Perfect Wedding Page 6

  Lo Sing grabbed Jason’s sleeve. “I’m really sorry, but there’s trouble. I’m not even sure what it is, but a couple of the Chan tong got cut up pretty badly, and—” He seemed to notice Marjorie and broke off abruptly.

  Jason whirled on Marjorie. “I’m sorry, Marjorie, but I have to go.”

  Looking dazed, Marjorie said, “Oh, that’s all right. Um . . . can I help you?”

  The notion of Marjorie actually being of help to him hadn’t ever, once, in more than three years, occurred to Jason. He was all set to thank her and say no, when Lo Sing preempted him.

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am, but if you can bandage cuts, we can use you.”

  Jason’s mouth shut with a snap of teeth. He almost barked at Lo Sing that Marjorie shouldn’t be exposed to what he anticipated the evening had brought to his Sacramento-street office, when Marjorie said, “Certainly. I’ve had a small amount of simple nurse’s training.”

  “You have?” Jason stared after her as she entered the cab, leaving him on the sidewalk gaping. He hurried over and climbed in beside her.

  “Aye. We needed to have some basic nursing skills as stewardesses for White Star. They taught us how to apply ointment, bandage wounds and stitch up minor cuts.”

  “Ah.” That made sense.

  Lo Sing took the front seat next to the cabbie. “Back to the clinic on Sacramento and Grant, Shen.”

  “Right.”

  Marjorie whispered in Jason’s ear, “Is the driver Chinese?” She sounded surprised.

  “Yeah, there are several Chinese taxi drivers in town. They mainly operate in Chinatown.”

  “Oh.”

  “Listen, Marjorie, this may be unpleasant and it’ll almost certainly be bloody. I’d rather you not have to—”

  ”I want to,” she interrupted. “This very day, I decided to expand my horizons.”

  “Yeah?” His gaze stuck when he turned and saw her face. She was by-God radiant. How . . . unusual.

  “Yes. So I tried out for the play, and now I’ll pretend to be your nurse for a wee bit.”

  “It’s probably going to be ugly in there. I anticipate a mess. There’s a full-fledged tong war going on in Chinatown, and the results are never pretty.”

  Her countenance sobered. “I shan’t faint. You needn’t fear about that. I’ve been through bad things before.”

  Recalling how she and Loretta had met each other and why she was now living in San Francisco, Jason nodded slowly, acknowledging the truth of her statement.

  # # #

  Marjorie hadn’t lied to Jason. She had been through bad things before. None of them had been quite as gory as this particular thing, however.

  The coppery reek of blood checked her in the doorway to Jason’s office before she even entered the room. Jason himself, along with Lo Sing, to whom Jason had introduced her as his assistant, had rushed inside as if they smelled such nauseating odors every day. For all she knew, they might.

  Marjorie hadn’t kept up with the Chinese situation in San Francisco, particularly. Loretta had lectured at her once or twice—or thrice or more—about how the Chinese were discriminated against, and she’d read articles decrying the so-called “yellow peril.” She’d heard about the Chinese slave trade in young women—she joined Loretta in decrying such a practice—but she hadn’t heard about tong wars until recently.

  Now it looked as if she was going to get a first-hand introduction to the results of a battle between members of different tongs. Five men sat in chairs or lay on the floor in Jason’s office, all of them soaked in blood, a couple of them moaning softly. A woman sat on a sofa in the corner, crying, her face a map of bruises. She, too, was covered in blood. Marjorie didn’t know if any of the men were dead, but a couple of them lay mighty still.

  “Here, Miss MacTavish, why don’t you put on this coat? You don’t want to get your clothes soiled.”

  She took the white coat from Lo Sing, thinking as she did so that the young man was incredibly polite, not to mention diplomatic. “Thank you.”

  “Marjorie, will you please go to the cupboard and bring me my black bag?” Jason asked the question as if he didn’t intend to be denied, and pointed. Marjorie complied.

  Those were the last English words she heard for what seemed like a million years. Jason, making a quick assessment of his priorities, went first to examine the men lying down, questioning the more coherent of his patients about their various wounds. He shook his head, and said something to Lo Sing.

  Snatching his bag from Marjorie, Jason pulled out his stethoscope. He pressed it to the chest of one of the men on the floor, then snapped an order at Lo Sing. They communicated in Chinese, and Marjorie didn’t understand a word. The two medical men gently transferred the man on the floor to the operating table in Jason’s examination room. Then Lo Sing returned to the reception room and started inspecting another patient.

  Feeling totally useless, Marjorie went back to the cupboard where she’d found Jason’s bag and grabbed two rolls of gauze, one of adhesive tape, and some scissors, and returned to Lo Sing. He glanced up, smiled when he saw the supplies she’d brought, took a roll of the gauze, and gestured for her to put the other roll on a nearby bench and cut strips of tape for his use. Again, she complied.

