by Hannah Tinti
TWENTY-EIGHT
The hospital looked asleep, the curtains pulled tight, the building set against the night sky turning to dawn. In a few hours the doors would open, welcoming doctors and students and patients, but for now Ren stood outside, gazing through the gate at the windows. Behind one of them was Mrs. Sands, and he was determined to see her before he left North Umbrage.
He did not know how much time he had before McGinty would discover that he was gone. The hat boys might already be on horseback, coming down this very road. It was a risk to be stopping, but Ren needed to say good-bye. After that, he wasn’t sure. He was afraid to think of what would happen next, where he would go or how he would take care of himself. If he thought too much, he would not be able to go on. And he had to go on. Today and tomorrow. And at least one more day after that.
He found the bell for the gate, then took hold of the rope and pulled. After a few moments the basement door opened and Doctor Milton himself emerged, holding a lantern. He was still dressed in a suit. It looked rumpled but clean.
“Ah,” said the doctor. “There you are.” As if he had been expecting Ren all along. The man took out his keys and unlocked the gate. “Come along now,” he said. “They’re waiting. We’re just about to begin.”
Ren followed the doctor across the courtyard and through the basement door. Doctor Milton slid the bolt behind them. The metal chute for the bodies ran next to Ren’s feet along the stairs. The walls were covered with cobwebs. Ren could barely see and held his arms out, feeling his way as they descended. At the bottom of the stairs was a damp, cool room with a dirt floor. The cellar was lit by oil lamps and held several operating tables. Stretched across the table in the center was Tom. The twins were kneeling on either side of him, still holding his hands.
When Ren saw them he felt a flood of relief. The fear he’d been carrying fell away as the twins stood and cried out his name. Brom laughed and Ichy began to lurch toward Ren. The mud on their clothes was still there. Bruises and scratches crossed their arms, but they were the same boys from Saint Anthony’s—their bad luck turned to good.
“How did you get here?” Ren asked.
“Brom stole a donkey cart.”
“The woman who owned it sent her pigs after us.”
“We threw rocks at them.”
“We looked for you.”
“But Papa said we had to get him to the hospital.”
“Then he started screaming.”
“Then he hit us.”
“Then he didn’t say anything at all.”
“We were afraid he was going to die before we got here.”
“But we prayed,” said Ichy. “And he didn’t.”
Ren looked down at the schoolteacher’s haggard face. His cheeks were drained of color, his beard wild, full of sticks and bits of grass. Ren reached forward and plucked a burr from underneath his chin.
Tom opened his eyes. “Where’s Benji?”
The joy Ren had felt at seeing his friends drained away. He looked around the room, but all he saw were bottles of medicine and hooks and baskets and buckets of water. “He’s not with you?”
The twins shook their heads.
Tom groaned. His leg was swollen to the size of a tree trunk, the skin red, blistered, and tight. Ren was suddenly afraid that Tom might die. The twins were thinking it too. He could see it on their faces.
Doctor Milton came forward and set the lantern on the table. “I see this is an unexpected meeting. But if you’d like to save his leg from being removed entirely, it’s time to get to work.”
The doctor gave each of the boys instructions. Ichy was to clean the wound, Brom was to stand by with the bandages, and Ren was to help Doctor Milton straighten the leg. It would take all of them, acting together, to set the bone right.
The doctor moved away from them into the back of the room, unlocked a door, and soon returned with some whiskey. Brom held the bottle and Tom sucked it down, as if he were nursing. The boys quickly helped Doctor Milton make his preparations, then waited while the doctor told Tom to prepare himself. Tom was still half-delirious as they set the leather belt between his teeth. Ren’s hand shook with expectation as he placed his palm on the man’s ankle.
The doctor took off his coat. He rolled up his sleeves. “Ready?”
Tom nodded.
“Now,” said Doctor Milton.
Ren took hold of the ankle, straightened it, then pulled. The leather immediately fell out of Tom’s mouth, and he shrieked louder than Mrs. Sands. Shrieked louder than the men beneath the streetlight. Shrieked so loud that when Doctor Milton pressed down on the break, forcing the bone back into place underneath the skin, Ren’s ears popped, then closed out, leaving behind a strange, fuzzy, hollow roar.
