The Healing Season (14 page)

“What are you doing here?” he finally managed.

Her brow furrowed. “Mr. Russell, do you mean to frighten me with that tone of voice and that ferocious scowl? I might remind you I am not one of these green boys who must cower at the sound of your stern reprimand.”

Not awaiting his answer, she turned to Digsby. “My dear sir, isn’t Mr. Russell simply brilliant?” As the man nodded, she held up her arm. “To think I have so many bones in this one small portion of my arm.” She walked over to the skeleton.

“So, this is Octavius. How do you do, Octavius?” she asked with a curtsy. “Wherever did you come up with him?”

“He was a patient at Guy’s across the street.”

She turned to Ian and shivered. “How gruesome.”

“Cadaver stealing?” Digsby asked. “I’ve read that’s a problem among you medical men.”

“It has been a problem, but it’s being alleviated somewhat as we are permitted more and more the dissection of patients who expire and leave no instructions for the disposal of their—er—corpses. There are no family members to claim the bodies, and they would end up in a pauper’s grave.” He approached the skeleton, his confidence returning as Mrs. Neville’s attention was fixed on it.

“That’s how I obtained Octavius here. Octavius Skinner was a patient of mine several years ago, an ‘incurable’ whom Guy’s took in. He had no family. In gratitude, when he knew he was going to die, he told me I could have his body to dissect.” He shrugged. “After using it, I was left with the skeleton.”

Mrs. Neville listened. He now recognized the expression in her eyes that indicated she was spellbound.

“It sounds more fantastic than one of my melodramas, Mr. Digsby.” She turned to Ian. “I invited Mr. Digsby to come along with me today. I thought he might like to see you at work. Perhaps you could give him a tour, show him the dispensary?”

He weighed her suggestion, remembering Henry’s advice. The banker had made time to come to him; the least he could do was spare a few moments and show him the area.

“Certainly. Allow me to lock Octavius away in his closet.” He turned to Digsby. “Authentic skeletons are
still at a premium, and I wouldn’t want to lose this one. If you will excuse me, I shall be right with you.”

He nodded and, turning to the hanging skeleton, he tipped him on his side and rolled him toward the cupboard door at the end of the theater.

When he returned to them, he said, “I shall give you a short tour of one of the wards, and then we can proceed on foot, or if you have your carriage…” he inquired of Mrs. Neville.

“Mr. Digsby has brought his carriage. We shall be more comfortable in that,” she replied.

“Very well. Shall we go?”

Eleanor walked with Digsby as they followed Mr. Russell out of the lecture theater and into the female ward. They strolled the length of it, Ian stopping from time to time to talk with a patient or explain her condition. She observed his gentle manner with the patients and marveled that by no hint did he indicate the least aversion to the person’s ailment or condition.

They descended to the ground floor and crossed one of the large courtyards within the hospital compound.

“This block of the hospital dates from about a hundred years ago, although St. Thomas’s has been here since medieval times.” He motioned toward the east. “There are six more wings down that way. It is quite extensive. But since it’s a chilly day, I suggest we go to your carriage and I’ll take you to the dispensary.”

He led them from the courtyard through the main arched entrance onto Borough High Street. “It is only a few blocks from here to my dispensary.”

“Why is a dispensary necessary, with the hospital so close by?” Digsby asked.

“The hospital doesn’t admit every patient, and not all can afford to be admitted. Many don’t require an overnight stay. There is also the question of mortality rates. We find a higher mortality rate among patients admitted to a hospital than those taken care of in their own homes. This is probably due in some degree to the proximity of sick patients to one another.”

Digsby nodded at the information and proceeded to ask him more questions.

When they arrived at the dispensary, Mr. Russell motioned to the crowded sidewalk. “As you’ll notice, the area is teeming with children. Most have nowhere to go.

“There is a growing problem of children left to fend for themselves in this city. More children are born to women unable or sometimes unwilling to take care of them. The foundling homes receive so many, and as far as I’m concerned, many of those are immediate death sentences to the infants left on their doorsteps.”

“What do you mean?” Digsby asked sharply, as they made their way past the line of people waiting outside the dispensary.

“It’s one way of curbing the population. Starve them,
expose them to the elements, and few newborn infants will survive.”

