Chapter 19

Near a whole city full,

Home she had none.

Ainsley stood at Bennett's body, his arms folded over his chest, postponing the inevitable. He would have to cut open his new acquaintance, dare he say friend, and it was a dissection he'd rather have avoided. He had to undress Bennett himself, not willing to subject Mrs. Crane to any further discomfort. She seemed to be taking Bennett's death very badly and since helping Ainsley clean up the original scene, she had refused to cross the room's threshold, or even look at the body.

Not moments before Ainsley had disrobed Bennett, removing his night shift and socks and performed the cumbersome task of washing him. Had Ainsley been in his own morgue he could have performed these tasks with greater ease. Using a pitcher of warm water, a basin and various cloths and sponges Ainsley gingerly bathed Bennett one final time. He took greater care with his colleague's body than he would have were it a perfect stranger. The duties he performed were no longer just the business of medicine, they had become quite personal.

With Bennett covered, Ainsley procrastinated. With his arms crossed and his eyes fixated on the body in front of him, the young doctor hesitated. For a moment he wondered if he could do it, if he could actually cut open a person he knew, a person he was just speaking with the day before.

He needed a drink and tried to ignore the urge to pull his flask out of the pocket of his jacket, which had been laid aside in the other room. Ainsley bit into his thumbnail.

There was a knock on the door and Mrs. Crane appeared in the hall. “There is a young miss--” she stopped short and looked away sharply, her eyes having grazed the image of the newly deceased doctor on Ainsley's makeshift examination table. Though Bennett was covered by a white sheet, the image was obviously too much for her. She turned her body, crossing her arms over her stomach and forcibly looked to the ground. She started again, more determined, “There is a young miss seeking the doctor. I had not the heart to turn her away.”

Ainsley met Mrs. Crane in the hall, careful to close the door behind him. “Is she ill?”

“No, she says her brother is in a bad way.”

Ainsley nodded and quickly made his way down the stairs. The girl, so skinny and malnourished looked as if she could slip out of her pinafore without the slightest movement, stood at the door to Bennett's house, her face fraught with worry. She twisted her fingers in front of her, bending them back and forth from anxiousness. “Are you the doctor?” she asked at once.

“I am a doctor, yes,” Ainsley replied.

“Willy's hot as a fire poker and we've tried everything but he ain't gettin' no better.”

Ainsley nodded. “Where do you live child?”

“Tallow Lane.”

 

Armed with Bennett's doctor's bag Ainsley followed the girl, who he learned was named Callie, to Tallow Lane on the opposite side of town. As Ainsley hurried along he noticed the houses became closer and closer together and their state of repair became less and less affluent. Turning from the main road onto Tallow Lane Ainsley found himself staring into the dirty faces of malnourished children playing in the cobblestone streets. They wore no shoes and their clothes were so threadbare he wondered how none of them froze to death in the late season cold. Little girls with tangled hair and mud smeared hands looked up from water pumps, their faces solemn and resigned. Little boys, no more than three years old played with pebbles and sticks but quickly cleared the way as his ominous form approached. All of the small, broken faces looked at him as he passed but avoided his gaze, giving him a wide berth where he walked.

Ainsley was accustomed to such scenes. As a child he often helped his mother in her efforts to comfort the depraved, ill and penniless. The slums of London were far more crowded and smelled of urine and filth in a far more putrid way. This street, though clearly left for the unfortunate of this town was a far cry from the poverty stricken streets of London.

Ainsley watched Callie run to a blue door near the end of the lane, its rich colour a stark contrast to the mulled and chipped colours of the other doors he had passed. She slipped in before him and Ainsley could hear her yelling to her mother that she had brought the doctor.

The door was left ajar and when he rounded the door frame he saw the smallest of rooms where a scarceness of furniture left it looking stark and forbidden. He would not have believed that anyone lived there had he not seen a roaring fire in the hearth and four strings of drying clothes positioned in front of it.

The house was but a few rooms, each corner of this main one was filled with tiny fear-laced faces looking up at him, their eyes wide. Men were not a welcome sight, it would seem, not in these homes. Ainsley counted five children, not including the girl whom he had met earlier. Ainsley now saw that Callie was the oldest. A child lay, with his back to Ainsley, in front of the fire, swaddled in thin, dingy blankets, his head barely supported by the thinnest of pillows.

And then Ainsley looked to the mother, standing with another child on her hip, and a wooden spoon in her hand. Cally stood in front of her as she scolded the child. “We ain't got no money for no doctor!” the woman yelled, oblivious to the cry that erupted from the child on her hip.

“Ma'am, I'd like to help, if I may.” Ainsley spoke up if only to spare Callie any further admonishment.

The mother let out a deep rooted exhaust of breath and pinched her lips together, shaking her head as she did so. “Be off with ye sir,” she called, cocking her chin toward the door and the street beyond. “We haven't the money and I don't have a mind to beholden to no one.”

“I charge no fee, not this day. In sovereigns or service. May I see the child?” Ainsley gestured toward the boy in front of the fire, who hadn't stirred during the entire exchange.

The woman eyed him suspiciously, resolute in standing in his way. “The only doctor I know is Bennett. You ain't look like him.”