Ichy took the soap and boiled water they’d prepared and poured it over the wound, slowly, slowly, until their hands were soaked, and Tom’s clothes were wet, and water covered the floor.
Brom reached for the cotton dressing and began to bind the leg.
“Not too tight,” Doctor Milton said as he held the bone in place. When the bandages were wrapped, he started work on the splint, while Ichy wiped Tom’s forehead. Brom stepped away from the table and pulled Ren aside.
“Doctor Milton wants to know where the bodies are,” he whispered.
“What did you tell him?”
“We said you had them.” He touched Ren on the shoulder. “We were afraid he wouldn’t help Papa.”
Doctor Milton finished making a sling for Tom’s foot. He strung a support beneath the ankle, then bound two pieces of wood carefully to the leg, from the hip down past the end of the heel.
“With a crutch he’ll be able to walk on it soon.” He slipped a blanket underneath Tom’s head. “I’ll give you a salve to ease the swelling, and something for him to drink for the pain.”
Brom went back to holding Tom’s hand. Ichy leaned over and began picking the weeds out of the man’s beard. The doctor motioned for Ren to follow him to the back of the room, the same place he had disappeared to and returned with the whiskey. He unlocked the door and ushered Ren into his office.
The walls were covered with shelves, littered with books and paper and labeled containers. The only window had been painted over. The latch bolted shut. Doctor Milton cleared a space on a desk full of bottles and magnifying glasses and boxes of dried butterflies. He set to work right away, as if he were a cook in a kitchen, taking a powder from this shelf, a bit of herbs from another, and then grinding the whole thing together with an ancient mortar and pestle.
Ren raised the lantern. In the darkest corner of the room something glistened. There was a table, and something large stretched across it, covered by a blanket. The boy walked closer and set the lamp down. Next to the table was a basin full of water. It held a set of knives, shining beneath the surface. An image of Dolly came forward in his mind. Ren’s hand began to tremble. A metallic taste filled his mouth as he reached forward and pulled the sheet back.
Stretched across the surface was a man. He was resting in a shallow tray with raised edges, floating in a sweet-smelling brown liquid. His legs had been removed, and there was a hole in his center, from his throat to his groin. Ren could see the ends of his ribs sticking out. The skin seemed as thick and tough as rubber, but inside there was nothing left. All of his organs were gone. There was only a mass of red and white and bits of purple, stripped down, wet and shimmering. The man did not seem human anymore, his face fallen in. But Ren could see that his hair had been blond, and there was a tattoo of a bluebird on the skin of his shoulder.
Milton finished grinding the powder and poured it into a jar of viscous liquid, then took his watch out from his waistcoat and checked the time. “That needs to soak for ten minutes.” He cleared his throat and walked over to the man on the table. “You’re probably wondering why I use whiskey.” Milton dipped his finger into the pan and ran it down the skin of Ren’s arm. “Feel how quickly it evaporates? The alcohol keeps the bodies from decaying t
oo fast. Even so, they only last a few days. I’m always looking for a better solution.”
Doctor Milton took out his pipe, but instead of lighting it, he used it to poke the body between the ribs, lifting the skin from the tray and peering underneath. “This man probably saved ten lives today. I can’t say that I’ve done that. Can you?”
Ren’s throat was dry. The smell of soured whiskey filled his nostrils. He stepped away until his back hit the wall. He could see the knobby bones of the spine, standing out beneath a thin layer of muscle, hard and white as knuckles.
“You look faint,” said Doctor Milton. He pulled a bottle of lavender water from the shelf, poured a bit into a handkerchief, and gave it to Ren. “It happens to everyone at first. But you grow used to it.”
The boy inhaled deeply into the cloth. His voice came out muffled. “How?”
The doctor drummed his fingers together beneath his chin. “How one does anything unpleasant, I suppose. Remove your senses from the process, and look beyond the task at hand. Eventually a kind of numbness takes over, and you find that you can do anything.”
