the knife aside and picking the remains of the thread from Doc’s side by hand.
More blood was leaking out alongside the pus, but his side had at least healed up enough to not be life threatening on its own.
“Nearly there, Doc,” Morgan comforted, his hold on Doc’s shoulders loosening a little in the interim.
“Do not lie to me,” Doc growled. He knew that cutting out the stitches was the easy part.
There was a slosh of liquid and Doc tensed his whole body up, fingers digging into the sand once more.
A few seconds of silence passed before liquid fire tore through his body. This time, he couldn’t hold back a shout, but he managed to force his mouth shut after the initial sound.
He couldn’t feel the whiskey itself running along his side as he knew it was. He was in so much pain that even the sand clenched between his fingers felt like nothing. He was writhing as much as he could trapped beneath both brothers, wounded noises escaping from him without his consent.
It took a long, long time for the searing pain in his side to finally fade into the dull throbbing he’d been experiencing all day. At that point, he was gasping in air and once again drenched in sweat, though with the sun fully down it was beginning to get cold.
A gentle touch on his knee brought him out of his thoughts, and he opened his eyes just enough to see Wyatt.
“I just wanted to let you know that my stitches won’t be as pretty as Goodfellow’s, but I’ve done this once or twice before,” Wyatt said carefully.
Doc swallowed. “Proceed,” he rasped.
With a steadying swig from the whiskey he’d just dumped on Doc, Wyatt wasted no time in hunching forward and beginning the arduous task of stitching Doc back shut.
While each puncture and tug made him wince, the memory of the whiskey burning arcs of lightning up his side made it seem a fair bit more bearable than it would’ve been ten minutes prior.
At Doc’s stillness, Morgan apparently deemed it safe enough to let him go and instead just leaned back with a more friendly hold on his shoulder. He’d never admit it, but the comfort was grounding.
It took much longer than tearing them out had taken, but Wyatt soon finished with a pleased look on his face.
“My best work yet,” he said proudly, dumping the needle and thread back into his saddlebag.
“Made it to the easy part,” Morgan added, patting Doc’s shoulder.
This time, Morgan wasn’t lying, and the tension that bled out of Doc made him ache all the more.
In silence, Wyatt wrapped some clean bandages he’d clearly been storing for this exact scenario around Doc’s side, hooking a safety pin through them to keep them in place. Without even being asked, he pulled Doc’s shirt down as well, but left it untucked and his vest unbuttoned.
“Morgan, you can go finish what you were doing; I’ve got it from here,” Wyatt said, nodding in the direction of camp.
“Course,” Morgan answered, standing up and dusting the seat of his pants off. “Feel better Doc!” He called over his shoulder as he walked away.
“I feel like this spot would be an excellent place for me to bed down,” Doc said, turning his head to peer at Wyatt. The shadows dancing across his face due to the lantern light captivated Doc, though he tried not to let his eyes linger too long.
Wyatt huffed in amusement. “Sure. I’ll move your horse over with the rest of ‘em and put my bedroll with yours so the coyotes won’t get you in your sleep.”
“Much obliged, Wyatt Earp, as I feel that the chances of me being able to stand within the next hour are incredibly low,” Doc muttered.
Looking incredibly fond, Wyatt said, “Figured we might as well rest here another day. Give the horses a break, you know.”
“The horses,” Doc repeated flatly.
Wyatt patted Doc’s knee with a borderline evil grin and stood up.
“Wyatt Earp, you did not just compare me to a horse!” Doc yelled, struggling to his elbows and hissing through his teeth.
Wyatt didn’t even so much as turn around when he called back, “Course not, Doc! You’re closer to a mule than a horse.”
And before Doc could even string a sentence together, Wyatt was jogging off with a distant cackle.
Doc could only watch him go with an open mouth, eyebrows drawn together. He wasn’t even sure whether he should be mad or not. If it were anyone else, they wouldn’t have made it five feet before being laid out on the ground. But of course, Wyatt was different.
Giving up on the wisps of anger trying to form, he slumped back into the sand with an annoyed groan.
“Damn him.”