In the darkness between aspens like obscure pillars of mottled silver mist drifted over the ground and toward the sky like smoke. Frostrazored leaves shone blue in the sparse canopy, moon bright even amid the clouds and in their parting coruscated behind powdered snow falling cold enough to settle wet upon the branches. There was no wind. The night still and silence broken only by a scattering of bats, their cries clipped against the trunks. Morseled among the thorns and bracken blackberries clinging on, bindweeds run flat at the mouth of the warrens enmeshing brittle the roots and icebit earth. Where stone wore through the moss gathered dense and there embraced by a bed of leaves dead at the turning of the season, cups of aconite and white stars of wintergreen buried all and about the smell of rot, sharp and dank that the vapor seemed a slight cloud of sugared poison withering as it swept through. The trees denuding and in the months to come before frozen floor turned again to mud and in turn to grass there would be lightning and thunder as storms broke in from the highlands to the north, hunting as long as the light held each day. Bands from nearby town and hamlet and further afield the season’s tourists too all fanned out and treading gentle as a buck, buttplate to shoulder and fore in palm, shots breaking loud and clapping peacefully into the distance. On their departing with blood and powder spent in their wake then would furtive scavengers attend discarded hoof and viscera, preserved by frost and chill of the bone to be picked clean that any remnant of killing would lie unseen in the snow. Then would it be winter.
Fur trembled on the wire. Caught in the fencing newlyerected after damp had eaten through the old posts and badgers made it onto the grounds. Along the narrow salted road carving a solitary path through the forest the stakes stood clean and smooth, widening out about the tarmac giving way to the gravel of the driveway as if together with the light from the lamp above the door holding back the night. The house was large and old and had passed hands many times, carrying about it a certain impression of forgetfulness even cleared of ivy and wisteria that it seemed apart from its surroundings and lonely in its apartness. The shadows cast by the metal frame of the fixture ran long and tall, neat lines pronounced across the steps and at their outermost melding away, beside the island fountain a wheelbarrow holding spare posts and a large bucket of soil and a hammer and hooked nails and a roll of mesh. Two cars, a van parked out front. Bodies sleek and black and muscular, the bonnet of the larger vehicle steaming with droplets that merged and ran together to be swallowed by the grill, along the shallow trench beneath the windshield acorns and dusted spores of sycamore pods spread across the crane of the wipers in a pulp of wet and grit though there were no such trees in that part of the country for miles around. Cabin and backseats empty, rear lights left on and darkly glowing against the bushes, a dribble of petrol from grazed underside gathering in a small pool that in the bright dawn would shine dark purple and green and gold like a jewel hefted fatal into the stones. The passengerside door pushed to but not into place, a trail left in the gravel by rapid footsteps toward the door. From inside the house the low murmur of voices and laughter could be heard a few feet back and no further.
The road wound for almost a half hour from the nearest village. Where the map marked a single route through the woods so many sideroads rose up to meet her but there were few other houses this far out, forking into the wilderness and as though pared back by the trees soon ending by a stack of felled timber or a stream or footpath. Things seeming changed upon return, the landscape shifting as she backtracked. Adding time as it did it was a mistake she could not afford to make but in the course of her visits the scenery had become familiar and it was not one she now often did. The car hummed as she drove. Dashboard glowing against her hands on the cool leather of the wheel, headlights holding steady ahead.
In the passengerside footwell was a wide rollup wallet, strapped inside a set of steel instruments. Scissors and probes, sutures and scalpels and hemostat and forceps. There was a penlight and a packet of needles, a plastic flask of alcohol with rolls of surgical thread and adhesive tape. On the seat a black leather bag fastened with a metal clasp holding her other equipment. Blood and urine strips, lancets and syringes, a tourniquet and glass vials and latex gloves. A mask, wooden blades and disinfectant wipes, lubricant. She’d brought drugs. Antiinflammatories and codeine and diazepam. A host of antibiotics, valacyclovir and emtricitabine and tenofovir, raltegravir and prochlorperazine, lorazepam. Bottles of morphine and adrenaline and haloperidol. Beneath eyedrops and ointments and creams a stack of overthecounter pregnancy tests, tucked beside them a lighter and a pack of cigarettes.
She’d first made the journey over two years ago. They made contact through an intermediary and it was weeks before any meeting was set. Her contact had not been given a number or an address and even after she was visited by their man it was not clear things would move forward. He was tall and in his midforties. Eyes dark under boxed forehead, blownout tattoos deep in the skin of his arms and blurred with age and sun as though drawing through muscle and tendon into his bones and very marrow. They spoke briefly. She assured him she was good at what she did and explained she took pride in being recommended. After he left it was again weeks before a date and a time were passed on and at that only for further consultation with the client themselves.
