“Stitches!” cried the voice of an actual little boy. “I want to help! I can hold the seam, doctress!”
Mae sighed.
Winston came barreling forward, flour dusting his brow from whatever he’d been up to in the kitchenette, his eyes wide and eager.
“Inspector,” she said, turning to look at him. “This is Winston. He aspires to one day be a doctor. Do you mind if he assists me in stitching your wound?”
“A child?!” he balked. “Will he wield the needle?”
“No!” said Winston.
“No,” agreed Mae.
“One day,” said Roland, raising his eyebrows. “Come clean your hands, Winston.”
“I already did!” Winston said, holding them up for Roland to inspect. “Smell them! I used the lye soap!”
Roland nodded and dipped a clean cloth into the basin. “All right. Go help Mae clean the wound before we start sewing.”
Winston nodded and took the wet towel, wringing it out carefully in his little hands and then went to stand between Mae and the inspector. He blinked up at him a couple of times and said, “What is your name, sir?”
The inspector hesitated, wrinkling his brow. “Irving,” he said, seemingly without thinking.
“Well, Irving,” Winston said in his best adult voice. “Would you like to hear a story while we work?”
Mae pressed her lips together, glancing over at Roland, who was grinning widely at the scene as Winston began to dab at the cut while Mae splashed it at intervals with witch hazel solution.
“I used to have a very lazy dog,” Winston informed the inspector, dabbing and rinsing and dabbing again. “All he ever did was sleep, and I was sick of it! So I decided one day that he would be happier as a pub dog, since his favorite place to sleep was by the fire. I just had to get the pub man to agree to have him.”
“All right,” said Mae, nudging him to the side and reaching for her threaded needle.
Winston moved to the head of the cot and the inspector’s eyes followed him. He handed the bloodied rag off to Roland without stopping his story, keeping the man’s attention as Mae wedged the needle in at the base of his cut.
“The pub man was never going to say yes, but my mum said as long as he didn’t say no, the dog could stay, so I waited until I had saved up enough to buy a nice breakfast there on a cold morning when there would be a fire and took my lazy dog to eat it by the fireplace. Just like I knew he would, he fell asleep straight away. So, I ate my breakfast really fast, and as soon as I was done, I went for the door so my lazy dog could stay in his new home. The barman caught me, though, and he said, ‘Oi, lad, you can’t leave that mutt lyin’ there!’”
“Bad luck,” said the inspector as Mae finished the stitches.
Four, she noted with satisfaction, tying them off and looping the knot.
“Well,” said Winston. “I told him it wasn’t a mutt lion. It was a mutt dog! And then I ran out before he could argue. And now the lazy dog lives there still to this day!”
“Oh,” said the inspector, giving a dazed little chortle. “Oh, very good.”
“All done,” Mae informed him. “Keep it dry and clean and come back in a week or two and I’ll take them out. Please don’t try to take them out yourself or early. If they start itching or leaking clear or white, come back early.”
“He always comes back early,” Roland observed, crossing his arms. “Doesn’t he?”
At that, the inspector at least had the grace to look a little abashed. “It is my profession, good sir,” he said, forcing himself upright. “Oh, bother, I cannot go out onto the street with my trousers like this!”
“Why not?” said Winston, sounding genuinely baffled.
It got another dazed little chuckle out of the inspector. “You’re a good lad,” he said, and ruffled Winston’s hair. “Perhaps you will be a doctor someday after all.”
“And you were one of his teaching cases,” Roland informed him. “Though, as you can see, we only do that here with the permission of the patient.”
“Me?” the inspector said, sounding affronted. “A teaching case?”
“Yes,” Mae agreed. “You just were. Weren’t you?”
