by Merry Farmer
“Do you have an apron?” she asked.
If she wasn’t mistaken, a grin tweaked the corner of Dr. Pycroft’s mouth. “In the dispensary, which is that door there.”
He pointed down the hall closer to the waiting room. His expression lightened and then fell again at the sight of a young girl, about twelve, striding down the hall toward him with a glower that matched the one he’d been wearing earlier.
“Mary.” He let out a breath and strode toward her. “What is it, my darling?”
Marshall
Fate gave with one hand and took with the other. Just when his savior had stepped through the door in the form of Dr. Alexandra Dyson, filling him with the hope that a few things might actually get done around the hospital for a change, the light went out again.
“What is it?” he asked his daughter, coming to stand in front of her in the middle of the hall.
“Mother sent me to fetch you home,” Mary sighed. She seemed as little pleased to be sent on the errand as he was to be on the receiving end of it. “She says that if you want your laundry finished, you should come and do it yourself.”
“Bloody hell,” he swore. Mary was used to such things. She was the one person who wouldn’t hold anything against him. They were in it together. “What now?”
“She tried to wash the clothes,” Mary said, “but if you ask me, she made a mess of it on purpose. Everything is soaked at home, and there are washing suds on the walls.”
Marshall clenched his teeth. The woman was punishing him. She had been punishing him since the day he announced they were moving home to Brynthwaite. He turned to send an apologetic glance to Dr. Dyson, another woman who had been dragged up to the back end of nowhere against her will. Unlike Clara, however, Dr. Dyson looked as though he had just made her life immeasurably better instead of worse.
“Dr. Dyson, I’d like you to meet my daughter, Mary,” He introduced them.
“How do you do?” Mary asked, making a nice curtsy.
“Quite well,” Dr. Dyson answered.
“Are you a real doctor?” Mary asked.
“I am,” Dr. Dyson smiled. There was such pride in her voice, in her smile. That was a blessed change from everything Marshall was used to.
“I’ve just hired Dr. Dyson to work here at the hospital,” Marshall went on, “and you can go home and tell your mother that while she may be up to her neck in sopping laundry and soap suds, we are up to our eyeballs in sick and injured people who need to be treated without delay.”
“Yes, Papa,” Mary said, far too gloomy for a bright girl her age. She shook her head. “I don’t understand why she won’t just let me do the laundry. I know how. Nora and I watched her maid do the laundry when I was playing at her house.”
He had to grin and kiss her forehead. She was the sweetest daughter a man could ask for. But he questioned the wisdom of letting her have friends who employed a variety of servants. It would only set her expectations higher than he could ever hope to meet. At the same time, Marshall knew that his eldest was every bit as capable as she claimed she was.
“Tell your mother that I will be home directly, but that I’ve instructed you to help tidy up the place before I get there. Then you can do as much laundry as you’d like and claim you’re only following orders, like a good soldier.”
“Yes, Papa.” Mary burst into a smile. It both warmed Marshall’s heart and hardened it. These were not the things that should make a girl so close to growing up happy.
Mary pressed up to her toes and kissed Marshall’s cheek before turning and running off. Marshall watched her go, the weight of parental love and guilt hanging over him.
“She’s a fine young lady,” Dr. Dyson commented.
Marshall started. He’d forgotten that his new employee was there.
“She is that,” he said, putting on his best frown and gesturing for Dr. Dyson to follow her down the hall to the dispensary. “She takes too much on her young shoulders,” he lamented.
“Though she seems capable of handling it,” Dr. Dyson said.
“Which is precisely the problem,” he muttered, hoping she hadn’t heard. “Here are the aprons. You may want to make a quick survey of the medicines we have on hand. Simon is supposed to do inventory twice a week, but he’s had his hands full, so I doubt he’s taken stock since last month.”
“If we make it through all of the people in the waiting room, I may be able to do that,” Dr. Dyson said.
