Read Online The Good Doctor by Paul Butler - Free Book Online Page B

side with those in charge. In the jungle of the school quad and dorm, this creature—Grenfell and his ilk—was the young doctor’s natural enemy. His only recourse was the sucker punch under cover of the rugby scrum, the secret dead leg to his persecutor. But such revenge was fleeting and ineffectual. The subversive joy it carried hardly lasted beyond the moment, and merely strengthened the hand wielding the cane. More than ever the young doctor feels a desperate need to keep Grenfell from Nurse Mills. There is dirtiness beneath his assumed superiority, a lack of courage and even a lack of honesty in his “uprightness”; it’s all too easy, too smug, and too danger-averse.
    The crowd has filtered away and only stragglers pass them now. “I suggest you take your hands off me now,” the young doctor says, ducking his head, digging his shoes into the turf, getting ready to spring.
    â€œIn a second,” Grenfell replies with another false hug. “There’s one main difference between you and me. You came here to weep and fall on your knees. I came with a clear head. The preacher gives you what he wants to give. I take from him what I want to take. I take. You get taken.”
    He removes one hand from the young doctor’s arm at last and slips a paper from his jacket pocket. The young doctor’s freed hand reaches for it in panic, but Grenfell dodges it with a short laugh. The forged letter; how easily it could be used in evidence! He assumed until this moment that Nurse Mills was still in possession of it. She is altogether too troubled to simply hand it over to Dr. Bleaker. Not so Grenfell.
    A gust of wind circles the tent’s entrance, flapping the paper in Grenfell’s hand. The young doctor makes another grab, and this time his fingertips touch the paper, but again Grenfell keeps it clear, but only with an effort. Grenfell abandons his shoulder clasp and now grips the young doctor’s collar in one fist, still holding the paper high in the air in the other.
    Wrapping his right leg around Grenfell’s left, heel sinking into the turf, the young doctor pulls at Grenfell’s jacket sleeve. He bends his rival’s elbow, bringing the paper closer.
    â€œGet off me!” Grenfell shouts.
    Another moment finds them falling. Grenfell lands first. He gasps like a sack thrown from a cart. The young doctor falls on top of him. A growl of violence breaks from the knot of limbs and joints. There’s a moment of squirming confusion. Knees and knuckles dig into Grenfell’s chest. The young doctor tries to pull from the fist which twists at his collar. Grenfell’s fingernails scratch at his neck. Head scorching with trapped blood, the young doctor clambers over Grenfell’s ribs to the hand with the paper. He pushes his knee hard onto the centre of Grenfell’s exposed wrist. The hand goes suddenly limp and opens. The young doctor snatches the paper, stands, and takes a quick step back.
    Grenfell spits with pain and, sitting quickly, grips his wrist. Aware now of forms about them, three or four bewildered organizers from Moody’s camp, the young doctor holds back from the kick he wants to deliver. He turns quickly and leaves—the paper hot in his hands.
    ***
    He listens for the tread of footsteps behind him, watches for the elongated V of a warning shadow cutting the gaslight, but there is nothing. Relief subsides as he turns a chilly corner close to the London wall, and a new curiosity bubbles. The paper still crumpled in his fingers seems softer, and of thicker bond, than the letter he folded into the envelope this morning. Even during the panic outside the tent, he was vaguely surprised by the bluish hue of the note Grenfell brandished. The paper he used last night had an anemic cream finish.
    He slows his pace, afraid to look down, feeling a sickly new wave of worry. If this isn’t his forged letter after all, it must be something else. And