Chapter 28
It was luck, pure luck, that the man with the shoulder growth had not yet left the clinic when Mae emerged from her parlay with Vix.
It was not exactly that Mae enjoyed enmity or otherwise found rudeness and sniping a necessary part of friendship, but something about her dynamic with Vix made her feel whole.
A woman like that, poised and polished and utterly posh, meeting Mae on a level playing field, had always made her feel not only energized but seen.
And she suspected, in some strange way, that Victoria Beck Aster felt the same way about her, too.
In any event, that’s why she’d given her the thimble. And the golden duck. And Roland, for the evening.
She wanted to begin her plan before she shared it with him. She was always better at explaining an idea when she had the beginning threads of it in hand as a demonstration.
The man with the mole that might have been a cyst was perfectly amenable, even enthusiastic about her suggestion. The malaria patient was wary but not opposed. Two was not a bad beginning.
From there, after closing, Mae spent yet another night in the classroom, working on one of the student desks as she compiled a letter, a list, and a scrap of old wax paper from the nursery to jot and scratch on for her ideas and rejections.
She left the nursery door and the classroom door both fully open so that she could observe the children coming out to play the ghost dare game at the top of the stairs.
She knew she ought to scold them and send them back to bed, but she had been going through such a tense and difficult time that, around midnight, she simply emerged, squatted amongst the ones who were still awake, and asked to join them.
When it was her turn to dart down into the dark, she enlisted the malaria patient to make a few frightening moans and rattle some beakers around.
That, if nothing else, sent every last child scrambling back under the covers for the night and cheered Mae enough that she locked up to head for home with a smile on her face and one of Reed’s kits with a link torch in his hand at her side.
The following couple of days were uneventful, outside of the standard chaos of the clinic. What she was waiting for—hoping for—was that Irving the inspector would indeed return to them to have his stitches removed, despite being brother-in-law to the head of surgery at Guy’s.
It was perhaps a silly thing to expect. Reckless, even.
But she did have a suspicion that he would want to confirm that his gift had arrived, if nothing else.
And she had been making very good use of her new mortar and pestle.
It was a very fine tool indeed, and even if she hadn’t had ulterior motives, she would have wished to thank him in person for it.
The quinine, as well, had saved their poor malaria patient unnecessary suffering during his stay.
If he did not arrive, she told herself, she would write the thanks and mail it.
If he did not arrive, she would pivot.
But after a week, he did arrive. This time, he was not wearing his wig. This time, he did not shout “Inspection!”
He looked around the room, his eyes passing right over Mae until they settled on Winston and brightened.
“Ah, my young doctor!” he called to the boy. “I’ve come for my follow-up!”
Winston, who had been on his hands and knees, separating bent needles from straight ones on an unfurled towel, snapped to his feet so abruptly that he sent his neat rows back into a scattered hay pile of silver. “Is that me?!” he cried, his eyes watering with enthusiasm.
“Of course it is,” Mae said, stepping forward and giving a little jerk of her head to Sally to grab the needles before they vanished between the floorboards. “Come along, the procedure room is empty just now. We can perhaps remove those stitches, hm?”
“It’s my favorite part,” Winston whispered to the inspector. “I bet it feels very fine, the threads swishing through the new skin. You will tell me, if it tickles?”
“I will tell you,” Irving promised him, patting his head.
She caught Roland’s eye as they moved toward the room and nodded when he raised his brows at her, his posture shifting only slightly from where he was leaned against the back wall, near two patients, one getting a rosewater rinse on an infected eye and the other waiting for leeches to do their work on bulging veins along her calves.
He pushed off the wall and followed them quietly into the procedure room without further fuss.
“I did something very clever,” the inspector confided, speaking directly to Winston. “I had my wife repair my torn trousers with a buttoned pocket, so that I may open them right where the injury was when I came back. Look at this!”
He proudly propped himself on the treatment cot and twisted to show the little window his wife had put in the trousers.
Mae was genuinely impressed. “That is very clever,” she said. “This was your idea or hers?”
“Mine entirely!” he said, with a blush and a twist of his lips. “But only after she told me it could be done. I am hopeless with a needle. I’m sure you could never understand, Miss Casper.”
“You can’t sew?” Winston said, sounding disappointed. “Why not?”
The inspector smiled at him and held his hands out flat in the air. They quivered there, his fingers twitching. “Unsteady hands, I’m afraid,” he said with a shrug. “My penmanship is also a travesty.”
