Page 69 of Malady

“Miss Ophelia!”

Thomas is trying to squeeze past her, tugging his mother along by the hand. The poor woman can barely keep her feet, her face grey beneath the sweat shining across her brow, and when her scarf slips, I catch sight of an awful swelling along one side of her neck.

“She won’t stop shaking,” he says, looking at me desperately. “I’ve tried getting her warm, but she just keeps⁠—”

“Thomas, wait. Let me⁠—”

“Out of the way, lad!”

Arthur's voice cuts through the commotion as he moves aside to let old Robert through. The man stumbles over the threshold in nothing but his nightshirt and an ill-fitting coat, blood dried beneath his nose and one arm clutched tightly across his stomach.

Then somebody calls my name from the lane.

And another voice answers, asking whether there's room for one more.

Mrs Higgins has started crying. Thomas is talking too quickly for me to make out half of what he says, Mary’s asking whether her baby is safe, and somewhere beyond them Gideon’s prayer has stopped altogether.

The shop that felt almost peaceful an hour ago is suddenly full of fevered breath and frightened faces.

I look at Iscairn. The blue beneath his glove is gone. He’s already looking back at me.

No.

18

DOCTOR ISCAIRN

Icannot stop them.

They will not stop.

They will not stop.

Since the Vance babe died in Ophelia Harrow’s arms this afternoon, rotten memories have been battering against my mind one after the other.

Small children running around my legs. A girl with ribbons coming loose from her hair. A boy laughing somewhere behind me. A baby crying hard enough to turn red in the face while I hold it against my chest, one tiny hand opening and closing against my shirt.

I know that cry. Or I think I do.

My teeth grind together as an ache seizes my chest and curls my hands into fists.

I have been inside more homes than I could ever hope to count, delivered children whose names I forgot long before they were old enough to walk, and watched whole families grow old around me. Any one of these memories might belong to somebody else. A baby handed to me while its mother slept, perhaps, or some little girl who got under my feet during a visit to a house I never returned to.

But what if they are not?

I grip the rim of the well, grit biting beneath my gloves, cold damp soaking through the leather as I brace both hands against the stone. My shoulders lock. All I want to do is wrench at the thing until the old mortar cracks beneath my grip.

What sort of man cannot remember whether he had children?

I push myself away from the well and pace. Every time I manage to catch hold of a memory, another pushes its way in before I can make any sense of the first.

A small hand tucked into mine.

Someone calling from another room.

A baby asleep beneath my chin.

“Damn it!”