Free The Plight of the Darcy Brothers by Marsha Altman Page A

spent many hours reading by daylight when he worked a long night shift and spent the next day recovering. When the print on some of the pages began to blur, he had to shell out a small fortune—most of his savings—to get his glasses changed.
    He took every job he had no major moral objection to, and that he was physically capable of, even the ones considered beneath proper doctors and assigned to surgeons. Surgeons, in his opinion, were not well trained, and doctors rarely put their training to use. He was also extremely discreet, partially from having no one to tell and partially from wanting the repeat business.
    As a result, though his wife did not know it, he was one of the favorite people to call for every madam and pimp in Town. He did not treat the women of easy virtue unless their maladies were something that could be mended, though he was very polite to them—as he felt a gentleman should be, whatever his profession—he could not cure their diseases because there were no cures that he knew of. Yet despite explaining this at length, and many times, he still found the women throwing rather risqué and grotesque descriptions of their symptoms at him, so that he probably knew what was wrong with every fancy lady in London.
    On this particular evening, when he arrived, he was ushered along to a familiar room with a woman, barely covered by a silk robe, standing at the door.
    “Hullo doc,” said the woman.
    “Hello, Lilly,” he said.
    “How's the good doctor these days?”
    “Married,” he said quickly, and ducked into the appropriate room, which was not properly lit, but he knew his way around it. A man wearing trousers and an undershirt lay on the floor besidethe bed, holding a cloth to his bloodied chest with one hand and a bottle with the other.
    “I'm the doctor,” Dr. Maddox said very formally, kneeling beside his patient and setting down his bag. “Do you mind if I look at the wound?”
    “Go ahead,” said the man, and removed the cloth. “There's been a lot of blood.”
    Dr. Maddox removed his glasses and held up the lamp, peering in very closely. “The wound doesn't look deep. It was mainly done for dramatic effect, I imagine, but it's more of a surface wound. I'm going to probe it, if you don't mind. There may be some discomfort, and the instrument is a little cold, but it's more sanitary than my hands.”
    “Goddamn it,” the man said, taking a swig from his bottle. “Goddamn whore.”
    Dr. Maddox ignored this and opened the bag, carefully removing his instruments. The madam appeared at the doorway. “The usual water, please, in a clean bowl, and some towels.”
    She nodded and disappeared. He turned his attentions to his patient. The wound was indeed mostly superficial, meant to draw blood (which had a fright factor) but not do serious harm. However, the initial blow, before Lilly had dragged the knife along his chest, was deeper, and the bleeding would not cease. The fact that the man was especially fat had given Lilly more room to work with.
    “If you would allow, sir, I'd like to give you a few stitches on the top, perhaps no more than three or four.”
    “If I would allow it?” the man said, his cultured, obviously high-class accent slurred by drunkenness. “ I bleed. Go ahead.”
    “I usually prefer consenting patients when they're conscious,”Dr. Maddox carefully explained, and went about his business. His patient rambled on as the doctor did his work, explaining that Lilly had attempted to renegotiate the price after the deed. When he refused, she had stabbed him, and she was a “crazy woman.”
    Actually, Dr. Maddox suspected Lilly was quite sane, if a bit in love with the knife, as this was not the first patient with a stab wound that he had been called to, but he kept that counsel to himself. He focused instead on stitching the wound while having his patient press down on the lesser wound area until the bleeding stopped. In the end, five stitches were required, more than