Corpse & Crown

by Alisa Kwitney

  Aggie nodded. “It’s just—it’s my time of month, Matron. I’ve been on my feet for the past six hours, and I need to use the facilities.”

  Shiercliffe rubbed the bridge of her nose, a rare concession to fatigue. “Fine, then. Hand me your logbook.”

  Aggie turned over the little red-leather notebook and pencil that each student nurse was meant to carry with her at all times. “Thank you, Matron.”

  Bobbing a quick curtsy, Aggie walked, straight-backed, across the receiving room. Dodger had stopped a few feet away to read a notice about the symptoms of cholera. She swept past him without making eye contact, trusting him to follow her into the cloakroom.

  “All right,” she said, buttoning her cloak and picking up her battered carpetbag from its hook. “I’m ready.”

  “Hold up. You got everything you need in there? Bandages and such?”

  “We’ll have to make do with what I have left.” There was no way she could remove what she needed from the medical supply cabinet without Shiercliffe noticing—and objecting.

  “Will any of this help?” Dodger opened the left side of his swallowtail coat and revealed a startling array of hooks and pockets, all filled with surgical implements and supplies clearly purloined from the hospital.

  “How on earth did you get all of that?” But she knew. The same way he’d snatched her coin purse. He had light fingers.

  “Not to mention these.” He opened the right side of his coat and revealed a scalpel, a bottle of chloroform and an anesthetist’s mask.

  I don’t really know this boy at all, she thought. “I don’t know what your game is, but those supplies belong to the hospital and the poor people who come here for help. I’m not going to allow you to just help yourself so you can make a profit selling these things on to some dirty back alley butcher.”

  Dodger looked as though he had been struck. “No! It’s just for Nancy. Whatever you don’t need, you bring back.” Dodger opened the front door for her and held it. “Come on, Aggie. Please.”

  It was the look in his eyes that decided her. She might not be able to trust him, but she couldn’t seem to make herself walk away from him, either.

  13

  Aggie wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but the pawnshop’s bright red Valentine’s Day decorations caught her by surprise. The splashes of crimson seemed a bit macabre, especially with the lovely blond girl lying bruised and bloodied on a chaise longue and the smell of sausages still lingering in the room.

  She glanced at Dodger and was relieved to see he wasn’t about to toss up his accounts. The last thing she needed was for him to get weak-kneed and pass out.

  “You brought the nurse for Nancy?” The speaker, a young woman with a strong nose and curly brown hair, was sitting beside the chaise longue and sponging cold water onto the semiconscious girl’s bruised face.

  “That I did,” said Dodger. “How is she, Faygie?”

  Faygie looked up, her expression bleak. “I don’t know.” Her eyes were red and swollen from crying. “Thank you for coming, miss.”

  “I’m afraid I’m just a probationer nurse,” said Aggie, not wanting Faygie to get her hopes up. “But I’ll do whatever I can.”

  Faygie stood up, making room for Aggie. “I’ve put some cold water on the bruises to try to keep the swelling down.”

  “You did well.” Aggie sat down in Faygie’s place, moving the water and cloth aside. “Hello, Nancy. Can you talk to me?” Nancy’s eyes fluttered open. She was lying on her back, her scarlet dress ripped and muddied.

  “H-hullo,” she said. Her bottom lip was split, and the cut on her forehead was still seeping blood into the tightly coiled curls at her hairline.

  “I’m studying to be a nurse. Can you tell me what happened to you?”

  Nancy opened her mouth but couldn’t seem to get enough air. “I,” she said. “Hurts.”

  “And it’s difficult to speak. All right. I’m going to check your pulse.” Aggie pressed two fingers to Nancy’s wrist, then frowned. The girl’s pulse was faster than she would have expected. “Nancy? I’d like to check your heartbeat, if that’s all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  Aggie pressed her ear to Nancy’s chest. The injured girl’s heart was racing. If only I had a stethoscope, thought Aggie, moving the position of her head so she could listen for breath sounds on both sides.

