by C. L. Polk
I swallowed bile. My miracle hadn’t gone unnoticed after all.
“Do you hear yourself, Crosby? I think you ought to go home. Get some rest. Read a pleasant book, maybe in a nice bath.”
Blood suffused Crosby’s face. “Suggest that again, outside.”
My own blood was up, and I didn’t care. I’d had enough of this gadfly buzzing around my cases. “Gladly.”
“What’s going on here?” Dr. Matheson’s voice dashed cold water on my fighting mood.
I stood up, feeling like a boy who had just been caught misbehaving. Dr. Crosby stepped back from the doorway, straightening his tie.
Dr. Matheson stood with her hands on her hips and stared both of us down. “Dr. Crosby, Dr. Singer, is there an issue I can help you with?”
“No, Dr. Matheson,” Dr. Crosby said. “I was just leaving.”
He marched away with his head high. Dr. Matheson came closer, brows bunching up her forehead.
“Miles?”
“He doesn’t like me,” I said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be dismissive. Dr. Crosby noticed I had ordered some tests on some of my patients and he wanted to know why.”
“And he came up here to accuse you of … what?”
“I don’t know.” Someone had put a new notice up on the hallway’s pin board promoting a games club. I looked back at Dr. Matheson, hastily.
“Why did you order these tests?” Dr. Matheson asked.
My ear itched. I kept my hand by my side. “Honestly? I’m chasing clouds.”
“Miles.”
“There are diseases that make people exhibit signs of madness, like syphilis,” I said. “What if that’s why some of our patients have this delusion? What if there’s a physical cause?”
Dr. Matheson crossed her arms. “Miles…”
“They all think the same thing, Mathy. Have you run across a case of anyone with the hidden killer effect who wasn’t a soldier? Who hadn’t gone overseas to fight? What if it’s physical?”
“You’re chasing clouds.”
“Fifty thousand men are coming home right now.” I scrubbed my hands through my hair. “How many have battle neurosis? How many of them have the hidden killer effect? I should have been chasing this cloud a month ago. Two months ago.”
She studied me for a moment, the corner of her lip folded under her teeth. “Do you have any of this written down?”
“Notes,” I said. “Do you want a report?”
“Yesterday. You should have come to me before you started this pursuit.”
“I’ll get you a report,” I promised. “And a study proposal. One of them should be Gerald Grimes.”
“I agree,” Dr. Matheson said. “Finish your accounting, Miles, and try to mend fences with Dr. Crosby?”
I gave her a rueful look. “We almost came to blows. I don’t think he wants to mend fences with me.”
“I will mediate if you don’t find a way to get along. He’s on the midday shift over week’s end, but he’s trying to get on your schedule.”
“My schedule? What about Dr. Finch?”
“She’s pregnant. Resolve this dispute with Dr. Crosby.”
“Peaceably?”
“Yes.” Dr. Matheson turned back to the stairwell, and I rejoined my sandwich and Nick’s quarterlies. I’d just settled into the rhythm of reading the statements when the phone rang.
I stared at the damned thing, then sighed and picked it up. “Ahoy.”
“Miles,” Grace said. “Everything’s set. The morning after the parade.”
“So soon?”
“He doesn’t have much time.”
“You’re right.” I’d have to sacrifice most of the day to rest. I slept round the clock after a long day in surgery, and ate enough to feed a regiment. “I’ll be there at six.”
“I’m sending the carriage. You won’t be able to ride back.”
“You’re right.” I wouldn’t be up to a twelve-mile bike ride, and it wasn’t like Grace didn’t know where I lived.
“Thank you so much for doing this, Miles. Father won’t be able to thank you, but I do. If there’s anything you want—shall I donate to Beauregard again?”
“You’ve already given five thousand,” I said.
“Something you want, then. Anything.”
“All I want is freedom, Grace. That’s the best thing you can give me.”
Silence, for a moment. Then: “I understand. I’ll see you on Sixthday, Miles.”
