Truly a Wondrous Age
Nicole Clevenger (February 2015)
Notes: H/C filler between 3.05 and 3.06, throughout which I wantonly gloss over many icky medical realities in the name of fiction. A few more scenes with Doctor Amelia Frayn, simply because I liked her. Spoilers to the end of ep6. Written for DesertOrchid.
I make no money, because they do not belong to me.
She is the only one present when he opens his eyes, a soft noise at her back the first sign that he is finally, truly awake. Amelia turns from the window, dropping the rag with which she'd been drying her hands. She sees his throat shift as he swallows. Watches his eyelids droop closed. He gets them open again, blinking blearily at the ceiling.
She moves closer to the bed, the volume of her voice as tentative as her progress. "Inspector?"
He attempts to turn his head; the effort quickly flattens him. It's too easy to read the pain in his features, even without the familiarity that her medical practice has brought. When his tongue darts out clumsily to moisten his lips, she pours a glass of water from the carafe on the table.
Amelia sits lightly on the edge of the mattress. She is pleased to see his eyes flick her way.
"Do you know your name?" she asks him, even this not something they can take for granted. Three days past she'd watched that American doctor carve out a piece of his skull. A large part of her had doubted that he would wake at all.
"Reid." A scratch through the room's air. But an excellent sign.
"The year?"
His eyebrows furrow under the bandaging. "... year…" Clearly this question is more difficult. She assists his vague efforts to raise himself off the pillows with a careful arm behind his neck, enough to help him get a few small sips of water; Reid breathes heavily after this small exertion. He looks as if he might slide back into sleep. "My daughter," he mumbles. "Where…?"
"I will have someone bring her to you. Can you tell me what happened?"
"Overboard," he says. "Saw her fall."
"You are confused, sir." Amelia rests a hand on his chest, seeking to calm his rising agitation. "Your daughter is well."
"Fell in the water… could not reach her." He struggles to rise again, a distant glaze to his look now. "I must –"
"You must do nothing but lie there and heal." It is his weakness, not her strength, that keeps him down. He collapses back with a groan, curling around the wound in his abdomen. Amelia readjusts the blanket over him. "Your daughter has since been returned to you, sir. You shall be reunited as soon as I can send word."
With Reid's face half buried in the sheets, it's difficult to determine if her message is getting through. Amelia wonders if he will recall her part in the deception preceding his daughter's said return.
"Your brain has suffered a trauma," she continues. "The confusion should clear with time." An optimistic prognosis, but they truly have little idea of what to expect here. By rights he should already be dead. Amelia believes firmly in speaking the truth to her patients. Without the knowledge of what might come, she sees no harm in this instance in erring on the side of hope.
"Mathilda," Reid murmurs into the mattress. It sounds an oath born of pleading and despair.
She sets the full glass on the nightstand, picks up instead a cloth to dab at the sweat dotting his skin. "Sleep, Inspector. She will be here when you wake."
His hold on consciousness is tenuous, slippery. He loses his grip.
Captain Jackson finds her in the upstairs parlor several hours later, the cup in her hands an excuse to give Mathilda some time alone with her father. The American appears rumpled, more so than usual, as if he had rushed here the moment he heard the news. The calm of his voice can't disguise the excitement sparking in his eyes.
"He's awake?"
Amelia nods toward the open door across the room. "His daughter sits with him."
Jackson takes a step in that direction, turns back. Amelia watches over the rim of her teacup as he plays with the hat in his hands. She'd had to argue with him in the end to do the surgery, had eventually pointed out that a failure would make little difference. It had been a harsh, distilled reasoning. Voiced in a final desperation.
"How is he?" A question for the rug that covers the floor.
She rests the cup in its saucer. "He retains the ability to speak and understand. He has knowledge of his identity."
Jackson does not fight with his grin; Amelia cannot help but return it. They've accomplished something incredible here, rescuing this man from the mouth of death. The technique may have been ancient, but it has taken on a modern significance in her mind with their success. She plans to write a paper on the effects if Jackson choses not to.
"There is some confusion," she adds, tempering the good news. "But it seems to be improving."
Reid had been more aware the second time he woke, if not more alert. He hadn't questioned Mathilda's arrival. When Amelia left the room the girl was sitting by the bed, holding her father's hand as she had during his days of unconscious slumber. He had seemed soothed by her presence.
A giggle floats through the doorway into the parlor. They both glance that way. "Sounds like a positive sign," Jackson observes.
"Indeed." He looks as if he may do permanent damage to the brim of his hat. "I doubt they would consider it intrusion were you to join them," she tells him.
"Nah, I'll…" Another stuttering step. "I'll come back later."
Many of the girls she treats in her clinic have few that they would identify as family or friends. Yet she's known plenty like this American, loved ones who can't bear to sit by the side of the bed. Amelia had only seen him here once in her visits over the last five days, dragged in with the other inspector by that blustering, bewhiskered man. She'd stood out of the way, speaking only when bid. Studied their body language. Her strongest memory is of how Jackson's gaze had jumped about the room, never landing long on the man in the bed.
"You do not wish to examine him yourself?" She is accustomed to having her competence judged first by her sex. The surgeon admittedly has never treated her with any hint of disdain, but still she is surprised.