  Nurses weren’t supposed to diagnose illness, but Aggie felt an increasing suspicion that Nancy had a collapsed lung—a tension pneumothorax. As the lung deflated, the air filled the chest cavity, and the lungs could shift into the space where the heart was located, putting stress on it.

  She looked up to find Dodger watching her. “What’s going on?”

  “I think she has air filling her chest, which is making it harder for her to breathe. There’s a way to let the air out,” Aggie said, “but I’m not trained to do it.”

  A hulking shadow in a corner of the room stood up, revealing itself to be a big man with a thuggish face. He cleared his throat, nervously twisting a cap in his hands. “She going to be all right?”

  Aggie swallowed. “I think we need to perform a procedure to help her breathe.” Except that there was no we—she was going to have to be the one to do it, or it wouldn’t be done.

  “What kind of procedure?” The big man’s voice was thick and raw and more than a little menacing. His dog gave a low whine.

  Dodger put his hand on the man’s shoulder, pressing him back down. “Take it easy, Bill.”

  “All right. I can do this.” Aggie unbuttoned the bodice of Nancy’s dress, revealing her chemise.

  “Do you bloody mind? This ain’t a peep show!”

  Dodger shoved the bigger man back. “What are you, a lunatic? You couldn’t even be fussed to go look for her!”

  Bill shook his head. “Don’t you start with me.”

  “Oi! Cut it out, you two,” said Faygie. “Outside if you’re going to start throwing punches.” She looked from one to the other, clearly disgusted. “Pair of bloody arseholes.”

  Nancy tried to lift her head as she made a horrible wheezing sound. “Don’t worry, Nancy,” said Aggie as she pulled a thin knife out of her medical bag. “We’re going to help you.” Except that she didn’t have all the equipment she needed. “Does anyone have a pen? I need a small hollow cylinder.”

  Faygie handed her a fountain pen. “Will this do?”

  “Perfect. Thanks.” Unscrewing the pen, Aggie extracted the ink tube. “Hand me the carbolic acid from my bag—That’s it, the brown bottle. Now pour this over my hands and the tube.”

  Dodger tipped the bottle over the pen cartridge, ignoring the brown puddle it made on the floor. “That enough?”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “Do you need my help?”

  “I’ll need you and Bill to give us a little privacy. Faygie, can you help me hold Nancy still?”

  Bill reluctantly stepped aside, casting his shadow over her.

  “You’re standing too close,” said Aggie.

  He scowled down at her. “Just want to keep my eye on you.”

  “You’re blocking the light.”

  Bill grunted and moved so he wasn’t blocking the lamp, and Faygie took her place at the foot of the chaise longue. “That’s good,” said Aggie. “Just hold onto her wrists. Gently but firmly.”

  “Got it.”

  Aggie focused on her patient, unbuttoning her chemise so her chest was exposed and placing her fingers over the other woman’s right clavicle. “All right. Feeling for the third intercostal space.” For a moment, looking at Nancy as she lay there, she felt incapable of piercing her skin. Then she thought about her mother’s advice: When you have a difficult task, break it into smaller pieces, and don’t think about anything else except the doing of it.

  Of course, Ma also said to know
your limits. A midwife helps nature along—a doctor tries to fight it.

  So much for listening to her mother, then. Aggie took the scalpel and focused on making the cut at the correct angle, over the rib. Nancy opened her mouth but no sound came out, and Aggie realized she hadn’t planned on the blood seeping from the wound. It was soaking into the girl’s chemise.

  “I need someone to mop that up,” she said. “There are sterile bandages in my bag.” Dodger was there in an instant, dabbing at the wound. His worried gaze remained fixed on the girl’s face, and he did not seem to notice her partial nudity at all.

  “That all right? More?”

  “No, that’s good.” Aggie inserted the cartridge into the cut, biting the inside of her lip as she pushed the metal into the wound. Nancy groaned, and Faygie had to hold her tight as she tried to push away from the pain and Aggie. It felt strange and somehow wrong, but as Aggie heard the whistle of air being released, she knew she had done the right thing.

