“You are the most inconsiderate, vain little girl,” Ezra was sputtering. “You think everyone around you is your plaything. Just a puppet to amuse yourself with.”
“If that were true,” she shot back, “I’d certainly makeyoufar more amusing.”
Roland grinned. “Dr. Ravishing went up a moment ago to separate them but has thus far been unsuccessful.”
“This will need to be cleaned right away,” Ravi’s voice cut in, followed by his footfalls as he emerged back into the hallway. “Lot of dust and grime behind where it was in the first place.”
“Oh, Daniel, get your hands out of that!” Dinah squealed.
Mae sighed, leaning her head back, and moved to go up the stairs and deal with the matter directly.
Roland caught her wrist at the first step, just lightly, to make her turn back.
“You didn’t wear it,” he observed, his eyes scanning her form.
She gave him a quirk of her lips, pulling her wrist free with a slide of her fingers against his own. “Is that what you think?” she returned, and turned to bustle up the stairs.
She reached the top just as Dinah pushed past her in a fluster. “Morning, Mae!” she cried. “Brooms are in the kitchenette? We need brooms!”
Mae nodded, stepping aside, and rounded the corner to find a little boy of toddling age blinking up at her, covered in caked oatmeal paste over his chicken pox and streaked with grime. He extended his hand and opened it, revealing a tiny white object in the palm.
“Oh, Daniel, what have you got there, friend?!” Ravi called, bustling over with Ezra in tow.
“Oh, heavens,” said Ezra, looking a little green as he bent and plucked the little white bead from the boy’s hand and presented it to Ravi. “I think it’s a frog.”
Mae blinked, leaning closer.
Indeed. Apparently they had missed a frog’s head during that particular act of vandalism, and now all that remained with this tiny, shiny white skull.
Ravi took it from Ezra and held it on the tip of his finger, his lips twitching. “Alas, poor Yorick,” he said softly. “I knew him well.”
Ezra snorted, evidently despite himself, slapping a hand up over his mouth and shaking his head. He glanced in apology at Mae and took little Daniel by the shoulders. “Let’s get you to the washroom, hm?” he said to the boy, guiding him away.
Ravi was still considering the little skull. “Honestly, I might keep it,” he said.
It was at that moment that Mae realized that not a single person there, aside from perhaps her grandfather and Roland Reed, knew she had been late.
She blinked at Ravi and in a moment of petty pique, she blurted out, “Roland just called you Dr. Ravishing.”
Ravi paused, almost dropping the little frog skull. “Did he really? Are we adopting it?”
“We are not,” she told him, and turned to return to the patients downstairs.
She got through the remainder of the morning on the sheer necessity of proving to herself that she was required here. She iced a goose egg on a man’s forehead. She lanced a boil. She stitched a short but deep stab wound in a woman’s knee from a very unlucky incident with a dropped kitchen knife. She assisted Sally in a massage meant to encourage a late baby to flip around already.
It was busy, exhausting work, and it kept her mind occupied.
At least until she went into the storeroom to get a new bottle of witch hazel. She didn’t even hear the door open behind her, much less the sound of him slipping through it.
She almost startled out of her skin when his hands gathered up the fabric at her waist, bunching up her skirt to get a peek at the slip underneath, his breath warm and amused in her ear.
He tutted as she turned her head in annoyance, pressing her firmly into the storage table where the witch hazel bottles lived so she could not wriggle away. “And here you had me doubting myself,” he chided. “A charming white linen chemise, to be sure, but not the gold.”
She squirmed a bit for the sake of it but could not hide her smile as he leaned forward and pressed a kiss into the curve of her neck, his arm wrapping around her waist to hold her steady against him.
“You know you are acting a little mad today,” he whispered. “Is that because of me?”
“Audacious,” she observed. “No. It is because I overslept and it’s thrown me off-kilter. Much like yourself, I do not enjoy the sensation.”