Ren lowered the handkerchief and glanced at the body again. He gagged and quickly brought the cloth back over his nose.
Doctor Milton seemed disappointed. He pulled the blanket over the cadaver and picked up the bowl of knives. “You were supposed to bring five bodies. My students are expecting them.”
Ren steadied himself against the wall. It was cool, and when he pulled his fingers away, they were wet with condensation. “We’re leaving,” he said. “There won’t be any more.”
The doctor set the bowl down again, a bit of pink water spilling over the edge. “That is a disappointment.” He crossed the room, opened a drawer in his desk, and consulted a notebook. He touched his forehead, as if it suddenly pained him, and cleared his throat again. “So this is the end of our time together.”
“Yes.”
“And how will you pay for the leg I’ve just set? And for the rest of your landlady’s care?”
Ren slipped his hand into his pocket, to see if he had anything to bargain with. He felt McGinty’s gold watch and reluctantly gave it over. Doctor Milton opened the cover, examined the portrait, then returned it.
“Can you read?”
“Yes,” said Ren.
“Then I have a better idea.”
Doctor Milton pulled a chair up to his desk, took out a sheet of paper, and dipped a pen in ink. As the doctor wrote, Ren looked around at the books. They were tossed every which way into the wall of shelves, piled on the floor in great towering columns, like those in MISTER JEFFERSON’S NEW, USED & RARE. Ren leaned a bit to the left and read the titles off a few of the spines: Prayer and Practice. A History of Phrenology. De Humani Corporis Fabrica.
“Here,” said Doctor Milton, handing over the pen and stepping back from the table. “You can sign an X if you can’t sign your name.”
On the paper was a brief account describing Ren as a boy aged twelve and Doctor Milton as the witness to that fact, and, with full understanding of the laws of the country, that Ren was promising his body upon death to become the property of the hospital of North Umbrage, to be used for the greater purposes of science, to further the understanding and knowledge of anatomy, for the benefit of the human race and for all of mankind.
Ren looked up from the paper.
“You don’t have to give me your body now,” said Doctor Milton. “It’s a promise. For the future.”
The pen felt heavy, the same weight as the surgeon’s knife, and Ren imagined it cutting into his skin, peeling back the muscle, spreading his sides open, down to the bone. What a job it would be. The boy felt a cramp in his side. He pressed his arm against his ribs. He was not empty, not yet, despite everything he felt missing.
Ink was dripping onto his fingers. Ren closed them around the nib and wrote his new name, the one that seemed so unfamiliar, the one he could never have imagined for himself.
TWENTY-NINE
Upstairs in the private ward there was a window cracked open. Ren could feel the cool breeze on his skin as he came through the door to Mrs. Sands’s room. Beyond the curtain was the morning, its pink sky mixed with gray, the smell of a storm coming. The gauzy tent hanging over Mrs. Sands’s head and shoulders caught the dim light and seemed to glow.
Beside the bed, in a rocking chair, was Sister Agnes. She was knitting, her head bent over the needles. When Ren closed the door behind him, she raised her eyes as if he had only left the room a moment before.
“How is she?” Ren asked.
“Better,” said Sister Agnes. “God be praised.”
Ren reached forward and parted the flaps of the tent. A rivulet of steam came out, the air wet and sticky on his skin. It had been a week since he’d brought Mrs. Sands to the hospital. Her face was quiet, her hair neatly plaited in two braids. She wore a clean white nightgown that buttoned up to her neck. To the side, on a table, was a kettle of hot water over a flame, the spout churning tiny white clouds that drifted and filled the space around her.
Sister Agnes looked at the boy, then down at her needles, then back up, as if she were trying to somehow match the two together. “You’ve come to say good-bye.”
“Yes,” said Ren.
“Will you be returning?”
Ren thought of the body down in the basement, the bluebird etched into its skin. “Someday.”
Sister Agnes put the knitting into a bag. She rolled back and forth in her chair, the runners sounding in rhythm against the floor, just like the rocking horse in the mousetrap factory.
