Chapter 5
Minus Sally, who was only at the clinic a few days a week, and Dr. Bethel, who was making house calls this morning, Mae found herself with a full accoutrement of help before breakfast had even been cleared away.
She had immediately sent Mr. Reed into a back room to organize inventory, thinking that perhaps hiding him was the safest route forward, at least until she came up with something better, and it was a good thing she had, for within moments of his sequester, Dinah, Rosalind, Ezra, the rabbi, and even Vix Beck arrived, all apparently intending to spend the day seeing to clinic business alongside Hannah and Thaddeus.
“Oh, no,” Mae said immediately upon spotting Vix and Dinah, arm in arm, cresting the doorway in her grandfather’s wake. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, good morrow to you, too, Casper,” Vix replied with a lift of her chin. “I’m here to grace you with my charm. You’re welcome.”
“Vix is always a help,” Dinah said, gazing up at the other woman with hero worship in her eyes, which won slightly different sounds of distress from both Mae and Hannah.
“She’s here to watch her mischief play out,” Hannah said with a little frown. “Aren’t you, Vix?”
“Of course I am,” Vix replied with a flash of her teeth. “Where is Roland?”
“Roland?” Dinah repeated, her big blue eyes going somehow wider as her voice went up an octave into an excitable squeak. “Is Mr. Reed here? Is Mr. Reed going to be working at the clinic?”
“Who?” came Ezra Barnett’s voice with a frown. “Who are you blustering over?”
Mae thought she might be getting a headache.
“The most beautiful man in London,” Dinah replied, blinking at Ezra. “You will see. You will see.”
“Oh,” said Ezra, looking wholly displeased with that answer. “Wonderful.”
Mae sighed. “An enforcer from Mr. Beck’s gambling hell. Here to provide a bit of aid should the trouble strike up again, after the vandalism the other night.”
“Oh,” said Ezra. “Well, I’m here for that, aren’t I?”
There was a moment of silence as the women turned and regarded him. Ezra Barnett: freshly turned all of twenty years old, fingers hooked in the button eyelets of his tweed jacket.
“You certainly are,” Mae said after a moment, sending Dinah into a fit of stifled giggles.
Ezra’s frown deepened. “I’ve brought some copies of the recent medical journals to go over with you when you have a moment,” he said, turning his back on Dinah to face Mae exclusively. “We are mentioned.”
“Are we?” Mae said with a little sigh. “Anything damning?”
“Not explicitly,” he answered with a shrug, “but they mention the Quakers four or five times in one of them. Seems that is a particular bother to someone out there. I imagine there might be something more colorful in the next copy of The Lancet.”
“Isn’t there always?” Mae said with a grimace. “It is nothing more than a gossip circular with a particular focus.”
“Yes, well,” said Ezra with a shrug. “I’m starting to think that’s true of every newspaper.”
“Oh, that’s him,” Dinah breathed, gripping Ezra by the elbow and turning him toward the supply closet as Roland Reed emerged to grab another box of empty bottles ready to be filled and labeled.
The sunlight caught like a halo in his hair, casting a ring of pink gold over the top of his head as his curls swung over his shoulders with the motion of leaning down to grab the next crate.
“Mr. Reed,” she added unnecessarily, with a deep and indulgent sigh.
“Him?” said Ezra, shaking off her hand from his elbow. “The statue man?”
“Oh,” said Vix, her lips immediately curling into amusement. “Do mention the statue incident to him straight away when you introduce yourself, lad.”
“Do not,” Hannah instructed. “Dinah, go upstairs.”
“You’re not the boss of me,” Dinah retorted.
“Go,” Hannah said through her teeth, “upstairs.”
“Make me,” Dinah suggested.
Mae sighed and looked for somewhere else to go. She glanced out the currently glassless window at Mr. Beck arguing with the torch installers while Rabbi Hirsch appeared to be using his fingers to measure the hypothetical placement of the future staircase, and shook her head.
Not out there.
“Dinah,” Mae said absently, through the sororal bickering that was unfolding like some rapid-fire Sunday school chant.
“You need to send that Winston boy home. He was winding up the others all night with tales of what the vandals were going to do to them all when they finally gained access. He framed the event as both inevitable and imminent. They were in a state of serious disarray when I arrived this morning.”