"Seems you've got things well enough in hand." Jackson scratches at his beard, gives the door another look. "I should go. Left someone waiting."
His society lady, no doubt. Miss Hart hardly looks to Amelia for a confidant, but it would be impossible not to hear the rumors. The bedridden have little entertainment but talk, and the women on her staff naught but human. She isn't sure if he's expecting her to try and convince him to stay.
Decision made, however, he appears in a hurry to leave. Jackson tips his hat to her as he puts it on. "You do good work, Doctor."
"But you've only –" she starts. The thought goes unexpressed; he escapes before she can fully formulate a reply.
The sentiment lingers after he has left the parlor. She finishes her tea in its echo.
Amelia returns to the sickroom to find the girl in the middle of a one-sided conversation; from the doorway it seems as if Reid rests peacefully beside her. But as she nears the bed she can see that the hand not held by his daughter is a tight fist tangled in the sheets, that his lips are pressed into a flat pale line. Mathilda babbles brightly on, needing no more encouragement than she had during those long five days.
"Perhaps that's enough for now," she tells the girl. "Your father needs his rest. You may return later."
Mathilda does not argue; Amelia has never known her to do so. She simply smiles her dreamy smile. The one that implies her years of captivity may have left her a bit out of sync with the world.
"I believe Miss Cobden is in the study with Miss Susan," Amelia says. "Do you remember the way?"
"I do." Mathilda lifts her father's hand to kiss the back of it. "Sleep well, my daddy. I shall visit you soon."
Reid musters up a smile for her, fragile and paper thin. It crumbles the moment the girl exits the room.
"You are in pain?" Amelia asks him. It isn't really a question, the evidence obvious. She picks up her stethoscope to listen to his heart and lungs.
"Some," the clipped answer all that he gives.
His heart beats too fast, his breathing too shallow. She hangs the instrument around her neck and reaches for the vial of morphine. Reid notices. He rolls his head back and forth on the pillow in feeble protest.
"No." A whisper of a word.
Amelia ignores him, filling the syringe. "For the time being I shall have to overrule you, Inspector. Forgive me."
He is not pleased; she does not care. The drug pulls him quickly down.
Amelia had decided it would be best to spend this first night at Miss Hart's house, wishing to keep a close eye on her patient. When she goes to Reid's room at half two to check on him, she finds Captain Jackson standing a dark shadow at the side of the bed.
Her skirts swish over the carpet and he turns. Without a word, he comes to join her in the doorway; the two of them move out into the high-ceilinged parlor. From the brief glimpse she'd gotten, it looks as if Reid is asleep.
"Ma'am," Jackson greets her. His expression is sheepish, his posture reminiscent of a cat burglar caught in the act. Amelia wonders if he'd let himself in.
"Captain."
He eyes the room's doorways warily over the top of her head, his attention dancing between them. She suspects it is Miss Hart he keeps watch for. Amelia resists the impulse to reassure him that she's not seen the woman all day, she who had been such a fixture in the sickroom during Reid's coma conspicuously absent with his awakening. It isn't her place to volunteer such information.
"Were you able to speak with him?" she asks instead.
"Nah… he's dead to the world." Jackson winces as he hears what he's said. "Uh, that is –"
"I have your meaning, sir." She can smell the whiskey on his breath. "It's late. The household sleeps." She thinks perhaps this was at least in part his intention.
"Yeah." Jackson drags a hand over his face, smothers a yawn. Peers at her as a thought occurs. "You're awfully alert for… for whatever damn hour this is."
"The hour has little relevance in this profession. As you know."
He studies her now. "You find yourself concerned?"
"Cautious. He has a long road to recovery."
"That he does. Though you're like to have a hell of a time convincing him of it."
An impression already beginning to form with Reid's earlier refusal of the morphine. "A difficult patient?" she asks.
Jackson shakes his head. "Can't say that I'd really know." It sounds frustrated, almost bitter; she watches his mouth work through several comments before settling on one. He jabs his fingertips in the direction of the other room. "That man has a passion for hiding his pain that borders on a fervor. All I'm saying is you should keep an eye on him."
"I know my job, Captain." It's a knee-jerk response, reflexive after all these years. She can hear its sharp steel.
"And I ain't claiming otherwise. Merely a warning. Based on my humble experience."
She makes herself recognize that this is not an attack, forces herself to listen to what he says. She regrets her reactive tone, an armor too easily slipped into. They stare each other down, until Amelia takes a calming breath and drops her gaze. "As I am so awake," she says, "I think it sensible I look in on him."
Jackson gestures toward the open doorway with a tiny bow and an exaggerated sweep of his arm. "Don't let me stop you." He wobbles a bit as she passes.
It's quiet in here, the air disturbed only by the sound of her patient's breathing. Amelia lights a candle to work by; the flickering glow provides enough illumination for a superficial examination. She has almost finished when Reid starts to stir under her hands.
His eyes are dark slits, his first try at speech no more than a mumble. "… where?" he gets out. Little else.
"You are convalescing, Inspector." She gently palpates the glands on either side of his throat. "At the home of Miss Hart." She thinks he may feel a bit warm.