“Do you think she’ll forgive me for leaving her?” Ren asked.
Sister Agnes set her mouth. “I could not say.” She stopped rocking and looked out the window. Her hand touched the edges of her habit, then fell into her lap. “That man you brought here before. He was not from Saint Anthony’s.”
“No,” said Ren. For a moment he was buoyed by the thought that Dolly had come looking for him.
“You are from Saint Anthony’s, though. I believe you were raised there.”
Ren wondered how she had discovered this. But nuns and priests and brothers always seemed to know more than most.
“He is the patron saint of lost things,” said Sister Agnes. “I always thought it was an appropriate name for the place.” She took out a folded piece of paper and handed it over. Ren opened it slowly and recognized the handwriting of Brother Joseph.
Dear Sister,
I read your letter with great interest. The boy you spoke of lived here until eight months ago, when he was claimed by a relative. I had some doubt as to the man’s intentions, but it is not my place to question, and as you know our space at Saint Anthony’s is limited and we must take help in whatever form God provides it.
I am thankful that the boy found his way to your door. If you should see him again, please send him our blessings. Tell him that I hope he has put his Lives of the Saints to good use, and that I pray each night that the bad luck of threes has not followed his good fortune (he will know what I speak of).
Yours in Christ,
Brother Joseph Wolff
“Why did you write to him?” Ren asked.
“I had to make sure you were the same child.” Sister Agnes seemed nervous and began to rock again, pressing the chair back, then pressing it forward. “Some years ago a woman came to the hospital in the middle of the night. She said she was a Christian, God be praised. But her dress was covered with blood, and she seemed half out of her mind with fever. She told me that she had killed her baby.” Sister Agnes folded and refolded her hands. “This is rare. But I have seen a woman driven to it in my time, once or twice. I asked her to bring me to the body so that we could give the child a proper burial. She had hidden the baby underneath a bush at the side of the road, near the gate. He was well wrapped in blankets, and when I pulled back the layers, I saw that the child was still alive, and no more than a few weeks old.” Sister Agnes covered her mouth for a moment before continuing.
“One of his hands had been cut off.”
Ren looked at Mrs. Sands. He looked only at Mrs. Sands. He expected her to wake up and start shouting. But she stayed completely still and quiet.
“I gathered the child in my arms and rushed back to the hospital. The doctors were able to save his life, God be praised. When the baby was out of danger, I tried to put him in the woman’s arms. She held him, and wept, but refused to admit that the child was living. She removed the baby’s clothes, all but the nightshirt, and filled them with stones from the yard. She kept the doll that she had made, and told me to watch over the other until she returned. She would not tell me her name, or the child’s.
“After a fortnight with no sign of the mother, I took the baby to Saint Anthony’s. We bring all the children there who are left behind, on purpose or by the parent’s death. The coach dropped me at the crossroads, and I walked to the orphanage. It had just started to rain. The baby was so quiet that I worried I had somehow smothered him in the bundle. I opened the blanket and he stared up at my face with a peculiar expression, then stuffed his blunted wrist into his mouth.
“I had been depositing children through the wooden door at Saint Anthony’s for years by that time. I did not enjoy this duty, but I performed it without complaint. I was looking forward to traveling alone back to the hospital, free of my burden, with time for my own thoughts. But the way the child sucked his wrist, as if he were at his mother’s breast, made it difficult for me to detach my feelings. I stood before the small door in the gate with the baby in my arms. I kept thinking of the mother weeping when she first came to the hospital, and saying, ‘I killed him. I killed him,’
“The rain had already found its way into my habit. I made myself go cold and with one last look into the blanket, I tucked it around the child and pushed the whole package through the swinging door. But as soon as I did, I felt regret. I thought that I should have waited until morning, when someone was sure to find him. But they might suspect the baby was one of the sisters’, or even my own, and it would bring dishonor and shame onto our convent. Still, I reached my hand through the tiny door, to see if I could catch hold of the blanket and take the child back. But he had already rolled away, beyond my reach. I stayed there, stretching my arm in all directions, until at last the night began to fade, and I was needed at the hospital.”