“What on earth?” Mae cried, her fingers going into her mouth as she rushed forward, only to be stopped bodily by Sally. “My ether! The documents!”
“You’ll step on glass,” Sally said reasonably. “Don’t.”
“Stitches, I think,” Ravi was saying to the inspector, picking through the glass around him to peer at a cut on his leg while the patient with the gravel wound was looking curiously downfrom the bed. “Let’s get you up before that ether gets into your wound.”
“Don’t touch me!” the inspector cried, wincing and trying to turn onto his side, only to plant the flats of his palms in more glass and shout out again in pain. “Blast and damnation! Why was that shelf so loose!”
“Because it’s not a guardrail?” Ravi suggested mildly, crossing his arms and watching rather than assisting. “Why did you grab it like that?”
The inspector only pulled a face rather than answering. “I believe I slipped in pus,” he muttered.
“I believe he was going to spew,” the gravel patient offered helpfully. “I ain’t producingthatmuch pus.”
“No, you aren’t, Mr. Hollander,” Ravi agreed politely.
“What are all these … what is this!” the inspector barked, snatching up a wet stack of papers so harshly that they came wetly apart in the middle. “This is my name! My nephew’s name! What is the meaning of … oh, God, my leg!”
Mae shot Sally a look and pushed her arm off the hold it had around her waist. “Those are mine,” she said firmly. “Unhand them at once. You are ruining them.”
“Is this retaliation for the simple act of inspection?” he demanded, going as purple as the blossoming trail of blood from his leg, his wig slipping down the back of his head. “I am empowered by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, I’ll have you know, and Guy’s has a great interest in ensuring this facility is up to standard given that it has poached so many ofher patients. What business have you with my nephew and his fellows?”
“I could answer that,” Roland said mildly, appearing at Mae’s side as though from the air itself. “Shall I?”
Mae sighed. “Sir, if you do not let us stitch your leg up, you are going to lose so much blood, you will faint. Do you wish to faint? On a pile of glass?”
“Oh, no, the shelf!” Dinah cried from somewhere in the rear. “I suppose I’d best go find those muscled workmen to fix it, yes?”
“Dinah, go back to your children,” Ezra snapped. “Or get the brooms back out of the nursery.”
Evidently tired of all the conversing, Thaddeus Beck stomped through the crowd, parting them with the sheer breadth of his body, and loomed over the inspector, his shadow darkening the man enough that he had no choice but to peer up at this new player.
“I am going to put you on a cot,” Mr. Beck informed him. “Do not squirm.”
“Not my cot,” Mr. Hollander said with a sniff. “I’ve still rocks in me.”
“The one in the foyer, Mr. Beck, if you please,” Mae managed, stepping back and pointing. “Thank you.”
They all pointedly looked away from the inspector being scooped up and cradled like an infant as he was moved, dripping, to the designated bed. As she could not reach the area herself, Ravi went for the thread spool, stuck two needles into it, and tossed it to her over the threshold of mess.
But it was Roland that caught it.
He wordlessly turned and followed the path of the inspector and Mae did the same, casting one last mournful look over her shoulder at the wasted ether and witch hazel, the ruined bottles, and worst of all, those documents from Morning Glory Investigations, destroyed and smearing more by the second in the ruin that was the floor.
“It burns,” the inspector whined as Beck rolled him onto the narrow bed. “Like hellfire.”
“That’s the ether,” Mae snapped. “My precious,expensiveether. Enough to last me through the remainder of the year, you know. And now it is gone.”
“Did it burn me?” he asked, grimacing. “Am I further wounded?”
She shook her head, letting Roland set up the needles and thread while she tore the inspector’s trousers further open to look at the wound. “No. It’s just cleaner than it would be otherwise and bleeding more than it needs to because ether has that effect. It’s not as bad as I thought. Four stitches or five ought to do it.”
“Shouldn’t an apothecary know that?” Roland asked, accepting a fresh basin from Sally, who glared at the inspector before flouncing back off.
“I’m not an apothecary,” he muttered. “I am a member of the Worshipful Soc—”
“Yes, we all heard you,” Mae told him. “Have you ever gotten stitches before?”
He shook his head. “Never,” he said, and for a moment, he sounded very much like a little boy.
