I said, “Perhaps, and I know neither are always rewarded. But what you do is so grim and relentless.”
“Ah, but immensely satisfying.”
“Sherlock, together we-”
“Oh, come now, Poppy, one cannot tie up life neatly with a shiny bow and glitter. I swear you would try to wave a magic wand across the belly of this beast we call London and give every day a happy ending. As if we could have a happy ending.”
“But you need not go it alone. Life is-”
“Life is monotonous,” he interrupted. “Predictable. Melancholy.”
“Sherlock, this is what I mean. You must keep who you are at the centre. Do not let boredom affect you so, or be so permeated with a sense of dread that you lose yourself in cocaine or worse. Please do not let the evil you crave to extinguish seep into your own soul. It’s important that you do not stare so long into the abyss that you become what you have beheld.”
He simply stared at me as if he thought I’d lost my mind.
At such times, after such exchanges, when night descended, came with it involuntary tears that fell more quickly than I could wipe them away. For always, I was alone in my bed, engulfed in the solitude, and my only consolation was the memory of our night in the cottage. That was when I would hear our soft murmuring, our gentle laughter, the chords and melodies of that ancient dance. I wished so much that the memory of that one lovely night would transform into my life’s most painful moment, so that I could close the door to it forever. But it never did.
To what state of mind had he brought me? To what level of anguish would my affections take me? I could no longer picture myself out of Sherlock’s life. I could no longer comprehend a life without him in it. Sometimes he made me tremble. He was like a fever.
8
It was not yet three o’clock when I entered St. Bart’s quadrangle. It held the same awe and wonder it always had, despite the fact that I knew I would never be hired as a surgeon by the hospital. In operation since medieval times, it was the oldest hospital in all of England - though those at St Thomas, where I’d attended nursing school before I became a physician, would beg to differ. My uncle said that the inscription and date over the old surgery at the corner of Duke Street, ‘Liber Fundacionis,’ was conclusive evidence that 1123 was the true year of St. Bart’s foundation. But St. Thomas had also provided healthcare since the twelfth century. As early as 1215, it was already described as ‘ancient,’ but it was named for St. Thomas Becket, suggesting that it was founded after Becket was canonized in 1173. Supporters of St. Thomas Hospital’s claim to being England’s oldest hospital said it was only renamed in 1173 and that there was an infirmary at the Priory as early as 1106, pre-dating St. Bart’s. The debate continues.
By the mid-seventeen hundreds, St. Bart’s consisted of four buildings: the church of Little St. Bartholomew, the outpatient department, the residential quarters of the medical school, and the medical school. In 1859, the pump in the centre of the square that had provided clean water to the hospital was replaced with the fountain. Sherlock and I both loved the fountain, and often we would meet there before meandering to wherever it was he needed to go.
I took a seat on the bench near the fountain, intending to read some of Effie’s journal, but the welcoming breeze from the well-grown trees that adorned the quadrangle made me close my eyes, remembering the way the change of seasons affected The Square, as it was called by the locals. I always looked forward to the changes in the seasons, especially autumn when the turning leaves added so much colour to The Square. The hum of the wind gave way to murmurations of starlings and house sparrows. Sometimes there were pigeons and rooks and jackdaws in the branches. When Uncle told my father that someone on the roof of the hospital had sighted peregrine falcons on the weathercock of the church of St. Michael Queenhite, Papa, an avid birdwatcher, took the train to London at a moment’s notice. Poor Papa, he stayed three days at Uncle’s house, walking each day to the hospital in hopes of spotting a falcon, but never caught even a glimpse.
I let my mind drift back to memories of this place, this almost-hallowed place that I’d started visiting in my childhood and that, with my uncle’s assistance, I now knew like the back of my hand. While I appreciated having had the opportunity to attend the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing at St. Thomas, it was St. Bart’s that felt like home.
My first memory was when I was just a little girl, perhaps four or five, and Uncle Ormond would take me by the hand or put me on his shoulders and point out various things of historical significance at the hospital. We had stopped at the great gate in the middle of the Smithfield front, and he had pointed to an inscription. “This front was rebuilt anno 1702 in the first year of Queen Anne–Sir William Pritchard Knight and Alderman President; John Nicou, Esq. Treasurer.” On the course above the inscription are the words, “Founded by Rahere,” who built the priory and associated hospital in fulfillment of a vow to the apostle and in thanks for his miraculous recovery from malaria. Rahere believed that Bartholomew had come to him in a vision and promised that prayers for healing made in his church would always be heard and answered.
And thus was the beginning of St. Bart’s, a place that has