  Because she knew that wounds needed to be cleaned, she then went to the sink, filled a bowl with hot water, and brought Lo Sing the bowl and some carbolic soap and a washcloth. Again Lo Sing smiled at her. It was some comfort. She might not know what was going on, and she might not understand anything anyone was saying, but at least she felt as if she was doing something worthwhile.

  Talking to one of the Chinese men, Lo Sing made a gesture, which Marjorie interpreted as one asking her to clean the first man’s cut arm. It was a nasty cut. Marjorie recalled a Chinese ceremonial knife that Loretta owned, and wondered if such a weapon had made this wound. She’d heard of hatchet men. Did these people really use hatchets on one another? She would have shuddered if she hadn’t been otherwise occupied. Her patient hissed once or twice, but didn’t complain. She tried her very best to be gentle.

  She had no idea how long a time she and Lo Sing worked in that little room, surrounded by wounded people, muttered comments in Chinese, a welter of blood, and the sickening stench of gore, but it was far longer than she wanted to be there. Following gestures by Lo Sing, she cleaned wounds, swabbed them with iodine, padded them with gauze, and secured gauze pads with tape. Long before Jason returned to them, wiping his hands and looking grave, she wished she hadn’t been so eager to volunteer to help him. Broadening her horizons, she told herself, didn’t necessarily have to mean delving into the murky realm of Chinese tong wars.

  At least she didn’t get sick. The good Lord knew, she felt like it often enough.

  When Jason did emerge from his operating room, both she and Lo Sing glanced up. Lo Sing said something to him in Chinese. Jason shook his head and said something back that made Lo Sing shake his head. By that time, Marjorie wanted to stamp her foot and demand that somebody tell her what was going on.

  Since she would never do anything so unconventional, she yet spoke up. “How is your patient, Dr. Abernathy?”

  He shook his head again, grimly. “Lost him.”

  Lost him? He’d lost him? Did he mean that the man had died? “You mean . . .” She couldn’t say the words. They were too appalling.

  Ignoring her unasked question, Jason turned to Lo Sing. “What’s going on in here?”

  “I think everyone will be all right if infection doesn’t set in. Miss MacTavish has been very helpful.”

  He shot her a brief smile, and Marjorie didn’t believe a word he said. She’d been virtually useless, except for cleaning and binding cuts, and she felt awful about it. Glancing at Jason, she shook her head, but didn’t explain herself, afraid she’d start crying if she tried.

  “Did you find out what it’s all about?”

  “Yes. Evidently, the problem isn’t solved yet.” Lo Sing looked nervous wh
en he peered from Marjorie to Jason. “Er, it’s not a nice story. Perhaps . . .”

  Impatient, Jason said, “Just say it, Lo Sing. I’m sure Miss MacTavish won’t faint from shock.”

  Marjorie wasn’t sure about that, but she didn’t let on.

  “Well, then,” Lo Sing continued, “it’s a tong fight, as we already knew, but now I know the reason—or as much of a reason as there can be for so unreasonable a conflict.”

  Jason grunted in agreement.

  “The Chan warlord bought Jia Lee over there—” He gestured at the girl in the corner. “—from someone. Nobody seems to know from whom, although I gather it’s a white man who imports women along with Chinese art and artifacts.”

  Marjorie stared at the girl. She had stopped weeping but looked as if she might start again any second.

  “Unfortunately, the Gao warlord claims he bought her, too, from the same source.”

  They’d bought that girl? Marjorie’s horrified gaze turned to the girl. She opened her mouth to ask the question, but a peek at Jason’s face stopped her. It had taken on the aspect of a thunder cloud about to burst and rain over everyone and everything in his sight. Anyhow, she’d known the practice existed, intellectually, at least. She’d never expected ever to be this close to it.

  He snapped, “Miss MacTavish, come here please.”

  Under normal circumstances, Marjorie would have objected to his tone of command. This evening, she rose from her knees—with some difficulty, as she’d been kneeling for what seemed like weeks—and joined Jason, who had walked over to the girl. He’d already started speaking softly to her in Chinese. The girl’s gentle voice replied. She didn’t once lift her head to look at Jason, but stared at her hands, which were clasped tightly in her lap. Marjorie would have paid money to know what they were saying to each other.

  She jumped slightly when he wheeled around to face her. “This woman’s name is Jia Lee. She’s had a nasty experience tonight and, as you can tell, she’d been badly treated. Will you please take her into the—oh, damn.” Without excusing himself for using profanity, he called out to Lo Sing. “Help me get the body—uh—the man out of my operating room, Lo sing. Miss MacTavish needs to take care of Jia Lee.”

