Lyddie

“How about your stomach? Do you feel sick?” Lyddie shook her head, then stopped. Any movement seemed to make the pain worse.

There was a sound of ripping cloth at Lyddie’s ear. She opened her eyes. “Your apron,”

Lyddie said. “Don’t—” Aprons cost money.

Diana seemed not to hear, continuing to tear until her apron was in shreds. She bound the least bloodied pieces around Lyddie’s head and tied them in place with a narrower strip. “Do you think you could stand up?” she asked.

In answer, Lyddie started to get up. Diana and Delia helped her to her feet. “Just stand here for a minute,” Diana said. “Don’t try to move yet.”

The room spun. She reached out toward the beam of the loom to steady herself. Diana put her arm around Lyddie’s shoulders. “Lean on me,” she said. “I’ll take you home.”

“The bell ain’t rung,” Lyddie protested weakly.

“Oh Lyddie, Lyddie,” Diana said, “whatever shall we do with you?” She sighed and pulled Lyddie close. “Delia, help us down the stairs, please. I think I can get her the rest of the way by myself.”

Slowly, slowly they went, stopping every few feet to rest. “We don’t want to open that cut again,” Diana said. “Easy, easy.” Mrs. Bedlow helped Diana take Lyddie up the stairs to the second-floor infirmary, not her own room as she wished. But Lyddie’s head pounded too much for her to insist that they take her up still another flight of stairs.

“I’ll send Tim for Dr. Morris,” she heard Mrs. Bedlow saying. No, no, Lyddie wanted to say. Doctors cost money.

“No,” Diana was saying. “Not Dr. Morris. Dr. Craven. On Fletcher Street.”

She was asleep when the doctor arrived, but she opened her eyes when she heard the murmur of voices above her. “Lyddie,” Diana was saying softly, “Dr. Craven needs to look at the wound.”

They were there, the two of them standing above her, Diana’s familiar face flushed, smiling anxiously down at her, and the doctor’s … He was a handsome, bearded gentleman—young, his dark brown eyes studying her own, his long, thin hands already reaching to loosen Diana’s makeshift bandage. “Now let’s look at that cut of yours,” he said in a tone compounded of concern and assurance—the perfect doctor.

Lyddie gasped.

He drew his hands back. “Are you in pain?” he asked.

Lyddie shook her head. It was not pain that had startled her. It was the doctor himself. She had seen him before—with Diana—last summer on Merrimack Street.

14

Ills and Petitions

By Saturday afternoon she was back in her own room, and by Sunday the pain had dulled. Dr. Craven had cut her hair away from the wound and bound her head in a proper bandage, but she took it off. She was going back to work the next day, bald spot and all. She’d never been vain—never had anything to be vain about, to tell the truth. No need to start in fussing over her looks now.

At first Amelia and Mrs. Bedlow objected to her returning to work so soon, but they quickly gave up. Lyddie would go to work no matter what. “If you can’t do the work …,” Mr. Marsden had said. Besides, Diana came by Sunday evening and said she was looking quite fit again. Diana should know, shouldn’t she?

She went to bed early, but she couldn’t sleep. Her head seemed to throb more when she was lying down. She thought about her family—suppose that cussed shuttle had killed her, or put out her eye? What would they do? And Diana. What was Lyddie to think? She hadn’t dared ask about Dr. Craven. Diana hadn’t explained why she sent for him instead of Dr. Morris, who usually cared for the girls at Number Five. Dr. Craven seemed as good a doctor as any—better. He didn’t leave a bill.

The curfew bell rang. Amelia came to bed. Betsy did too, though she kept her candle burning, studying into the night as she often did. At last she blew out the light, and slid down under the quilts. Then it began, that awful tearing sound that Lyddie would come to dread with every knotted inch of nerves through her whole silently screeching body. Finally it stopped.

“Betsy, I do wish you’d see Dr. Morris about that cough.” Amelia’s voice came from the next bed.

“I’m a big girl, Amelia. Don’t nag.”

“I’m not nagging. If you weren’t so stubborn …”

“What would he tell me, Amelia? To rest? How can I do that? I’ve only got a few more months to go. If I stop now—”

“I’m going to stop.”

“What?”

There was a sigh in the darkness. “I’m leaving—going home.”

“Home?”