The woman was magnificent. Then again, anyone, be they king or beggar, who would have said those words to him just then would be considered magnificent. But there was something about having so much help offered by a handsome woman in an expensive frock that made it that much sweeter.
Marshall left Dr. Dyson to her perusal and marched back into the hall. “Mrs. Garforth,” he called, heading for the waiting room.
“Yes, Dr. Pycroft?” Mrs. Garforth answered him. She was waiting, solid as Gibraltar, just on the other side of the doorway to the waiting room. Almost as if she had been listening for him, listening to everything that had been said moments before. Well, it had been her job to get him into trouble when he was a boy. Some habits died hard.
“Mrs. Garforth, Dr. Dyson is now employed at the hospital. You will do your utmost to be sure that she has all the assistance that she requires as she acquaints herself with the building, the supplies, and the patients.”
“A woman doctor?” Mrs. Garforth balked.
Marshall nodded, then turned to head back into the hall. “Any doctor is a godsend at this point, Mrs. Garforth. You will not give her a hard time.”
“Yes, Dr. Pycroft,” she called after him, unconvincing.
Marshal frowned and headed upstairs to the wards to break the news to Simon and the other porters as well as the ward nurses. The hospital had been built as a home for unwanted children, and was designed to accommodate plenty of them. He halls were wide, the staircase was wider still, and in spite of being dark and closed-off, the rooms were large. Growing up, he’d lived almost his whole life within the confines of the orphanage. He’d eaten in the mess hall downstairs—still in use as a mess hall and recreation room for those patients too ill to leave but well enough to be out of bed, and their family when they had come from far afield—he’d been schooled in the stuffy rooms that now constituted examination rooms, the hospital’s surgery, and his office, and he’d laid his head to rest each night in the boy’s dormitory.
The dormitories were where anything of any actual importance had ever happened in Brynthwaite Municipal Orphanage. There were two of them—two gigantic, long rooms that ran nearly the entire length of the second floor of the building, with bathrooms at the end. One dorm had been for boys and the other for girls. The ages of the children tossed in together hadn’t mattered, and more than a few nights were interrupted by the older children bullying the younger ones senseless. Marshall had only been too grateful to have Jason and Lawrence there to defend him from the worst of it. They had grown tougher from the relentless teasing. He had threatened to fall apart under the constant onslaught. Even now, knowing that the boy’s dormitory was nothing more than the men’s ward of a hospital he oversaw and knowing it was filled with the sick and infirm, stepping into the room sent chills down his back.
“Simon,” he barked, harsher than he needed to be to hide the trickle of old fear.
“Yes, Dr. Pycroft.” Simon sprang up from where he was mopping up sick next to the bed of a man who had eaten dangerously bad meat the day before.
“We have a new doctor aboard with us,” he said. It felt good to say.
“We do?” Simon blinked.
“Our prayers have been answered,” Nurse Callow, a middle-aged spinster of a thing who only spoke a few times a month sighed with joy.
Marshall nodded to her. “Dr. Alexandra Dyson. And yes, she’s a woman.”
“A woman doctor?” a man in a bed next to him, his foot enclosed in a cast and elevated by a stack of pillows, snorted. “I ain’t lett
in’ no female doctor touch me.”
“I wouldn’t touch you either, Horace,” Marshall snapped at the man.
Horace laughed, as did a handful of the patients near him, but damn, it brought up a problem he hadn’t considered. He needed all the help he could get, but that didn’t mean everyone would accept that help. Well, he would cross that bridge when he came to it.
“I’m certain Dr. Dyson will be up here at some point, so you can introduce yourselves to her then. She was eager to get straight to work without the grand tour. So be kind to her when you see her.” He glanced around at the patients laid out in their beds. “If any of you so much as says ‘boo’ to her and frightens her away, I’ll have you on my surgery table in a trice, and I can’t guarantee which body parts will still be attached when you wake up.”
