Crescent City Courtship

The notorious red light district was located a few blocks from the medical college and Mrs. Hanley’s Boarding House. It also happened to be where John had encountered Tess and Abigail. Yesterday’s experience had destroyed whatever appeal the District once had. And going back with Abigail this morning to visit the McLachlin family had turned it rather into a source of conscience.

John opened the book again. “I’m busy. And if you had even half as many brains as Hank, you’d take one of these books down to your room and have a look yourself.”

Marcus gave John a puzzled look. “What’s got into you today? You didn’t go to church this morning, did you?”

John gave a bark of laughter. “Not exactly. I attended a funeral.”

Marcus sat up straight, his thin, sandy hair all but on end. “I’m sorry, Braddock! Who died?”

“Nobody you know.” John had no intention of exposing the life-changing experiences of the last two days to Marcus’s inanities. “I’m just—not in the mood. Comprendez-vous?”

Marcus pursed his lips. It was common knowledge that John’s family ties took him in directions that less well-connected students could only dream of. “Certainly. I understand. Death and all that.” He slid off the window seat and sidled toward the door. “You were my first choice of companion, but I guess I’ll head down to Weichmann’s room to see if he’d care to get his head out of the books for a bit.” He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “If Clem asks, tell her we’ve gone on a call.”

Mrs. Hanley would certainly ask, should John be so foolish as to stick his nose outside the room. He gave Marcus an absent wave as the brilliantly hued dressing gown disappeared into the hallway. There had better be no emergency calls tonight.

He took a sip of the stone-cold coffee, then propped the cup on his chest, dropping the book onto the floor. He’d been studying the composition and medicinal uses of opium for hours and there was still no conclusive evidence that Abigail Neal was wrong. It was true that opium and all its derivatives—including morphine and laudanum—could be addictive when consumed even once. Certainly the substance was effective as a painkiller, but were the side effects worth it?

John didn’t know. He was discovering there were a lot of things he didn’t know. The more he studied medicine, the more he realized its practice was largely in the realm of guesswork, intuition and trial and error. Frequently even mysticism. Even Dr. Laniere, his favorite professor and mentor, sometimes made fatal judgments. He had as good a record of success as any physician John had yet to meet, but…people did die under his care.

Why didn’t God just tell people how to go on? Why did they get ill and injured in the first place? If he could heal at all, why didn’t he heal everybody?

Irritated at the intrusion of such unscientific thoughts, John slung his coffee cup onto the bedside table and got up off the bed. He took a deep breath and bent to touch his toes a few times.

He’d been entertaining a lot of God-related meanderings ever since the delivery of that stillborn baby. All day he’d had a sense of someone looking into his mind, prodding his thoughts and feelings. One of the main reasons he’d taken Abigail back to visit that croupy baby was to escape the strong urge to go to church.

Just a bit spooked, he turned a full circle, taking in his familiar surroundings. Nothing out of order. The narrow, tumbled bed with the coffee stain on the pillow. The square table holding a pile of anatomy textbooks and the Tiffany lamp his mother had given him on his twenty-first birthday. Sepia-toned photographs of his parents and her sister Lisette on the mantel above the tiny fireplace. Hank holding court in the chair under the window. The plain mahogany chifforobe with its mirror reflecting his confusion back at him.

John thrust both hands through his hair and stared at his own reddened eyes. Not enough sleep lately. That was all it was.

Then he looked at his hands. They shook. The nails were immaculate, the signet ring on his left little finger dull gold with a garnet set into the family crest. Rich man’s hands? Healer’s hands?

He hurried to the window, leaned out and sucked in a draft of thick, clammy, November air. He’d lived in New Orleans all his life and the humidity had never bothered him before, but he found himself struggling for a breath. No wonder little Paddy McLachlin was so sick.

John looked down, watching passersby fading in and out of the pools of gaslight spotting the sidewalks. When had it gotten dark out? Maybe he should try to catch up to Girard and Weichmann after all.

He pulled his head back inside the room, banged down the window sash and yanked the curtain closed. He sat down to tug on his boots, decided against a coat and tore out of the room, slamming the door behind him. He pounded down the stairs, shoving the useless key into his pocket.

God couldn’t influence his thoughts if he wasn’t there.

Chapter Five

The next morning John slumped at a table in a nearly empty classroom, listening to the heavy marching of the clock on the wall behind him. Traffic clamored from the street outside the open window to his left.

