Chapter 4
Hannah had been unprepared for how unpleasant the clinic would be upon every one of her senses. She had known, of course, intellectually, that this would not be a pleasant place. Still, one’s imagination often fell short of just how poorly things could get.
“Oh, Miss Lazarus, welcome!” Rabbi Hirsch had exclaimed the instant she’d ducked under the tent flap leading to the central apparatus. “I was so pleased by your interest in helping us, especially when you could otherwise be feasting with your sister’s wedding party.”
“Indeed,” said Hannah, trying not to pull a face at the smell. “My mother thought this perhaps a better use of my time.”
If the rabbi found anything at all amiss in this statement, he did not show it, though Hannah had always thought the rabbi a canny sort, so that didn’t prove anything anyhow.
“Tzedakah,” he always said from the bimah, so many times throughout her life that she had lost count, “is the sacred duty of our people. We support our community. We help those who need help. There is nothing more important.”
So, certainly it had not escaped his notice that Hannah herself had never appeared for one of his community projects until this exact day.
All the same, it was terribly kind of him not to mention it.
She had thought, upon parting ways with Ember, that her mind would be fully absorbed by thoughts of Mr. Beck and what futures she might pursue in his direction. However, she had underestimated the pull of so many ailing people, all in one place.
“Let me introduce you to Miss Casper,” he was saying as they wove through cots full of dirty, moaning people. “She is a healer and a friend.”
“Is there no doctor here?” Hannah asked, trying not to balk. “Surely there must be.”
The rabbi made a face, half apologetic and half resigned. “No,” he said. “Not yet. But perhaps it is just taking some time for word to spread to someone willing to help.”
“There, now, don’t squirm,” a woman was saying, tucked behind a round curtain in the corner. “We’ll need to set it clean if it’s going to heal properly. It won’t be so bad.”
Hannah almost stumbled. It would be so bad, and that was very evident to anyone with eyes.
The injured man was a skinny one, and his bones were already knobby and visible, especially with his shirt off.
Whatever had thrown his shoulder askew had created a grotesque bulge at his collarbone, and every deep breath he took stretched his ribs upward toward the site of the injury and made him grit his teeth in pain.
The woman attending him, to Hannah’s utter shock, looked to be no older than she herself was. She had rich, red-brown skin that contrasted vibrantly against the sickly gray pallor of her patient as she ran her fingers over the knobs and ridges of his injury.
The patient himself was clearly more shocked by the presence of a rabbi and a Jewish girl in his tent than he was by having his bones set to rights by a woman.
Not just a woman, but a young one, with brown skin and the kind of face that likely drew stares even when she was doing nothing at all out of the ordinary.
Hannah wasn’t sure if that was surprising or not. But it was unquestioningly fascinating.
Miss Casper spared only a single glance and a nod at Hannah and the rabbi, pushed the loose curls of hair that had escaped her braid away from her face, and paced behind the man to get a good grip on his arm.
“Why don’t I tell you a story while I work?” she said, her voice chipper, like they’d just run into one another on their daily errands. “The good rabbi there can keep you company too. Now, have you heard the one about the three debutantes from Dover?”
“No, miss,” the young man said, his eyes darting to the side like he was trying to keep tabs on her. “I ain’t heard it.”
“Well, these three debutantes were the gems of their rival houses off in the city of Dover. They came to London all together this Season to have their debuts and compete for the best match. One day, the three girls got together to have tea and chat, so they could compare their successes.”
Hannah watched as the healer arranged the man’s arm in his lap, taking two sturdy strips of canvas and buckling him at the wrist and elbow to his own leg, as though to keep him in a particular position.
Despite herself, she was listening to the bit about the debutantes as well.
“The first one sighed. In her efforts to win the war between the three of them, she had accepted the very first proposal offered to her and was quickly wed off to a wastrel and a rogue. She had begged him to be a respectable sort if he wished to have a loving wife. She said all she asked for was frankness and earnestness in a man. He did not need to be handsome or rich or charming, only frank and earnest.”
The rabbi chuckled softly to himself.
“The middle girl was quick to gloat. She immediately said that just last night her papa had approved her betrothal to a war hero and a baron besides. She sighed dreamily, knowing she had surely done the best of all of them.
“The third scoffed and said she could do one better. She had claimed the attention of the most fabulous gentleman, a foreign royal, she said. A shah! She was certain she would be made a princess any day now and whisked away to lands unknown.”
While speaking, Miss Casper had begun to spread an oily ointment onto the man’s shoulder, making its bruised and distorted flesh glisten in the beams of afternoon light that came in from above.
“The first girl was feeling very glum indeed, and only felt worse when she saw her wastrel husband come to retrieve her and take her back home. However, nothing had prepared her for both of her friends jumping to their feet in a flutter and rushing toward him like they were great intimates. She demanded an explanation straight away.”
She braced the flat of her hand against the roundest portion of the bulging shoulder, checking the straps she’d put into place, and gave the man a reassuring smile.
“Well, as soon as she introduced the man as her husband, her friends became enraged.
