Medicus mi-1

by Ruth Downie

Finally alone, Ruso started the Fatality Report. The first stroke of the first letter slid down the sheet and ended in a quivering black blob. He rested the pen on the edge of the desk while he blotted the page with a soft rag. A glance at the shelf told him there were no spare sheets. Of course not. The chief administrator had probably taken the key to the stationery cupboard too. Ruso held the sliver of wood over the lamp flame to hurry the drying of the blot and wondered what the girl'ssmile was like.

  The blot was obliterated by a scorch mark. He swore.

  This time the stroke started well enough, but the ink began to falter halfway down. He pressed harder. The nib scraped the wood, leaving a blank indentation like a dry riverbed. The dead cavalryman deserved better than this. He dipped the pen in the inkpot and tapped it against the edge.

  Gods above, Ruso, you are hopeless.

  He wasn't completely hopeless. He'd managed three years of marriage. Whereas Valens was still single at thirty-two and any woman willing to marry him would need her sanity examined. So would the second spear, if he gave his permission.

  A fine neat stroke this time, cutting across the sepia edge of the scorch mark. That was better. He was making progress now.

  The pen jolted between his fingers and stopped working. A second attempt at the stroke made an ink less scratch. Ruso lifted the pen to eye level and squinted at the nib. It was bent at an impossible angle. He flung it into the corner where it made a splash of black as it bounced off the plaster, missed the wastebasket, and rolled across the floor.

  Claudia would never have approved of this line of business, you know. He must stop showing an interest in slave girls. He would become a source of amusement.

  The next pen had a nib that wobbled about. The third proved to be an inky stick with no nib at all.

  Ruso sent the stool crashing back onto the floorboards, wrenched open the door, and roared, "Can't anybody get anything organized in this bloody place?" to an empty corridor.

  14

  Athrush was singing its early song in the hospital garden. The girl who had decided they could call her Tilla lay with her eyes closed, letting the music lift her above the dull ache in her arm. The bed was comfortable. She felt clean for the first time in weeks. It occurred to her that she was happy.

  The feeling was followed by a flush of shame. She had no right to be happy. This white room with the square window was only a temporary resting place.

  The Roman healers had, for reasons that were not clear to her, chosen to delay her arrival in the next world. Three times now she had allowed her thirst to defeat her resolve, reached out her good hand and drunk the barley water they had left in the black jug. When the serious one had sat on the bed and fed her with a spoon like a child, she had accepted a few mouthfuls of salty broth. After he had gone, she had struggled out of the bed, picked up the bowl, and tipped the contents out the window.

  She opened her eyes. This morning's bowl of gruel was still untouched on the table. This time there was a plain bone comb beside it. She swung her feet down onto the wooden floor and paused with her head bowed until the giddiness passed. Moments later, the thrush's song died as the latest meal slid out of the bowl to join the others under the lavender bush.

  By the time she fell back onto the bed she was sweating and exhausted. She closed her eyes and leaned against the white wall. She must not weaken. In the next world, the others were waiting.

  15

  Ruso paused in the doorway of the admissions hall and eyed the three very young soldiers who were standing stiffly against the wall. Over the murmur of conversation that echoed around the hall he inquired, "Are you here for me?"

  "Yes, sir," they chorused in badly timed unison.

  "Ah." It struck him that this answer was less than helpful since everyone in the hall was there for him in one way or another. "So, you're the new bandagers who are supposed to be following the doctor around this morning?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Good. Keep your eyes open and your mouths shut, and you might learn something. I'll try and make time for questions afterward."

  There were about twenty patients already lined up on the three benches. Half a dozen still stood in the line at the orderlies' table by the main entrance, waiting to be processed. Each man already seated had been assigned to a bench depending on the apparent urgency of his case. Several of the men on the nearest bench were slumped forward with their heads in their hands. A couple were clutching at injuries with bloodstained rags-one eye, one foot-and one was shivering and coughing.