Winston blinked and held his own hands out the same way, looking nervous about it until he observed that his did not shake the same way.
“Wash those,” Mae said, nodding toward the basin. “You’ve been crawling around on the floor.”
She bent down to inspect the sutures in the inspector’s leg, nodding with approval at how cleanly they had healed into place. “You did a wonderful job keeping these clean,” she told him. “They are ready to come out today.”
She stood up and followed Winston to the basin to rinse her own hands, dry them, and dust them with talc. “I will snip and you can pull with the little tweezers if Mr. Irving gives you leave,” she said to him. “You must ask his permission.”
“He has it,” Irving announced. “Just be gentle, lad. I am ticklish!”
“Me too!” Winston confided, sounding giddy as he went bounding toward the tray in search of the curved tweezers. “Especially under my arms.”
“It’s the feet for me,” Irving told him, looking utterly charmed.
“Do you have children, sir?” Mae asked, turning back to him. “You seem a natural father.”
He shook his head, still smiling. “Sadly not. We were never blessed so. But I had my nephew coming up and now I’ve met dear Dr. Winston here.”
Roland shifted a little from his spot by the door, looking thoughtful. He met Mae’s eye but did not speak or otherwise move to intervene.
“I am glad you came back to us,” Mae said, rolling the tray closer to him and looking for her narrow scissors.
“I wanted to thank you personally for the gifts you sent and tell you what a difference they have made for us. I use the mortar and pestle every single day. It is a vast improvement on my old one made of stone.”
“I am pleased to hear it,” he said, his voice gone a little softer as she made the first snip. “And I trust you have had no more trouble with my nephew or his fellows?”
She glanced up.
Snip.
“Not a peep,” she said. “If that was your doing, then I am doubly thankful.”
“I had words with his father,” Irving said, giving a little frown at the third snip.
“He was … well, less than helpful. If Lady Aster hadn’t been here to personally threaten me that day, I don’t think I’d have gotten through to them.
Making mischief at a charity institution is one thing, but assaulting a peer is quite another, you understand. I am terribly sorry about all of it.”
Mae sighed.
Snip.
“You did what you could,” she said. “And it worked, for now. The Season is practically over at this point, anyhow. I think the best course of action at present is to prevent this starting up again in earnest next year.”
“I would help with that,” said Irving. “If I could. All I can offer is to be fair and honest in my inspections. But, Miss Casper, I hope you know that I always was, even before.”
She gave him a little smile. “You do still owe us a pair of forceps.”
“Oh, gracious,” he replied, covering his mouth with both hands. “I knew I had forgotten something.”
“Is it my turn?!” Winston demanded, cutting in on their adult conversation impatiently, tweezers aloft. “I am ready!”
Mae nodded, dragging forward a stool and making sure he was steadily perched on it before she let him start. “Do you want the magnifier glass?”
“No!” said Winston. “My eyes are very good!”
“All right,” she said, but nudged it closer anyway, just in case. “Put the threads in that little dish. Don’t just drop them on the floor.”
“I know that, doctress,” Winston said with a frown, leaning close and squinting. “I’d just have to sweep them up anyhow.”
She watched him remove the first little thread, his fingers moving carefully and slowly, and exhaled a little, trusting herself to move her attention back to the patient.
“I do have a proposal, actually, toward the matter of preventing further discord in the coming year. Do you think your brother-in-law would be willing to meet with me? To actually hear me out?”
Irving blinked, tilting his balding head to the side. “He would meet with you,” he said. “But he is a bit of a pedant. I can’t promise how well he’ll listen. Perhaps if I join you?”
“I was hoping you would,” Mae said. “Truth be told, every doctor here wants to come with me when I meet with him, and perhaps also a representative from St. Bartholomew’s, to be safe, but I’d rather not cram a dozen people into a single room if we can avoid it.”
“You should bring your grandfather, at the very least,” Irving suggested. “They remember him. They respect him, in a queer way. And his name is on the charter.”
“All done!” Winston announced, sitting back and smacking his lips. “Did it tickle?”
Irving paused, his eyes widening with what appeared to be surprise as he looked down at the lad. “Why, no!” he said. “I didn’t feel it at all. My God, boy, you really do have a surgeon’s hands!”
After that, Mae did not wish to puncture Winston’s glee.
There was only a final moment, right before the inspector departed, where he pressed her hand into a respectful shake and promised, “I will arrange it.”