Reid makes a noise that could be an acknowledgement and shifts against the pillows. The candlelight creases his features, picks out the perspiration on his forehead. Amelia manages to get a little more water into him. He moans through his teeth as she helps him lie back again.
"Dizzy…" Reid whispers, his eyes squeezed tightly closed.
Amelia dampens a cloth and rests it across his head. She can't resist a small smile; he does not see it. "If that is the worst to come of this, I think we shall call ourselves grateful."
"Mmm…" She isn't certain that this is an agreement.
"How is the pain?" A jerk of his head, one she suspects leans toward some negative. It does not surprise her, but neither does it answer her question. "Would you like something?" she presses on.
"No." She can hardly hear him. "Thank you."
"Christ," comes a snarl from the doorway. Amelia turns her head to find the American there. She had thought he'd departed.
Reid blinks in that general direction as well. "Jackson?" He attempts to push himself more upright against the pillows; the movement stretches the stitches in his side and he gasps. Jackson's outline peels itself from the doorframe to take fuller shape by the bed.
"You're dreaming, Reid. I ain't here." Jackson touches the back of his fingers to the skin under Reid's ear, gauging his temperature. He glances across the bed at Amelia as he straightens, but says nothing.
"Vivid," Reid slurs, his eyes again closed. The hand not welded to his side lies on the bed beside her. She can feel the tension in him without needing to close the distance.
"That's Lady Morphine," Jackson assures him. She thinks his voice takes on a difference when he speaks to this man; it may simply be a deception of the still air, the fluttering dim light. "She'll twist you every time."
"… smell as if you've bathed in whiskey," comes the inspector's muttered response.
Amelia brings her hand up to cover the twitch of her lips.
"Yeah, well… you're not exactly a rose yourself, Reid. Now shut up and let the pretty doctor help you feel better."
A dry cough, a smashed groan from the man on the bed. Jackson gives Amelia a pointed look, one that slides sideways to include the bottle on the table. She reminds herself that he is attempting to assist not usurp, that the plan was hers as well.
Reid mumbles something as she administers the injection, but she's unable to decipher it. He relaxes into sleep soon after. She looks up from her patient and sees that Jackson has left the room; Amelia stands, moves out into the parlor.
The room is empty. She hears the distant sound of the front door closing downstairs.
Amelia returns to her busy clinic the next day, leaving instructions that she should be summoned if needed. It is late in the afternoon by the time she arrives at the Hart house to check on the inspector. After a brief conversation with the lady herself, Amelia heads up the stairs. She meets Drake who is on his way down.
"Inspector," she greets him.
"Doctor." He appears unsettled.
"You have been to see him?" One does not require a policeman's instincts to surmise this.
"I have, ma'am." He looks back the direction he has come. "It is truly a wondrous age in which medicine can rescue a man whose fate has so surely been sealed."
Amelia can not take credit for this. "And how do you find him?"
"He is ever as I knew him," Drake confirms, but now he hesitates. Gives the top of the staircase another glance. Amelia waits for the rest of his thought.
"Although?" she prompts, when he does not continue.
Drake remains reluctant, as if he divulges his own secrets. "I think him in difficulty, though he would deny it. He speaks already of returning to work."
She arches an eyebrow at this information, files it away. "I shall see to him, sir. We will keep him here a while yet."
Drake nods. "Ma'am." He goes past her down the stairs.
Amelia enters the sickroom to see Reid slumped half-propped against the pillows, his fingertips exploring the shaved skin around the gauze at his temple. "Something you have forgotten, Bennett?" Reid asks, without opening his eyes. His voice sounds rusty, a heavy chain being dragged over stones; she does not like the waxy pallor of his face. Amelia moves closer to the bed.
When he looks to investigate Drake's silence, he finds Amelia standing beside him instead. Reid frowns, confused. "Doctor. Forgive me. I had thought –"
She's quick to try and alleviate it. "He has just left. We met in passing only moments ago."
"Ah." He adjusts his position on the bed; a rogue sunbeam peeks through the window to stab him in the eyes. Reid winces, slings his left arm over them to block it out.
Amelia crosses the room to tug at the curtain. "How do you feel today, Inspector?"
"Better." She doubts this. He does not move his arm.
"Headache?"
"Tolerable."
She lets this too go unchallenged. Begins her examination.
"The details, if you please," Reid says, when she's removed the thermometer from his mouth. "Of my recovery."
His temperature is elevated, but not yet dangerously so. "You are far from recovered, sir."
Reid makes no comment. Amelia lights a match, holds it to the diagnostic torch. She carefully moves the arm shielding his eyes; her fingers look tiny where they circle his wrist. His pale skin the same shade as her own.
He flinches violently when she holds the mirrored flame up to his face; he'd have pulled away from her had he anywhere to go. "Tolerable?" she chides lightly as she scrutinizes his pupils. "Slightly more severe, I think." She blows out the light and returns the torch to the table.
"You were shot in the head and the abdomen," she tells him, while inspecting the wound in his side. "Most fortunately, no internal organs were harmed. There was damage to your brain, however. You were unconscious for five days, sir, prior to yesterday."
"The damage. Permanent?"