  "Not so busy this morning," observed Ruso, eyeing the empty seats.

  "Word gets around, sir," said one of the trainees.

  Ruso turned and raised his eyebrows. The other two shrank back as if they were hoping to melt into the wall.

  "I mean, sir," the lad stumbled, "only the men who are really ill bother coming."

  Ruso was conscious of the patients' eyes on him as he led his little troop across the hall and into his surgery.

  Ruso's working space contained three shelves, a collection of unmatched stools and chairs, an examination table by the window, and a desk whose migratory tendencies had been curbed by a previous incumbent with a hammer and several large nails. One wall held a scatter of faded notices and a collection of colored diagrams showing muscles and bones. The students looked uncertain whether to stand to attention or demonstrate their keenness by trying to memorize the diagrams.

  "Stand where you can see," he instructed them, laying his case on the desk and unfastening the clasps, "and don't get in my light." As they shuffled awkwardly around the stools, he lifted the lid of the case and repositioned the bronze probe, which always slipped out of its place as soon as the case was vertical. He glanced up at them. "Ready?"

  The nods were a little too eager.

  The feverish man was summoned, swiftly examined, and sent down to an isolation ward with a prescription. The moment the man had been escorted out of the room, there was another knock on the door. Instead of the next patient, it turned out to be the porter who was part owner of the invisible dog.

  "Could I just have a quick word, sir?"

  "Can't it wait, Decimus?"

  "Very quick, sir."

  "Go ahead."

  "Sir, I thought you might like to know, Officer Priscus was seen arriving at the street of the Weavers this morning. He's back at his lodgings, sir."

  Ruso stared at him. "That's it?"

  The man glanced at the students. "We wondered if you wanted anything shifted, sir. Being as he might be here any minute."

  Ruso frowned. "Why would I want anything shifted?"

  "We're cleaning up a bit, sir. So if you've got anything cluttering up any of the rooms, we could move it for you. Sir. If you tell us where to put it."

  Ruso scratched his ear. "If Officer Priscus finds anything cluttering up any of the rooms, you can tell him I put it there."

  "Yes, sir." The man hesitated.

  "Well?"

  "Sir, we think Officer Priscus might ask who helped you put it there in the first place. If there was anything. And then some people who were just trying to be helpful might be in hot water, sir."

  Ruso glanced at his students to make sure they were at least pretending not to listen. "I'll deal with it in a moment," he said. "Send in the next man."

  Next in was the optio with the bloodstained rag clutched to one eye. Ruso looked at his students and grinned. This would take their minds off any speculation about things cluttering rooms. This, he knew, was the patient they had all been dreading.

  The optio did not disappoint. By the time Ruso had sent him off on a stretcher to be prepared for surgery, one of the students had fainted and the other two were looking as though they wished they could join him on the floor. Ruso supervised the revival of their fallen comrade and gave them all a brief lecture on the importance of not frightening the patient.

  Next in was a pale standard-bearer with a recurrence of acute abdominal pain on the right-hand side. He left
clutching a prescription for a more powerful medicine. Privately, Ruso hoped that it wasn't gallstones. They were the devil to treat and he dreaded elective surgery almost as much as his patients did. Recovery was at the whim of the gods, but no matter how careful he had been, the blame for failure always lay with the doctor.

  The rest of the urgent bench consisted of a man who had stepped on a nail and an unremarkable collection of conditions painful to the owner but mercifully palatable to the medical student.

  "Finish your notes," he ordered the observers. "I'll be back in a minute."

  The imminent arrival of Officer Priscus seemed to have had the same effect on the staff as a heat wave on a nest of ants. They had all emerged from wherever they hid during the day and were scurrying around clutching blankets and bandages and bedpans and brooms.

  The girl's room was quiet. She was sitting on the bed with her knees drawn up under her chin, apparently listening to the sounds of activity around her. Ruso glanced out into the courtyard garden. One man was busy scything the grass and another was on his knees ripping weeds out of the herb bed.