More raucous laughter followed him as he turned on his heel and marched out of the room. He let out a breath, shook his shoulders loose, and continued on to the woman’s and children’s ward. The women’s and children’s ward had been the girl’s dormitory, and as such it inspired far less horror in Marshall. He knew full well that the same miserable tactics of forcibly-induced hierarchy had existed amongst the girls growing up as much as it had with the boys, but as he had never been a part of it, the ward didn’t hold the same sense of doom for him.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” he greeted the dozen or so female patients.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Pycroft,” they answered, some sullen, others eager to please. Marshall wasn’t sure which made him more nervous.
“Nurse Stevens, Nurse Nyman, we have a new doctor on staff, Dr. Alexandra Dyson,” he announced without preamble.
“Alexandra?” Nurse Stevens asked, straightening from where she was spooning some sort of vile medicine down the throat of a listless young boy. “A woman?”
Marshall sighed. He might as well get used to the question now. “Yes. A woman and a doctor. We don’t care how God made her, so long as she’s willing to help us heal the sick, which she is. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Dr. Pycroft,” the two nurses answered in unison.
Their eyes grew round as they glanced over Marshall’s shoulder.
“Dr. Pycroft,” Dr. Dyson spoke right behind him, slightly out of breath. “A man has just been brought in with a broken leg. He fell off a ladder. I just started stitching up a young woman’s split hand, and Mrs. Garforth sent me up to fetch you.”
Marshall laughed mirthlessly. “Baptism by fire, is it, Dr. Dyson?” He turned to the ward. “Here she is, your new doctor. Treat her well.”
“Yes, Dr. Pycroft.”
It was a blessing that Nurses Stevens and Nyman seemed instantly taken with the idea of a woman doctor. The fewer people he would have to convince of Dr. Dyson’s worth, the better.
Marshall headed downstairs to see to the man with the broken leg. He had neither the time nor the patience to check Dr. Dyson to be sure she was stitching the woman’s hand up correctly or with proper hygiene. For a man who had never trusted a soul beyond the friends he was raised with, trusting Dr. Dyson to do her job came surprisingly easily. Or perhaps that was because he was desperate.
The leg fracture turned out to be tricky. He had a devil of a time setting the poor man’s bone while he wailed and moaned, and eventually passed out from the pain. If they’d had the medicines to spare, he would have poured them down the man’s throat in an instant. Instead, he left the man bandaged and splinted and sleeping in one examination room while tending to another man with a hideous case of pox from head to toe in another room. Time ceased to have any meaning. The sick just kept coming, but as long as they were coming, Marshall would do whatever he could to make them better. If he worked hard enough, if he pursued cures diligently enough, then perhaps one day not a single soul would have to step foot in this blasted building again. Everyone, far and wide, would be well and happy, and he could finally rest.
“Dr. Pycroft, it’s well past six o’clock, and most of the patients have already gone home for the night or been admitted,” Mrs. Garforth informed him after he sent a cheeky beggar with a sprained wrist on his way.
Oblivious to anything but the inventory of injuries and illnesses running through his brain, he asked, “Has supper been started for the patients?”
“Started and half-served,” Mrs. Garforth answered. “And before you ask it, the linens are being washed and all the other washing has been sent out.”
“Thank God for that,” Marshall said. If they had to do all their own washing, they’d never get anything— “Dammit,” he huffed, remembering the debacle that waited for him at home.
Mrs. Garforth stared at him as if she would take soap to his mouth for cursing.
“Double dammit,” he hissed. He’d told Jason he would meet up with him and Lawrence at the Fox and Lion that evening too. Well, if it came down to having a drink with his friends in the pub or going home to a hysterical wife who wouldn’t give him a moment’s peace, the decision was easy.
He took off his apron and threw it in the hamper with the rest of the things that needed laundering, washed his hands as thoroughly as he could, donned his coat, then marched out through the waiting room and into the street. He headed straight-away across the busy intersection and into the Fox and Lion. Familial duty or not, he needed a drink to fortify himself for what was to come. Lucky for him, Lawrence was already sitting at a table in the back corner. Marshall gestured to the barkeep—who knew him well enough to nod in return and start pulling a beer—then headed to the table.