A glance shows her that his eyes are closed; her attention lingers for a moment on the hard line of his clenched jaw. Miss Hart had taken to shaving him herself while he had been in the coma. Amelia wonders who has been doing it since. "There is a procedure called trepanation," she says, peeling away the gauze at his temple. "Do you know of it?"
This grabs his focus. Reid blinks at the ceiling, unable to turn his head. "Yes. You –?"
"Captain Jackson performed the surgery. I am quite encouraged with the results thus far."
"Jackson." It's a puff of exhale she cannot interpret. But now a slow smile stretches his lips, surprising her. "My surgeon still," he murmurs. The pleased expression smoothes some of the pained lines cracking his face.
"I would enjoy… discussing it with him," Reid tells the rafters, his voice breathy as she gently prods around the new hole in his skull. "Fascinating… ngh –"
"Would you like me to send word?" she asks, looking to distract him from the burn of the antiseptic.
He chokes out a laugh. "No. Captain Jackson... does not greatly appreciate being… summoned. I would… I would have him in good spirits… for our discourse."
If he recalls the captain's presence this night last, he does not mention it. Amelia rewinds the bandaging that will keep the gauze in place. By the time she has finished, his head hangs limply forward. His energy drained from him along with what little color had remained in his face.
Reid's hand comes up to the side of his head, but instead of seeking the injury his fingers press against his right ear. She would swear she can hear his teeth grinding upon one another in the silence. "Sir?"
"A ringing," he explains. She aids in lowering him back onto the pillows. He looks decidedly nauseous.
There is little she can do. Amelia braces herself for the now familiar battle. "Allow me to ease your suffering."
"Unnecessary," Reid grunts from behind his eyelids.
Only two days of this so far, and it already begins to wear thin. "The more you rest, the faster you will heal, Inspector. The morphine –"
"False comfort. An embrace more difficult to abandon the longer… the longer it is enjoyed."
A coherent argument, she admits. But still she wavers. When he opens his eyes, she's staring at the bottle on the table.
"I know of what I speak," Reid says, once she's turned back to him. The heavy scarring she's seen covering his left shoulder jumps a picture to the front of her thoughts. His hand still works to meld with his ear, as if enough pressure will force the noise to vacate the organ.
"There is no shame in relieving pain, sir. Some of us attempt to make a profession of it."
Reid holds her gaze. "No drugs, Doctor. I would have my mind clear again." His words are firm. "You will do this for me."
Because she owes him? Amelia is uncertain if this implication is his or her own; she cannot long forget the look on his face when she'd told him his daughter was dead. If this is his meaning, however, he makes no direct mention of it. Since there is no way to discover what he remembers without asking, Amelia is left to wonder. "As you wish," she eventually says.
Agreement secured, Reid lets his eyes close. "Thank you." He seems spent, discomfort or exertion causing a fresh sweat to spring up across his skin. His fingers continue to rub at his ear. She sees that his arm is trembling.
"It has been a long day for you already, I think." Reid frowns without opening his eyes; Amelia gets to her feet. "I will go to fetch ice for your headache. You will allow that much, at least?"
Her frustration lends a bit of bite to the question, sarcasm couched not much below the surface of her polite ingrained tones. He fails to respond to it.
"I would be grateful." It's more breath than speech.
Amelia fights to tamp down her annoyance; she is a physician, and she will assist in any way that she can. She softens her tone. "I shall return shortly. Rest."
The house is quiet as she heads down the stairs, though it's early still, the sun not yet set. Miss Hart's cook enters the kitchen as she's chipping at the frozen block, gathering the chunks into her clean handkerchief; Amelia declines her offer of assistance, but asks her to prepare a thin broth. She plans to get some food into her patient.
When she arrives back at the sickroom with the ice, his breathing is uneven. A ragged sounding sign that he is not asleep. "Inspector?"
Reid's eyes snap open; they immediately narrow to a squint. "Doctor?" He seems disoriented. Unsure if they are both where they're supposed to be.
"The ice," Amelia clarifies. She slides the lumpy bundle between the back of his head and the pillow. His escaped sigh of relief hisses through the air around them. "I would like it if you would try to eat something."
He makes a face, plainly displeased by the idea. "Not hungry."
"I know. Regardless, I would like you to try."
He makes no promises. She leaves the room to enjoy a cigarette in the parlor while they wait.
A while later Amelia follows the cook and her tray into the room; Reid's expression appears not to have changed. He does make an effort to eat, though it doesn't carry him much farther than a few bites before he drops the spoon into the bowl and rests back against the mound of pillows. "Enough," he declares, closing his eyes.
She can tell by looking at him that no amount of convincing is going to force him to have any more. "For now," she concedes, transferring the tray and its uneaten food to the bedside table. Reid groans, swallows hard. "Are you going to be ill?" she asks.
"No." As if he can simply will it so. He breathes deliberately through his nose.
There's a blurry halo around half of his head, a water mark spreading across the white pillowcase as the ice melts. Tomorrow she will see about having the sheets changed, the man in them given a sponge bath. Tonight, she thinks, the activity might prove overambitious.
The room grows dimmer by the minute as the sun progresses through its slow descent; the shadows creep up the bed, crawling out from their nebulous collections in the corners. They stretch across Reid's face, softening its angles. In this gathering deceptive light, he appears much more peaceful.
