Harrison, ID June 12th, 1899
150 miles north of Grangeville
Dr. R.J. Alcorn walked briskly down Main Street to the office next to Burke’s Haberdashery that he shared with Dr. Gerald Stackhouse, who specialized in diseases of the ear, nose, and throat. He enjoyed quite a brisk business attending to the miners, who inhaled all manner of dust and bugs and Lord knows what else as they dredged the mountainsides in hopes of uncovering a fortune hidden beneath layers of earth.
As for Dr. Alcorn, he specialized in broken bones, sprained joints, fevers, and ailments of a venereal nature. There was a roaring market for such things, thanks to those same camps. Dr. R.J. was more than happy to be one of the few doctors who would venture out to far-flung places like Harrison. Boomtowns like this had made for a good living and allowed him and his wife, Cora, to teach the local children in addition to offering medical services.
Unfortunately for Dr. Alcorn, his healing services were not always appreciated by the spouses of those who received them. He was often seen as a purveyor of vice by local clergy due to his ability to relieve sinners from the wrath they had surely incurred from God. A way was usually found to run him out of town, most often through a slanderous article in the local newspaper and gossip whispered in church pews—pews one never found Dr. Alcorn in. That was no help to him at all, but R.J. was a man of science and one who enjoyed the calm of a lone Sunday morning.
“Good morning, Mr. Burke,” Dr. Alcorn sang to the portly, graying man sweeping the walk in front of the haberdashery.
“Good morning to you, Dr. Alcorn,” Burke replied as Dr. Alcorn unlocked the door to a modest storefront painted with a shiny white coat that made it seem as though the filth of the outside stopped abruptly at its threshold.
Inside, Dr. Alcorn took off his hat and settled behind his desk with The Mountain Messenger. He was finishing the front page, which had been obnoxiously cluttered with advertisements intermingled with the real news, so that one wasn’t quite sure where the news of electrification ended and advertisements for electrical appliances began.
This can’t be good for the everyman’s conception of reality, Dr. Alcorn thought, just before there was a knock at the door.
He looked up to see Mrs. Burke, the wife of his neighbor in commerce, waving at him through the glass door. He motioned for her to come in.
“Lovely morning, isn’t it, Dr. Alcorn?” Mrs. Burke began, which tipped Dr. Alcorn off to the fact that she wasn’t there for some typical ailment. When a woman of Mrs. Burke’s age came to see him, it generally ended in a bottle of laudanum. There just wasn’t much else to do for women of a certain age but help them cope with the fact that they were no longer of use to society—sad as it might be. At any rate, the approach was generally direct in such cases; there was never any mention of the weather.
“You are certainly correct, ma’am. It is quite lovely. And how can I be of assistance to you?”
Dr. Alcorn wasn’t one for spending time on things he didn’t enjoy, and he didn’t enjoy small talk.
“Oh, well, I certainly didn’t want to take up any of your valuable time, Doctor,” replied Mrs. Burke with a glance at the newspaper on his desk. “I just had a question to ask of you. It’s of a very delicate nature, and I must know that I can trust you will keep my confidence about this matter.”
This can be one of only a few things:
- This proper lady has gone so long without a bath that she’s given herself a urinary tract infection to rival the gods—unlikely, as he knew Mrs. Burke to be a clean and godly woman.
- This proper lady’s husband had brought a disease home with him from a brothel.
- Because this proper lady was also the mother of a proper young lady, there was the possibility that the proper young lady had found herself in a decidedly improper situation.
“You can trust me absolutely, madam—as though I were your clergyman, perhaps more,” Dr. Alcorn quipped as he walked to the door and pulled the shade. “We’ll make sure no one walks in on our conversation as an added precaution.”
He pushed the slide latch closed and gestured to Mrs. Burke to take a seat.
Mrs. Burke sat at the edge of the chair, her pocketbook held tightly in her hands.
“It’s my daughter, Dr. Alcorn,” she began.
Ah. The final of the three possibilities.
R.J. kept his gaze steady and softened his eyes. He could see the torment the poor woman was experiencing. She was slight to begin with, but it was clear she had not been eating or sleeping. Dark circles under her eyes and hollows in her usually rosy cheeks betrayed her stress.
Mrs. Burke paused, took a deep breath, and continued.
“It seems that she has found herself in the family way, and the young man responsible has disappeared from the area. Her father does not know anything of her troubles, so please, Dr. Alcorn—please keep the subject of my visit from him.”
“Again, Mrs. Burke, you can be sure that I will keep your confidence at all costs,” he replied gently. “Does Miss Burke have an idea of when this came to pass? In other words, how far along would you say your daughter is?”
“Cora told me that she missed her cycle just last week,” Mrs. Burke replied.
“Ah, Cora, you say. That’s my wife’s name as well. She’s currently away in Missouri completing her medical studies—with our three-year-old son, if you can believe it.”
He quickly realized this did nothing to comfort Mrs. Burke and returned to the matter at hand.
“Please bring her to me this evening, and I will examine her.”