From the first draft of The Dose Makes the Poison, an enemies-to-friends-to-lovers romance between a surgeon and a journalist, in the midst of a Gilded Age small town murder mystery.

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All at once, he saw it laid out plain before him. The new doctor meets a mill girl—tends her wounds without expectation of payment—indeed, while repeatedly refusing payment—then can’t spare so much as a glance towards an eligible heiress that very same evening—and then walks miles uphill every day afterwards to call upon the mill girl.

Yes, if one didn’t know Jack for a cocksucker, it all looked very suspicious, indeed.

From the first draft of The Dose Makes the Poison, an enemies-to-friends-to-lovers romance between a surgeon and a journalist, in the midst of a Gilded Age small town murder mystery.

–

Whitlock looked up sharp from the corpse. “You know this man?”

“I do.” Jack swallowed; his throat had gone dry. “He came to my clinic yesterday. Wanted a cure for his deafness.”

“And what did you prescribe him?”

“I didn’t prescribe him an autopsy, if that’s what you’re askin’.”

From the first draft of The Dose Makes the Poison, an enemies-to-friends-to-lovers romance between a surgeon and a journalist, in the midst of a Gilded Age small town murder mystery.

–

“Well, it’s kind of a funny story. This fella—Alexis St. Martin—fur trapper up in Michigan territory about fifty or sixty years back—he takes an accidental shotgun blast to the gut.”

Dr. Hedgepeth paused in his speech, as if it had only just occurred to him most people might not consider a shotgun blast to the gut funny.