Shadow

By Debra Milligan

Dr. Daniel Eugene Hunter is a scarred man of professionalism and passion. He must save the life of Edward von Atzingen from the enemy of diphtheria. This child is the son of the woman with whom Danial Hunter refuses to believe he’s fallen in love.

Celeste von Atzingen knows better. She also knows that love can be the only healer when life hangs in the balance.

Dr. Anthony McDowell is the nemesis for life and the sneaky champion of money-grubbing from any patient that dares enter his practice. Dr. Francis Redmond struggles to survive the sins of this doctor and the fears of becoming like him. The steady hand of Dr. Hunter guides this younger physician, even as it directs, dominates, damns, and presides over the doctors-in-training at Denver General Hospital.

Pavel Morosov, the Russian lunger, adds to this drama in a hospital set in Denver in 1905 during the bust part of the boom-or-bust cycle. That phase of bust is one that the more corrupt in this gold-and-silver town turn to their boom cycle; the former husband of Celeste is one of those pig-capitalists.

Love, deception, and the making of a physician of conscience are the drivers in this medical novel called SHADOW.

Life and death are the greater powers that cast a huge shadow over the world of medicine during those days of the early 20th century. Doctors had not yet climbed onto their pedestals or hid behind the white coat. The effects of the Industrial Revolution were beginning to be fully felt in America, but the practice of medicine was not yet an industry. A good doctor was a healer, not a cog in a wheel.

Each physician was a wheel of his own making that, round or misshapen, drove the mighty engine of medicine into the modern era. Some wheels tragically derailed off the tracks of the healing art; other wheels moved steadily along, strong, decisive and true, toward the making of the Art into a profession worthy of the name of Medicine.

Each physician had to work patiently, with each patient, to earn the name of Doctor. His worth was measured in his patience and in his passion for the art of healing his patients. The patient, not the doctor, was at the center of that revered world that measured life and death, often in a matter of mere minutes. Some illnesses could be cured; others could not. The wise doctor, the good doctor, accepted those truths of life, and death.

Set in 1905 in Denver, Colorado, “Shadow” sheds light on the doctors of Denver General Hospital: the martyrs, the malcontents — and the mavericks. Those magnanimous mavericks were the rugged individualists who, one by one, blazed a trail toward modern medicine. They were the heroes and the healers.

Single-handedly, they crustily created and carved a far-reaching profession out of the cadre of grave-diggers and grave-robbers and the surgeon-barbers of yesteryear. Single-handedly, and acerbically, the good doctors drove from their profession the worst of their kind. They knew all too well, even more than did any doomed patient, the types of doctors who threatened the art of healing, their art.

That magnificent world remains, to this day, a private and protected domain of even more intimate, and concealed, internecine warfare. The patients, along with their physicians, dedicated to the art of healing and to the goal of being healed, they are the warriors who must valiantly win this war to reclaim medicine from its own death grip. Putting the Patient at the center of the disease is the prescription that will deal the death blow to the death culture in America.

“Shadow” reveals the febrile and fetid beginnings of that world — in all of its glory and all of its gore — along with some romance and doctor-induced murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debra Milligan
• Release date: Feb 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005779351

Debra Milligan

Debra Milligan is a novelist, essayist, poet, and short story writer. She is fluent in French and has varied interests in the fine arts, architecture, history of all kinds, music, horses, hounds, the Golden Age of Hollywood, quilting, fashion, and gardening.

Book preview

Shadow

By

Debra Milligan

Copyright 2022 Debra Milligan

Smashwords Edition

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your very own copy.

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

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Dedication

To the Healers

All his life he’d lived in shadow, never knowing when she’d come, only that she would. Now she was there, holding him, and he lived in shadow no more.

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Chapter One

It was written upon his heart, and he had been told by the wise amongst his friends, that he should not go back, back to where his beloved woman had betrayed him. He knew better than to even think of such a journey. And yet the idea played upon his mind, in ways that haunted him, soothed him, lured him, repulsed him.

He was born a man of many talents, but he chose surgery as his first love; and from that first love there would grow only one other love, a great love for a woman who had been a girl when first they’d met at a formal dinner party. She was there with a young man, a stylish fop whom this doctor immediately disregarded as unworthy of notice, by him, by her, by anyone.

She will not wed him, he thought. He’s beneath her.

She caught the eye of this surgeon, and she soon spoke to him, coyly, as if from a distance. The sound of her voice had been too reminiscent to this man of that beguiling creature who had first seduced him, and then betrayed him. In that quietly melodious sound, there was too much pain. He spoke harshly to her, this girl named Celeste. He nearly laughed at the name itself: a heavenly woman, a sublime force had come to his side, to rescue him from his hidden pain!

She left his side, vowing to never again speak to this man who had hit her with his voice, with the brittle suspicions that formed the sound of his voice, even as he caressed her with the sound of his eyes.

A year later, they met, as if by accident, as they waited for a street-car on a corner down the street from Denver City Hospital.

She whispered his name upon seeing his face:

Daniel.

He looked at her, seeing not the young woman she’d become, but the face of the lost woman he’d sought to retrieve from his pain-filled past, as if his heartache would go away if he merely caught her in his arms and held her once more.

I’m sorry to have intruded upon you, Celeste said. I . . .

Daniel stared at the dark blue eyes of this woman. He felt the misery of his desire for her, a fiery sensation that had first prompted his boorish treatment of her a year earlier. He did not know that she’d wed, not the young fop of the party that evening; but an older man of wealth. Horace Donovan did not love her, but he lavishly provided for her materially.

I am on my way to the hospital, Daniel said gruffly. If you’ve the time, he motioned with his hand for her to proceed him to step up in to the car. He adamantly did not offer her his assistance by taking hold of her elbow. He knew he was behaving in a silently rude manner, but he dared not touch her. That touch might touch his heart, and his heart had already begun to yearn toward this woman named Celeste.

They sat beside one another, as if separated by a chaperone. Celeste felt her temper rise, while he felt his desire for this young woman confuse his every thought. At last, he tipped his hat, and barked:

It’s been fine weather. I must leave at this next stop. Good day, Celeste.

She eyed him as if the level of insult from him could not get any more severe. And then it did.

I’ll be better off if we part ways, Daniel spoke with his determined chin, more than with his deep voice.

Celeste sighed. She had nothing to say to a man who fled his own emotions. She already lived with a husband of that ilk. Another male of the species with the same self-imposed burden was more than this twenty-two-year-old could bear, especially on this sunny May day. The clouds were silver as the sun shone through them. She suddenly wished to run past this man, and show him that she too would be better off parting ways from him.

The street car clanged to a stop. Dr. Daniel Eugene Hunter exited the trolley. Celeste looked straight ahead, averting her eyes from him; but he looked back, ever so slightly at her. He noticed the tilt of her head, a defiant gesture that told him his insults had hit their mark.

As he walked down the street, he felt ashamed of his horridly crude behavior. He turned his head to speak to the street car, to wave to the young woman in the window. They were gone from his sight, and so was this moment to express remorse.

The remorse remained with him all through that day, and long into the night. He did not sleep well. Anna, his maid, took notice that next morning of his surly mood, but said nothing. Rodger, the Brittany spaniel, did the talking for her. He whimpered, and clawed at the calf of his master.

I know, Rodg, old boy, Daniel sighed. We shall get a better night’s sleep tonight.

Somehow, Anna did not count upon it. She could smell a secret romance in the air; and she hoped that this time, the master did