Page 4 of Taken By the Ripper
The man leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. Her breath faltered as his stare bore through her like searing sunlight baking desert sand. “I believe we have a gravemisunderstanding, Miss Thompson. I do not seek the services of a simple nurse. I need a doctor.”
Her throat dried, making speaking difficult. “My father taught me everything he knew.”
“Then you are not a physician at all. I know your father has passed. Are there no other doctors present?”
“It’s just me. But I am fully capable of—”
“You see? The pause for tea was a tedious waste of my time. You could have told me this at the door.”
Finding patience for men like this may have permanently disrupted the health of her jaw when she found herself grinding her teeth in frustration. “Just because I can’t afford tuition for medical school does not make me any less of a doctor.”
“It actually does.” He touched his cane to the ground and stood, brushing down his coat. “I will continue my search elsewhere. Good day, Miss.”
Despite needing a cane to help him walk, he still moved with fluid grace, quickly disappearing from the room as if in a hurry to find that physician he was in desperate need for. However, she only held back a snort. He’d be back. Because unless he traveled to London, he wasn’t going to find anyone better than her in Whitechapel. Not when the existing poverty made this city unappealing for those practicing.
“Oh, he’s so handsome!” Mazie sighed, hands clasped to her heart.
Clara stuck up her nose. “He’s rude and lacks good manners. I advise you to stay away from him lest his atrocious conduct rubs off on you.”
Before Mazie could reply, the bell over the door chimed as someone opened it and stumbled inside, crying in agony.
She took a deep breath to compose herself, ignoring the ache of exhaustion pulling on her eyelids as she strode out of the drawing room and toward the front door. The doctoring neverended, and half the time, she was never paid. In coin, at least. Occasionally, she’d receive a stale piece of bread or a jar of moldy jam.
But it was better than what others earned during these hard times.
She adopted her professional mask as she moved to greet the screaming patient. However, her mask melted, and her eyes shot wide open when a pale-faced man stumbled toward her with a hand held to his bleeding neck.
With a hand on his elbow, she rushed him into the infirmary wing and set him down on a cot before pulling a curtain forward for privacy. She snatched a pile of clean white cloths from the bedside table and moved his hand from his neck.
A gasp escaped her when she found two holes pierced through his flesh, profusely bleeding as if the wound had caught a vein.
Quickly, she pressed the cloth to his wound, and he cried out as if the touch pained him.
“What happened?” she demanded.
His expression contorted in a wince, his breathing shallow. And when she placed her fingers against his wrist, she found his skin clammy and his pulse weak. “I-I-I can’t remember much of what happened. I was dallying with a woman in the alleyway late last night, and I woke up this morning covered in my own blood. Wh-wh-what if it was the R-r-ripper?”
Clara lifted the bloodied rags to examine the wound once again. Judging by how much it still bled, it was a miracle he wasn’t lying dead on the streets.
“I don’t think this was caused by the Ripper,” she answered honestly, replacing the bloodied rag with a clean one. She recalled the details inThe Starof all three incidents thus far, and none matched two holes in the neck.
“Then what?”
“I don’t know.” A cruel, violent prank perhaps. But it was no murderer. Most likely.
“Do you know what happened to the woman? Could she have done this to you?”
The man shook his head, but the movement caused him to sway where he sat. Dizziness must have overcome him, as he melted onto the cot and squeezed his eyes shut. “She was a small, pretty thing. Called herself Lady Stride.”
Stride…
Shock coursed through her body, her patient momentarily forgotten as she jumped to her feet and rushed to grabThe Starstill lying on the table near the doorway. Her gaze quickly scanned the first of the three periodicals. When it didn’t hold the information she searched for, she tossed it down in favor of the next. Still nothing.
And then she glanced over the third, her gaze stopping suddenly on the name of the latest victim, Elizabeth Stride. Could she be one of the same?
“What did you say your name was again?” she murmured half to herself.
But when she returned to the infirmary to ask the man, he was passed out cold, his face paler than ever before. She checked his pulse and pressed her ear to her monaural stethoscope to listen to his lungs. He was still alive.