  "I need to move you," he said, automatically glancing around the room to see what possessions needed to be gathered up before realizing that she had none. Even the rags she came in with had been burned. He retrieved his comb from beneath the window and wondered if she had been trying to throw it out. Glancing at her hair, he concluded that it had sacrificed several teeth in vain.

  He leaned down and placed one arm around her shoulders, the other beneath her knees. He was acutely aware that, underneath the rough wool of the old tunic, she was naked. He was going to have to face the business of finding more clothes for her very soon.

  "Up!"

  She seemed no heavier than when he had carried her in. The matted hair rested against his cheek. He hoped he had been wrong about the head lice. He hooked one toe around the door and pulled it open, stepping out into the side corridor and pausing to crane around the corner and make sure no one was approaching.

  The hospital formed a large square around the courtyard garden, with the long admissions hall and the operating rooms on one side of the square and the wards and other rooms along the remaining three. The quickest way out was to turn right and carry the girl up toward the admissions hall. They could then escape through the side door beside the baths, which would surely be unlocked for the maintenance staff to get in and out during the day.

  He had made it about twenty feet along the corridor when an unfamiliar voice sounded in the distance. The tone sounded authoritative and it was growing louder as the owner rounded the corner behind him.

  Ruso dodged into another side corridor like the one he had just left. On either side of him were doors to isolation rooms. The voice was growing louder. "… and have it all scrubbed through immediately," it was saying.

  "Yes, sir!"

  "Isolation rooms," announced the voice, almost upon him now."Your responsibility, Festus Junius."

  Moments later Ruso emerged from one of the rooms, alone. At the sight of him, a tall thin officer whose face was ten years older than his hair paused in the doorway of the room opposite.

  Pulling the door closed behind him, Ruso said, " Optio Priscus, I presume?"

  "Indeed," replied the man, inclining the hair slightly toward him.

  The orderlies with him were stone-faced.

  Ruso introduced himself. "New surgeon."

  "Ah, good morning, Doctor. Welcome to the hospital. I am your administrator. We conduct a daily ward inspection so if there is anything you require…"

  Ruso jerked a thumb back toward the door he had just closed. "Leave this one till later, will you? The old boy's only just got off to sleep."

  A flicker of something that might have been displeasure moved the muscles of the administrator's face. Then the hair inclined toward Ruso again and the man murmured, "Of course."

  Back in the isolation room, Ruso gathered up the girl from where he had dumped her on the end of the bed. The old centurion had woken up. His eyes were wide and his chest was heaving with the effort of drawing breath to speak.

  "Wrong room," said Ruso swiftly, "Sorry."

  The man's mouth opened.

  "Don't try to talk." Ruso gestured toward the bedside. "Do you need me to ring the bell?"

  The man shook his head.

  "I'll be in later." The old boy had deteriorated since earlier this morning. Ruso left the door ajar so the staff would hear the bell and, as he left, heard a wheezy voice suggest, "You can-leave her behind-if you like."

  Priscus had turned right. As soon as the corridor was empty Ruso turned left and hurried back past the girl's former room, narrowly missing a big basket of dirty linen that someone had abandoned just around the corner and promising a voice which called, "Doctor!" that he would be back later.

  The girl seemed to have drifted off to sleep as he strode down the corridors. He took a shortcut across the garden. A man who was standing in a lavender bed and scrubbing the wall beneath what had been the girl's window glanced up but said nothing. Finally he reached the hospital kitchens. Ignoring the stares of the staff, he marched through the steamy atmosphere, wrenched open the back door, and stepped out into the street.

  Valens had gone out but fortunately forgotten to lock the house door.

  Welcomed by enthusiastic puppies, Ruso carried the girl over the threshold-a feat that required much less effort than it had with Claudia in his arms-and dumped her on his bed. The house smelled abominably of dogs and mold. He forced open his ill-fitting bedroom shutters and wondered how he could have failed to notice how bad it was before.

