Phillips Harbour
Thursday, October 22, 1868. Pre-dawn.
On Wednesday evening, Mrs. Everchild returns with Bernice to her little cabin, to review the volumes Girard had left with Bernice. Mrs. Everchild is quite interested, and takes a few of the books that are more concerned with the practice of magic in general than with the Game itself. The remainder she leaves with Dr. Townes: "I can only read so much at one time, dear, and it's safer to spread such things around. No sense keeping all your eggs in one basket if you've got two."
After Mrs. Everchild leaves, Bernice spends a little time with the remaining books herself. Bernice happened to have Girard's private journal beside her bed, and for some reason she didn't show it to the older woman while she was there. She ends up retiring late with a head full of sometimes contradictory Latin and French phrases on the nature of the Game.
It feels like she's only just put her head down when she is jolted awake by a pounding at her door. "Miss Townes! Miss Townes! Come quick!" The urgent but unfamiliar voice has the timber of an adolscent boy's, cracking between high and low ranges.
Bernice startles out a daydream she was having about the 'unimportant you don't want to bore yourself with that book' book, and nearly calls out a reply in French, but catches herself. Sparing a glance at the trapdoor, she shuts the book she was looking at and hops to her feet, scurrying for the door. "I'm coming!" She undoes the latch and opens it up a foot or so, peeking her face out to see who's calling on her.
A breathless teenage boy, one of her de facto landlord's sons she thinks, stands on the stoop. "Miss Townes! There's a fire in town! Doc said to come, fast 's you can!"
"A fire?!" The young woman looks positively shocked, but she doesn't waste time gaping. Less than a minute passes and she's collected her doctor's bag and is hurrying off the stoop with the boy in tow, headed for Slate's shed. "Do you know how to help me get my horse tacked? Otherwise, you'll just have to hang on tight!"
The boy tags behind her, wide-eyed. "A horse, ma'am? I've ... uh ... ridden bareback afore. Kinda."
Bernice scurries into the shed, skirts swirling and kicking up dust in her rush. "Good! Let's not waste time, then! Slate, we're needed girl!"
Slate bring up her head as soon as her mistress enters, and whickers a greeting. She catches Bernice's urgency immediately and does not delay in moving out of the shed. She waits a little impatiently while Bernice hauls the boy up with her on her bareback. In a moment, she breaks into a trot, then a canter towards town.
Townes fairly manhandles the lad up onto Slate's back with her, just as impatient as her mare is. She gives him the time it takes to call out, "Hold on!" before she crouches low to pat her friend's neck and urge her to a gallop. Under other circumstances, it'd be exhilerating to ride hard again, sharing the joy of racing wind and countryside flashing by with Slate, but now her thoughts are occupied with reservations about what she'll find, what caused the fire, and a certain wistfulness for anything she might have left behind.
The kid clutches at Bernice's waist and grunts as the pace Slate sets is a bone-jarring one for someone unaccustomed to riding. To his credit, however, he manages to hang on. As they near town, Bernice can hear the cries of the townsfolk and the pealing of the church bell in alarm. She comes to Dr. Greeene's wagon, parked in someone's yard, before she reaches the fire itself. She can see the flames ahead: men and women are working in a bucket brigade from the bay, and with shovels as they try to smother the flames from the other sides. At least three houses are in flames along Stephenson. It takes her a moment to spot Dr. Greene, treating a young man who's lying on the ground.
Bernice slows her mare enough to let the boy down safely, and is already swinging herself off Slate's back by the time they come trotting up to Greene, the young woman clutching her bag as she hurries to the doctor's side. "Dr. Greene! I came as fast as I could! How many people are hurt?!" The sight of the flames and billowing smoke is overwhelming, and she tears her attention away from the spectacle to kneel down by Greene's patient, opening her bag.
The clamour is almost more overpowering than the fire itself: men issuing orders, pointing out new outbreaks in the fire, seeking help, a cat yowling fit to the wake the dead, dogs barking. "Several with minor burns; this lad got a lungful of smoke but I think he'll make it. Can you triage, doc -- Miss Townes? I don't want anyone overlooked or waiting for me to finish here if they need help more urgently."
"Yes, sir!" The 'nurse' quickly gathers her bag up again and rises. It takes a deep breath to steady herself in the face of absolute chaos, but once centered she sets to work, picking her way through the mass of people running in all directions. First she finds a moment to lean close to Slate, hoping the commotion is enough to mask talking to her horse. "Move someplace safe and out of the way, but don't go too far!" With that, she returns to the breach, looking for injured people to prioritize and stabilize.
Some of those with minor injuries are still working the line. Others are coughing violently; Bernice finds herself instructing the men and women nearest the fire to tie wet clothes over their faces to protect them from the smoke -- and then has to remember to take her own advice.
As she tends to one man she judges too injured to wait -- burns all along one side, and his wife looking horrified when Bernice cuts off the remains of his clothing to treat the burns -- Bernice hears a familiar ooking. ISLINGTON! What happened? Where's Mrs. Everchild?
The doctor's soon got a soaked mask of her own tied over her nose and throat, flecks of water and soot from flying embers darkening her dress as well. She casts aside scraps of blackened and blood-crusted cloth and pours cool water from a commandeered bucket over the wounds along with a stream of soothing words. By the time she hears Caliban's voice, she's applied layers of clean linens to the burns, careful to avoid breaking any blisters. "This'll help until everything's under control!" she shouts to the wife, raising her voice over the din. "Keep the linens on him and stay with him, keep talking to him!"
Caliban's voice, a howl just to be heard over the fury of the fire. Islington! I'm comin' to you, stay cool!
It dawns on Bernice who the cat's voice could belong to, and Caliban's answer chills her even with the heat radiating from the blazing houses. "Too many injured," she thinks numbly, finishing her work on the badly burned man as quickly as she can. "Too much." The doctor can't leave her patient until she's sure she's done the best she can, but once she has, she's off like a shot, trying to run as fast as she can without slopping the bucket over too much, racing towards Caliban's voice.
The wife looks bewildered and in shock, only offering a nod to Bernice in reply before the woman races off. Caliban's voice is coming from very near the fire; Bernice hears one man saying "What in blazes is that ape doing?" Then she sees that the chimp has dashed into the burning yard of one of the houses. With a start, she orients on her location, and realizes that's Mrs. Everchild's house.
"Oh God." Townes stands frozen in a moment of indecision, then resoaks her mask, prepares another, and upends her bucket of water over herself. Goosh! Dripping and shivering, she follows after Caliban.