“It is too little,” Anna agreed. “And I can’t say what I really remember and what I only remember because Aunt Quinlan told me the story. But I remember how I felt, and that’s the important part.”
Her voice was calm and without tremor, but Lia got up from playing with Skidder to crawl into her lap. With the little girl’s solid weight in her arms, Anna sent herself back to the summer when everything changed.
? ? ?
DR. LAMBERT WAS in the middle of a postmortem when they got to Bellevue, so they went outside to wait in air that smelled of recent rain and the sea.
Jack had almost gotten used to the smells that clung to Anna’s clothes when she came home from the New Amsterdam—strong soap and carbolic, denatured alcohol, all with an undercurrent of blood and bile. Bellevue had all that times ten because they took anyone who came to them, men and women and children, the sickest and poorest and least likely to survive. The outdoor poor.
Outside, leaning against a wall warmed by the sun, Jack watched as people came and went out a side entrance favored by staff. A crowd of younger men, students or interns, appeared, looking like a company of soldiers fresh from the battlefield. Jack caught sight of a familiar face just as Oscar saw him too.
“Dr. Graham!”
Neill Graham’s head jerked around toward them, his expression less than friendly.
“He doesn’t recognize us,” Jack said.
“Sure he does. Look at him trying to make a pretty face. He may just manage it by the time he gets over here.”
Jack studied the younger man, seeing exhaustion and irritation. Medical students worked impossible hours for little pay; in the same situation Jack knew that he would be less than sociable. He could tolerate a bad mood, but there was something sour in Graham’s expression.
“Detective Sergeants.” Graham stood in front of them but left his hands in the pockets of his very grimy tunic, and rocked back on his heels. “I don’t think you want to be shaking my hand today. Not until I’ve soaked it in carbolic for a couple hours.”
“Hard shift?” Oscar asked
He blew out a breath. “Long. Forty-eight hours, and maybe two hours’ sleep. Only two surgeries I was allowed in on because in case you didn’t know, this place”—he jerked his chin toward the hospital—“is staffed to the roof with students who can buy preference. Today there was a Caesarean—only three done last year in the whole city, but instead of that I was stuck dealing with the usual garbage that comes through this place. People who don’t have the sense God gave an ant, real deviants.”
Oscar said, “That bad. Did you lose a patient?”
“No. The work stinks, but I could handle it with my eyes closed. Some of the patients would be better off dead, to my way of thinking. You two know what it’s like dealing with whores.”
You couldn’t be a cop and take offense at plain speech, not if you wanted to get anything done. Conversation in the station house was often far worse, but there was something in the way Graham used the word whore with a lip-curling disgust.
He was saying, “I’ll be glad to see the last of this place.” He turned his head to scan the hospital windows.
“You headed someplace else?” Oscar’s tone was light, friendly, encouraging.
“There’s a surgery position opening up at Women’s. That place is like a palace compared to this cesspool.”
Oscar said, “Competition must be stiff.”
Graham’s whole face contorted. “That doesn’t worry me. You know I’ve got twice as many hours in the operating room as anybody else who’s applying. They know what I’m worth at Women’s. Somebody from the staff—I won’t name names—told me. He said I had a brilliant career ahead of me. Women’s is my next stop, and then who knows? London, Paris, Rome.” His smile broadened, full of satisfaction.
“And no poor people at Women’s,” Jack observed.
“They’ve got a charity ward,” Graham said, a little insulted. “But there are only so many beds and that means you can pick and choose among the ones who come begging and only take the interesting cases. This place—” He glanced up at the hospital. “The scum of the earth.”
“And still you managed to get good training,” Oscar said.
Graham shot him a suspicious look but relaxed when he saw nothing but mild curiosity in Oscar’s expression.
“There’s work enough, but I hate having my time wasted on the cases that come in here. Truth be told, I don’t much like examining any woman—any honest surgeon will tell you that. But with whores, it’s like rooting around in a bucket of filth, up to the wrist in sludge. The last one I saw today, she looked forty but I doubt she was more than twenty, the worst case of the clap I’ve ever seen, and she was still working, still spreading her legs for coin. Imagine the degenerate who would pay for the privilege.”