Lake in the Clouds by Sara Donati

Author:Sara Donati [SARA DONATI]
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780007108305
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Published: 2003-04-29T03:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

Early Monday morning as Cicero handed Hannah up into the carriage for the ride to the Almshouse, he pressed a note into her hand. The paper was thin and the ink was poor, but it was written in a strong, careful hand, one that Hannah did not recognize.

A man needs medical help. If you will attend to him, be outside the Almshouse kitchen door at three this afternoon. We will see that you are back by four. Mr. Spencer has no part in this, and neither should he, for his own welfare.

Hannah worked all day with the note folded in her bodice, measuring its shape and weight with every breath she took. A man who needed help. A note from a stranger about a stranger, passed to her by Cicero, who never even met her eye when he put it in her hand. A man who needed help, who dared not come to the Almshouse or the dispensary or the hospital, all places where someone without money could get treatment.

It might be Manny. It might not.

It was the worst kind of folly, and yet Hannah found herself planning. She could be away from the sick wards for an hour, if the work in the vaccination office was finished. Dr. Simon would assume she was in the nursery; Dr. Scofield would assume she had gone to the hospital with Dr. Simon; Dr. Savard might come looking for her, but it was unlikely: Dr. Simon would be amputating a leg this afternoon, a procedure that called for many assistants.

A man needs medical help.

It could be fever or a broken bone or a knife wound. Hannah checked the lancets and scalpels she had been given by Hakim Ibrahim, instruments she had used with the supervision of Dr. Todd or Curiosity or Dr. Simon. She checked the vials and bottles strapped to the side of the bag. Her supply of willow bark for fever tea was low, and she refilled it from the crock in the apothecary.

At two, when she had finished with the last of the day’s vaccination work and she was about to close the office, Dr. Simon came in. Hannah could hide her distress, but not her surprise.

“I was just on my way to change some dressings,” she said. “I thought you would be at the hospital by now?” Making a question of it, the way Amanda did when she was offering direction to her husband.

“I was about to leave when a visitor arrived,” said Dr. Simon, with his usual quiet smile. And with that an idea came to Hannah, outlandish and very appealing all at once: she could put the note in his hand, and let herself be guided by his counsel. Dr. Simon’s antislavery sentiments were public knowledge; he would not do anything to harm people in need.

“Yes?”

“And then I remembered your vaccination.”

Hannah glanced down at herself, confused now. “I don’t understand what an unexpected visitor has to do with my vaccination. Am I overlooking something?”

“Is this not the eighth day since you were given the virus?”

“Yes.

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