A Madness So Discreet

by Mindy McGinnis

  Falsteed’s voice interrupted from the shadows. “Even you’re enough of a doctor to know that won’t do much good, Heedson. The brain’s damaged and there’s nothing left of that girl other than what you see before you. What’s another lifeless patient to you, anyhow?”

  “She’s not just anyone,” Heedson said, neatly tucking Grace’s bandages back as if healing her wounds could undo the surgery. “This girl is Nathaniel Mae’s daughter.”

  “Nathaniel Mae the senator?” Reed asked, true surprise ringing in his voice.

  “The same,” Heedson said, nodding. “She’s here because of her former delicate condition, under my direct care until she was able to return home. How do I explain this?”

  “Tell ’im you’ve got a surgeon that’s overly fond of brandy and doesn’t understand plurals, for all I care.” Thornhollow slapped him on the back. “The road is long, gentlemen, and I need to be on it. I’ll send you a bill, old fellow,” he said as he disappeared into the dark hall to collect his valise.

  “Thornhollow!” Heedson yelled after him. “You can’t leave me in this position!”

  “Nonetheless, I am leaving,” Thornhollow said as he emerged from the shadows, bag in hand. “The girl is your problem. Ohio needs me, and I must go.”

  “Ohio,” Heedson said, his beady eyes shooting back and forth as he thought. “Reed,” he said quickly. “The girl hasn’t spoken since she came here, correct?”

  “Not a word, sir. I’d give her some bread and she’d eat it just fine, but never a thank-you or request for something more did I hear.”

  “Indeed,” Thornhollow said. “I’m not sure I’d have needed to use the ether on the girl; she was as compliant as a lamb. I did, though. A blade has a way of bringing one to wakefulness.”

  Heedson closed his eyes. “Reed, do you feel that I pay you well?”

  “Well enough, sir. You do know that Maggie’s got another little one on the way, and I can’t say there’s meat on the table every day.”

  “If I were to make your life more comfortable, do you think meat is a good replacement for the memory of this night?”

  “More than enough, sir,” Reed said. “I’ve no liking for Nathaniel Mae as it is. He seems as like to spit on the poor as to feed them. If you’ll put food in the mouths of my own and I can pull the wool over his eyes at the same time, I call it a deed well done.”

  “And do we still have any empty tins at the moment, for the ashes of the dead?”

  “Yes,” Reed said slowly. “But I’ll not let you kill her, sir. Trickin’ a man is one thing, but killing a girl to cover your mess is beyond me.”

  “And I’m not so drunk that I’d allow it, either,” Thornhollow added.

  “Jesus, what do you take me for?” Heedson asked. For the slightest moment Grace saw in the depths of his eyes a hint of sadness, a reflection of a man who had once truly wanted to give care to the insane, now dampened and dulled by years of discouragement.

  “Mae will rant and rave at me,” Heedson continued. “But in the end, what can he do? I know the reason why his daughter came to be here in the first place, and he’ll not threaten me for fear I’ll share the story. We’ll give him a tin of ashes with her name printed on it, along with apologies. The girl disappears and no one is the wiser for it.”

  “Disappears to where, sir?” Reed asked.

  Heedson turned to Thornhollow. “You’ve landed us in this fine mess—you’ll be taking the girl with you.”

  “With me! And what am I supposed to do with her?” Thornhollow bellowed, his drunken indignation echoing around them.

  “Heal her up and sell her to a brothel for all I care,” Heedson said. “Her story’s sealed inside that ruined mind and the truth dies with it. You and I have our careers to think of, Thornhollow, and you’ll not want it getting around that you hit the bottle before surgery, I don’t think?”

  “I take a nip or two to get me in the right frame of mind. I don’t think you’d hold it against me. My work is not pleasant,” Thornhollow said, smoothing his ragged hair and straightening his sleeves as he pulled on his traveling coat.

  “Not pleasant, indeed,” Heedson said, his eyes returning to Grace once more. “Reed, bring the girl a decent dress, a coat, and some shoes if you can manage some.”