“He did what,” she said sharply, narrowing her eyes and turning on her heel from her sister, already marching toward the staircase. “That little piglet. I’ll boot him out right now.”
“Masterfully done,” Vix observed, watching the swing of Dinah’s green skirt as she went. “You could’ve been a governess in another life.”
Mae clicked her tongue. “Do I need to get rid of you next?”
Vix grinned at her. “You are welcome to try.”
Mae raised her brows, considering the prospect, but a sudden bang interrupted them yet again as the door slammed open and a gaggle of injury hobbled through the door, mutually supported and moaning.
“What now?” Mae muttered, stepping between her friends toward the door where her grandfather had come immediately to his feet to assess the situation. “Grandy?”
Her grandfather was in rapid congress with the most uninjured person in the group, a girl who looked to be around twelve years old and was gesticulating wildly as Ezra and Rosalind rushed forward to help in the straggling injured.
“Cart tipped over,” he said, glancing up at Mae with his knobby hand on the little girl’s shoulder. “Crushed a few, threw the others.”
Mae nodded, surveying the group. “Who is hurt the worst?”
“Mum,” said the girl, pointing to a woman who was being carried in the arms of a limping man, her leg wrapped in blood-soaked fabric. “Cut.”
“This way,” Mae shouted to the limping man, guiding him toward her procedure chamber in the back. “Dr. Casper will sort the rest of you, please be patient!”
She hurried along, unable to miss Roland Reed emerging from his bottling task with a rag in his hands, blinking at her, the scene, and then his rag before discarding it and following her along her path.
She did not have time to be baffled by it, nor to dissuade him.
“Start the range!” Vix was shouting at someone from behind them. “I need two kettles of water filled immediately.”
“Not there,” Hannah’s voice said, lapping over the other. “There are cots through here, in the infirmary. I will show you.”
“Put her here on the bed,” Mae instructed, holding the door open with her back as she ushered the man and woman inside. “Bleeding side up, please. We need to clean it first and foremost. I will need … oh!”
She blinked as Mr. Reed immediately proffered a freshly bottled supply of witch hazel toward her, his gaze steady and blank.
“Yes, thank you,” she managed. “The … the gauze and clean towels are in the cupboard just there.”
He turned without a word and began to retrieve further supplies as Mae rounded the bed and helped the man unwrap his wife’s leg.
It looked like a clean slit down the outer thigh, mercifully shallow enough not to puncture the muscle, though jagged in shape. It was bleeding a lot and would need stitching, but as Mae splashed and dabbed and splashed again, her relief grew with each reveal of clean, healthy flesh around the cut.
“She landed on a rock,” the man said, fishing in his pocket and holding up a bit of blood-stained slate. “Do you need the rock?”
“I … do not,” Mae said, blinking at him. “Perhaps keep it and let her exact her revenge upon it later. You may go out into triage and have your limp looked at, sir.”
“Not until she’s well,” the man said, frowning. “What can I do?”
“William,” said his wife, muffled in the pillow. “You can do what the doctress tells you.”
“Darlene,” he began, but she shushed him with a hiss of pain, which seemed to chasten him into retreating.
He left as a portion of the boiling water arrived, delivered by none other than the pox-seeking child Winston, who was gazing wide-eyed at the wound as he inched into the room, a hot bowl suspended between his hands, which were wrapped in rags.
“There,” said Mae, pointing to the basin. “Dip and thread the needles. Wash your hands first.”
“I’ll do it,” said Roland to the boy. “You, come here.”
Mae dipped a new cloth in the boiling water and put a hand on Darlene’s ribs. “This is going to hurt,” she said. “But it’ll prevent a fester later. I’m just going to clean it out and then stitch it up and you’ll be good as new, all right? Is it all right if the child helps me?”
The woman made a brave sound, gripping the pillow tightly to her face, and managed a nod.
“Why don’t I tell you a story while I work?” Mae suggested, dropping the hot cloth onto the wound and pressing down on it first to acquaint the leg with the temperature. “I find that can help with the pain. Then we’ll give you something to take the edge off.”
The patient nodded, her hay-colored hair bobbing against the clean linens.
Mae discarded the first blood-tinged rag and reached for another, finding Roland already holding it out toward her, two needles sitting on the basin table, ready to be threaded. She paused and met his eyes, still that startling, gorgeous shade of turquoise, and nodded in appreciation.