The Wonder(34)

Tying her drawers at the waist, Anna showed no sign of having heard a word.

“My prescription’s very simple,” said Standish. “A quart of arrowroot in milk, three times a day.”

Lib stared at him, then spelled out the obvious. “She won’t take anything by mouth.”

“Then drench her like a sheep, woman!”

A slight quiver from Anna.

“Dr. Standish,” protested Lib. She knew the staff of asylums and prisons often resorted to force, but— “If a patient of mine refuses a second meal, my nurses have standing orders to use a rubber tube, above or below.”

It took Lib a second to understand what the doctor meant by below. She found herself stepping forward, between him and Anna. “Only Dr. McBrearty could give such an order, with the permission of the parents.”

“It’s just as I suspected when I read about the case in the paper.” The words sprayed from Standish’s mouth. “In taking up this chit of a girl—and dignifying this charade by setting a formal watch—McBrearty’s made himself a laughingstock. No, made his whole unfortunate nation a laughingstock!”

Lib couldn’t disagree with that. Her eyes rested on Anna’s bent head. “But such unnecessary harshness, Doctor—”

“Unnecessary?” he scoffed. “Look at the state of her: scabby, hairy, and gross with dropsy.”

The bedroom door banged behind Standish. A strained silence in the room. Lib heard him bark something at the O’Donnells in the kitchen, then march out to his carriage.

Rosaleen O’Donnell put her head in. “What’s happened, in the name of God?”

“Nothing,” Lib told her. And held the woman’s gaze till she withdrew.

Lib thought Anna might be weeping, but no, the child looked more thoughtful than ever, adjusting her tiny cuffs.

Standish had years, no, decades of study and experience that Lib lacked, that no woman could ever obtain. Anna’s downy, scaly skin, the puffy flesh—small matters in themselves, but was he right that they meant she was in actual danger from eating so little? Lib felt an impulse to put her arms around the child.

She restrained it, of course.

She remembered a freckled nurse at Scutari complaining that they weren’t allowed to follow the prompts of the heart—to take a quarter of an hour, for instance, to sit with a dying man and offer a word of comfort.

Miss N.’s nostrils had flared. You know what would comfort that man, if anything could? A stump pillow to rest his mangled knee on. So don’t listen to your heart, listen to me and get on with your work.

“What is fumigated?” asked Anna.

Lib blinked. “The air can be purified by burning certain disinfectant substances. My teacher didn’t believe in it.” She took two steps to Anna’s bed and began to smoothen the sheets, making every line straight.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s the harmful thing that must be taken out of the room, not merely its smell,” said Lib. “My teacher even made a joke about it.”

“I like jokes,” said Anna.

“Well, she said that fumigations are of essential importance to medicine—because they make such an abominable smell, they compel you to open the window.”

Anna mustered a tiny laugh. “Did she make lots of jokes?”

“That’s the only one I can recall.”

“What’s the harmful thing in this room?” The child looked from wall to wall as if a bogey might jump out at her.

“All that’s doing you harm is this fast.” Lib’s words were like stones thrown down in the quiet room. “Your body needs nourishment.”

The girl shook her head. “Not earthly food.”

“Every body—”

“Not mine.”

“Anna O’Donnell! You heard what the doctor said: half starving. You may be doing yourself grievous harm.”

“He’s looking wrongly.”

“No, you are. When you see a piece of bacon, say—don’t you feel anything?” asked Lib.

The small forehead wrinkled.

“Not the impulse to put it in your mouth and chew, as you did for eleven years?”

“Not anymore.”

“Why, what could possibly have changed?”

A long pause. Then Anna said, “’Tis like a horseshoe.”

“A horseshoe?”

“As if the bacon’s a horseshoe, or a log, or a rock,” she explained. “There’s nothing wrong with a rock, but you wouldn’t chew it, would you?”

Lib stared at her.

“Your supper, ma’am,” said Kitty, walking in with a tray and setting it down on the bed.

Lib’s hands shook as she pushed open the door of the spirit grocery that evening. She’d meant to snatch a few words with the nun at the changeover, but her nerves were still jangling too much from her encounter with Dr. Standish.

No carousing farmers in the bar tonight. Lib had made it almost to the staircase when a figure reared up in the doorway. “You didn’t tell me who you really were, Nurse Wright.”

The scribbler. Lib groaned inwardly. “Still here, Mr.… Burke, was it?”

“Byrne,” he corrected her. “William Byrne.”