The Doctor's Discretion

by EE Ottoman

  “I’m sorry; I’ve been keeping you up with my problems. The bedroom is through there.” William nodded to the doorway. “You can take the bed, and there should be water in the pitcher by the basin if you want to wash.”

  “Where will you sleep if I take the bed? There is nothing in here bigger than an armchair to lie on.”

  “I can sleep on the floor,” William said. “I’ll take a spare blanket and sleep close to the fire.”

  “I’m not putting you out of your own bed and making you sleep on the floor, not after everything else.” Moss looked offended at the mere idea. He eyed William for a long moment, expression strangely wary, and then he seemed to come to some sort of decision. The wariness turned to determination, and he nodded once. “We’ll both sleep in the bed.”

  William opened his mouth and then closed it again. It was completely natural and proper for two men to share a bed if they were traveling or when space was limited. He and his brother had shared a room and a bed right up until William had left for university. There was no ulterior or improper motives in such an offer.

  Except when there was. William swallowed and met Moss’ gaze.

  But no, this was just an offer of sleeping arrangements.

  Then he remembered the reason Moss had been committed to New York Hospital in the first place.

  For a second, he’d forgotten, and that alone sent a jolt through him like being pricked unexpectedly with a needle.

  “We shouldn’t.” He looked away. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

  “Oh Lord,” Moss raised his eyes to the ceiling as if calling directly on the Divine for patience. “I’m a man; you’re a man. There is nothing improper about it, and you know it. Unless you’re planning on acting improperly.”

  He brought his gaze back down to William’s in open challenge.

  William swallowed hard, his cheeks heating. “All right then.” He held Moss’ gaze and this time didn’t look away, meeting him challenge for challenge. “I don’t suppose it makes sense for either of us to sleep on the floor.”

  Moss nodded and then stood and crossed the parlor into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

  William sat at his desk and went over his day’s worth of writing.

  Eventually, Moss opened the door, although he didn’t leave the bedroom. William set his papers aside. He put out the candles and banked the fire, and when he could not put it off any longer, he turned towards the bedroom.

  Moss was already curled up, a surprisingly small shape under the blankets.

  William walked around to the other side of the bed so Moss was facing away from him. He took a deep, steadying breath and removed his coat, cravat, shoes, waistcoat, socks, and, finally, trousers.

  Clad only in his shirt, he put out the candle and slid under the blankets.

  For several minutes, he lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling and listening to his own heartbeat.

  “Just go to sleep,” Moss sighed, and there was the rustle of clothes as he curled himself further under the blankets.

  William rolled over onto his side, back to back with Moss, and shut his eyes.

  ~*~

  Augustus did not go back to his room that night.

  Despite his exhaustion, his whole body still sang with nerves. Every time he tried to relax, images of Moss, Blackwood, Cooke, and Doctor Anderson filled his mind. So instead of heading home, he walked east in the direction of the docks.

  He didn’t try to fool himself into thinking this was something different from what it was. It was a retreat to the safety of the familiar.

  Blackwood didn’t want him, and not in the way that one might reject a partner they’d only spent one night with. It was deeper than that, more profound.

  Blackwood didn’t want him. Didn’t want the parts of him that were vulnerable, soft, and secret.

  Blackwood had turned his back on him, as if he couldn’t stand the mere sight of Augustus. As if Augustus was some twisted broken thing Blackwood couldn’t bear to look at. Augustus had expected it, had gone there braced for Blackwood’s anger and disgust, but it had still hurt.

  It was particularly painful now because Blackwood had been kind since then. More than kind. In fact, Blackwood had risked his safety to help him and Moss. He was a good man who was willing to act on the principles he believed in and to help those in need.

  Hill wanted him even more because of it. It made him think they could have had more than just the sex together, that Blackwood could have been more to him. That there could have been long evenings talking together, collaborating on work, and someone else at his side always.

  But he doesn’t want you.

  It hurt, a tangled mess of emotions inside of him.

  His fist tightened around the head of his walking stick. He didn’t know what to do about Blackwood; he didn’t know what to do about Moss. What he needed was to stop for a little while, make it go away. Remind himself there were people who knew and didn’t care, who didn’t hesitate to touch his body. It would give him a little of his balance back.

  At least the streets weren’t dark here. Lights and voices spilled from every building. Shouting, music, and drunken laughter assailed him from every direction. Neighborhood was teeming with people, most of them men, most of them drunk. But there were women there too, in brightly colored dresses. Brass jewelry masquerading as gold dripped from their necks, fingers, and hair.

  More women, and men too, sold food out of carts, baskets, or crates. Potatoes were boiled in a huge pot set on a coal brazier right there in the street, eaten sprinkled with salt; apples and pears were sold by the piece or by the bag. Meat pies were sold out of a basket a black woman carried on her hip. Another woman roasted ears of corn over her coal brazier, squatting almost in the gutter as she did so. Augustus passed at least three carts containing packed ice and oysters, the owner ready with a knife to shuck one for you on the spot.

