The Fire's Center (25 page)

"Good morning, Lucien." She smiled brightly. "You have Mr. Rennie at half nine, and Mr. Harcourt at ten. Then we can go to the clinic if you like."

Lucien nodded, wondering why he felt like he had got up on the wrong side of the bed that morning.
It must be the heat he thought,
noticing the room seemed very hot and stuffy.

Riona was wearing one of her white blouses with a navy skirt, and looked fairly cool and calm.

"Some breakfast?"’ she asked cheerfully.

"No, thank you!" he snapped.

Riona stared at him wide-eyed for a few moments, and then gathered her papers and books and left the room without another word.

"Damn it, what is wrong with me?" he wondered, as he paced up and down in the study for a few moments, before going into the dining room and pouring himself several cups of hot strong coffee.

He lingered at the table for several minutes, but noticed Riona didn’t join him, and also did not appear when either of his two patients were there.

Once he had finished with Mr. Harcourt, Lucien went in search of Riona, and at last found her in the study upstairs, pouring over her anatomy book.

"I’m sorry, Riona, I didn’t mean to snap at you."

She shrugged, but did not look up from her book. "I just thought it was better to stay out of your way."

But as Lucien stood awkwardly in front of her and the silence lengthened, she glanced at him shyly and asked, "Are you worried about something, Lucien?"

Lucien threw himself onto the sofa next to her, and admitted, "The clinic. The launch was great success, but I'm beginning to have doubts."

"Now who needs a hug." Sliding closer, she leaned her head against his navy blue silk waistcoat. "It will all be fine, you’ll see. It's just a very big step, and now that it's here, of course you're anxious it will be a success. But knowing you, and how hard you work, it can’t fail, Lucien," she reassured him quietly.

Lucien brought his arms around her and sighed. "Thank you, that’s much better. I’m sorry for being so churlish."

"Don’t mention it." Rising, she held out her hand to pull him to his feet. "Now, if you’re ready, Dr. Woulfe, let’s go. I’m sure you'll have heaps of patients to see."

Riona and Lucien worked at the clinic all day. Lucien saw the patients, along with Dr. O’Carroll and Dr. Kennedy, while Riona sat in the office drawing up a complete inventory of everything in the clinic, down to the last bar of soap.

The clinic slowly filled with various fever cases, people with running sores, and many obvious cases of malnutrition.

"We’re becoming a soup kitchen rather than a clinic," O’Carroll exclaimed haughtily to Riona as he washed his hands and demanded she fetch him a clean towel.

"Well, that's what we are here for. If we haven’t any patients, then the people can have the gruel. ’Tis little enough for the poor souls."

"And you’d know about being poor now, wouldn’t you, Miss," O’Carroll sneered, looking her up and down with a decided leer. "Just what did you do for the committee member to get this job!"

Riona bristled like a hedgehog. "I’ve never been that poor, thank God. But I’ve seen far too much death where I come from to wish to see any more of it if there anything I can do to prevent it."

Dr. Kennedy had overheard the last of the exchange, and though he had been frowning worriedly, he now gave Riona a timidly admiring look.

Dr. O’Carroll decided that if she were as innocent as she really claimed to be, he would try to shock Riona sufficiently to at least knock her down a peg or two, if not outright get rid of her. He disliked her confident manner, her air of command. Women had no business organising and running things. They were good for one thing only...

"Don’t tell me those women are really poor," he said, pointing to two rather bedraggled specimens. "Women have an easy enough way of earning money if they are willing to lay on their backs for it."

Dr. Kennedy gasped, but Riona said coolly, "Isn’t it a sad comment on our society then that women, and even men, should be forced to sell their bodies like animals to survive?"

That wiped the smirk off his face, but he tried to recover his composure by asserting leeringly, "Everyone has a price. What’s yours, Miss?"

"I haven’t discovered it yet, but I know yours," she replied with a withering stare.

"What the hell do you mean by that?" Dr. O’Carroll barked.

"You made sure the committee members pulled strings to get you in here. If you're really as good as the certificates you possess say you are, then why aren’t you in a private practice? And if you really dislike the poor as much as you say, then why on earth would you want to work here? There isn’t very much prestige attached, so you must be after something else. All I know is that anyone can tell there’s more to you than meets the eye," Riona said boldly, refusing to be intimidated by this overgrown playground bully.

"You open your mouth again about things that don’t concern you, and I’ll...." he threatened, grabbing her by the arm. He twisted it behind her back to press up closely against her menacingly.

"And you touch me again, and surgeon or no surgeon, I’ll break
your
arm," Riona said evenly as she shoved him hard against his chest, sending him stumbling backwards. As she did so, she jerked her throbbing arm free, giving his own a painful yank in the process.