He stared at the test in front of him and wondered which of the medicines he’d just listed would be the quickest remedy for acute hangover. Maybe he should go straight for the arsenic. Quelling a strong desire to hang his head out the window and heave, he contemplated the top of Dr. Girard’s bald head, visible behind the Monday morning Daily Picayune.

Marcus’s father was a cold-hearted old goat, a brilliant lecturer whose written tests had been known to reduce grown men to tears. He sat at the front of the lecture hall, behind a bare table which exposed his short legs, stretched out and crossed at the ankle. His scarlet-and-lemon-striped waistcoat, half-inch-thick watch chain and green paisley ascot revealed the source of Marcus’s love for sartorial splendor.

John wished the professor had his son’s amiable temperament.

He was one of only two students left in the room. Everyone else, including Marcus himself, had either completed the test or given up in despair. He glanced across the room at Tanner Weichmann. Weichmann had not indulged in spirits last night, but had come along more or less to keep Marcus out of trouble. In fact, it had been he who put both Marcus and John to bed, after paying for a hack home and supporting the two of them up the narrow stairs. Good thing Clem slept like the dead or they might all have been out on the street tonight.

John supposed he should be grateful not to have awoken in a gutter somewhere, robbed of his clothes and money. Weichmann was a serious pain, but he was dependable. Perhaps not as gifted a scientist as John, not nearly as much fun as Marcus, but methodical to the point of insanity. John was certain he’d finished the test long ago, but Weichmann would check his answers to make sure every word was spelled correctly and all sentences complete.

Weichmann suddenly looked up, his dark eyes probing John’s. He wiggled heavy black brows and elaborately pulled out his watch.

John couldn’t resist looking over his shoulder at the clock. Nearly noon. Time was almost up. He suppressed a groan, bent over his paper again and dredged up the therapeutic and alterative uses of mercury. By the time he finished his answer, Dr. Girard had folded his paper in a neat square and waited, stubby fingers linked and his brow creased in impatient lines. John looked around. Weichmann had disappeared.

“Braddock, you seem determined to make me miss my noon meal,” growled Dr. Girard. “Are you quite finished?”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” John rose and clattered down the steps of the amphitheater, sticking his pencil stub behind his ear. He reluctantly handed over his paper. “When will you have them graded?” If he failed this test he would have to repeat the course. Pharmaceuticals tended to be his downfall because of the spellings.

Without looking at him, the professor stuffed John’s test into a leather portfolio. “You’ll know soon enough.” He rolled out of the room without a backward glance.

John ran a hand around the back of his neck, popping the joints to relieve tension. At least it was over. Pass or fail, there was nothing he could do about it now. He needed to go lie down.

He headed for the door and nearly jumped out of his skin when someone grabbed his arm as he passed into the hallway.

“How did you do, Braddock?”

John wheeled. “Careful, Weichmann, or you’ll be cleaning your shoes. I’m still a bit unsteady this morning.”

Weichmann gave an evil chuckle. “Speaking of morning, you missed rounds. Prof wasn’t happy.”

Dr. Laniere wasn’t the only professor, of course, but every med student distinguished him with the title. No one wanted to disappoint Professor Laniere.

John lifted a shoulder and continued down the hall toward the stairs. “Couldn’t be helped. What did you tell him?”

“Told him you had a previous engagement.”

“You did not.”

“No. But I should have. Braddock, you never drink. What’s gotten into you, old man?”

Since the words were almost a direct quote of Marcus’s the day before, John hurried down the marble stairs without replying. He wasn’t going to admit that a prostitute’s dead baby had resulted in his hearing from God.

Weichmann’s long, skinny legs had no trouble keeping up. “There’s a few minutes for lunch before anatomy lab. Want to go for a beignet and coffee?”

John’s stomach revolted. “No!”

“Oh, sorry…Didn’t think.”

John sat down and planted his elbows on his knees, laying his pounding head in his palms. He could feel Weichmann hovering behind him on the stairs, his breath wheezing and whistling. It took little to get the young Jew’s asthma kicked up.

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” John stared at the gray squiggles in the white marble between his feet. “Weichmann, has God ever communicated with you? You know, like Moses and the burning bush?”

Weichmann didn’t answer for a long moment. John could hear the clatter of students changing classes down in the east wing and, through the open windows, the rattle of carriages passing in the street. The heavy odors of mildew and chalk and the stench of the dissection lab drifted from two floors up. He looked over his shoulder and found Weichmann staring at him as if he’d lost his mind.

“Maybe you’d better go home and go to bed,” suggested Weichmann.