Doctor Silas Blackwell's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

By morning the line stretched past the door. Silas counted twenty people before he stopped. A woman held a feverish child. An old man leaned on a cane. Ashworth worked the first bed while Silas named each step. Two hands could not answer twenty needs. Silas knew where trained hands lived. They lived in the manors, paid to serve the rich. He would have to go and ask one to leave. He walked to the fine two-story house on the edge of town. Its shutters were painted green and red. A house physician served there, salaried, comfortable, and idle most days. Silas knocked. A servant led him to a parlor. The physician came in wiping crumbs from his coat. Silas stated his case plainly. A free clinic. Beds full. Work that mattered. The man laughed and said the poor could not pay. He showed Silas the door. Silas stood in the road and felt the plan collapse. No wealthy doctor would trade a warm salary for unpaid labor. He had asked wrong. He had gone looking for hands that were already bought. He needed hands that no one wanted. He thought of the apothecary where he had first met Matthias. Silas went there and waited among the jars and hanging herbs. A bundle of lavender hung by the door, tied with twine. The shop smelled of dried sage and dust. When the door opened, Silas knew the beaked mask and the wide black hat by the sound of the boots. "You're the one they're hunting," Silas said. He had heard the criers. A plague doctor, named on a warrant, wanted by the Council. "Matthias Corvus." Matthias stopped. "I don't have long. Guards check the wards." "I know your work," Silas said. "You cured forty patients no one else would touch. You go to the ones people step over." He set his shaking hand flat on the counter to still it. "I have four beds and a line at my door. I have a partner who cuts while I direct. I need a third pair of hands. Yours." "They'll find me at your clinic." "Then we treat the poor, who never talk to the Council. And you stop running alone." Silas leaned closer. "You want somewhere to belong. I can hear it. Come belong." Matthias was quiet a long moment. "I work first. I sit with the ones everyone gave up on." "That is the whole point of the place." "Then yes." Matthias pulled his hat lower. "But I bring trouble with me." That evening three doctors worked the clinic. Ashworth stitched. Matthias mixed draughts and knelt by the feverish child. Silas moved between beds, naming each treatment. The line shrank. For the first time, they kept pace. Silas watched the warrant flyer nailed to a post outside his window. He had his third pair of hands. He had also brought the Council's hunt straight to his door.