She trailed off, pulling it from the shelf as she turned back and found Roland already standing ready with the gauze, prepared to help her wrap the leg.
She thought perhaps her patients were not the only ones experiencing a bit of internal trauma today as something clanged around in her ribcage and landed with a splash in her stomach at the sight of it.
She took a deep breath and told herself to keep working.
In London, work didn’t stop when a cart tipped over or a tenement collapsed. It certainly wasn’t going to because Mae Casper’s heart had fallen into turmoil.
CHAPTER 6
There were a few moments in the remainder of that first day where Roland thought Mae Casper was going to speak to him. To truly, meaningfully speak to him.
She would take in a little breath, meet his eyes, and open her lips, but always something would falter in her expression and all that would come out would be a request for a tool or a tonic, something needed as they worked through the clutch of people who had been injured by the toppled cart.
Much of it was familiar. Jammed joints and dislocated bones. Scrapes and cuts and bruises and lumps and so on. No one was very seriously hurt save for the first woman, whose wound could have turned dangerous quickly if the clinic had not been nearby to aid her.
Roland did idly wonder if Mae always smelled faintly of talcum powder and cloves or if that was just today's scent, a result of the necessary things she'd put her skin against in the course of her work.
He genuinely felt surprise when Rosalind and Dinah descended from the upper floors, announcing that they had to depart before the sun finished setting. He hadn't realized so many hours had passed, nor that the light had changed as they had done so.
Tod and Hannah had stayed, both falling into helper roles with a quiet ease that spoke to a time when they had been instrumental in the creation of this place, back when it had only been a tent next to the site of a broken tenement.
"Are you going directly to the Vixen to work through the night?" Roland had asked his friend, finding a spare moment to corner him before he could slip away. "After all this?"
"Afraid so," Tod had replied with a wry tilt of his head. "Unfortunately, I assigned my usual deputy for these situations to clinic duty and can't rightly put the burden on him tonight."
"Maybe not," Roland said, frowning. "But he can share it. I'll follow you back to St. James once things are locked up here."
He watched her as she secured the children in the nursery and the two patients who would stay overnight in the infirmary. He followed her lead in picking up bottles and towels and random bits of rubbish and sundry to be tucked into their respective cabinets, and clicked his tongue at the kits lingering nearby to do the same.
He did note, with a faint sense of amusement, that the boy Winston, whom he had taken to be some sort of patient here, was still lingering and participating in the work alongside the kits without any explicit instruction or request.
He kept scratching at his sable-brown hair and sneaking glances at Mae as though she were some sort of sorceress, and if hedidn't check often enough, she might vanish and he'd lose his opportunity to continue to observe her.
Roland did make a mental note to ensure that whatever reason the boy was here wasn't dangerous or horribly contagious if he was joining the fold, officially or not.
Just before they finished, as two kits literally swept the perimeter with hay brooms, an elderly man with a full head of snow-white hair appeared through the door, looking comfortable enough that Roland didn't immediately move to boot him out.
"Ah, Dr. Bethel," Mae said, looking up at him from where she was rinsing out her basins near the kitchenette. "House calls ate up your entire day, didn't they?"
"They do that sometimes," he replied, a touch more defensively than Roland thought strictly necessary, and then looked around at the children assisting with the cleaning up with an expression of approval. "Well! Look at the lot of you, pitching in. Are you all here to catch the pox?"
"What?!" Roland barked before he could stop himself.
Mae glanced at him, her lips twitching a bit but otherwise giving nothing away. "No, these boys are runners. They come to assist now and then. Except for the one over there with the broom. He actually was here to catch the pox, but it appears he's changed vocation."
Dr. Bethel blinked his brown eyes and then shrugged. "I suppose there's no reason he can't do both."
"Chickenpox," Mae said suddenly, turning and facing Roland entirely, those dark eyes of hers meeting his. She wasfinally speaking to him directly with something other than a professional request, and it was to saychicken pox. "The community drops off young children here sometimes to get the process over with. It is safer to catch it while you are still small. I trust you've already had it, Mr. Reed?"
"Twice," he said without thinking, blinking at her in surprise. "Long time ago."
"Twice!" Dr. Bethel repeated, sounding impressed. "That's a rare man you've got there, Miss Casper. Pleasure to meet you, sir, by the way. I am Asher Bethel."
"This is Roland Reed," Mae said quickly, seemingly to spare Roland the effort. "He is here to assist us for the remainder of the High Season, lest we run into any more mischief-makers or vandals."
"Twice, though!" Dr. Bethel said again. "You do understand how unusual that is, don't you, sir?"
"I didn't," Roland answered, a little stunned by the attention. "How unusual?"
