My dear friend
singerme wrote most of this chapter as a standalone ficlet, and it fit so
perfectly into this story that I asked to borrow it with a few revisions. She graciously gave my story the perfect
ending.
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Doc shuffles over to the bedside and checks the pulse of his patient.
Still a bit thready, but thank heaven, at least it is still there. For a while,
he had been afraid he wouldn’t find a pulse the next time he checked. He’d been very worried that he’d lose Kitty
after all she’d come through.
After Matt had gone to hunt down Jude Bonner, Kitty had rapidly developed
a severe infection due to the terrible abuse she’d taken from the dog
soldiers. When the lawman had arrived at
Doc’s door, hat in hand, eyes tortured and searching anxiously for Kitty, Doc
had hated to tell him that she was so very sick now.
Doc had done everything he could.
All they could do was wait. Maybe
pray a little. Matt had brushed him
aside and planted his large body in that uncomfortable chair by Kitty’s bed and
barely stirred for several days now.
Several days of watching and waiting.
And praying.
Doc glances over at the chair beside the bed and notices that its
leggy, rumpled occupant is awake. Apparently he has been for some time. "Didn't know you were conscious,"
Doc says quietly, checking his patient’s temperature which is still dangerously
high. He wipes her perspiring face and
neck with a cool, damp cloth then tenderly brushes her hair off her forehead.
"Yeah," Matt murmurs, looking at the small, fevered figure in
the big bed. "I've been sitting here thinking.”
"Thinking?" Doc sagely looks over at him.
"I was thinking about what my life would've been like if she
hadn't come into it. How different I would've
been."
Doc gives a quick swipe of his mustache but keeps quiet, letting the
big man talk, knowing it is rare that he opens up to anyone save Kitty.
"You know," Matt continues, "from the moment I first saw
her, I knew there was something special about that little red-headed tornado.
Not just her looks, or her intelligence or even her temper but something extra...” His voice catches, and he threads his fingers
through his hair. “Something I'd never
encountered in a woman before."
He swallows hard as reaches over and takes her hand in his, softly
rubbing the back of it over and again. "She has courage, Doc. You know
that? A courage I've never seen in another woman and in very few men. She's
faced things that would’ve killed most people and won the battle every
time."
Kitty softly moans and Matt stops, anxiously scanning her face for any
sign of consciousness. There is none. Doc steps back over to the bedside but
moves no closer. He can tell she is still senseless to the world around her.
After a few moments Matt settles his weary frame into the chair a bit,
never relinquishing the hand he clings to so desperately. Doc quietly observes the lawman’s brooding
features and waits patiently until he continues his rare soliloquy. "You
know, the more I think about it the more I realize, it's her courage that has
kept me going all these years. There have been times she had to have the
courage for the both of us, cause I just didn't have it."
Doc's eyes narrow as he looks over at the tough US Marshal from Dodge
City. He is having trouble imagining Matt without courage until he looks back
down at the woman in the bed and he understands his meaning. She is probably
the only person in the world that can bring the great Matt Dillon to his knees
with nothing more than a smile.
"Every time I leave Dodge, I wonder for just a second if she'll be
here when I return." Matt's voice is exhausted by his lengthy vigil by her
bedside but the emotion is still there, rich and strong. "I mean she's had
so many better offers than mine. I wouldn't blame her for choosing someone
else. But every time I come home, there it is, a single lamp burning in an
upstairs window just for me."
Utterly despondent, Matt raises red-rimmed, glassy eyes to the old man
beside him, unable any longer to contain the tears that had been threatening to
spill over for some time. "Doc, if she doesn't make it..." He can't continue. His heart is incapable of
conceiving a world without Kitty Russell in it.
Doc tugs his ear before swiping at a stray tear of his own. He opens
his mouth to reply when a scratchy, frail voice emanates from the disheveled,
sweat-soaked sheets of the sickbed. "I'll make it, Matt," she breathes.
"I promise, for you, I'll make
it." The sound is music to his
ears, but the taste is bittersweet in his mouth. Why did this have to happen to her?
Matt’s sun-creased eyes widen in wonder at the strength and resilience
of this woman who captured his heart so long ago. He gratefully leans in to whisper in her ear,
“I love you, Kitty.” Brushing his lips
against her fevered temple, he murmurs the words again to make sure she hears
him, “I love you so much.” A smile just
crinkles the corners of her sapphire eyes as they drift closed once more and
deep, healing sleep claims her again.
Matt kisses the small, white hand he cradles and releases a shuddering
sigh. Because Matt knows Kitty Russell
has the courage to make it through this, too.
End
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