* * *
I packed the wine bottle from Grace’s lunch when I gathered everything together at the end of my day. Tristan and I could drink it with supper, and then we could work on figuring out how to turn my sight off. I’d have to be careful around Dr. Crosby. He was already convinced I was uncanny, and being able to diagnose everything ailing a patient wouldn’t ease his suspicion of me.
There were no well-dressed strangers in the hospital lobby this afternoon. I unlocked my bike and wheeled onto the street, joining a draft of five women in bell-shaped hats. They seemed to know each other, for they called out to each other in conversation and laughter. I did my best not to listen in as they spoke of Dot’s prospects with a fellow named Harry, but they were having a ball teasing their leader. A bit of movement on my left made me raise my hand in greeting, ready to comment on last night’s rain, before I realized the rider was coming in too fast, too sharp.
“Watch out!” I cried, but we crashed. I collided into the lady next to me, landing hard on my right hand. She knocked over her draft-mate with a sharp cry, and then the cyclists behind us crashed into the whole mess.
Pain flared bright and hot in my wrist, fierce enough to send my stomach roiling. I drew it in close to my body, gritting my teeth at the fresh waves of pain from moving it.
Shocked exclamations sounded behind we unfortunate ones. People edged around us, stopped in front of our mishap, and helped untangle people from the scrum. The lady I’d collided with favored her ankle, but she stoutly turned down my assistance and my apologies.
“Are you all right?” a man said. “I saw everything. He drove into you on purpose and stole your bag.”
My bag?
I scanned the mass of people righting themselves. The wine bottle lay smashed on the street, the elliptical splash of red liquid spread across the lane. People were already cleaning up the glass so no tires could be punctured. The metal basket mounted over my front wheel was empty, and my bag wasn’t on the pavement.
“Which way did he go?”
He pointed down the street. “Turned the corner, I think. He’s long gone. Was your bag important?”
My heart sank. “I’m a doctor. That was my medical bag.”
The cyclist scowled, setting his curled mustache on an irritated tilt. “He was after your drugs, Doctor. It’s a disgrace.” He watched me try to walk my bike off one-armed. “Are you hurt?”
“Landed wrong.” I joined the ranks of people trying to sort themselves out on the sidewalk. My bag was stolen. My scalpels, gone. My stethoscope and years of tools, gone. Was it stolen for a few dollars’ worth of medicine?
I’d have to be a fool to believe it, with Nick Elliot’s quarterlies sitting inside.
I locked my bicycle and limped up the street. I wasn’t far from Tristan’s. I tried to remember the names of the towns Nick had visited. Norton, Mary’s Wish, Red Hawk. I repeated it with the rhythm of my steps. I had to remember.
TWELVE
Healing
The brass lion knocker on Tristan’s door was old but lovingly polished. I grasped the ring with my left hand and rapped on the door. I was weary with the effort of enduring the pain. I wanted to lie down with my wrist cradled to my chest and try to sleep, if only to escape it.
I wanted to go back in time so I could have braked, or somehow evaded without causing a pileup. I wanted to have leapt to my feet and grabbed the villain by the scruff of the neck. I wanted to have noticed him lurking about so my excellent instincts could have alerted me and I could have clev
erly had him detained so we could find out who had sent him to steal evidence.
My regretful, wishing fantasies popped as Tristan’s front door opened and his housekeeper stared at me in horror. “Why, Doctor Singer! Have you had an accident?”
“I was attacked.” I stepped inside as she opened the door wider. “They knocked me off my bicycle.”
“In this traffic? What a disaster,” Mrs. Sparrow said. “Can you take the stairs? Oh, your poor coat.”
I unbent my arm cautiously and felt ill when a jolt of pain ran up my forearm. Reluctantly, I upgraded the seriousness from sprained to fractured. I didn’t have time for a cast and one-handed awkwardness. I didn’t have time for stolen bank records, either.
Mrs. Sparrow helped me get my topcoat and sack jacket off, fussing out “you poor dear” whenever I winced or, in one shameful instance, yelped. Soon I was protectively curled around my wrist and hobbling into Tristan’s parlor, where Mrs. Sparrow guided me to the deerskin fainting couch.
“You’ve a tear in your trousers,” Mrs. Sparrow said. “It’s just a seam ripped out, mostly, nothing I can’t mend.”