“Tough day?” Lawrence asked as Marshall plopped into his chair.
Marshall groaned, letting the stress of his life roll off his shoulders and pull his posture down with it.
Lawrence chuckled. “The only man who can be pressed down by so many cares is a man who cares in the first place,” he said.
Marshall arched an eyebrow at him. “Fine words from someone who did not spend the entire day barely able to catch his breath as the crowd in the waiting room piled up. Where did this bronchitis come from anyhow?”
“I hear they’ve got it bad down Kendal way,” Lawrence said.
“Yes, and can’t the hospital in Kendal handle it without giving it to us?”
Lawrence shrugged. “They probably have their hands full too. You know poor folk are willing to make the journey all the way to Brynthwaite Hospital because you refuse to turn anyone away, whether they can pay or not.”
“And most of them fall into the ‘not’ category,” Marshall grumbled. That would be the death of him someday. “At least there is one light on the horizon,” he said, perking up a shade when the barkeep brought him his pint. “I’ve got a new doctor.”
“You actually found someone willing to work for the peanuts that you’re able to pay?” Lawrence smiled.
Halfway through his first sip, Marshall sighed. “Dammit, I forgot to discuss payment with her.”
“With her?” Lawrence sat straighter, his brow rising nearly to his hairline.
“Yes, yes,” Marshall grumbled. “I’ve hired a woman doctor. She comes highly qualified and unlike every other doctor this side of Yorkshire, she seems to actually want the job.”
Lawrence nodded consideringly as Marshall gulped his beer. “It makes sense,” he said. “If she’s a woman, chances are it’s been hard for her to find a position. I suppose a doctor like that would be willing to work for free if it came to it.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Marshall said. He paused, staring at his pint glass. “Though now that I think about it, she may not be in dire need of money in the first place. Dr. Alexandra Dyson.”
That was all he needed to say. Lawrence broke into a smile. “Lord Thornwell’s niece? I’d heard she and her mother moved in at the Hall. Didn’t know she was a doctor, though.”
“Apparently.”
The two men sat there in silence for a few seconds. Marshall relished his beer and Lawrence picked at a meat pie he was nearly finished eating. Lawrence’s expre
ssion grew far away, then serious.
“I wanted to ask you something,” he said at length.
“Ask,” Marshall said, feeling better now that he had some alcohol in him.
Lawrence met his eyes. “Is Jason ill?”
Marshall blinked, then burst into wry laughter. “Jason is no more ill than you or I.”
Lawrence quirked an eyebrow. “Why has he been coming to you to order him cures since he moved back, then?”
Marshall let out a long breath. “There’s nothing wrong with Jason that hasn’t been wrong with him for the last twenty years. He’s high-strung and ambitious. He’s so blasted determined to prove himself to the world that he can’t relax. Mark my words, that man won’t ever give himself a moment’s peace until they’ve erected a statue of him in the center of town, and even then, he’d probably work for a bigger one.”
“And that’s all it is?” Lawrence asked.
Marshall took another drink of his beer, instantly second-guessing himself. “I’m sure it is. The man is driven—driven by forces beyond his control, forces that I wouldn’t want pushing me, but driven still.”
Lawrence hummed and took another bite of his pie. “I’ve asked Mother Grace about it.”
“Mother Grace,” Marshall grumbled and sniffed.
“But she says to wait and watch,” Lawrence finished, a sharp edge to his voice.
He and Marshall had never seen eye-to-eye about the old witch who lived alone in the woods, and they never would. Mother Grace practiced the old arts, to hear Lawrence tell it. To Marshall, she was just another misguided old woman who couldn’t appreciate the gifts of modern science and medicine. She was probably the sort who had concocted the useless trash Jason kept ordering from him in the first place.
“All Jason needs is a woman,” Marshall went on, nearing the bottom of his pint glass. “Although much good it’s done me.”
Lawrence’s mouth quirked into a grin. “I believe a woman is what Jason is trying for.”