  In the kitchen he poured a cup of water and hacked a lump of cheese from the end without small teethmarks.

  He left the food with the girl and added a scrawled note on the slate which was supposed to be the house message system: SLAVE IN MY ROOM TEMPORARY ARRANGEMENT.

  He sprinted most of the way back to the hospital, entered through the front door, nodded to Aesculapius, and made a determined effort to silence his breathing as he strolled across the admissions hall toward his surgery where his students were waiting. Pausing by the door, he turned and saw two benches full of men, all watching him.

  "Right!" he said. "Who's next?"

  16

  The wolf was very large and very dead. Its skin was splayed against the white wall. Its fangs were bared in a snarl and the lively glint in its glass eyes suggested that it was about to leap up and attack the damp patch on the hospital administrator's ceiling. Priscus, presumably used to the sight, snapped open a folding chair for Ruso. He slid himself into position behind his desk as neatly as if he had been one of his own files on the shelves.

  "Ah," he said, smiling in a manner that made Ruso glance back at the wolf for comparison. "I see you've noticed my little trophy, Doctor."

  "Is it local?"

  "Oh yes. I ran into it a couple of years ago on my way to Eboracum. Quite a fine specimen, don't you think?"

  "Very impressive," agreed Ruso, noting that the administrator had a better office than any of the medical staff.

  "You'll find there is excellent hunting in Britannia," said Priscus, running a hand lightly over the top of his head, as if to check that the hair was still there. "Although personally I find it rather difficult to set aside the time."

  "I imagine you find plenty to do here," suggested Ruso, not adding especially if you don't give anyone else the keys.

  Priscus smiled again. "Organization," he said, indicating a large board nailed up above the shelves. Each notice on it was spaced an exact inch from its neighbor. "Organization and teamwork," he continued. "The key to a pleasant and successful hospital. Don't you agree, Ruso?"

  "I find a steady hand with a scalpel quite useful, myself."

  "Precisely!" Priscus spread his fingers to grasp an invisible quantity of precision that he seemed to think was hovering just above his desk. "Efficiency stems from a clear understanding of our various roles and responsibilities. So perh
aps you will allow me to give a brief outline of the administrative arrangements."

  The administrative arrangements were impressive in their complexity: so impressive that once Ruso had spotted the underlying theme-that every decision was referred back to the hospital administrator-he stopped listening. He was wondering whether Priscus knew who was responsible for breaking into the linen closet when something caught his attention.

  "I'm sorry, what did you just say?"

  "As I was saying, a scribe could be extraordinarily useful. I think we can find a suitable man."

  Ruso frowned. "A scribe?"

  "My men aren't used to African writing, I'm afraid."

  The man had only been back for a day, and already he had found time to scrutinize the patient records. "It's the same as any other writing," said Ruso. "The dispensary's never complained."

  Priscus's head inclined in agreement. "No, they are very professional. But I took the liberty of discussing the matter with them just now and they agree that a scribe would be the best way forward. And of course, so much more convenient for you. Many of the medical staff with whom I have had the honor of serving have found it very useful. No need to keep stopping to take notes. Nothing to carry Both hands free."

  Ruso scratched his ear. "I suppose I could give it a try."

  "That's the spirit, Doctor." As Priscus moved to indicate a stack of writing tablets on one side of his desk, a reflection of his hand glided across the polished surface. "I'm sure it won't take long to copy these."

  "You're intending to rewrite all my notes?"

  "It will give your man a chance to learn what's required. He won't bother you unless there's something he can't make out."

  "Is this really necessary?"

  "It would be extremely useful for the hospital. There must be a great deal of valuable information in there."

  "I suppose so," said Ruso, realizing how neatly he had been outmaneuvered.

  "Excellent! Now…" Priscus leaned across the desk and lowered his voice. "Let me tell you, in confidence of course, something I heard in Viroconium. I was told on good authority that not only do the procurator's office have orders from Rome to prepare for a major audit, but it is quite possible that our new emperor may inspect the province in person."