The Twisted Root by Anne Perry Page A

patients’ waiting room. She resented bitterly Fermin Thorpe’s admonition to her to go and offer comfort to the troubled and moral guidance to the nurses, although both were tasks she fully believed in and intended to carry out. It was their limitations she objected to, not their nature.
    She passed one of the nurses, a comfortable woman of almost fifty, pleasant-faced, gray-brown hair always falling out of its pins, a little like Callandra’s. Had their backgrounds not been so different the resemblance might have been more apparent. This woman could barely read or write, not much more than her name and a few familiar words of her trade, but she was intelligent and quick to learn a new task, and Hester had frequently seen her actually tending to patients when she knew there were no doctors anywhere near. She seemed to have an aptitude for it, an instinctive understanding of how to ease distress, lower a fever, or whether someone should eat or not. Her name was Cleo Anderson.
    She lowered her eyes now as Hester passed her, as if she wished to avoid attracting attention. Hester was sorry. She would have liked to encourage her, even with a glance.
    There were some patients in the waiting room already, five women and two men. All but one of them were elderly, their eyes watchful in unfamiliar surroundings, afraid of what would happen to them, of what they could be told was wrong, of the pain of treatment, and of the cost. Their clothes were worn thin. Here and there a clean shirt showed under a faded coat.
    Some of their treatment was free, but they still had to pay for food while they were in hospital, and then, after they left, for medicine as well if it was necessary.
    She chose the most wretched looking of the patients and went over to him.
    He peered up at her, his eyes full of fear. Her bearing suggested authority to him, and he thought he was about to be chastised, although he had no idea what for.
    "What’s your name?" she enquired with a smile.
    He gulped. " ’Arry Jackson, ma’am."
    "Is this your first time here, Mr. Jackson?" She spoke quietly, so only those closest to him would overhear.
    "Yes, ma’am," he mumbled, looking away. "I wouldn’t ’a come, but our Lil said as I ’ad ter. Always fussin’, she is. She’s a real good girl. Said as they’d find the money some’ow." He lifted his head, defiantly now. "An’ she will, ma’am. Yer won’t be done short, wotever!"
    "I’m sure," she agreed softly. "But it wasn’t money I was concerned about."
    A spasm of pain shot through him, and for a moment he gasped for breath. She did not need Mr. Thorpe’s medical training to see the ravages of disease in his gaunt body. He almost certainly had consumption, and probably pleurisy as well, considering the way he held his hand over his chest. He looked considerably over sixty, but he might not actually have been more than fifty. There would be little the physician could do for him. He needed rest, food, clean air and someone to care for him. Morphine would help the pain, and sherry in water was an excellent restorative. They were probably all impossibly expensive for him. His clothes—and even more, his manner—spoke of extreme poverty.
    He looked at her with disbelief.
    She made up her mind. "I’ll speak to Dr. Warner and see if you shouldn’t stay here a few days—" She stopped at the alarm in his face. "Rest is what you need."
    "I got a bed!" he protested.
    "Of course. But you need quiet, and someone who has time to look after you."
    His eyes widened. "Not one o’ them nurses!" The thought obviously filled him with dread.
    She struggled for an argument to persuade him, but all that came to her lips were lies, and she knew it. Many of the nurses were kindly enough, but they were ignorant and often hard-pressed by poverty and unhappiness themselves.
    "I’ll be here," she said instead. She had placed herself in a position where she had to say something.
    "Wot are yer, then?" His curiosity got the better