  “Straightaway, sir. I believe a girl’s come in just about her size the other day, died soon after. I’ll just lift her things out of the belongings room.” He disappeared again, returning with a bundle of clothes and a pail of water.

  Heedson looked at Grace dubiously over the lantern’s glare. “Can she dress herself?”

  “Doubtful,” Thornhollow said, hiccupping into his hand. “Reed, take her into the surgery and burn the filthy rags she’s wearing.”

  Grace let Reed take her by the hand, his touch cool and light. He shut the door behind them and laid a bundle of fresh clothes along with a pair of shoes onto the table.

  “I snagged them from the laundry this morning,” Reed said, pitching his voice low. “The shoes may rub a bit, but they’ll do in a pinch. Go on then, make it a quick wash. I’ll not look.”

  Grace took a minute to resurface, letting her body know she needed it to perform a duty again. Feeling returned. The warmth of the lantern was a welcome thing, slipping past the darkness of the basement that had permeated her skin. She stripped the nightgown away, scratching her nails along the filth that coated her arms. A ragged cloth and a bar of heavy white soap floated in the pail. The water was cold, but Grace welcomed it the same. She brought a froth from the soap and dragged the cloth over her skin, passing over the sag of her belly with care.

  It was quick indeed, nothing like the steaming baths at home, where she had taken care to clean under her nails, scrubbing imagined dirt away. She’d never known what it was like to be truly dirty until she came here, and she washed away the asylum as best she could in the dark with a stranger only a few feet away.

  The dress was a shapeless thing but clean, and she held her breath against the smell of the laundry’s soap, too familiar after her wrapping. The top was too big in the shoulders, the sleeves passed well below her fingertips, and the shoes did pinch. But she had on real clothes, her footsteps rang when she walked once more, and there was no layer of dirt on her skin.

  “You can turn,” she said softly, and Reed faced her in the lamplight, offering his hand to lead her back out. She took it, but her mind had retreated before she’d even finished the gesture, the darkness always more welcome than the light.

  They emerged into the cell block, where Thornhollow was slouched against the wall, his eyes closed in a half daze. Heedson raised the lantern to give Grace one more inspection. “You’d best change these bandages before you go, Thornhollow. She’s apt to bleed right through them on the road.”

  “No need for that,” Thornhollow said, pulling himself to his feet. “The early morning hours are the darkest, and the best ones for secreting the girl away. If she dies on the road it’s all the same to you and lends truth to your tale.”

  “Here she is, then, Dr. Thornhollow,” Reed said. “Have a safe journey and take care of the girl. I’d like to believe that lost ones such as this find a good end, no matter how unlikely.”

  “A lovely thought, Reed,” Heedson said. “But I’ll be happy to never see that face again, pretty as it is.”

  “I’ll keep her from harm. That’s all I can promise,” Thornhollow said. “To claim that any who follow in my footsteps will find something good isn’t a safe bet.”

  Thornhollow peered into Grace’s eyes and shook his head. “How I’ve found myself the guardian of a young woman, I’m not sure I’ll ever know.” But he took her hand and they climbed the stairs together, her steps ringing out strong and sure beside his own.

  The night air was clean and sharp, almost painful for her to breathe in. Grace gasped at the stab of fresh air, and Thornhollow rounded on her in the street.

  “Quiet,” he warned with a hiss. “I’ve got a horse and carriag
e along the alley, with a blanket or two inside. What you’re wearing won’t keep you warm for long in this weather.”

  The horse nickered at their approach and Grace reached up to touch its velvety nose. “In, in,” Thornhollow urged, brushing her hand away.

  She climbed into the carriage and wrapped herself in the blanket he’d promised. He clicked to the horse and they were moving in an instant, the clip-clop of hooves and the swaying of the carriage lulling Grace into a stupor. She slipped onto her side and pulled the blanket over herself, the smell of clean air mixing with the scent of roses as she left the city behind her.

  THIRTEEN

  It was dark work, as he’d warned her.