  There were less edible wares as well. An old toothless woman was selling cock sheaths and there were young boys hauling baskets and boxes of cigars and cheroots.

  From all directions, Augustus could hear nothing but voices laughing, yelling, screaming, talking, and singing. Bodies crowding in on all sides, jostling him, and at one point, almost knocking him straight off the sidewalk into the street.

  Filth was impossible to avoid in New York, no matter how good the neighborhood, but here, its presence was almost overwhelming. The gutter was a sludge-like slurry of filth and decay, spilling out across the street more often than not. Garbage was piled high in mountains between the buildings, overflowing the alleys and mixing with the gutter water. Huge bristle-backed pigs shouldered their way through crowds of people, or lay in the muck that covered the street, forcing carts to swerve around them.

  Augustus pushed his own way through the crowd, heading down the street with purpose.

  His appearance was garnering him a few stares but, in truth, not that many. While a lot of the men he passed were sailors, dockworkers, or common laborers, many others were as well dressed as him if not better. Men of the middling classes or even of wealth, risked ending the night on top of one of the garbage heaps, stripped of all valuables, in order to enjoy the whores and oysters carts dockside.

  The building where he finally stopped looked like every other on the street—two stories and made of wood, with paint peeling off the front in long, unsightly strips.

  Inside, it probably looked like all the others too. Like most taverns, it was a little bit dark and crowded, but with plenty of tables for men to sit and drink. There was a fire burning in the fireplace, and a pretty, dark-skinned young man tended the bar.

  The man he was actually looking for was sitting at a table in the corner of the room and, Augustus was relieved to see, had no one with him at the moment.

  His skin looked unusually pale in the dim light, a result of the white face powder he was wearing. There was pink on his lips and across each high cheekbone as well, and black charcoal outlined his dark gray eyes
. His purple silk waistcoat and dark blue coat were cut to make him look slimmer and his shoulders narrower than they actually were. He didn’t try to hide the silver that ran through his dark hair like veins of precious metal, or the lines around his eyes, though. There was no pretense to a youth he no longer owned. Instead, he held himself with a kind of calm self-assurance that had drawn Augustus to him originally and kept him coming back.

  “Mr. H.,” he said when Augustus came close enough to the table. His voice was as ever deep and gentle, with no attempt to disguise it or make it higher than it naturally was.

  “Mr. Lake.” Augustus nodded to him, and Lake’s lips curled up into a smile.

  It wasn’t his name, of course, but Augustus had called him that since the first time they had met, and it seemed to amuse Lake every time he said it.

  “Same as always?” Lake leaned back in his chair, arms folded, and Augustus nodded.

  “If I may.”

  Lake seemed to find that amusing as well. He stood from the table and turned towards the doorway at the back of the room.

  It led to a short dimly lit hall and a staircase. Lake didn’t touch Augustus, didn’t so much as look at him as he led the way up the stairs and along another dim hallway.

  The room Lake revealed when he opened the door was small, just big enough for a bed, a chair, and a washstand with a small mirror made of polished metal hanging next to it. It was clean, though, the floor meticulously swept, the bed neatly made.

  Lake removed off his coat and laid it across the back of the chair, and untied his cravat while Augustus watched.

  “I will say I’m surprised you’re back here at all. I would have bet money that you’d have found yourself a woman by now.” Lake undid the buttons on his waistcoat one by one.

  Augustus snorted and Lake smiled. “Or at least found yourself a gentleman.”

  That made him think of Blackwood, of course—smiling at him, sleeves rolled up from washing dishes because he didn’t want to make extra work for his housekeeper. Augustus looked away for a moment and then back where Lake was undoing his trousers.

  His movements were easy but not purposefully sensual, the way anyone would undress while preparing for bed.

  The mundane nature of each movement made a little bit of tension leave Augustus, the muscles in his shoulders and the back of his neck loosening.

  He sat on the small tidy bed, and Lake, now only in his shirt, came to kneel between his legs, his long fingers brushing across his thighs, tracing the seam of his trousers. “Relax, and let me do this.”

  Augustus pushed him back as gently as he could, stood with Lake still between his legs, and undid the front of his trousers.

  CHAPTER 5

  ~

  WILLIAM DIDN’T REST WELL, BUT he did sleep. He woke early and rose in the dark while Moss still slept, and went into the parlor to make coffee.

  Moss emerged from the bedroom fully dressed around the time William was filling the coffeepot. He looked exhausted even though William knew he’d slept the night before.

  He sat at the table and drank a cup of coffee while William washed, shaved, and dressed.

  Once William was presentable, they headed out into the cold and dark to take a cab to Doctor Russell’s house.

  Moss gazed up at the huge house while William paid the driver. “Why are we here again?”

  William came to stand beside him. It felt like eternity since he’d last been here, although it had only actually been a few days.

  “Doctor Hill and I were hired to do an inventory of Doctor Russell’s medical collection and recommend what should be done with it as part of the settling of his estate.”

  He started up the steps to unlock the front door.

