The product of an aristocratic upbringing, John Henry "Doc" Holliday's dreams of a career in dentistry are dashed by respiratory disease. Encouraged to seek the therapeutic benefits of drier climes, John Henry undertakes an odyssey crossing the western frontier, often in the company of Kate Elder. Gambling, drinking, and living on the edge, ever beset by disease, Doc meets and befriends Wyatt Earp. Kate is never far behind, drawn like a moth to the flame of inevitable demise. Dancing on the edge of oblivion, driven by fate and an unyielding will to live on his own terms, Lunger is Doc's story as he himself might have told it.