He frowned and shifted and every time he moved, the year changed again. The scenery changed again.
Dinners at the parish house. Sneaking into the old Sparrow’s Tail to run games with Tod, deep in winter. The day they’d bought the Tod & Vixen. The day they’d opened it.
And Mae Casper. Mae setting bones. Mae glinting in gold at a ball. Mae laughing with the other women at a sunny picnic.
Mae and Mae again. Over and over and over.
Some hours must have passed, during which he heard Rosalind and Dinah discuss the merits of purchasing a second chalkboard for the classroom, and Rosalind’s soft brogue lamenting that she felt guilty erasing Ezra’s alphabets before every tally class.
“It seems such a waste when all I am going to draw are just a bunch of lines and dashes,” she said.
They had also, if he was not mistaken, spent some time exchanging observations about how pleasant the new doctor was to look upon.
“You cannot deny it,” Dinah whispered. “He is a vision.”
“I am married now,” Rosalind returned.
“Married, but not blind!” Dinah giggled.
They must have then assumed Roland was completely asleep, for Dinah commented, “I shall marry whichever one Mae decides she doesn’t want.”
A comment which haunted the remainder of his drifting hours.
At some point, she must have come up and re-dressed his wound, for he woke to find the gauze in a different arrangement against his ribs and the glass of silvery herbal drink had been refilled on the windowsill.
Winston informed him that they’d made an adult-sized bed up for him downstairs before everyone had left for the night and, unable to find any good reason to argue against it, he drank the pain-killing brew and carefully descended down to the cot for a second night at the clinic.
Mercifully, this one was quiet, with only the sounds of the passing patrolmen and their shadows interrupting the flicker of torchlight to punctuate the passing hours.
Sadly, the mercy ended there, for whatever was in that drink put him down hard enough that he slept through the clinic opening the following day and didn’t come back to himself until peoplewere already buzzing about around his prone body, midway through the damned morning.
“Miss Turnhill walked through the stinging nettles,” Sally was saying to Dr. Casper as she passed by, wafting the smell of roasted coffee. “Again.”
“I think she just missed you,” he replied with a chortle. “Oh, extra cream for me?”
Roland groaned and turned his head to the side, blinking his eyes open as he searched for Mae among the moving bodies and shadows on the ground floor.
“He has been coming back every week for months and we haven’t been able to help,” said her voice from a far corner that pulled his gaze farther down, until his chin was touching his shoulder. “And you’ve solved it in minutes!”
He blinked a few times, the blur of healers standing in the far end of the room coming more into focus as Mae, Dr. Bethel, and the new chap talked in a tight knot of eager chatter.
“I’ve only ever seen one case of ague in all my career,” Dr. Bethel was marveling. “And it looked nothing like that.”
Ravi chuckled, shaking his head modestly. “If you’d grown up where I did,” he told them, “you’d be able to spot malaria from twenty paces with horse blinders on. It really is nothing. I didn’t know it traveled this far north, though.”
“You don’t understand!” Mae pressed, turning and grabbing both of his hands with her own. “He’s been suffering formonthsand now we finally knowwhy. We can’t cure him, but now we can at least help!”
Roland frowned, noting the way their skin tones blended attractively together where their hands met as he ran his thumbnail between two of his own pale, freckled fingers.
Ravi was grinning widely enough that Roland could see his perfect bloody teeth from all the way over here. “Well, if you are happy, Miss Casper,” he said, “then I have no choice but to be as well.”
At that, he forced himself to sit up, grunting in pain as he did so, his hand going immediately toward the radiating heat in his ribs.
It brought their attention around, all three of them immediately moving toward him.
“Ah, the hero of the hour,” sang Dr. Bethel. “Let’s get a look at you, son.”
Roland looked helplessly at Mae, who crossed her arms and stood back, looking a bit amused as Dr. Bethel hopped in and did the job for her, moving to unwrap the site of the cauterization and examine its progress.