She drove down in the heat of July. The sky empty, bugs tapping against the windshield with the windows down and the radio on. Stopping by the side of the road between two crags at the crest of a hill she stretched her legs and changed her shirt. It had not rained for some time and the ground was dry. Stood in her brassiere drinking from the canteen in the shade of the rocks she saw in the dust near her feet the dried husk of what might once have been a toad. Eyes hollowed, treadmarks crossed neat upon its back. When she nudged at it with the toe of her boot it did not fold under or crumble as she’d expected but skittered like a flattened can in a way that at once amused and brought up within her a slight wrench. The faltering satnav led her to a cabin on the far side of the valley and then to an empty field and when she arrived it was late and with dark circles under her arms all the same. She parked by the outer gate and stepped from the car and shrugged into her jacket fastening only the middlemost button. Taking her rucksack from the boot she walked the driveway to the door where she pushed the intercom and waited. Fountain pattering behind her. The groundsman emerged from a slender footpath leading away from the house and into the trees, carrying a weedstrimmer and set of secateurs and apparently alarmed to see her. She explained she had called to no answer and he told her to try the bell and disappeared into a greenhouse behind the hedges. Finding the lever she heard it sound first in the hallway and again somewhere deep inside the house. In a moment the door opened and she was ushered in by a smiling woman far younger wearing a cropped satin gown and oversized pink slippers.
The ceiling was tall. The hallway wide and with a blue tint about it after the brightness outside, halfway down a set of doors framed by an ornate stone arch standing out against the woodpanelled walls. The girl chatted as she led her through and into a large reception room where there were leather sofas and armchairs and a coffee table. A bar in the far corner. On the windowsill another woman with brown hair cut short below her ears sat with a magazine and tea. Neither ventured to introduce themselves and the first soon left to find someone who might better direct their evidently unexpected guest. She sat neatly in one of the armchairs. Flicking through her phone until the second woman stood and leaving behind the magazine took her cup into the adjacent room where the television clicked and blared sedate. The first soon returned in the company of a broadshouldered man with a stout beard and shavenheaded who led her up a flight of stone steps and along a corridor and then up again until they came to a study at the top of the house. The man knocked twice and a voice answered and she nodded at him and went inside.
The desk was a mess of files and loose paper. To the right a squat monitor with a tangle of cables hanging from the back. From the rail above the crosshatched window there hung a stylish black dress and behind the desk sat a woman goodlooking and blonde. She waved her in.
I’m late.
Please. I’ve emails that have been sitting here for days. Something to drink?
No.
Take a seat.
The woman placed her cup on the desk and clearing a space before her rested her elbows on the table. She was not young and carried her years with grace.
Perhaps you have a preferred moniker?
Sorry?
An alias of some sort.
No.
What should I call you?
Anything you like.
Doctor, then. Very good. I should express my admiration. I’m nothing if not a patriot. Unfashionable, perhaps, but I very much believe in the land being a part of who you are.
You told my associate you had need of my services. It’s been three months.
Given the nature of my business . . .
I’ve a variety of clients.
Yes, well. It occurred to me we might first meet as there are certain matters I thought it best to discuss in person. One or two preliminary concerns.
What I’ve offered is the flat rate. I can be here every ten to twelve weeks and will need a minimum of four hours for emergency calls unless I’ve told you otherwise.
Fair to say I think that works.
Good. We’ll put the twenty ninth down for the first round.
The doctor took her rucksack from behind the chair and rose.
A moment, please.
I have an appointment.
Before you go, then.
The woman stood and walked to the front of the desk. She wore a pair of old tracksuits and glossed running shoes. She leant back against the frame, arms folded.
To be plain, this is not an easy line of work. Many of the women here are young and can, on occasion, find they may be liable to waver in their resolve. Not least when they’re not actually out on the floor. While there is of course no doubt in my mind you will be compassionate, I do equally expect that you will also act in the utmost professional manner. Namely, to understand and respect the fact that above all I am paying you. Whatever you may think of what we do here I run a tight ship, and they know very well that my door is always open. They come to me. And if they come to you, you come to me. I hope that is clear.
I have to go.
Someone will see you out.
I can find my way.
Not at all.
They shook hands. The man was waiting outside. The doctor glanced back at the woman who smiled thinly and gave an abrupt wave and closed the door.