Amelia debates turning on the electric lamps, still a decision that she takes a moment to consider. She isn't sure which is more amazing: the idea that she can now simply flip a switch in the wall and produce illumination, or the fact that this wonder has come to feel almost commonplace in such a relatively short amount of time. When she was a girl – not all that long ago – so many of these modern advances did not even hold the substance of dream. Now she works amidst them daily, and she's not supposed to give them a second thought.
She decides against the lamps; best that he sleep. "May I do anything for you, Inspector, before I go?"
"I would not protest, were you to remove that." A tip of his head toward the steaming bowl, barely a motion. His voice seems to be fading with the light.
Amelia picks up the tray. "Do not be surprised when you see it again," she says. Reid does not offer an opinion on this.
She leaves him in the coalescing dark to carry the bowl back downstairs.
A few days later, she enters the room to find Reid sitting on the edge of the bed. He rolls a black silver-topped cane back and forth between his palms, the tip twisting a pattern just above the floorboards. His head is bowed, his focus on his bare feet. The hair on his crown juts upward in unruly spikes.
He looks up as her footsteps near, unsuccessful at hiding the wince the movement brings. "Doctor. I did not yet expect you."
They have settled into something of an unintentional pattern, Amelia stopping by Miss Hart's after her days at the clinic. He was often reading when she arrived – another good sign that his mind was functioning as it should – though she suspects it is more difficult than he lets on. It seems only to increase the headaches.
"A present?" she asks, nodding at the cane.
"It would seem so. It was here when I awoke."
From Miss Hart? Amelia isn't entirely pleased with this, would have appreciated being consulted. The cane continues its repetitive turning between his hands. It's oddly hypnotic.
He stays that way as she examines him. "No book today?" she asks, going through her progression.
"The words are not content to remain where printed," he admits. "It is an aggravating exercise."
He does not sound aggravated, merely weary. She doubts that the mild fever he has been unable to shake is helping with this. "Double vision?"
"No. The ink jumps about on the page."
"Hmmm." His pupils react to the light as they should. He can track the motion of her finger without a problem. "I think it probable that it is simply fatigue," she says. "I am told you have not been sleeping well."
Reid looks for a moment as if he might protest this, but his attention falls back to the cane. He says nothing, and she finishes her work through a silence broken only by an occasional question with a one-word reply. He is restless under her hands. Clearly anxious for her to be done.
"Some room please, Doctor," Reid murmurs, when she has straightened up. His fingers curl around the top of the walking stick. There is a determined set to his jaw.
"Sir, I am not sure it is wise yet. Perhaps tomorrow."
He petulantly ignores her; the cane wobbles dangerously under his weight as he pushes himself shakily to his feet. He stabilizes just long enough to give her a look that can almost be described as smug. Before his right leg folds under him and he pitches sideways.
Contact with the mattress slows his fall; unfortunate that he hits mostly on his injured side. Reid ends up a heap on his knees on the floor, struggling to suck in a breath. Amelia steps over the dropped cane to kneel in front of him.
He appears a little stunned. "Tomorrow," Reid echoes, when he can speak again.
"Perhaps," she says.
They have together managed to get him back onto the bed when the downstairs girl appears in the doorway. "Doctor, a message come from the clinic. They need you, ma'am."
Amelia thanks her for the information, turns back to Reid. "Go," he says. "I am unharmed."
His voice is gaining strength; he takes care to meet her eyes. She hasn't much of a choice. She wonders what could be happening that her staff cannot handle themselves. "I will return when I can," she tells him.
"Do not hurry on my behalf," Reid says, staring up at the ceiling. "It would seem I am going nowhere."
It is the end of the week and she is late leaving work. Amelia pulls her shawl more tightly about her shoulders, seeking protection from the cold that has settled while she spent the day indoors. Crossing the street, she hears her name called from behind her. She turns to see Jackson approaching. He's closer than she would have expected.
Amelia stops to wait. He looks a bit more put together than the last time she saw him, that night at Miss Hart's. She thinks he may have even gotten his hair cut. "Captain."
"I was about to give up on you," he says. "You keep long hours, Doc."
Amelia feels she has already justified this. She is tired; she still must stop by to check on Reid. She has no desire to stand here in the chill and replay past conversations. "You are welcome inside," she tells him.
"Not sure your patron would agree."
She lets this slide by. She has no wish to embroil herself in that drama. Amelia blows on her hands, trying to warm her numbing fingers through the thin gloves. She knows what it is he wants to ask.
A spate of fidgeting culminates in the production of his cigarettes; he offers her one as an afterthought, already having lit his own. She accepts it, leaning close to the flame he cups in his hands. "How's he doing?" Jackson finally asks, shaking the fire from the match. It's obviously meant to sound casual.
She pulls in a lungful of cold air with the tobacco smoke. Her exhale is visible between them. "I go to him now. If you would like to join me."
He rubs the side of his jaw with the heel of his hand, his eyes on something to the right of her shoulder. "I've known that man a long time…" It sounds as if he's talking to himself. "We ain't exactly… Hell, I don't know what we are these days. But we ain't exactly friends."
