Page 50 of Libby's London Merchant
The doctor started forward, his face red. “I won’t do it. Libby, get away from her.”
“No. I can’t possibly leave her.”
He sat another long minute until the woman in the trees seemed less agitated, almost as if she were waiting, too. “Well, then, my dear Miss Ames. Hold the inside of her leg steady and push slowly and carefully against it from the opposite side. It looks to me like a mere greenstick break. You should feel it click into place.”
Without thinking about anything except the task before her, Libby hunched her shoulders to protect her head as much as she could, took a deep breath, and did as Dr. Cook told her. She shut her mind to the terror of something more than pebbles thrown her way, disregarded the fear of what would happen if she couldn’t hear a click and the bone remained as displaced as ever. She steeled herself to do something serious that she knew nothing about.
To her overwhelming relief, the bone offered no resistance but straightened exactly as Dr. Cook said it would. The child stopped whimpering. Libby hugged her and then let go quickly as the rocks rained down.
To her surprise, in another moment the doctor was beside her. He pushed her to one side and whipped out two splints. “She’ll run for the men now, Libby, but we dare not leave it like this. Get the bandage out of my pocket while I position these splints. Joseph told me what to expect, bless him, so I brought these. Ah, very good.”
Libby pulled out the bandage and unrolled it. While she held the splints in place, he expertly bound the leg, spent a swift second in examination of his handiwork, and then jerked Libby to her feet.
“Ready for a footrace, my dear?” he asked as he pulled her out of the little depression. “The interests of medicine are strangely served upon occasion.. Oh, God, here they come.”
He grabbed her hand and they ran. Libby looked back once to see men chasing after them, some of them carrying sticks, others rocks. The sight, softened as it was by the hazy rain, still made her pick up her skirts, throw gentility to the wind, and race for the fence.
The doctor panted along beside her. “I could be a gentleman’s son and give up all this,” he said between gasps.
The stones pelted around them. “What, and lead a boring life? Ow!” she exclaimed as a stone struck her back.
The doctor tightened his grip on her hand and ran faster. Soon they were at the hedgerow paralleling the road. A wagon filled with animal fodder lumbered by.
The farmer, still grasping the reins, raised up off the wagon seat to watch the unusual sight of Holyoke Green’s portly physician squeezing his considerable bulk through the hedgerow and tugging Miss Elizabeth Ames along behind him. He grinned as the doctor threw her into the wagon, jumped in after her, and commanded him to drive for all he was worth.
Libby heaved a sigh that came all the way from her toenails, and leaned back against the hay. She shook her skirts down around her ankles again. To her mind, the wagon wasn’t going any faster, but the gypsies had stopped at the fence. They threw a few more stones and made some strange gestures with their hands, but came no closer.
“H’mm, we have likely been cursed with boils or piles, Miss Ames,” said Dr. Cook as he took off his glasses, wiped the rain from them with the wet comer of his shirt tail that had worked itself loose, and put them back on.
Libby laughed. “You can’t talk about piles and call me Miss Ames. You know my name is Libby.”
The doctor joined in her laughter, even as he had the good graces to blush. “I suppose I can’t, Libby.” He raised up on his knees. “Thank you, Farmer Hartley.”
The farmer touched his hand to his hat. “Will you charge me less now, sir?”
“You and all your descendants,” the doctor declared, “right down into the twentieth century. I will put it in my will. Make it an act of Parliament.”
“Very well, sir. Done. I am going in the wrong direction for you, though.”
“Any direction away from the gypsies is fine with us,” Libby said. She started in surprise as the doctor began to unbutton the back of her dress. “Doctor!”
“Be quiet,” he said. “H’mm. The rock broke the skin. Quit fidgeting! Surely you are not a worse patient than our Mr. Duke. I probably have a gum plaster somewhere for that.”
He kept his hand on her bare shoulder while he fished in his pockets. In another moment he put the dressing over the little wound. “You can take it off tonight. Be sure to wash the cut well.” He buttoned up her dress again. “And stay away from gypsies.”
Libby nodded, remembering. “What will the gypsies do to the little girl?”
The doctor was silent a long moment. “I do not know. I hope they will leave the splint on, but I don’t know that they will. If she will only be allowed to stay off that leg for a month, it will likely heal. Children are amazingly resilient.”
To her own amazement, Libby burst into tears. Without a word and with no apparent discomfort at the aspect of a watery female, the doctor put his arm around her and held her tight. She burrowed close to him and sobbed into his soaking wet jacket.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you are a remarkable young woman?” he asked finally, his voice gentle and close to her ear.
“I don’t believe the subject ever came up before,” she sobbed.
“Strange,” he murmured. “What is the matter with the men of Kent?”
“Nothing,” she wailed, as he threw back his head, laughed, and kissed her.