They gave her a room on the far side of the house. It was plain and well lit with a desk and a stool and a single bed against the wall by the window. They came alone and were told to sit as she took first names and made note of features with which to place them. Dirtbrown eyes, dimples, scar from a righted cleft lip. They were polite and wellspoken and meticulously clean. She answered their questions simply and was brief with hers. They did not seem nervous though when she told them to lie back on the bed their eyes would close and breathing shorten at the coldness of the gel. After they would dress in silence as she wrote and to a woman thanked her quietly when they left. A few smoked but they drank in moderation and ate well and made use of the exercise machines in the basement. Cardiac and respiratory results were good and taking vaccine histories she gave shots for hpv and hepatitis and gathered swabs and samples that she sent to a former colleague at a hospital in the city. Low cholesterol and a single case of rectal chlamydia. She returned the same day to prescribe a course of doxycycline.
Her second visit fell before Christmas. The hall and reception room in fashionably understated decoration. One of the women had been in pain for two days and because it had worsened in the night they had called ahead of time. The woman complained of a fever and stabbing in her lower abdomen and with the nausea kicking in sometime in the small hours she’d been unable to keep anything down. The doctor took her temperature and after a brief exam gave her a combined course of antibiotics. The infection would clear inside a week. In the meantime she would need to rest.
Time passed and they fell into the rhythm of their appointments. It was not that they were friendly so much that they became gradually more at ease around her. She soon found herself able to wrap in half the time and still her visits lasted from when she arrived in the morning until they began to prepare for work. She was wary of talking at any length but found them earnest and unassuming, likely a function of their relationship though in a way that struck her as familiar. Honest.
They were not all European. Two had come up together in a religious cult in a small town outside St Louis Missouri and another sent money to Cote d’Ivoire where she had left two boys in her mother’s care. She could not be sure how often they left the house nor what share of earnings they kept. They wore clothing and jewelry stylish but inexpensive and it did seem they had friends, partners. She often wondered how bookings were made and how far clients might travel and how often return and with the range and the lake and the mountains whether there was perhaps not more to it. Clearly the women shared lodgings and there was more space in the house than enough though it struck her the rooms being kept free did not necessitate their being booked for more than a night at a time. She was never once asked about herself. A fact for which she was grateful, and thought maybe they might be too.
One night around two am she woke with her phone in intermittent drift across the bedside table. Leaving it to voicemail and blinking at the screen to scroll back through the last fifteen minutes of calls and messages she swept the covers back and pulled on her khakis. She would be there by five.
She made good time and was met by the younger broadshouldered man who took her round and up through the back entrance. There was a charged quiet about the house, something fearful about the stillness and the dark as she was led along as though breath held behind each door being exhaled silently and without relief as they passed. She’d been told little beyond being needed and that it could not wait until morning.
The woman lay with brown hair splayed on the pillow, face turned toward the wall. The rise and fall of her breast shallow, unsteady. The bleeding had not stopped but had begun to dry on her neck and cheek, skin from temple to jaw in the pale halflight of the bedside lamp like a fetus glimpsed beneath split eggshell. Sat beside her the other woman who had waited told the doctor the painkillers had not been enough and while they’d sought to calm her she’d continued drinking and passed out not half an hour before. Their employer was somewhere on the continent and had been for some time and would not return before next week was out. The woman said she would stay. The doctor dragged a chair from the corner and sat beside the bed.
Two teeth were broken, another missing entirely. After a shot of anesthetic the doctor inserted the tip of her middle finger into the clotted smile of the wound. At its widest she tested the bone intact and through the lens of the otoscope saw from two narrow fissures the eardrum had perforated. She worked quickly. Threading with gentle tugs between the bruised lips and tying off the stitching with deft and measured motion. The woman murmured twice and was still. When she’d finished she explained they would need an xray to rule out a hairline fracture and that the dressing should be changed regularly. She placed a bottle of codeine on the table. The other woman thanked her without looking up. The doctor paused by the door, returning to rattle out a diazepam and leaving them then lying together on the bed. One white with exhaustion, the other with her head in a dull halo of padding and gauze.
Two weeks ago now. The doctor’s stomach turned as she pulled in at the gate and bushes closened all too suddenly after hours of the landscape falling effortlessly into a blur around her. They had guests. Muted shapes rippling in the textured windowglass. Opening the door she smelt woodsmoke. The light wavered, a large moth batting against the fixture above the steps where the madame sat waiting. Ashtray and a halftumbler of clear drink beside her. She rose as the doctor retrieved her bags and did not offer a hand but led her down the path between a gap in the hedgerows and into the trees, explaining she’d returned not long before the call was made and only then to be made fully aware of the situation about which there really was very little she might have done given she’d not actually been in the country. All being as it was what had happened last the doctor had been so kind as to come, because it really was very kind of her and especially at such short notice though of course also under the purview of their arrangement but very good of her all the same, what had taken place was regrettable and would not under any circumstances be permitted to recur while at the same time being perhaps foreseeable albeit not entirely unavoidable, perhaps. She ought to have been here and there were stern words to be had about why she’d been told extending her trip would not pose a problem given things had ticked well enough along in her absence because clearly they had not. They’d had trouble before but nothing like this in the slightest and of course, of course the doctor should understand this was not something any one of them might really have been prepared for under the best of circumstances and that at any rate she would without question find herself further compensated for her time and generously too, upon which it was respected there were a great many pressures even if this did technically fall within the terms of the arrangement, which did not mean it was not deeply appreciated and especially at such short notice. The doctor thought she might at least tell her where they were going.