  As before, the house was not completely dark when they stepped into the hall, although it was still chilly and heavy with the sense of disuse.

  “This will probably not be that interesting for you, but there are plenty of books in the library if you want to read.” William picked up the candlestick from a side table and led the way down the hall and through the dining room to the library.

  Hill was already at the table when he opened the library door. The fire in the hearth was lit, and the drapes on the windows had been pulled back, allowing some of the pale early-morning light to creep in.

  “Good morning.” Hill looked up and smiled at them. “There’s coffee if you haven’t already had any.”

  Moss was gazing around them with much the same expression he’d had on the sidewalk looking up at the house. “I’ve never seen a private library like this.” He walked over to one of the shelves and skimmed his fingers across book spines before selecting a leather-bound volume at random and taking it off the shelf.

  William, watching him, realized he probably hadn’t. When he’d been young, his father had owned a modest few shelves of fine leather-bound books. That was much more than most people, even most merchants, but then, William’s father had always been a man of learning as well as commerce. The first time William had ever seen a room completely filled with books had been when he’d begun to study medicine. He could remember walking in, the overwhelming splendor of that many volumes, shelves and shelves of them all neatly organized, housed, and cared for. How easy it was now to take such things for granted.

  He turned away from Moss poring over a book and looked at Hill, back bent over his ledger. There was a cup of coffee by his elbow, and the piles of books already spread across the table in front of him. He was dressed in the blue tailcoat he’d worn the first time they met and looked less tired than he had before, but only slightly.

  William sat at the table opposite him and began unpacking his bag, taking out his ledger, ink, and pen. He reached for one of the books he’d been going through the last time they’d been here.

  “Can I ask you something?” Hill asked, voice low enough to keep the conversation between the two of them, but without the solemn undertone that meant he might want to talk about illegal matters.

  William looked up at him. “What?”

  “Why don’t you work at a hospital or as a member of a practice? This kind of work"—Hill gestured around them at the books and the library—"can’t pay well enough for it to be a comfortable sole source of income. Not the way practicing medicine would.”

  Slowly, William set the book aside. “I always intended to go into private practice.”

  Hill was looking at him, watching his expression, and William found he could not quite meet his eyes. He looked down at the table instead, at his ledger and the book still lying beside it.

  “But then there was an outbreak in New York—yellow fever—in the lower wards. I was newly graduated from medical school and was back in the city. I volunteered to work at Bellevue where they were bringing the worst of the cases, for free. I wanted to help, to make a difference.” He swallowed, throat gone dry. “But it...was hard.”

  It had been like nothing he’d ever seen. The practice of medicine was often not pretty or pleasant. There were doctors at the highest levels of the profession who never ventured further than the doorway to their patient’s sickroom. For most practitioners, though, there was plenty of death, blood, and filth to go around. He had been required to work as a surgical dresser during his studies, holding men down while their legs were amputated. After multiple amputations in a row, everything including him, operating table and floor would be slick with blood. He’d participated in dissections, too, and observed operations from the mundane to the extremely experimental.

  He’d thought he was ready, hardened to the realities of medicine. He hadn’t been ready for the realities of an epidemic, though, or for Bellevue. The dirt, the smell, the degradation and death. So much death. He’d watched whole families die before the outbreak had run its course.

  He looked up, expecting to see pity on Hill’s face or even contempt at his lack of clinical reserve, but Hill’s expression was full of sympathy. So much so that it made William’s chest tighten.

 
“We ran out of room in the mortuary,” he said, not sure why he was still talking. “So we stacked bodies in the halls. When the outbreak was over, I found that I had...difficulty treating patients anymore.” An unholy terror of watching them die was what he meant, but he couldn’t find the words to say that. “So when the opportunity to use my medical knowledge in a more academic sense came along, I took it, and I’ve been doing that ever since. It doesn’t make me much of a doctor, I know, but I...” He trailed off.

  “It’s not weakness,” Hill said, voice low but also intense, almost urgent. “To care if your patients live or die, to feel guilt or grief when you can’t save them.”

  William looked at him. Hill had been in battle and must have seen many men die. He’d studied diseases like yellow fever and had no doubt witnessed outbreaks before, but he still worked with patients and practiced medicine.

  How would he understand the bone-deep terror, the horror of seeing another person suffer and die, that kept William from being able to so much as set foot in a sick room or hospital? Hill didn’t know about how he still woke shaking and sick at night, how sometimes, even remnants like the specimen collections or dissection cadavers were too much for him to bear.

  Here, in libraries like this, he was safe. He didn’t pretend it made him a doctor, though, not really. There were apothecaries with only a year’s apprenticeship to their name who practiced more medicine than he did.

  Hill had gone back to his work, his quill scratching softly across the page. Moss was curled in an armchair, a book open in his lap.

  William knew he should turn to his own ledger, but there was an uneasiness prickling along his arms and the back of his neck. It made his palms itch, and the mere act of sitting still felt almost more than he could bear.

  He rose and started packing his things back into his bag.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Upstairs. I’m going to work on cataloging the specimen rooms for a while.”