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Oh et Dr Marcus

We’re not gettin Doctor nobody I already been to the clinic and huntedkit, and I just need your help on this--just a stitch or two--and then I’ll be on ive you the entire picture when I’ain at her hand

Cos Temple around and sits her on the side of the bed and lays her hand out on the tabletop under the lamp

Here, Tee

How onna need that hand

Ruby injects it into the fleshy part of her paler

I don’t knohy Dr Marcus can’t do this

Coonna like et curious notions of brotherhood, oes to a drawer and sifts through it What color? she asks, flustered

I don’t guess it onna be blood black in a ht

Coets the needle and thread, and Tehtstand for one of the azines piled there and puts it down to catch the blood Then she takes a good look at her pinky finger It’s gone just above the first knuckle, a clean cut through the bone that shows as a yelloig poking through at the end She uses her other hand to draw the skin up over the end of the bone and pinch it shut like a foreskin

There, she says to Ruby Now just run that thread through there a few times and tie it off It’ll be okay

Ruby does it and Tearden Ruby has hanging over her bed In the irl wearing a bonnet The pain coh the dullness of the lidocaine She feels dizzy but clenches her teeth to keep fro out She pulls one of the Vicodins from her pocket and pops it in her mouth

When it’s done, Teer and watches to see ill happen A little blood oozes out the seaauze and tapes it

You did some nice work, thanks

I never did that before

Well, I reckon I should--

But when she tries to stand, the roo forward and her neck feels loose and squirht

Are you all right? Ruby says, but her voice sounds like it’s coh lollipops h the cottontails of all the bunny rabbits in all the vegetable patches in the world

Temple says, I’ll just sit a sec--

And that’s when the darkness co she knows, she’s lying under the covers in Ruby’s bed and there’s sunlight shining full and bright through theNo one else is in the rooround Her head still feels afloat on purple ether, and her eyes see to look She’ll have to ainst the wall and makes it to theand back to the bed--and for a few minutes she just walks back and forth between theand the bed until her eyes start seeing straight and her head gets anchored to her body

Ruby comes in

You sure stirred the pot, Sarah Mary Willia for you Say they just want to ask you sos--but I don’t like the look in their eyes, some of theins to sift through the clothes hanging there

They say you made a mess of that Abraham Todd

I wouldn’t of done it if--

You don’t have to tell me Those Todd boys have hearts as black as I’ve seen God help you, I’ave hienda, and that’s a man without an ounce of foolishness to distract hiet you out of here Put this on

Te now, so Ruby helps her take off her clothes and stuff theot you?

Te and raises her arms so Ruby can drape her in the yellow cotton sundress she has taken froainst her skin

What’s this for? Temple asks