“I can’t take them off,” I said.
“You’ll need a blanket to cover yourself,” Mrs. Sparrow said, “but it’s nothing I haven’t seen before. I’ve had three husbands.”
“I mean I can’t undo the buttons,” I said. “My wrist.”
“Well, I’d better do it, then,” Mrs. Sparrow said.
“Perhaps you’d better,” I agreed. It was an awkward business, being undressed by someone who wasn’t my valet. Mrs. Sparrow was neutral as a nurse, but my cheeks burned as I drew a violet-fringed blanket over my lap as I sat down, half undressed.
“There’s a wine stain on your shirt,” she said. “Did you spill at lunch?”
“I had a bottle with me. It broke.”
She helped me sit up. “Best to treat it quickly.”
She was careful as she could be. I had to take the shirt off, regardless. But when she said, “I’ll find you a dressing gown, dear,” I didn’t want to move for anything, until I heard the jingle of carriage harness and the gait of Tristan’s horses pull up to the front door.
“Mrs. Sparrow?” I tried to draw the blanket up to my chin.
“Miles? Are you here? I’ve uncovered yet another fraud claiming to speak to the dead—”
“Don’t come in, Mr. Hunter!” Mrs. Sparrow announced, bearing a scarlet brocade dressing gown in her arms. “Dr. Singer is undressed.”
Rather more than merely undressed. I was in my drawers and socks. I should have been in a bedchamber. I groped for the dressing gown, and Mrs. Sparrow tried to help me put it on.
“What?” Tristan stopped inside the pocket doors. “Why?”
“There was an accident. Turn your back,” Mrs. Sparrow said.
Tristan grumbled but he turned around, shielding his eyes in a theatrical fashion. Heat flooded my cheeks, but I caught my finger on a seam in the sleeve and the noise I made had him three strides into the room.
“You’re hurt,” Tristan said, trying to look around Mrs. Sparrow. “Where are you hurt?”
“My wrist,” I tried to say, but Mrs. Sparrow shooed at him with flapping hands.
“Turn your back, Mr. Hunter!”
Tristan looked up at the cloud-painted ceiling and sighed, but he turned around.
Mrs. Sparrow fastened every button on the gown. “There. Enough jostling about, I expect. Time for Mr. Hunter to learn what happened.”
She took my clothes away and left us in the parlor. “I’ll check the hen in the oven, Mr. Hunter. Doctor, I’ll have this tear sewn up in a blink.”
“You’re very kind, Mrs. Sparrow,” we called out, and my embarrassment eased when he grinned at me. He pulled his chair close and leaned in. “You’ll have to wait until I dismiss Mrs. Sparrow before you can heal it.”
“I can’t use it on myself.”
“Damn,” he swore. “I think I can show you. For now, would you like some morphine?”
“You shouldn’t play with that,” I said. “Cannabis is harmless enough, but morphine is addictive.”
“So I’ve heard.” Tristan moved into the room he used as an office instead of its proper function as a dining room, and opened a cabinet. “If you’ve broken your wrist, I’m your bone-setter. I’d feel better about it if I wasn’t hurting you much.”
“They stole my bag,” I said. “They knocked me off my bicycle and stole my bag.”
“Who? The man who followed us?”
“It might have been.” The idea that more than one man was following me put a chill down my neck. Whatever Nick knew about the war had killed him, and now I was on the same trail. …
Next time, it might not be a simple shove off a bicycle. And it gets easier to kill after you’ve done it once.
“Nick Elliot’s banking records were in my bag,” I said. “I think that’s why.”
He returned to my side with a brown bottle in his hands. “Annihilation. Did you wait to open it, again?”
“I looked at them. Write this down,” I said. “Norton. Mary’s Wish. Red Hawk. They’re places—places he went in the last year.”
“I’ll remember.” Tristan pushed a medicine spoon to my lips. I swallowed and gasped at the bitterness. “L.R. stands for Lorelei Ross, but Gold and Key’s secretary wouldn’t let me see her.”
“Drat.” My tongue tingled. Morphine tangled me in its strands already.
