Page 23 of Caging Darling

It’s a woman, naked as a newborn babe, still as an untouched pond.

The crowd gasps in unison, men’s voices echoing the sentiment that this is not an appropriate event for women to attend. Apparently, it is appropriate for a crowd of men to gaze upon this woman’s naked flesh. Something hot incites in my bones, but I watch, remembering that in Estelle, it’s only with the patient’s consent that their bodies be used this way.

This woman dedicated her body to learning. I can’t imagine doing the same. The idea of consenting to anyone touching me without my knowledge has my head swimming.

“Meet Mildred van Clark,” says the physician—Renslow, is his name, if I remember correctly. I decide I don’t like him. Mostly because of how personally he says her name. I think ifI were lying on a table naked like this, I’d rather keep things as impersonal as possible. “Perfectly healthy female, until she began to notice a brownish fluid in her urine.” A few women in the crowd gasp. “Come now,” says Renslow, gesturing toward the woman’s corpse, “surely talk of bodily fluids isn’t what’s bothering your feminine sensibilities.”

A few in the crowd chuckle. I shift in my seat.

Renslow continues. “Over time, her belly and face began to swell. The local physical prescribed herbs and bedrest, to no avail. Eventually, Mildred’s condition worsened. She was overcome with such fatigue, she could no longer perform her duties at the inn she worked at in the next town over. By the time she was rushed to Chora for me to see her, she’d vomited to the point of dehydration. She was dead by the time they rang my bell.” Renslow has the decency to tap his fingers regretfully against his leg.

“Now, any guesses on what illness overtook her?” Through his spectacles, Renslow searches the crowd wide-eyed, like it’s a challenge he expects no one to conquer.

Several hands shoot up, though a few in the crowd blurt out answers that meld together into an incoherent jumble of medical terms.

“Now, now. Surely all of you educated people learned to raise your hands in school,” says Renslow. A few people chuckle abashedly, then raise their hands. He calls on a woman in the front row, who offers edema as a possible diagnosis.

“That would be a symptom, not the cause,” says Renslow.

A few more brave souls try their luck, but to no avail.

I’ve got this strange feeling. This memory that pounces out at me from the past. It’s of John, and he’s rambling about something he found in one of the old medical journals in Father’s library.

“Any other takers?”

When I raise my hand, it’s almost as if it’s not me doing it but John, back from the grave, eager to have already known the answer.

My hand is trembling, which Renslow must perceive because he says, “Nervous, young lady?”

Peter turns to me, a question in his eyes. Or maybe it’s less of a question, and more surprise that I would dare bring attention to myself. This is likely a poor judgment call. I should try to bring the least attention to myself as possible if we’re going to be committing murder tonight.

But it’s not as if it matters. I might as well be a ghost.

“Nephritis,” I say, my voice trembling with the knowledge of hundreds of pairs of eyes on me.

Renslow frowns. “What was that?”

I clear my throat and open my mouth to try again, but Peter is faster. “Nephritis,” he booms.

I’m reminded of the time Charlie tried to do the same, but Astor cut her off. “Wendy can speak for herself,” he’d said.

Something deflates, then sours in my stomach.

I’m not sure from this distance, but I think I glimpse Renslow’s eye twitch. He addresses me, not Peter, and says, “Ah, well, my dear. It seems you’ve forced me to go off-script.”

By the way he clears his throat, it’s obvious he wasn’t prepared for anyone to know the answer and doesn’t have a clever response prepared. In just a moment, the self-assured physician-made-performer loses the secure air about him, every bit of confidence in front of the crowd lost without his script.

I shouldn’t feel bad for this man, knowing what he’s planning to do tomorrow. But I can’t keep the embarrassment rolling off of him from slithering onto me, heating my cheeks.

The man thinks for a moment, swallows, then gestures to the crowd. “Well, I had an entire speech prepared about thelimitations of using symptoms to diagnose. But it seems that our friend here has undermined my point by besting the rest of you.”

Guilt percolates in my stomach. I shouldn’t get the praise for this. Not when I only know it because of John. I wish he were here beside me.

Still, there’s no aggression in the man’s tone. Like he’s more upset with himself for not having an alternate plan than he is with me for spoiling his first. Not the reaction I’d expect from a man calculating the murder of multiple innocents.

Something sloshes in my belly.

“Well, we’ll just have to see whether this young woman is correct,” says the doctor, padding over to his place beyond the woman. An assistant appears on stage and hands the doctor a scalpel. Immediately, his tensed shoulders relax and his demeanor settles into a poised determination. While he had to control his variables to feel comfortable in front of a crowd, cutting into a body is as natural to him as falling asleep.

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