An hour later, I was standing opposite the London Hospital. The weather was mild but grey; it threatened to rain but was not cold. Whitechapel Road was heaving and groaning like an endless sea; heads were bobbing, and carts were jostling for space with omnibuses and cabs, none of them proceeding at a notable speed. I leaned against a lamppost and stared at the archways of the entrance to the hospital and the clock on its facade. Apart from the occasional scream from a hawker in my ear, and children trying to access the contents of my pockets, I was largely ignored.
I had stood there for what seemed like hours and had almost given up when I finally saw Thomas’s slim frame spring from the shadows like a gazelle. He danced down the steps with one hand on his hat, the other holding an umbrella under his arm. He skipped, carefree and gay. Men like him fished for idiots like me. What a desperate stench I must have given off.
He strode through the streets like a fucking dandy, and I followed him. We went down Whitechapel Road, Montague Street and Wentworth Street and came out on Commercial Street, whereupon he walked into the Princess Alice pub. The sight of the Alice made me unsteady. It was well known for trouble, and the Thomas I was familiar with was far too much the snob to rub shoulders with the dockers who drank there. Of much more significance, though, was that the man who took Aisling from me had been drinking in the Princess Alice before he landed in our emergency room. His name was Henry White. Merely thinking his name brings me a gloom I find difficult to shift.
*
Henry White had got into a huge fight that night in the Princess Alice. One of the men got stabbed in the thigh with some glass, another was beaten about the head with a chair leg, and Henry had his head cut open when a glass was smashed on it. They were all brought into the emergency room at the London, where Aisling and I were on shift.
I was wary as soon as I laid eyes on him. He had that hostile rage hopeless men at the bottom always have simmering inside them. He was loud, cursed endlessly and kept demanding attention, even though the minute he got it, he was abusive. His face was a reddened bloated mess, with blood running into his eyes and teeth. The duty manager had told him once already that if he didn’t stop his troublemaking, he’d be thrown out and left to bleed to death on the pavement.
Aisling knew how to talk to men like Henry White. She could withstand their vulgar language and intrusive hands, could flash a smile and with a quick tongue disarm them, charm them into docility, however rough. I, however, was always distant and aloof, and my priggish reserve antagonised brutes like him. I was more useful standing back and assessing the situation. Aisling didn’t mind being more involved, and she was a better nurse, cooing at the trickiest, dirtiest men that I cringed from. She was undoubtedly the braver one. I always feared one of them might lash out and hurt me, especially when the room was drenched in blood, noisy with patients writhing in discomfort and screaming obscenities, and frantic with doctors and dressers shouting instructions at each other. Patients could be unpredictable and, like any animal, when in pain, they tended to bite. Aisling said I could see danger where there was none. That makes me laugh now, because Thomas said the same, and I wanted to believe them both. But it turned out I was right.
We were told to tidy him up quickly and get rid of him, because the duty manager didn’t like the look of him and wanted him out. When I tried to examine him, he waved his filthy hands around and knocked my cap off. He pushed a dresser away more than once, until he was threatened again, after which he sat mumbling to himself with blood streaming down his forehead and into his eyes.
Aisling could see I was afraid of him. ‘Why don’t you stay the other side,’ she whispered to me.
White managed to remain quiet for a minute or so, then began to rant that his wife was a ‘bitch’, that he’d been to the Americas and was sorry he’d come back to this shithole of a country now it was full of ‘coons, cunts and peelers’. He griped about someone having stolen his money, which was what had caused the fight, but it was safe to assume he had drunk it. It seemed a pity to waste good bandages and carbolic on him.
I had dipped the utensils in the carbolic and put them on the tray when White smacked it upwards on purpose, sending the instruments clattering to the floor and bouncing around the emergency room. The two dressers rushed to gather them up while I retreated to a corner.
Aisling, meanwhile, tried to subdue White and make him lie back. She put an arm across his chest. ‘Hey now, they’ll kick you out if you keep that up,’ she told him.
His head wobbled on his neck and he glared at her in a vile rage. His ugly, unfocused eyes tried to make sense of her defenceless face and then I saw a silver streak flash and rip Aisling on the underside of her chin. The metal sliced into her like a nail through paper.
She didn’t scream – it was more of a gasp and a yelp at the shock of it. She didn’t understand what had happened and she looked to me in disbelief as she stood there fumbling at her neck