“I have an appointment with the leisure editor of the Star.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.” He peered into my eyes and nodded. “Is the pain subsiding?”
“A little. Do you know how to set bones?”
“Not really.”
I sighed. “I better tell you now, before I’m completely taken by your tonic.”
I think it was harder on him than on me, even though he didn’t hesitate or flinch when I hissed in pain, whimpered, and gave a shout so loud Mrs. Sparrow came in to find out what had happened. But he set it and improvised a splint-board with an incense tray, the bandage one of his silk neckties. He handled my wrist as if it would break again, but the tonic had dulled the pain.
“My uniform. I’ll need it for tomorrow,” I said.
“I haven’t dismissed Michael yet. If you’ll trust him with your key, he can bring it here.”
Her glance darted between the two of us. “Mr. Hunter, perhaps I should stay to attend Dr. Singer tonight.”
“I can manage, Mrs. Sparrow, but it’s very kind of you,” Tristan said. “Would you arrange Dr. Singer’s things, when they get here?”
“Of course.” She bustled out of the room, and Tristan helped me rise. The pain had subsided to a dull throb I needn’t concern myself about. My relationship to gravity had changed, and if I didn’t set my feet just so, I would float. And wouldn’t I look absurd?
One place setting had a plate with the chicken already cut into small bites. I fed myself with careful dignity. The thump of the door knocker sounded, and Mrs. Sparrow went out to answer it.
Tristan jerked his chin to indicate my plate. “Have some more chicken, even though you don’t want it.”
“Food feels funny. Are you going to show me how—”
“I am,” he promised, and went quiet as Mrs. Sparrow came back.
“Are you certain you don’t need me, Doctor? It’s no trouble to stay,” she asked me, but she glanced at Tristan.
“It’s just a sprain, Mrs. Sparrow.” I smiled at her. “I look forward to cutting my own meat at breakfast tomorrow.”
Mrs. Sparrow gave Tristan a long look, but he had turned his attention back to his plate. Finally, she curtsied and went out. Tristan sighed in relief.
I laughed. “She wouldn’t let you in while I was undressed.”
“You were blushing.” He sipped his tea.
“Because she’d made such a fuss about it!”
“I’m glad you came to me when you needed help,” he said. “What do you s
ay to a tart?”
“Love some.” My wrist was far away. Tristan cut narrow slices, and I enjoyed the sweetness mixed with the scent of oranges. I washed it down with my tea and waited for him to guide me back to the fainting couch in the parlor.
“The mirror trick should work.” He chose a square mirror from the wall. “Look in the mirror at your wrist, while you can see your own.”
“All right.”
“Focus on the one in the mirror.” From the angle, it looked like his arm. “Now see it, the way you see what needs to be healed.”
I looked at the reflection, and let my eyes drift out of focus, but there was nothing to see.
“I’ve never been good at these lessons,” I said. Grace had been. I could do what I stumbled on by myself, and instruction did me no good. That’s why I never made Father happy.
“Don’t think of that,” Tristan said softly. “Imagine this room floating in the middle of the sky. Imagine the clouds all around us, the city far below. Don’t think of painful things.”
Floating. High in the sky with the stars all around, only we two and our secrets. I knew what my wrist would look like if I could see it—a scarlet glow tinged with tiny stars rushing to the broken place low on my ulna. Each little star would pile on the broken ends and knit back together, regrowing the bone back to a whole. It wanted to be whole, the machine of my body. All I did was draw more spark-stars to the break, faster than nature could do it.
But then I felt weak. I was so close to filling the whole gap. It hurt now, as if all the dull ache of the process over the weeks had been crammed into these few seconds, and I nearly lost my grip on the sparks.
A surge of power steadied me, and knitting up went faster. More solid, until all the small lights massed together and held.
“Splendid,” Tristan said. “Lie back now. You’re—”
Oh. I fell against the embroidered cushions, dizzy as the room tilted.
“I’ve never felt that before. I hit the end of my strength, but then there was more. Was that Nick’s power?”
“You didn’t draw on your soul-stars first?”
“My what?”