  After half an hour, Aggie removed the cartridge and disinfected the wound site before bandaging it up. “That should help, but she should go to hospital in the morning,” said Aggie. A strand of hair had come loose from her nurse’s cap and was falling over her face. She swiped at it with the back of one arm and it fell back, damp with sweat.

  “Here.” Dodger had tucked the hair back in place. It felt comforting, his hand on her hair. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  She could feel the tremble in her hands, and suddenly she was shaky and odd. “Just take me home, all right? I want to go back now.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “Of course.”

  * * *

  The streets were not empty. There were huddled figures in doorways, and the occasional small fire. A feral dog slinked through piles of refuse, skittishly jogging away when it heard them approach.

  Light-headed with fatigue and relief, Aggie found herself stumbling into Dodger as he walked beside her. He placed his hand on her elbow to steady her. “You all right?”

  “Just a little tired.”

  “Can I buy you something to drink? Or eat?”

  “I think I just need to sleep.” What she really wanted was a slug of gin to steady her nerves, but she fought the urge. She couldn’t rely on having a drink every time she treated a patient. Coffee would have been nice, but it was too early for the coffee vendors to be out.

  “You look shattered. Here—you can lean on me, if you like.” He held out one arm with his elbow crooked, and after a moment’s hesitation, she slipped her hand through it. She had never walked arm in arm with a man before, but it was easy to match her pace to Dodger’s. She felt as aware of his body as if it were an extension of her own, and it made her stumble again. This time, he drew her closer, slipping one arm around her waist. It was not a respectable way to walk down the street, and she knew she should move away from him.

  If only it didn’t feel so good to have him holding her as they walked.

  She wondered if he was going to try to kiss her at some point, and if she was going to let him.

  She could hear her mother’s voice in her head: Careful, my girl. That’s how they get under your skin.

  Leave off, Ma, she thought. I have a right to my own mistakes.

  They were about to turn a corner when Dodger abruptly veered around, his hand dropping down to her side as he placed himself in front of her and the unseen danger. “All right,” he said, “I know you’re following us.”

  Aggie stared at him, confused, and then looked into the dark street behind them. “Did you hear something?”

  “Someone, not something. I can tell when I’m being followed by something on two feet, so come on out.”

  A figure lurched out of the shadows at them. “Heard you got yourself a tasty new mort.” The gaunt young man doffed his top hat to Aggie, revealing a matt of tangled, greasy blond hair scraggling down the sides. “Evenin’, miss. It true you work at the Royal Vic?”

  Dodger shook his head. “Sorry, Aggie. This nudnik is Oliver Twist. Twist, it’s late and I am taking the lady home, so sod off.”

  “Don’t be like that,” Twist said, moving to block their way. “You’re a nurse, aren’t you, miss? Well, I just need a bit of paregoric to settle me.”

  Paregoric, or campherated tincture of opium, was often given to children for a cough, but it could also induce feelings of euphoria in a patient. In higher doses, it could also inhibit breathing and cause a dangerous dip in a patient’s heart rate.

  “What you need is to get yourself off all those nostrums,” said Dodger, guiding Aggie around Twist.

  Twist wasn’t giving up that easily. “Please, miss,” said Twist, following closely behind them. “You don’t know the kind of pain I’m in.”

  Aggie stopped, turning to face Dodger’s friend. This close, she could smell the bitterness on his breath. “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t know your pain. But do you know that in a high enough dose, paregoric can be lethal?”

  Twist’s gaze dropped to her medical bag. “So you do have some!”

  Dodger gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t.”

  Twist’s mouth contorted. “You’re lying.” He grabbed the handles of her carpetbag. “Let me see.”

  “Are you insane?” Dodger gave Twist a shove, but Twist maintained his desperate grip on the carpetbag, pulling it out of Aggie’s hands and yanking it open.

  “I’m only going to say this once,” said Dodger. “Give it back.”

