Chapter 16 #2
Roland watched them leave, his mind whirring with colliding thoughts and concepts.
He turned to her, running his thumbnail over the edges of his fingers as he turned an idea over in his head.
“Mae,” he said, stopping her before she walked away.
“If there are dead folk to cut on, why are those students so angry about losing live patients for their test cases?”
“Roland!” she said, frowning and glancing around at the waiting patients in triage, though none of them had heard, or if they had, none had reacted with interest. She grabbed him by the sleeve and tugged him back toward the storage closet, oblivious to the grin that broke out over his face as she did so, marching him forward like he was a dog on a leash, her apron rustling.
She came to a halt just short of the storeroom door and turned to him with a frown. “Because it is summer,” she said, like she’d just explained that the ground is solid and the sky is in the upward direction.
“Oh,” he answered flatly. “Naturally.”
She blinked, hesitating for a moment. “In the summer, the corpses spoil too quickly for any sort of structured medical study,” she elaborated.
“And besides, the High Season is very short in the grand scheme of things, so it is a tiny window of time during which all the greatest medical minds in the nation are all concentrated into London to demonstrate, impart, and observe at the major hospitals on live patients.”
“Oh,” he answered, a little more sincerely this time as she released his wrist. He grinned, rubbing at it as though she’d hurt him, but only to goad her. “So winter is corpse season.”
She narrowed those lovely dark eyes. “In so many words. A living body behaves differently to a dead one. For example, a dead body does not bleed when you cut it, so it is hardly a fitting test of how competent a surgeon’s steadiness is with a scalpel.”
“I see,” he said, the wrist rub softening as he considered this. “So they need living cadavers from the poor.”
She grimaced. “Yes.”
“And using animals doesn’t stopper the gap?” he pressed.
She shook her head. “A cow has four stomachs. How are you going to learn to treat a person’s one from that?”
He stared at her for a moment. “Are you teasing me?”
She shook her head. “Four stomachs. Why do you think they’re always chewing?”
“Because of the … you know, the only having one row of teeth,” he said, pulling a face. “Wait, are you saying it keeps coming back up after a turn in each stomach?”
She sighed. “I really don’t have time to discuss cud,” she said, gesturing to the waiting area. “Perhaps save it for family dinner?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, watching her go. “Appetizing.”
By then the witch hazel had cooled enough for him to take it into the storage room and begin his bottling. As a special reward, he gave Winston an errand a few blocks away to take Dr. Bethel his medical bag, which he’d forgotten when he left for his first house call shortly beforehand.
The lad seemed extremely mollified by the gesture of trust and it kept him out of the way while Roland went about setting up the funnels and beginning his straining and ladling.
It wasn’t until he’d gotten about halfway through the bottles that the door to the storage room was wrenched open by Mae Casper herself, who darted inside, pulled the door shut behind her, and marched forward, clinking the little golden duck onto the countertop next to his hands.
“You lost that,” she said, brisk as you please.
“I didn’t lose it,” he said, turning in the very narrow room to smile down at her. “I left it to keep an eye on you while I was holed up in here. Put it back.”
She sighed and went onto the tips of her toes, putting her talc-dusted hands on either side of his face and pulling him down to kiss her, quickly and firmly, on the lips.
If she had intended to pull away immediately and flit back to her doctoring, she still had quite a lot to learn about him.
He wrapped an arm around her, pinning her to his chest, and ensured that the kiss was a full and worthwhile affair.
He dragged the duckling off the counter and tucked it into her apron as he walked her back against the wall.
He took his time with placing it there, enjoying all those lush little curves she hid under that prim white apron as he ran his fingers down the side of the apron pocket and over the curve of her hip.
Her starchy fingers slid over his jaw in surprise but she did not resist, allowing her mouth to be plundered and tasted, tentatively flicking her own tongue back against his when he slipped it between her lips.
He groaned, wanting nothing more than to escalate this little encounter beyond the confines of either this narrow nook or the layers of their clothing and knowing neither was possible at this given moment.
He pulled back slowly anyhow, just to ensure that his pain was shared, and delighted in the shuddering little sound of protest she made as he did so.
“You can give it back to me after we close,” he told her against her lips before he released his hold on her. “Over dinner.”
“Oh,” she said, sounding a bit dazed at the rush of air when he stepped back and gave her the space around the wall again. “All right.”
“Good,” he said, and settled his hand over the next empty bottle, enjoying the flush in her cheeks and the rapid rise and fall of her chest. “Now get out of here so I can finish these bottles.”