Eleanor felt sick at heart at the thought. How close her own daughter could have come to such an end.

“Many philanthropists in the city give to these foundling homes,” Digsby argued.

“But do they ever bother to see how they are run?”

The banker fell silent, glancing at Eleanor. “Are you all right, my dear? You’re as pale as a bleached rag.”

“Ye-es,” she replied faintly, wishing she could dispel the image of so many unwanted infants.

“Are you sure?” Mr. Russell asked. “I have smelling salts inside.”

She nodded, wanting only to get past the sick people crammed around the entrance. The surgeon held the door open for her as she clutched Digsby’s arm.

They entered the crowded waiting room.

“What do they do when you’re not available?” Digsby asked with a look of surprise around the room.

“I have a partner, an apothecary, who is just as skilled as I in performing certain surgeries. We also have a couple of apprentices.”

He directed himself to the crowd. “Excuse us, please. Make way for the lady.” He opened a passage for them to the examination rooms at the rear of the waiting area.

“Good morning, Albert.” Mr. Russell nodded to his partner and to the apprentices.

“Hello there, Ian. Done so soon at the hospital?”

“I’ll go by later. I brought a few guests to see our work here.” He introduced them to the young apothecary-surgeon.

“What is wrong with our patient here?” he asked Denton, with a nod to the man sitting at the examination table.

“Mr. Jenkins has an ulcerated throat. It’s quite severe. He’s had it for three weeks now, haven’t you?”

The man nodded without speaking.

“What you need most,” the apothecary told him, “is bed rest. But as I know you are not able to follow this advice, I shall give you a prescription for a draft made of liquorice, marshmallow, and meadow sweet, three herbs to aid in reducing the inflammation. In the meantime, keep your throat well wrapped.”

After he’d escorted the man out, Mr. Russell’s partner shook his head sadly. “Without proper rest and care, I don’t know how he can expect to get well.”

“Why doesn’t he stay home, then?” Digsby asked.

“Afraid he’ll lose his job,” Mr. Russell replied. “Jobs are scarce these days.”

After he had answered Digsby’s questions concerning the number of patients and types of illnesses they most treated at the dispensary, Mr. Russell asked them if they wouldn’t like to accompany him on some of his rounds.

Eleanor tried to gauge Digsby’s reaction. She sin
cerely hoped he’d been moved by all he’d witnessed so far to support the surgeon’s work.

“Despite what you see here, many sick people don’t go anywhere to be treated,” Mr. Russell was saying to the banker. “Many can’t afford the fee. Although we accept anyone who comes to our door, there are many who are suspicious of doctors. They prefer to buy some remedy from an empiric hawking a tonic at the nearest corner.”

Digsby agreed to convey the surgeon to the vicinity of the mission in the East End. The three of them returned to his carriage. They crossed the Thames and passed Great Fire Memorial, before turning down Gracechurch Street. Ian rode up with the coachman and instructed him. Eleanor glanced out the window as the coach entered a warren of narrow streets. The houses were crammed together, many leaning precariously outward over the street as if squeezed from the pressure of the buildings at each side.

The appearance was all too depressingly familiar from her childhood.

The carriage stopped frequently as Mr. Russell paid calls on the sick. Eleanor and Digsby followed him, trudging up dark, smelly staircases, picking their way past loiterers whose smudged, sullen faces stared at them. She edged closer to Digsby’s comforting bulk, her lacy handkerchief to her nostrils.

Most of the patients were bedridden with coughs and congested lungs. Mr. Russell told those parents with
sick children to bring them to the mission. Those with toothaches he sent to the dispensary.

As they reemerged into the murky light of a narrow street, a woman in a calf-length skirt approached and clutched at Mr. Russell’s arm. “Give us a farthing, luv.”

Eleanor stared at the woman’s face. Her skin was covered with ugly nodules and bumps. But the surgeon seemed not to notice. He rummaged in his pocket and brought out a few pennies. “There you go, Celia.”

“You’re a good man.” She looked past him to Eleanor and Digsby. “Who’re the swells with you? Find yourself a lady at last, Doc? You deserve a good woman…” Her words were slurred and she turned away from Ian, weaving her way into a refuse-strewn alley.

“What was wrong with her?” Eleanor came up close to him as they resumed walking.

“The skin lesions and ulcers, you mean?”