  A week on the road, being jostled from carriage to shady hotels, hadn’t prepared her for the luxury of a soft bed. The asylum in Ohio was like a castle in a fairy tale, even if she did approach it on a dark night with lightning streaking the sky and fresh blood dotting her bandages. Although the scene was from a nightmare, her head rested easy on a clean pillow, in a room she was to have all to herself.

  Only hours into a well-deserved sleep her door banged open and Thornhollow was at her bedside, shaking her awake.

  “Come on, girl. Time to earn your keep.”

  Pulled from the sacred confines of sleep she lashed out, but the doctor was ready for it, well outside of her reach when she swung.

  “Sorry,” he said, from a safe distance. “I’ve yet to find a good way to wake someone.”

  “There isn’t one,” Grace complained, one hand dragging across her eyes. “It’s the black of night, besides.”

  “Our work isn’t done in the daylight,” Thornhollow said, rifling through the closet for clothing, which he tossed at her head. “Or rather, their work isn’t. If we’re to catch them while the deed is still fresh, we must keep the same hours.”

  “What’s this?” A voice came from the doorway and Janey, the head nurse for the female ward, came into Grace’s room, confusion making lines on her otherwise young face. “Doctor! I know this girl is under your special care, but you’ll not be barging into her room in the middle of the night. Not in my ward, no, sir.”

  “I apologize,” Thornhollow said, though he hardly sounded contrite. “However, we must work quickly to—ouch!” His sentence was cut off when Janey grabbed his ear.

  “And I must work quickly as well, sir. You’re the doctor, and I’m to take your orders. But in the night these women are under my care, and I will not have a man walking among them, no matter how many degrees he has!”

  “Grace,” Thornhollow said calmly as he was led from her room, “if you could meet me outside?”

  She nodded dumbly and looked up to find that Janey had remained behind with her. “The rest of the staff said you don’t speak a word, but you can move your head yes or no as to whether or not you want to go with the doctor?”

  The young nurse’s lips twisted when Grace acknowledged that she did. “All right then,” Janey said. “If it’s your will, I’ll not go against it. The superintendent said that the new doctor has some interests that might be taking him about in the middle of the night and you in his wake.”

  The clothing Thornhollow had thrown at Grace now rested on her lap. Janey began sorting through the items. “Although I’d advise you to manage your own wardrobe from here on out. He’s given you three undergarments.”

  Grace smothered a smile and let Janey help her dress in more suitable clothing, then followed the ward nurse to the lobby, where Thornhollow waited for her, his ear still red. They walked outside, where his carriage was ready and waiting, a driver in place.

  “Doctor,” she said quietly once they were safely ensconced inside. “You said we must move quickly in order to catch them while the deed is still fresh. Who are they?”

  “My dear Grace,” Thornhollow said. “I thought you understood. We’re going to catch murderers.”

  It was a gruesome scene, lit by the flickering lamps of the policemen and the flashes of lightning that still ripped through the night. Thornhollow pulled his valise out of the carriage and held a hand out to help her down, while their driver hunched himself awkwardly against the pelting rain. Grace stymied the rush of nerves as she reached out of the safe anonymity of the gig for his hand, her face going instantly slack as soon as she passed through the doorframe. Even the mauled body on the pavement did not move her as she alighted from the carriage, each footstep as light and quick as a ghost’s.

  “Gentlemen, what is the situation?” Thornhollow asked.

  “You the fellow playing policeman, are you, then?” a portly officer asked as he stepped over the blood pooling in the rainwater. “You’ve still got a bit of a baby face, yet you want to be a doctor and policeman both? Want to take your paycheck from the asylum and mine alongside it?”

  The younger policeman nodded toward the carriage. “A gig as fine as that, with a nice shiny horse . . . he doesn’t make that money up on the ridge.”

  “And a driver too,” his partner added. “What you pay him to bring you out here this time of night? More than I make, I wouldn’t wonder.”

  “Per my agreement with your commanding officer—decided upon when I applied for the job at the asylum—I’m being afforded every opportunity to learn more about the criminal mind,” Thornhollow said patiently. “Gentlemen, your job is nothing more than my hobby.