"He wants to see you," she says. "He wishes to discuss your surgical procedure."
This gets a flash of a smile, though it's directed at the cobblestones. "Jesus. He would."
"He continues to improve. He is walking, with the aid of a cane."
"Really?" Jackson sounds impressed, if grudgingly so.
Amelia nods. "With his daughter, all throughout the upstairs rooms. For as long as he can stand it." She decides not to mention the incident the other day, when she'd arrived to find him taking tea in the parlor with Mathilda and Miss Cobden. Sociable and smiling, a paragon of recuperation. A mask he had somehow been able to keep fortified until they took their leave. She will not detail the excruciating, stumbling effort it had been to get him the few meters back to his room after they had gone.
"Fever?" Jackson asks, snapping her from the memory of Reid's weight over her shoulders.
"Slight, but persistent. There are no signs of infection, however." She finishes the cigarette, drops the butt to the ground.
Jackson does the same. The further questions Amelia anticipates fail to come. She waits, watching his face. Jackson studies a spot just to the left of her shoe.
"I should go, Captain," she finally says. No reaction. "Shall I carry your greetings, at least?"
He shakes himself, a visceral reset. "Yeah. Do that." Jackson's eyes find her face, for the briefest of moments; she thinks there might be something else. But now he lifts his hat to her. "Doctor." He turns to go.
He moves off into the shadows, taking an opposite direction from hers. She's seen a lot of that man's back recently.
"We shall return home tomorrow. Would you like that?"
It's the first thing she hears when Miss Hart's heavy front door closes behind her. Mathilda's voice floats down the stairs after her father's.
"Oh yes. And then we shall go to the sea?"
"And then we shall go to the sea."
Amelia climbs the stairs to find them slowly pacing the landing. "You are leaving us so soon, Inspector?"
Reid stops short; with her hand in his, Mathilda pauses also. "I am no longer invalid," he says. "As you see."
What she can see is the sweat along his sideburns, the tiny tremors of the walking stick as it's forced to accept most of his weight. The wince permanently tugging at his lips. His eyes.
"I see a man who has made great progress, in the face of nearly insurmountable odds." Mathilda beams at her father when Amelia says this. Reid doesn't seem to notice, his chin resolutely up and his body rigid. "But perhaps not one yet ready to take on the world."
"Your opinion."
"Yes. My medical opinion. As a doctor, sir."
Reid looks to Mathilda, and Amelia notes that he bends his neck rather than his waist in an attempt to narrow the gap between them. "I have heard there are apples in the kitchen," he tells her, his tone conspiratorial. "Do you think that you can find them for us?"
The girl grins, pleased to have been given a purpose. "All right." Her hand slips from Reid's; she practically skips her way down the stairs.
Reid straightens, turns back to Amelia. "How long would you keep me then, useless in that bed?" he asks when they are alone. "There is nothing I can do from here."
"What is it you need to do?"
"I have work, Doctor." Reid flinches; his head jerks to the right. He pushes on through his teeth. "As, I've no doubt, do you."
"I do," she agrees. "Your head bothers you?"
"Mmm."
Both hands in a white-knuckled grip on the cane now. A blink that stretches a little too long. Amelia rests her fingers on his arm. "Come, Inspector. Let us sit."
"Yes." He sways; backward, away from her. A staggering step and he catches himself awkwardly on the railing; the cane makes a muted thump when it hits the carpeted floor. He clings to the polished wood as if it were the only thing holding him up. She suspects it may be.
Amelia reaches for his wrist to check his pulse; she tries to get a look at his face. "Dizziness? Or pain?" she asks, fighting to get a better sense of what's happening.
Reid drops his forehead onto the arm slung over the rail, muffling his words. "It passes," is what it sounds like. But she'd not thought this man a liar.
It has been a long day, at the end of a long week. Nearly a fortnight since she'd been woken near dawn by a pounding on her door and a message of emergency. A summons containing plenty of urgency, but no detail. She would never have expected it to lead to this man, of all people, bleeding to death in Miss Hart's arms.
There was that first flurry of activity to stabilize him, then so many days of waiting. Followed by a week that felt at least double its length. It has taken its toll on her patience. "You push yourself too far, sir."
He lifts his head, but whatever he may have been about to say is lost with the appearance of Mathilda and Miss Hart coming up the stairs. Amelia turns; Reid stands as tall as he's able in her peripheral vision.
"A little birdie tells me you are leaving us." One of Miss Hart's hands holds Mathilda's; the other cradles a fat red apple. "I found her fluttering about the kitchen." Amelia watches the blonde woman's eyes take in the scene before her. She has always assumed that there is little Miss Hart misses, in any given situation.
"You are well, madam?" Reid asks from Amelia's back. She suspects it is an effort to get his voice so close to normal.
"I am, sir." Miss Hart releases Mathilda's hand. She gives the girl the second apple. "I apologize for not being able to come visit with you sooner."
"Unnecessary." Amelia tracks the hitching of his breath between the words. "You have a great many demands on your time. It is I who must apologize. For the imposition."
"Nonsense. You are welcome as long as you have need of us."