Dr. Kennedy’s eyes widened at her words, and nearly popped out of his head altogether as Lucien entered the room.

"O’Carroll! Just what the hell are you doing in here! I asked you to come straight back to help with those stitches. And now they’ve just brought in two boys from the linen factory, mashed to a pulp. Get your instruments and leave Miss Connolly to get on with her work!" he barked.

O’Carroll scurried out, and Lucien turned his attention to his other colleague.

"Kennedy, you’re invited as well," he uttered in a voice dripping with sarcasm, and then he and Riona were alone.

Lucien shot Riona an angry look, and she too ran out to see if she could help.

Lucien had not exaggerated. The boys, certainly no more than eight or nine, though it was had to tell because they were so undersized, had been crushed in the looms. Riona could see the at the ribcage of one of the boys had been mashed to a jelly.

"His lungs are punctured, and his pelvis crushed. There’s nothing I can do with him except ease his suffering," Lucien sighed as he asked Riona to go fetch the morphine.

The second boy’s head had caved in on one side, and Dr. Kennedy suggested they try surgery to at least remove the pressure on the brain.

"He’s barely breathing, and in any case even if he did survive, he would never be right again. What would his mother do with a crippled, blind boy?" Lucien said almost angrily as he examined the boy for any sign of response.

"Well, at least their mothers will get compensation." Dr. O’Carroll shrugged, already turning away from the scene of horror as if it weren’t of the least concern to him.

"A few shillings is a pretty poor return for eight or nine years of parental devotion," Riona couldn’t help saying.

"Hah, devotion!" O’Carroll sneered. "They’ll be glad enough of the money to feed the others, now won’t they?"

Riona watched Lucien administer the painkilling drugs, and remained by their sides as the two young lives slowly ebbed away.

Dr. Kennedy began to visibly tremble then, and it was left up to Lucien to break the news to the distraught mothers when they came running in a few minutes later.

Riona helped comfort them, but what could she say… Her stomach roiled in misery, and she hardly knew how she could bear to stay in the clinic when their groans and whimpers as they finally breathed their last echoed around the walls.

But she had little time to dwell on two patients out of hundreds, for the rest of the day was taken up with all sorts of ailments, from festering fingers, to chilblains from the previous fortnight of cold weather, to cases of scurvy so bad that all of their teeth were falling out of spongy gums with the least pressure.

Lucien looked over at Riona and said to her, "Write down a note for a regular order of oranges, lemons and limes every day. We’ll give the juice to anyone who comes in. This is criminal in this day and age! I could see them being like this after a long sea voyage, but in Dublin?" He shook his head in dismay.

"Living on thin gruel if they are lucky wouldn’t help matters, now would it?" Riona remarked quietly.

"No, I suppose not," Lucien sighed, and busied himself with another injured patient.

Thus the rest of the day passed by in a whirl, and while she was still feeling gloomy herself over the death of the two mill boys, she also noticed that Lucien was extremely subdued that night over their bath and supper. As they sat in the drawingroom sipping their coffee, Riona asked him why he was so pensive.

"The waste of life we saw today. It was appalling," Lucien sighed as he rubbed his eyes wearily.

Riona reached over and hugged Lucien to her, and despite his resolution not to take advantage of her nearness, Lucien soon found himself clinging to Riona like a drowning man.

Lacing his fingers though her hair which hung down loosely over her shoulders to dry after her bath, he tilted her head up and kissed her full on the lips. Time stood still for both of them as their breath mingled.

Then Lucien sat up straight and said, "Thanks for trying to cheer me up, but I would really rather not talk about it. Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll go up to bed."

Riona was a trifle hurt that he was brushing her off so carelessly, but she simply said, "Don’t forget Mr. Sturgess and Mr. Allen and their wives are coming tomorrow."

"It is mainly to see you, Riona, but I'll try to be here. You can come to the clinic with me in the morning, and leave at about four in order to bathe and be ready for them," he instructed as he pulled the door shut behind him and mounted the stairs.

Once alone in his own room, Lucien threw himself on the bed fully clothed. Never had his room felt more lonely, and not for the first time, he wondered about going down to the corner of St. Stephen’s Green, where a woman’s company could be bought for a pittance. But if he couldn't have Riona, what was the point…. Yet she was the one woman he simply
couldn't
have.

Control yourself man, you’re behaving like a rutting stag,
he scolded himself, writhing on the coverlet in scorching agony after the embrace and kiss they had shared.

She’s just a young girl, and you ought to have more self-control,
he berated himself soundly.

He tried to take his mind off Riona by reading one of his driest medical tomes, but it was hard going all the same.