Chapter Twenty-Six Frankie #2
“Where’s your uncle?” Aunt Margaret appeared suddenly.
“Back at the Stoddards’. What’s happened?”
“We’ve got six new patients. All of whom have been attacked.”
Pearl let out a gasp. “The knackerman got them all?”
My aunt pursed her lips. “It seems… seems to be spreading. It’s not just the knackerman, or even Emile or Clarice. There are others who’ve been infected. Who aren’t themselves. Who are now capable of—” Her voice faltered.
I could hear the buzz of the injured and worried townspeople from down the hall.
“Which is exactly the reason Uncle Thomas told you not to open the door,” I said, shocked. “Not to let anyone in!”
Aunt Margaret shook her head, defiant. “They’re injured and sick, Frances. That’s what we do, isn’t it? What we are here in this town for, what God put us on earth for. To take care of those in need. The day I leave my door locked on a sick neighbor is the day I lose all sense of my humanity.”
There was no arguing with her, even if I’d the strength and conviction to do so.
“Uncle Thomas will be along soon. He’s… with Mr. Stoddard.”
“How is Benjamin?” Margaret asked.
I gave a quick shake of my head, looked in Pearl’s direction. My aunt gave me a knowing nod.
“Pearl, why don’t you come help me in the kitchen? I was making applesauce cake and putting more coffee on.”
“I’d love that,” Pearl said. “There’s nothing worse than feeling helpless. Put me to work, please. And Frankie, you know I’m not the least bit squeamish. I’m happy to help you as well until your uncle returns.”
I smiled at her. “You can bring some hot water and clean cloths to me in the surgery.”
“Come, dear, I’ll show you where everything is.” Aunt Margaret hooked her arm with Pearl’s. The dog trotted off behind them.
I took off my coat, rolled up my sleeves, and went into the waiting room. There were six townspeople, all talking at once, fearful and frantic. Their words all mixed together in a hysterical buzz: knackerman, bite, Clarice, madness, Emile, devil, possession.
“We’re doomed,” said John Lancaster, the town blacksmith. “He’s marked us. He’s possessing us, calling us to him one by one.”
“They say once you get bitten he’s inside you, you can hear his voice. Your soul isn’t yours anymore. You belong to the devil,” added Eugene Fitzpatrick.
One of the men let out a strangled sobbing sound.
I clapped my hands together to silence them, cleared my throat, then spoke as loudly and with as much authority as I could muster.
“Dr. Endicott is on his way. Until then, I’m going to take you one by one into the surgery to get you bandaged up.
” I looked around, saw that Niles Smith had the worst wounds, deep enough to need stitches, and was bleeding heavily into the towel he held against his shoulder.
I brought him back first, Pearl meeting me there with hot water and cloths.
She stood by my side, assisting me, handing me the things I needed.
We worked well together, and I let myself imagine us like this years in the future, me doctoring and her acting as my nurse.
By the time I was done cleaning the wound, stitching and dressing it, Uncle Thomas was back, his face grim. He gently peeled back the bandage, inspected my work, and nodded. “You’ve been in good hands, Niles. Frankie’s done an excellent job with the sutures.”
“What’s going to happen to me? Will I get sick? Turn mad?” Niles asked, voice high with panic.
“I’d like you to stay here, in the house, so we can keep an eye on you.”
“I want to go home,” Niles pleaded. “To my wife.”
“It would be better for you to stay here,” Thomas said. “Better for your wife and little girl. The way the sickness runs its course—”
Niles touched the bandage on his shoulder and nodded, understanding. He had a two-year-old daughter, Abigail, at home.
“Is it true what they’re saying? That’s he’s the devil? That I’ll be possessed now? That’s he’s taking us all, one by one?”
“No, Niles. It’s a sickness. Like the flu or the measles, it’s caused by germs, not by devilry. We may not understand it, but that doesn’t make it witchcraft.”
“But they say… they say he died and rose again. That he’s not human. He’s the beast in human form.”
Aunt Margaret came in just then with more hot water and bandages.
“Margaret, could you and Pearl perhaps open up the dining room for our guests? Get some blankets. Bring Niles back with you?”
“Of course,” she said, smiling at Niles. “It’s this way. Come, I’ll get you a nice cup of coffee.” Pearl accompanied them.
“We’re going to keep them all here, in the house?” I asked once Uncle Thomas and I were alone.
“We can’t send them back out there. When the sickness comes on, they’ll hurt their families. We can’t have it spreading any faster than it already is.”
“But, Uncle Thomas, having them here—how are we going to keep ourselves and Margaret safe?”
His face was pale, the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes giving him the appearance of a skinny raccoon man.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “We’ll think of something.
Perhaps we’ll have to bind them all… or sedate them.
The first task is to just get everyone’s wounds tended to. For now, we keep them here.”
I nodded.
“Bring two more in,” Uncle Thomas said as he rolled up his sleeves.
I went into the waiting room and got Anthony LaRocca and Eugene Fitzpatrick, both of whom had bites on their arms.
Pearl brought us more warm water and more towels, took the bloody ones away.
We went to work, my uncle and I side by side, patching up wounds, both of us understanding just how futile it was.
We knew how the sickness would progress. That bandaging the wounds did no real good, could not prevent what was coming; but we needed a moment to think.
Just when we thought we were making headway, Aunt Margaret would poke her head through the exam room door, announcing the arrival of another terrified, injured person.
“Don’t let him possess me,” begged Mary Fletcher, who held a lace handkerchief to the wound on her hand. “Please!”
By one in the morning, we had eight stitched-up people sitting around our seldom-used formal dining room, miserable and fearful, looking completely out of place in their dirty work clothes and nightgowns.
Some had lain down on the floor with the blankets Aunt Margaret had brought them.
Two men had refused to stay and gone home to their families despite Uncle Thomas’s pleas for them to stay here for the sake of their loved ones.
Several had gone to the church to sit and pray, sure the Lord would protect them.
A few had gone to seek out Charlotte Albone for charms of protection.
“I know you’re all scared,” Uncle Thomas announced when we went into the dining room to check on the patients who’d remained with us. “But we’re going to take good care of you here. We’re going to figure this out. It’s going to be all right.”
Everyone, myself included, understood he was lying.