A grunt that may be interpreted as an assent, but it grabs her attention. Amelia shifts position enough to be able to see him. The elbow-locked arm holding him off the railing is shaking, a failing support; she's beginning to fear that the grimace on his face might give permanent shape to his features. She dips down to reclaim the walking stick from the floor.
Mathilda comes closer, offering her father an apple; Reid's smile is painfully artificial next to the girl's. The apple drops to the carpet when he tries to wrap his clumsy fingers around it. Automatically he bends to pick it up, but the motion is quickly aborted. His hand finds its way to his side, his breathing nothing but rough edges.
The girl's smile cracks, disintegrates. "You are bleeding, Daddy."
Two bright spots of red, peeking through the thin robe he wears over the pyjamas. Almost unnoticeable with their small size. "It would seem you've damaged Captain Jackson's needlework," Amelia says, working to convey her calm to Mathilda, to the air of the landing. "Easily remedied."
Miss Hart steps forward and takes Mathilda's hand. "Come with me, girl. You can enjoy your treat in the parlor." They cross the threshold into the big room; as if on cue, Reid sags against the railing. He looks barely on his feet.
"Are you able to walk?" Amelia asks gently.
He laughs, though it sounds an unamused exhalation. She hands him the cane; his fingers brush over hers in the transition. "I am able to attempt it," he says through the stiff set of his jaw.
"Then we shall see how far that gets us."
The apple has rolled out of their path; she ignores it, preferring to keep a hand on his arm. Miss Hart watches them cross the room from her high backed chair without turning her head. By the time they reach the borrowed bedroom, Reid is panting through his bared teeth. She questions if he will make it the final steps to the bed.
Fortunately he does, and Amelia tries her best to control his collapse onto the mattress. Once she has reoriented him to where all of his limbs lie atop the bed, she unknots the sash of his robe. She pulls it open; her fingers move efficiently on to the buttons of his pyjama shirt. Reid's eyes blink open. He seems confused.
"I must see what you've done to yourself, sir."
"Of course," he mumbles, eyes closing again.
She doubts it is obedience that has him so pliant under her hands. The nightclothes he wears seem oversized, too much extra fabric to tuck out of the way. "You have not been eating." Amelia observes, not expecting a response. She gets none. Reid's entire focus seems on remembering how to breathe.
Her attention moves past the visible ridges of his rib cage to the stitches at his side. One pulled free completely; the second will also have to go. The slender trail of blood from the torn skin has been forced by gravity to alter its angle, now wriggling slowly round his ribs toward his spine. Every erratic gulp of air spurs another trickling pulse.
Amelia reaches for a square of clean gauze, lifts his hand from the mattress to hold the white cotton against the wound. He keeps it in the position she places it. "Breathe slowly. You only make yourself more lightheaded." She watches him attempt this, his brow furrowed as his body fights against him.
After a few moments, the pace does even out a little. "I shall go gather what I need," she says. Reid's eyelids flicker as her weight leaves the mattress, but they do not actually open. A vague noise comes from deep in his throat.
Miss Hart's head rises quickly when Amelia exits the sickroom. After exchanging a few words with the child, she gets to her feet and crosses the room to follow Amelia out onto the landing. They stop at the top of the stairs to speak.
"Is there anything that I can do?" the blonde woman asks.
"I have need of clean towels. I go to get water."
She nods; Amelia turns to go. She is halted by a light touch on her arm.
"Reid, is he…?" The woman cuts herself off mid-thought, removes her hand. Composing the distressed lines of her expression, she redirects her sentence. "He is well," Miss Hart says. It's more of a statement than a question, as if she is the one to be making assurances here.
Amelia wonders what feeds the intensity of this naked concern; until recently, she'd have sworn her benefactor held no great love for this man. An understatement to define the term. Amelia thinks it amazing that they manage even to be civil to one another. She suspects something must have happened between them, to have brought about this shift in their relationship.
Another detail about which she is not able to ask. "He is," Amelia says. "A few stitches needing to be replaced."
Her eyes seem a part of someone else's face, the emotions roiling in them dramatic when juxtaposed with the placid mask of her features. "And you think him recovered enough to leave your care?"
"I was no more consulted than you were," Amelia tells her. "I suspect my opinion will make little difference." That bite again. Jagged fatigue sharpening the bottom of the words. Amelia takes a deliberate breath, reminding herself to whom it is she speaks. "If you'll excuse me," she says, her tone smoothed and her smile polite. She leaves the other woman on the landing as she moves down the stairs.
When she returns balancing a bowl of water, Mathilda is alone in the parlor. Miss Hart sits on the edge of Reid's bed, the two of them engaged in quiet conversation.
"I have arranged a girl to cook and clean for you," the blonde is saying, as Amelia steps into the doorway. "Temporarily, of course."
A shadow crosses his face. "There is no need –" Reid breaks off as he catches the motion of Amelia's entrance at the edge of his sight. She says nothing, continuing to gather up her supplies. If he does not wish to talk in front of her, then he can wait until she has finished her task.
Miss Hart has no such concerns. "Then you would see her unemployed, sir, for I will not pay her to sit idle." Reid has been tracking Amelia's progress around the room; at this, his eyes snap back to the woman in front of him. She smiles, sensing she has him trapped. "She has already been informed, her duties reassigned. Surely you would not consign her to so cruel a fate without even an opportunity to prove herself."
