One of the surgeons, Professor Brown, had duly brought the letter to the attention of the graduating class, to a less than enthusiastic response. Luke’s fellow students had never heard of Yorkville and scorned the prospect of a village practice.
“Middle of nowhere,” one of them scoffed as they trailed down the ward in the surgeon’s wake.
“Farmers and ploughboys,” said another. “Not very interesting.”
But what they really meant, Luke knew, was “not lucrative.” Many of Luke’s classmates had family money that would help them get started or family connections that would guarantee them a place with a prosperous city practice. Their futures had been assured almost as soon as they had been accepted at medical school.
After rounds finished, Luke approached Professor Brown and indicated that he might be interested in applying for the position. And then he promptly wrote to his father seeking his opinion on the matter.
“Able to shoulder the more onerous duties?” Thaddeus had written back. “In other words, you’d be a drudge. On the other hand, I can think of no more expeditious way for you to enter the profession you have chosen. You might be wise to consider this.”
His father was also familiar with the village called Yorkville, as Luke had known he would be.
“Although it’s true that it’s a small place right now, it can’t be any more than two or three miles to Toronto,” Thaddeus wrote. “In a few years, it’s entirely likely that the city’s limits will have stretched to encompass the entire area. By the time your elderly doctor is ready to hand over the reins, you could well find yourself with a city practice after all.”
Armed with this knowledge, Luke wrote to offer his services.
When he arrived in Yorkville, he found a sleepy little village on Yonge Street, which — according to Christie, who seemed to have an extensive knowledge of the history and events of the area — had sprung up around a tollgate and a tavern, The Red Lion Inn. This public house was famous as a rallying point for the rebels of 1837.
“Brigands, all of them,” the doctor said. “Should have been sent straight off to the hangman.”
A small stream to the northeast had attracted the attention of Joseph Bloor, who built a brewery beside it in the early ’30s, and then of John Severn, who did the same. The two breweries, along with the brickworks that produced a distinctive yellow product from local clay, were, Christie said, the major industries of the village.
“You won’t see many grand estates here. It’s mostly small houses and cottages for the local workers, more’s the pity. I could do with a few clients who don’t have to be hounded for payment.”
To Luke, it seemed like a very self-sufficient little community, but he could see signs that his father might well be correct about Yorkville’s future. Just south of the village, the area between the Tollgate Road and Queen Street was designated by Toronto as part of its liberties — not really city, not really county — but a legislative distinction that cleared the legalities for future annexation. City factories, once too far away for the workers of Yorkville to reach every day on foot, were now serviced by omnibuses. And the Strangers’ Burying Ground, a cemetery on the corner of Yonge Street and the concession line, once considered on the verge of wilderness, now formed a barrier to the ever-expanding sprawl of houses in the village. Yorkville would probably always be a small town, Luke figured, but by the time Dr. Christie finally packed it in, its fresher air and slower pace might well have attracted a more well-heeled population.
In the meantime, as junior partner, Luke was relegated to the tasks that entailed the most work. This arrangement meant that he handled the cases that required walking any great distance. Dr. Christie’s definition of “any great distance” was narrow in the extreme, as the older man was disinclined to indulge in any sort of effort and much preferred that his patients come to him. Few patients ever did this. As a rule they attended to their gumboils and bunions themselves, and when a more serious ailment presented itself, they expected a physician to treat them in their own homes. This meant that Luke would be handling virtually all of the calls. That was fine, as far as he was concerned — every time he was called out it meant that he could leave the office and the sneering skeleton behind.
When a small boy pounded on the door the day after his arrival, Luke eagerly grabbed the scuffed leather satchel that contained his potions and instruments and followed the child down Yonge Street and into a side alley that led through a cluster of modest cottages.
“Hurry,” the boy said, “Pa’s bleeding something fierce.”
Luke’s patient was still in his back dooryard where he had been splitting firewood. The axe had sliced through the man’s boot and embedded itself in the big toe of his left foot. The man had not attempted to remove either the axe or the boot, instead slumping to the ground to await the doctor’s arrival. He was not suffering in silence, however, and his yells and moans had drawn a crowd of his neighbours, who hung over the garden fence to watch the drama.
“You’ll be all right now, Holden,” one of them said when he saw Luke. “The doctor’s here.”
“He’ll probably have to remove the leg, you know,” another offered, resulting in a further, and louder, round of moaning from the injured man.
“Shush!” a woman said to the man who had spoken. “You’re scaring him!”
“That was what I was hoping to do.”
“Well, stop!”
Luke ignored them all and lowered himself to one knee in order to assess the injury. Sometimes these wounds could be nasty, the laceration rarely clean, the edges of the wound ragged and shredded, depending on the sharpness of the axe.
After a moment, he turned to the boy. “Can you find me some clean rags?” he asked. “Freshly washed ones, that haven’t been used for anything else?”
The boy nodded and disappeared into the house.
Luke untied the boot, removing the laces entirely in preparation for taking it off. There was a great deal of blood spilling out from the slash in the toe. He would have to move quickly once he’d withdrawn the axe.
The boy returned, wordlessly holding out a wad of rags. They looked reasonably unstained. They will have to do, Luke thought. I can only hope they’re truly clean.
He looked around at the gaggle of onlookers at the fence.
“Could you give me a hand?” he asked. “You,” he said pointing at the man who was hoping for an amputation. The woman who had shushed him pushed him toward the garden gate. The man approached Luke reluctantly.
“I need you to pull the axe out while I take his boot off.”
The man paled, his jokes forgotten, but he reached for the wooden handle.
“Not until I tell you, mind. And pull it straight up and out.”
Luke grasped the edges of the boot, then said “Now.”
As soon as the axe head was freed, he slid the boot off in one smooth motion, then grabbed the bundle of rags and jammed a wad of them into the wound as blood spurted out. His patient screamed.
It had only taken a few seconds to accomplish, but it had been long enough for Luke to see that the toe was almost entirely severed, attached to the foot by only a small piece of bone and a flap of skin. He would have to remove it.
He would have preferred to get the man inside and away from the prying eyes of the onlookers, but that would take too long — the sooner the severed digit was out the way, the sooner Luke could stop the bleeding.
He