They were within a few feet of the clearing when she saw what had seemed a ways back a large boulder was in fact a small caravan. At the sound of voices the door shot open, the groundsman silhouetted in the frame. He mumbled an apology at the hissing madame. Lowering the barrel and stepping down onto the spread of wooden pallets out front allowing her to pass. He looked keenly to the doctor who gestured at the door and followed him through, axle creaking as the domicile righted itself.
The warped and flaking panels outside betrayed nothing of the caravan’s interior. Mugs hanging from a row of hooks above a chipped stove, wooden cupboards pasted over with photos of the groundsman bearing up behemoth carp drawn from the nearby lake and pictures the doctor presumed authored by the two girls smiling from a frame on the counter. There were seeds dispersed between glass jars set with care on the wire shelves above a display of polished stones on the sill, blackout blinds pulled low over the window on the far side. With the aged heater burning redorange it was warm. Aside the toolbox and can of weedkiller the table was clear and on the worn armchair in the far corner there lay woolblankets in a small pile. A vision of home were it not for the man on the sofa.
He lay lengthways. Lips fishcolored and legs hanging awkwardly over the edge of a throwcushion from under the scarlet wet of the towels. The doctor pulled back the sodden rags and counted eleven, twelve puncture marks of differing depth and the same width all, about the diameter of a shirt button. From between his ribs to the left of his torso jutted the bottom half of a champagne flute. He wheezed. The madame flicked the kettle on and set about hunting noisily through the cupboards.
His eyes were glassed and vacant. The doctor set her bags down and sat on the edge of the table. She tapped the flat of her fingers against his chest. The sound was faint but hollow. She pulled on a pair of gloves and removed the glass and stanched the bleeding, dumping the towel and used gauze into a green washbowl the groundsman placed on the carpeting beside her. She wiped the wounds clear and unwrapped several rolls of bandaging to patch over the deeper lacerations and then with the plastic sheets of the packaging and some tape too. Inserting a syringe between his ribs above the hole where she had retrieved the glass she tapped again as she held the barrel and drew out the plunger with her other hand.
She felt the man’s pulse in his wrist and listened to his breathing as the madame tipped away the now cold coffee and brewed more, handing the doctor a cup and patting a patterned arm uncertainly to follow her outside.
Well?
Pneumothorax. Most of the cuts are superficial but a couple have gone deep and at least one has entered the chest cavity.
Alright.
I’ve released it but we need to wait. If the lung’s been punctured there’s a chance it may collapse.
Which would mean what exactly?
Not a lot I can do here.
The madame scratched at the corner of her mouth.
What are our chances?
Better at a hospital.
No.
May not be an option. He’s lost a lot of blood.
Fuck.
I’ll do what I can.
Please.
It had stopped snowing. The doctor retrieved two cigarettes from inside her coat and handed one to the madame. The trees stood pale, moon breaching the bank of clouds with the wind rising to a whisper through the leaves, ducks in muttered remonstration somewhere down by the littoral at the smell of burning logs carried over from the house. Beside them on the makeshift porch the groundsman was asleep in a wide campchair. Wrapped in two of the coarse blankets, a batterypowered torch on the overturned bucket by his feet. Mist rose from his nostrils, leaning up against the wall behind him a pickaxe and wideblade shovel.
A lighter clicked in the clearing.
Will Neal is a London-born writer and journalist based in Tbilisi. His short stories have appeared in the Anglo-American literary magazine Litro and Manchester’s Lunate journal, and in 2020 his piece “Interdependence” was shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize. His journalistic output focuses on the state-criminal nexus, corporate accountability, offshore finance, and illicit use of emerging tech. Since training with the UK Press Association, he has worked at the Guardian, Global Investigations Review and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, where he was a contributor to such major international investigations as Suisse Secrets and Russian Asset Tracker. He has also written for New Lines Magazine, Byline Times, Novara Media, VICE News and The Sunday Times, and holds degrees in literature and philosophy from the University of Cambridge and University College London.