"You do too much," Reid murmurs. "I am already in your debt."
"There is no debt." It's spit out, hot and venomous. Amelia sees her own surprise splash reflected across Reid's face. Miss Hart swallows, her nostrils flaring as she pulls in a breath. "We are friends, Mister Reid," she continues, with more control. "I merely do what I am able."
Friends? Amelia expects Reid to refute this. Instead he reaches for the other woman; Miss Hart captures the offered hand, wrapping both of hers around it. Amelia averts her eyes. She feels an intruder here.
There is only so long, however, that she can convincingly pretend to be busy, and she does not wish to spend her entire night in this room if there is no cause. Amelia circles the bed to the side where Miss Hart sits. Her hands clasped in front of her, she waits with false patience for them to acknowledge her presence.
Miss Hart squeezes Reid's hand, lays it back on the mattress and stands to move out of the way. Amelia switches places with her. She discards the soiled gauze, begins by cleaning away the blood. Reid studies the ceiling rather than her work. The muscles of his abdomen twitch convulsively when her fingers replace the wet cloth on his skin.
She throws him a questioning glance. "Cold," he explains. The lukewarm water has failed to take the chill from her hands.
Miss Hart has not left the room; she watches the procedure from a few steps away with arms folded. Unflinching. With the audience, the scene takes on the atmosphere of a lesson, and Amelia suddenly feels as if she should be accompanying her motions with verbal instruction. Though she suspects the blonde woman already has more than a passing familiarity with how to do this.
It doesn't take long to repair the damage. Reid is shivering as the sweat dries across his bare chest. The pyjamas he wears are his own, brought from his home early on in an attempt to see him comfortable even in his unconsciousness. Amelia doubts that there is another set here, if indeed he possesses one. She debates the wisdom of trying to get him out of the shirt in order to soak away the small spots of blood.
A bell jangles downstairs; someone at the front door. "Miss Cobden, returned from her meeting," Miss Hart guesses. She leaves the room to check.
Reid pinches the bridge of his nose. The trembling is gathering a stronger hold. Amelia covers the fresh stitches with new bandaging, judging the amount of blood on his shirt insignificant enough. She tugs the sides of fabric back together and does up the buttons; the shiny puckered skin of his shoulder disappears slowly as she nears his collar.
"You still intend to go tomorrow?" she asks him.
"I do."
"And if this should happen again?"
"Then I shall seek out your medical expertise." There is no combat in Reid's tone; he sounds exhausted. His hand drapes limply over his eyes now, protecting them from the electric light.
He is a grown man, and she has no influence over him. "I would rest easier knowing that to be a promise, sir."
"Take it as you wish," Reid mumbles.
He shivers still; Amelia pulls the blankets up over his chest. "Would you like some ice for your headache?" she asks. The morphine has not been mentioned since he last declined it.
Reid's hand lifts a fraction and he peers at her, his lips shaping an automatic deflection. But he changes his mind. The hand languidly drops back to its place. "Thank you," he concedes without protest.
Mathilda appears in the doorway; Amelia stands, motioning for the girl to come in. "Your daughter, Inspector," she says softly. Reid's arm immediately falls, and he makes a meager effort to prop himself up. From the deliberate and repeated way he's blinking, she thinks it likely he's having a problem focusing his eyes.
She does not ask. With his daughter in the room, there is even less of a chance that she will receive an honest answer. She will examine him once the girl has gone.
"I shall return tomorrow, my daddy. And then we will go home together..."
Mathilda's voice fades behind her as Amelia crosses into the parlor. She exchanges pleasantries for a few moments with the councilwoman and Miss Hart, before leaving the two women and continuing on to the kitchen. Amelia does not hurry, giving them the opportunity to say their goodnights. She absently pokes around the pantry, searching for something that Reid might eat; she doubts the crunchy apple is his first choice.
Eventually she gives up, collects the ice. The parlor is empty when she passes through the space again.
When she next sees Reid, it has been nearly a week since he has discharged himself from her care. Returning from a house call a few blocks from Leman Street, the recognition of where she is brings with it the thought of him. Amelia decides to walk the short distance that way.
An absurd impulse, as she has no intention of entering the station house to hunt him down. She is not even certain that he has returned to work.
Though she has difficulty believing otherwise.
In the end there is no need to look for him; Reid and Jackson sit in front of the brick building, talking in the early morning sun. Amelia does not approach them. She watches from an opposite corner as Jackson gets to his feet. The American pulls a tailcoat from where it hangs and puts it on. He slings his long scarf over his shoulder. Leaves Reid there to duck back inside.
Alone, Reid removes his glasses and rubs at his eyes. Amelia frowns. He glances up and down the street, but doesn't notice her in all the foot traffic.
She takes an involuntary step forward when the front legs of his chair come off the pavement, concerned as he tips steadily backward. Amelia forces herself to stay where she is. Reid's shoulders hit the wall behind him.
He is laughing.
She has no wish to interrupt this moment of private joy. Amelia turns back the way she came without speaking to him. She'll look for a hansom on the high street.
end.