  Twist ignored him as he pulled a brown glass bottle out of the bag and squinted at the fine print on the label. “What’s this?”

  “Syrup of ipecac,” said Aggie, bending to pick up a length of catgut he had dropped on the ground. “Please. I need my supplies back.”

  Twist tossed it, then pulled out another bottle. “And this one?”

  “All right then,” said Dodger. “We’ll do it the hard way.” Jabbing his elbow into Twist’s ribs, he grabbed for the bag, but Twist reacted with surprising speed, and suddenly the two were grappling with each other, lurching into the brick wall as Twist aimed a dangerous rabbit punch at the base of Dodger’s neck.

  “Dodger, watch out!”

  “Don’t you worry about me, luv.” Dodger threw his shoulder into Twist’s midsection, knocking him back into the wall behind him. The bottle in Twist’s hand smashed hard against the bricks, shattering instantly into a spray of glass fragments. Taking advantage of his opponent’s momentary distraction, Dodger launched himself at Twist just as Aggie felt something pelt her face like hail, followed by an awful, stabbing pain in her eyes.

  She froze, ice-cold with terror as everything she had ever learned about eye trauma flashed through her mind—abrasians and lacerations and perforations, the urgency of immediate treatment, the risk of permanent damage.

  Then someone slammed into her from behind, throwing her off balance. The last thing she heard was Dodger, calling her name. Her head struck the stones and there was a moment of spangled brightness before everything went dark.

  14

  Aggie woke up feeling muddled and strange. The room was still dark, but she had the sense that she had slept later than usual. “Lizzie? What time is it?”

  “Aggie?” It was Justine’s voice that answered her.

  “Justine? What are you doing in my room?” Aggie sat up, disoriented. Her eyes were open, but the room remained dark. Wait—was there something covering her face? She brought her hand up to her temples and encountered the rough gauze of bandages.

  All right, she told herself. Think. What had happened last night? She came up blank, and a stab of panic pierced the lingering fog of sleep. Reflexively, she reached for her bedside lamp and something heavy slid off the table and fell to the floor with a crash. “What was that?”

  “Stay cal
m, Aggie,” said Justine. “Someone will be here in a moment to help.” There was a bell ringing nearby; someone was calling for help in one of the wards.

  Which meant she wasn’t in her room. She was in the hospital.

  “You’ve had an accident,” said Justine. “You’re in my room, and you’re safe.”

  “I’m in your room?” Even as she asked the question, Aggie became aware of the sound of Justine’s ventilator and the faint smell of carbolic acid. “Where’s Lizzie?”

  “Lizzie’s probably in the laboratory.”

  “At this time of night?”

  “Aggie—I’m afraid it’s not nighttime.” Justine sounded regretful. “It’s three in the afternoon.”

  “Three? How long have I been asleep?” With a growing sense of unease, Aggie tried to think back to the last thing she remembered before going to bed. Then it hit her—she didn’t remember going to bed. “What day is it?”

  There was a moment’s pause. “You had an accident, Aggie. You’ve been unconscious for nearly three days.”

  Three days. Aggie took a deep breath, fighting a wave of panic. The memories came back in pieces. The alleyway. Dodger’s hand on her elbow. The gaunt-faced young man with the lank blond hair—Twist. The struggle over her medical bag.

  She must have blacked out when she hit her head. “I think I remember some of it now. How did I get back here?”

  For a moment, the only sound in the room was the wheeze of the ventilator, and then Justine replied, “I don’t know. Shiercliffe just told me that you had been attacked while seeing a patient in the East End. She asked me if I minded sharing my room, and I said no, of course not.”

  So Shiercliffe knew that she had not gone back to her room that night. This is too much to take in.

  “I know,” said Justine, and Aggie realized she must have said the words out loud. “Try to stay calm.”

  That shocked Aggie into silence. No one had ever told her to remain calm before. She was always the one calming other people down. She had never realized that there was nothing less soothing than being told to stay calm.