Sisters' Fate

Page 58

Behind us, the crowd hurls epithets.
An orderly unlocks the hospital doors and admits us.
Mei leads the way up the wide staircase. “Kenneally’s office is on the fourth floor,” she advises, “near the matron’s office. We could try there first.”
But we only make it to the second-floor landing before a voice rings out. “Mei! Thank the Lord you’re here. We’re awfully short staffed. Half of my girls are sick and the male nurses are useless. We need you in the men’s contagious ward.” Mrs. Jarrell eyes Finn. “I’m sorry, sir, but a crisis is no time for excessive modesty.”
“I couldn’t agree more, ma’am.” With his hood down, Finn looks young and boyish. “The three of us are here to help.”
“Wonderful.” Mrs. Jarrell plunks her hands on her hips. “I hope you’ll forgive me for saying it, but we’ve got plenty of prayer; we need more hands. I don’t suppose you’d let me put you to work emptying bedpans?”
Finn gives her his most charming smile. “Perhaps some other time. We’ve got an errand to run upstairs.”
Mrs. Jarrell is unmoved. “I need these girls. People are dying left and right!” She swivels on Mei, the cap she wears over her short brown hair tilting precariously. “Don’t tell me you’re too shy to care for male patients.”
“Course not. I’ve got a brother at home,” Mei insists. “It’s only—”
I follow my instincts, stepping closer to the petite nurse. “Do you really want to help people? As many people as possible?” We are alone outside the doors to the female contagious ward.
Mrs. Jarrell nods. “That’s my job, isn’t it?”
I pull a crumpled leaflet out of my pocket and press it into her hands. “Then how do you reconcile yourself to this? Keeping medicine from the people who need it most?”
She scans the leaflets, then glances up at us. Her eyes linger on Finn. “This is nothing but nonsense. If a cure like that existed—right here in the hospital—I would know about it.”
Finn shakes his tousled head. “The Brothers have kept it secret because they don’t know when the next shipment will come in from Britain. You know how the fever’s been spreading. If four men come down with it, the entire National Council will fall like a stack of dominoes. They’re hoarding it all somewhere in the hospital, and Brother Kenneally is doling it out to those with the right connections.”
“If that were true”—Mrs. Jarrell shoves her hands in the pockets of her white apron, scowling—“it would be a crime. But I don’t understand. Why are you telling me this?”
Finn looks only too pleased to shatter his reputation as a devout Brother. “Because I think it’s criminal, too, and I want to do something about it. So do Mei and Cate. That’s why—” He freezes, realizing what he’s said.
Mrs. Jarrell’s brown eyes go wide. “Sister Cate?” She takes a step backward, and I wince, hoping my instincts were correct, that I won’t have to compel her not to run, not to raise a warning. I like this feisty little woman. “That’s you? You’re the—the witch they’ve all been talking about?”
“She’s the same girl who’s been here all week, working right alongside me,” Mei says.
“But she attacked the Head Council!”
“No.” I raise my chin. “I’ve never hurt anyone when I could help it, I swear. I don’t mean you any harm. We just want to get the medicine and give it to the people who need it.”
Mrs. Jarrell glances between Mei and me. “You knew what she was all along, didn’t you? Because you—you’re both witches. It makes sense now. The ones who recovered faster than the others—you haven’t been nursing my patients; you’ve been healing them!”
“Don’t tell anyone. Please,” Mei begs, her dark eyes pleading.
Mrs. Jarrell straightens her slim shoulders. “I’ll do better than that. Come along. If this cure exists, I’ll bet you anything it’s in the fourth-floor storeroom.”
She leads us upstairs, passing harried nurses and orderlies and the occasional doctor. They all nod at her respectfully, and she sings out cheery greetings, and no one gives us a second glance. We follow her down a warren of twisting white hallways. She stops outside a door with an enormous red-haired chap standing guard outside.
Mrs. Jarrell is nonplussed. “Hello, Willy. Increased security, I see? I suppose it’s because of this garbage?” She waves Merriweather’s leaflet at him.
“That’s it, all right.” Willy snorts. “I ain’t never heard anything so foolish in all my life. Da’s sick, you know. I’d hardly be standing out here if there was a cure sitting right in there.”
Mrs. Jarrell clucks sympathetically. “I’m awfully sorry to hear about your father. I hope he’ll be back on his feet soon.” She reaches for the doorknob, but Willy steps in front of her.
“Sorry, ma’am. Got my orders from Brother Kenneally himself not to let anyone in without his say-so.”
“Of course.” I turn to Finn. “Give him the note.”
Finn stares at me blankly. “The note?”
“The note from Brother Kenneally. You put it in your pocket,” I remind him.
“That’s right.” He pulls the leaflet the sergeant gave him from his pocket, and I hide a smile as he reads it. I’ve glamoured it to look like instructions from Kenneally, counting on the fact that Willy isn’t familiar with his handwriting.
Willy squints at the signature at the bottom, flushing, and it occurs to me that the poor man probably can’t read. “All right then,” he agrees, stepping aside.
The storeroom is a jumble of boxes and bottles and medical equipment.
“What’s this?” Mei crows. In the back of the room stands a tall, padlocked metal cabinet. She puts her hand over the lock and it clicks open.
We crowd around her as she removes the lock and opens the door. Inside sit hundreds of small vials of medicine. Each bottle is perhaps three inches tall, stoppered shut with a cork, and looks to contain a few ounces of the same clear liquid.
“Marvelous,” I declare.
“Why, those rats!” Mrs. Jarrell mutters. Then she crosses herself, looking worriedly at Finn. “Forgive me, Brother.”
“They are rats.” Finn opens his satchel and begins to stack bottles in it, wrapping them carefully in the linens we borrowed from Alice’s house. When he’s finished, Mei and I take turns filling our empty bags. Mrs. Jarrell counts each bottle as it’s packed.
“Three hundred,” she declares as we finish.
I hover with my hand over the zipper. “Do you want to keep a few for your girls?”
“No, dearie.” She shakes her head. “They’re all good, sturdy girls. Likely they’ll be fine. And they know the risks of what we do.”
“You’re angels, all of you,” I proclaim. I remember how powerless I was to help Zara and Brenna and my mother, and imagine facing that with good cheer day after day. “If you ever fall ill yourself, you send for us straightaway.”
“That I will.” She gives me a quick hug, then flushes, straightening her white cap and apron. “It’s a shame you can’t work your magic openly. You could save so many lives.”