One burst into tears and ran away, while the other reared back and slapped the man as hard as she could, turned on her heel, and stormed off.
“Her husband looked at her, gave a great sigh, and shook his head. ‘I did what you wanted, and look what good it did me,’ he said. ‘What do you mean, what I wanted?!’ his wife demanded. ‘I told you to be frank and earnest.’
“‘I was,’ returned the husband. ‘With the first girl I was Frank, and with the other, I was Earnest.’”
The snap happened so suddenly, it startled everyone in the tent other than Miss Casper. The man somehow laughed and cried out all at once as his shoulder was forced back into its proper place, while the healer quickly untied his restraints and pressed a cool towel into the spot.
“I know, I know,” she soothed. “But it will be so much better now.”
Once the man had exited that partitioned little section of the tent, Miss Casper turned toward them with a smile and a little sigh. “Thank you for your patience,” she said. “And your constitutions. I’ve had weaker attendees faint straightaway or worse from setting a joint.”
“I thought about it,” Hannah confessed, unsure if she was stunned, green, or awed. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Casper.”
“Mae, please,” she said, shaking her head and coming forward to shake Hannah’s outstretched hand. “I have been asking the rabbi to call me Mae for three years now. How many more times must I ask, my dear man?”
“At least once more,” said Rabbi Hirsch, “Miss Casper.”
She dimpled at him, clearly in fine, high spirits despite their surroundings.
“My grandfather wanted to come assist,” she said, turning to roll up the straps she’d used to bind the man’s arm.
“But his joints are the size of walnuts these days, and I forbid it. He claimed he would simply do oversight, and I called him the liar he is.”
“He is missed,” said the rabbi, “but I agree with you. He would not be able to resist treating folk directly.”
“I’m going to tell him you said that,” said Mae Casper.
The rabbi winced. “Please do not.”
For the remainder of the afternoon, they stood nearby, assisting Mae with tasks as she meted them out. Hannah watched four wounds of varying grisliness get sewn up, a row of broken toes get tied together (“Those we can’t set,” Mae had told her), and an infection get drained into a chamber pot.
She hadn’t vomited at all.
She wanted that noted, even if only to herself.
When they escaped into the open air of the dusk several hours later, she wondered if she was even capable of revulsion anymore.
It was very possible she’d just been inoculated against it forever.
“Oh, my dear, you look like you’ve taken a blow to the head,” Mae Casper said with a giggle. “You did well. I suppose that was your first time with the injured.”
“I … yes,” said Hannah, blinking a few times. “Though once I pushed my little sister into a flower pot and she had to have her brow sewn up.”
“Ah,” said Mae. “We’ve all done it.”
It startled Hannah enough that she snapped out of the mild blur that had taken over her mind and gave a startled laugh. “Have we?”
“Well, I have,” Mae said with a shrug. “Not a flower pot, though. A washboard. And it was a brother.”
Rabbi Hirsch made a disapproving little noise, shaking his head, though Hannah could see even in profile that he was smirking.
“Well, Hannah, I suppose the only question now is whether or not you’ve been scared off of coming back tomorrow,” Mae continued, tilting her head. “Please say you haven’t.”
To be totally frank and earnest, Hannah had been a little scared off. But the hopeful encouragement in the other girl’s voice was too much to resist.
“Of course not,” she said, and told herself it was not a lie, because now she had decided not to be. “I intend to come back for as many days as you need me.”
“Wonderful,” said Mae. “That’s wonderful. I think we will be fast friends.”
Hannah dearly hoped that was true.
They split ways at the second block, with Miss Casper heading to her home in Soho while Hannah and the rabbi went deeper into Clerkenwell.
She asked, before entering her home, who would watch over all those people in the night.
“I do not know,” said the rabbi. “But I hope we find many more shepherds in the coming days.”
“I’ve never met someone like Mae before,” Hannah said.
“Someone like her?” said the rabbi, “Or someone who looks like her? Don’t forget your own lineage, girl. We are, both of us, from the darker corners of the globe at the end of the day.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Hannah said, her cheeks heating. “I meant the healing. The … cracking and so on.”
“Is that what you meant?” said the rabbi. “Good night, Miss Lazarus.”
When Hannah got up to her room, blissfully alone in the house while her family was gathered around Esther and her husband for yet another dinner, she washed and changed and climbed into bed with a weariness in her bones that she knew she could not quite justify.
After all, she hadn’t been pulling human bodies back into order all day. She had only been standing nearby with things on trays, hoping to be useful in some small way. What right did she have to be sore?
Still, as she settled into the pillows and pulled the blankets up around her chin, her mind took on an interesting muddle of reflection.
She had written to Mr. Beck under the pretense of a donation. She had even known, theoretically, that one would be most welcome for such an endeavor. After seeing it, though, she realized that her pretense had actually been prophetic.
She might not know how to mend a bone, but she knew plenty of people of means. And, of course, it meant that if Thaddeus Beck didn’t respond to her missive, she now had an excuse to go hunt him down and follow up about it.
She couldn’t stitch a wound, but perhaps she could do something useful anyhow.
Perhaps it really would be a year of meaning, one way or another.