She nodded.

“Secondary stage of syphilis.”

“The pox!” She stepped back in horror.

“She won’t come in for treatment, and I’m afraid it will soon be too late.”

They walked in silence and arrived at a squalid flat, where he checked on a young boy who lay on the floor with a high fever. The dwelling was cold and only a thin blanket covered the child on his dirty pallet.

Mr. Russell turned to Mr. Digsby. “This boy had only
a runny nose last week,” he explained in a grave voice. “I’m going to take him to the mission. We’re not far from it. There’s clearly no heat in these rooms, and this child has no chance if he stays here.”

“Feverish is he?”

“Yes. I would ask your favor in allowing me to transport the child in your carriage.”

He waited for Digsby’s assent.

The man looked left and right, clearly nervous at the idea. “Isn’t it contagious?”

“There is always a risk,” the surgeon answered. “I could go down and seek a hack. But it’s a very short ride to the mission. We were heading that way.”

Sensing the urgency of the matter, Eleanor approached Digsby and cooed in her softest tones, “Come, Mr. Digsby, we’ll sit the child far from you, and air out the carriage afterward.”

Leaving them to work it out, Mr. Russell crouched back down at the child’s side.

“Will my boy be awright?”

Ian looked up at the woman. “Do you have any other blankets or a cloak?” he asked the mother. The mother, a woman so emaciated her bones seemed to jut out from her skin, from her drawn cheeks to the knobby wrists protruding from the threadbare sleeves. Her black hair grew straight and stiff like a scarecrow’s hay stuffing.

“Nothin’ I can spare. There’re the other young ones
to think o’, you see.” She took the moth-eaten shawl from around her scrawny shoulders. “Here, take this. It’s all I have.”

He pushed it back toward her. “No, keep your shawl. I’ll wrap the child with what we have.”

Eleanor’s heart squeezed painfully. “I’m sure there’s a carriage blanket down below,” she said. “Let me fetch it.” Before Digsby could object, she hurried from the room.

In a few minutes she was back, panting from her quick climb up and down the stairs.

“Thank you,” Mr. Russell told her with a grateful smile. She felt her cheeks grow warm at his regard. He knelt back down by the boy, whom Eleanor estimated to be between seven and eight years old. After wrapping him in his own blanket, the surgeon spread out the much thicker, woolen throw she had brought up. He laid the child in this and wrapped him up like a cocoon.

The next instant he lifted up the bundle and turned to Digsby. “Well?”

“Come along,” the older man said, as if resigned to his fate. “The sooner we get him out of this cold, the better.”

The boy’s mother clutched Mr. Russell’s arm. “Take care o’ him, Doctor. I can’t pay ye anything.”

“Don’t worry yourself about it. I’m taking him to a Methodist mission nearby.” He gave her the directions, and they descended back to the street.

Mr. Russell laid the boy on the coach seat. Digsby sat as far from him as he could on the opposite side of the roomy vehicle. Eleanor stroked the boy’s hot forehead.
Poor lamb.
He reminded her of Sarah a scant few weeks ago.

In a few minutes they arrived at the mission. Eleanor followed Mr. Russell, who carried the child directly to the infirmary, where a nurse came up to them immediately.

“A wee sick one?” she asked. “Come along, then, we have an empty bed over here.

“Oh, dear me, let’s get these filthy things off him. I’ll fetch a clean nightshirt.”

Another woman came to assist, and they soon had the boy in a warm bed.

Mr. Russell turned to the banker when they stood once more in the corridor of the mission. “Thank you, Mr. Digsby.”

He grunted. “If I come down with anything, I hope you’ll be by to treat me.”

The surgeon grinned. “Just send someone to fetch me. I’ll come any time of the day or night.”

“Don’t worry yourself, Mr. Digsby,” Eleanor reassured him, “Mr. Russell is very good at treating fevers.”

He harrumphed and led them back out to his awaiting carriage, grumbling about airing it out and burning the blanket.

Mr. Russell turned to Eleanor with a look of concern.
“We’re in the heart of Whitechapel. Do you have the stamina to go on a few more visits in the neighborhood?”

She realized how useful she’d felt in the past few moments. “Only if you’ll allow us to take you someplace for dinner afterward. I think you’ll have earned a good meal by then.”