“I am staying with Doctor Bennett. Your daughter told me her brother has a fever.”

The woman pressed her lips together and reluctantly nodded.

A boy, toddler more aptly, lay half asleep with his legs bent towards his stomach and arms crossed over his stomach. Ainsley knelt beside him and began peeling away the many layers of warmth he assumed the mother had applied earlier. So close to the fire Ainsley could feel the radiant warmth penetrating his clothes and he too began to feel ill with the heat of it.

As he revealed the boy Ainsley saw his cheeks were burning bright red and yet the child was shivering as if cold. The other children gathered around him though none closer than arm's length.

“His name is William,” Callie said over his shoulder.

“Hello William,” Ainsley said. The boy moaned, and began to speak though nothing seemed coherent. The boy was struck with delirium.

Scarlet fever. Ainsley's heart sank as the realization hit him. “How long has he suffered?” he asked, hoping the mother did not pick up the panic in his voice.

“Three days.” She spoke as if she did not want to admit her child was sick as she possessed no money to see him well.

Ainsley's shoulders slumped. Most cases of scarlet fever turned fatal within the third or fourth day. The boy had little hope of survival so late into the onset his illness.

“Is there another room, preferably one with a window?”

The mother nodded. Ainsley gathered William in his arms and followed the woman in to a room behind the main one. In it was a single bed, and a mass of blankets on the floor. Ainsley lowered the boy onto the bed, and pulled a single cover over him. He was still muttering incoherently as Ainsley walked to the window to open it.

“The chill?” the mother called in protest from the door.

“The fresh air is what this child needs.” Ainsley turned to Callie who had followed him in. “Fetch my bag. And some water.”

Callie nodded and scurried away. She returned with the bag and left for the water. Ainsley opened it at the foot of the bed and began rooting through in search of a known remedy for scarlet fever. As he looked, he was not sure exactly what he sought. He had a vague memory of a treatment option but all his years dealing with the dead left him ill-prepared for saving the living. If the boy died, Ainsley could scarcely forgive himself.

Ainsley found the carbonate of ammonia, distinctly remembering a dose of two grains for children.

“What's that?” the mother asked, peering in through the door.

Ainsley did not look to her. He dosed some into the cup of water that Callie brought him. “It's carbonate of ammonia. It's been known to alleviate the symptoms. Do you have brandy or wine in the house?”

The mother looked at him with wide eyes.

“Just a tiny amount,”

He saw Callie looking to her mother and then the woman nodded suddenly and Callie scurried away.

“My husband drank. He left half a bottle when he left six months ago,” the woman explained sheepishly. “We were hiding it from him, in case he came back.”

Ainsley gave the woman a sorrowful look. “I am sorry for your troubles ma'am,” he said softly.

“No trouble. 'Tis better with him gone.”

Ainsley pulled William to a sitting position, propping some pillows behind him to keep him from sliding back. Callie returned and placed the small bottle of brandy in Ainsley's hand. Ainsley took the spoon from the cup of water and measured a tiny bit of brandy into it. Carefully, Ainsley slipped the measured brandy into the boy's mouth.

“He needs to drink a cup of water with this every hour, more if he will take it. Give him some brandy every so often and let him rest as much as possible.”

The mother nodded.

“Keep the other children away as best you can.”

She nodded again as Callie looked on from the foot of the bed.

“And for heaven's sake keep the room cool, or he will never make it.”

He administered the carbonate of ammonia and brandy slowly, throughout the course of the next hour, before William slipped away into a less fitful sleep. The boy's mother came and went, dividing her time between her sick boy and the rest of her brood but Callie stayed at Ainsley's side, cooed softly for her brother to drink and accept the medicine the doctor offered him. When Ainsley finally allowed the boy to sleep his mother walked into the room. Ainsley stood, the burden of saving the child weighing heavily on his shoulders.

“Let him sleep,” Ainsley said to the sedate mother. She was clearly in shock with it all and that was driving her actions. “Take this,” he handed her the bottle of remedy, “And remember what I said. Summon me if he gets worse throughout the night.”

Ainsley left with little hope of the child's recovery. Most likely the boy would die. The fever was far too advanced for his rudimentary experience to make any noticeable difference. House calls, the desperate begging from mothers of sick children, where so little difference could be made as a practicing physician, are what deterred him from becoming one. He was far better at examining dead bodies than he was at comforting the sick. He was a stellar surgeon to patients out cold from chloroform or better still, already dead and awaiting burial. He could not comfort that mother, could not lie to her face and say he would cure her child any more than he could claim to be physician to the Queen.

As Ainsley stumbled back towards town, exhausted, he wondered if Bennett would have done better for the boy. The seasoned physician, who knew the town and its inhabitants, he could have better prescribed a method of treatment, more so than Ainsley who was lacking in this regard. Cocky and arrogant when he first arrived, Ainsley felt his confidence wane, so much so that he began to doubt his ability to save even Lillian, the girl languishing on death's door.

These thoughts haunted Ainsley as he made his way back through town. He scarcely knew where he was though it did not matter. The day was late and there was little else he could do. His energy spent between two severely ill patients, and his ego deflated, he headed to the one place he knew he could find solace. The pub.