  “As to my driver, his name is Ned, and he manages the asylum’s stables. He was kicked in the skull some years ago, bringing about the damage that made his new residence a necessity, though he harbors no ill will toward the species that brought the fate upon him. He chooses to live in the stables and spends his days carving small figurines of horses, as if in worship of the animal that delivered him from the necessity of having to interact with people such as yourselves. If I need him in the night, he’s there, without complaint. So, if you’ll step aside so that I can satisfy my curiosity, I’ll take myself and my assistant out of your immediate area as soon as possible.”

  “I’d heard that about the asylum up on the hill,” the heavier man said, his gaze still on the driver. “That you give ’em regular jobs. I never heard the like of it.”

  “Yes, we do give them regular jobs, and as I said, they do them without complaint, making them much more effective than any rational workingman I know.”

  “Your assistant?” the younger man asked, peering at Grace. “How come we don’t have pretty girls to follow us around and carry our nightsticks, George?”

  “I bet the doctor sees to her nightsticks, sure enough, Davey.”

  Their words were lost on their target. Grace remained as she was, empty gaze riveted on the dead body, sketching the details of the scene onto the blankness that she had created inside herself.

  “Don’t talk much, do you?” Davey snapped his fingers in front of her, but she didn’t so much as blink.

  Thornhollow didn’t look up from where he knelt beside the corpse. “I wouldn’t antagonize the girl too much, if I were you,” he warned. “She’s a mental patient as well.”

  “She one of them that just stares?” George asked, all attention on Grace so that he didn’t notice Thornhollow going through the victim’s pockets.

  “Stares, yes,” the doctor said. “Although every now and then a fit of violence takes her. The staff has yet to figure out what causes them. The other day they sent her out to milk the cows and she ripped two teats clean off one of the heifers.”

  Davey eyed Thornhollow with suspicion but edged away from Grace nonetheless.

  “She get tied down a lot, eh, doctor?” George asked, his eyebrows up near his greasy hairline.

  “I don’t know her history,” Thornhollow said as he touched an open wound on the dead man’s face. “Although the asylum practices the most humane type of medicine, so I severely doubt this young woman has ever been bound against her will.”

  “Seems complacent enough,” Davey ventured again, curiosity overcoming caution as he moved around Grace in a semicircle.
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br />   “They should all be done in, make no mistake,” George said, his beady eyes narrowing on Grace. “Even the ones with the sweet faces such as hers. You don’t know what devil lurks inside if it’s like you said, tearing into a milk cow who done nothing wrong that day.

  “You’d do better to practice your medicine on them that can be healed, Doctor. The works of such as goes on up at the asylum is an offense to nature. Ain’t no survival of the fittest at work anymore when we’re housing the idiots and stocking their kitchens with the food from our own larders. I work hard and I earn my bread for me and mine and seeing the likes of her staring there into the ground as if she don’t know up from down and she’s got a better roof over her head tonight than my little ones opens up a hole in my heart, it does.”

  “The existence of said organ still being under great question,” Thornhollow said under his breath.

  “What’s that?”

  “I said this man suffered some damage to his organs.”

  “That he did,” Davey agreed. “Some of us do take an interest in the mad, you know, sir, having so many here in our own town.” Thornhollow made a noise in his throat that was hardly encouraging, but the officer continued. “My papaw said he’s seen a time or two when more than one person from the same family ends up there on the hill. What you say to that, Dr. Thornhollow? Does madness run in the families? Or is it all skewed, and you never know who’s going to . . . to tear the tits off a cow, or something the like?”

  “I think it’s a good bet that you never know who is going to tear the tits off a cow on any given day.”

  George hawked and spat in the street, the stream landing near Grace.

  “Them’s that’s mad should have the surgeries so’s they can’t have babies. We could put an end to it in a generation or so, if just one person had the bollocks to say we should cut off theirs.”

  “On the contrary,” Thornhollow argued, “I’ve seen plenty of perfectly healthy children born to those deemed insane and decidedly insane progeny of the most normal persons imaginable.”

  “I still says there should be the surgeries,” George said.