  Turning back to Marjorie as precipitately as he’d turned away, he said, “Can you clean up the table in there, Marjorie? It’s a mess. But I don’t want Jia Lee to see it, and it would be better for her if a woman checked her for bruises and cuts. I don’t think she’s seriously injured.”

  Marjorie didn’t want to see the mess, either, and she didn’t want to inspect this Chinese girl for wounds, but she supposed she had to. She’d volunteered, after all.

  She took another peek at Jia Lee and doubted Jason’s assessment of her injuries. She might not be badly hurt physically, barring those purpling bruises on her face and a few scrapes and scratches that had stopped bleeding long since, but she was scarred inside. Marjorie knew it, because she’d seen that same expression, a combination of agony and numbness, on her own face. Countless times.

  Marjorie didn’t want anything to do with Jia Lee or with the gruesome mess she knew she’d find in Jason’s operating room. She had enough problems of her own.

  So she said, “Of course I will.”

  And she went and did it.

  Chapter Four

  The clock at the Chinese Methodist Church on the other side of Grant Street had struck four, and Jason felt as if someone had thrown sand in his eyes, when the last of the evening’s patients was taken away by family or tong members. The dead man had been carted off by his own familial tong, and his body would be shipped to China for burial. It was a tradition. Along with killing each other.

  No need for cynicism, Jason told himself. Every culture the world had ever seen, including his own, was irrationally brutal. Jason would like to acquit the American culture of brutality, but he couldn’t. Men—and women—were merely products of their animal instincts, Loretta notwithstanding. He didn’t understand it, but he knew by this time that he couldn’t do much about it except to bandage the results of such insanity as best he could.

  He rubbed his gritty eyes with a hand he’s just washed for the fiftieth time and sought out Marjorie. He’d lost track of her in the urgency of his medical dispensations. He appreciated her taking care of Jia Lee, and he dreaded the moment when he had to tell her that the Chinese girl had been restored to her singsong house—which was a pretty name for a disgusting place.

  But the truth was that Jia Lee was a slave and was being used as a prostitute. Unlike most American prostitutes, she didn’t even get to reap the rewards of her services. Her owner had that privilege, whoever he was. The whole thing made Jason sick.

  But back to Marjorie . . .

  “There you are,” he said, surprised to find her sitting in a chair against the wall, and with almost the same expression on her face as he’d seen on Jia Lee’s.

  “Aye.” She managed a little half smile, but he sensed her heart wasn’t in it. His conscience smote him. It was beginning to do that a lot where Marjorie was concerned.

  “You were a big help, Miss MacTavish,” said Lo Sing. “Thank you.”

  Her head jerked a negative. Jason, who felt like a bloody mess himself after doctoring so many vicious stab and slash wounds, shook his own head. He wanted to hug her, but didn’t dare do so—and not only because she’d probably scream and slap his face. He didn’t want to rub his gore onto her. She already wore enough of her own.

  That white coat Lo Sing had given her—and bless him for it, too, since Jason wouldn’t have thought of doing that—was smeared red and pink, and it wasn’t long enough to have protected her skirt. He noticed with dismay that smears and drops of blood had stained it. With a lopsided grin, he said, “You look like you’ve been through a battle.”

  Her huge green eyes pinned him and she didn’t speak.

  “We all do,” said Lo Sing with a grim chuckle.

  “I owe you a new skirt, Marjorie.”

  She didn’t smile. “Nae. Ye donna.”

  Deciding to hell with it, Jason walked over and sat in the chair next to her. She watched him as a prisoner might watch a particularly untrustworthy guard. “We really do appreciate your help. I didn’t anticipate the extent of the injuries we’d be handling, or I wouldn’t have exposed you to the mess.”

  “Yes,” agreed Lo Sing. “When I went to get the doctor, only Jia Lee and a couple of the men were here. I was shocked when we got back to find the room filled with the wounded.”

  “Please,” she said in a voice like shattered silk, “Dinna worry aboot me. If I did help, which I doubt, I’m glad to have done it.”

  “You did help,” insisted Lo Sing.

  “You did,” Jason confirmed, taking her hand. It was limp and cold, and she didn’t draw away from him, from which he deduced she was more upset than she cared to show. “Jia Lee was much more comfortable with you than she’d ever have been with Lo Sing or me. It was important that she have a woman to help her, and it was good of you to take care of her.”

  “She’s just a girl,” said Marjorie in a voice full of wonder.

  Jason sighed. “Yes, she is.” What else could he say?

  “I wish I could have been of more help. I wish I spoke Chinese.”

  “I’ll be happy to teach you.” Jason cursed himself as an idiot. Oh, he wouldn’t mind teaching Marjorie Chinese, but he sensed she wanted to learn in order to help Jia Lee and other Chinese women, and he didn’t want her anywhere near Chinatown and its problems. He asked softly, “Are you all right, Marjorie?”

  When she turned to face him, he saw tears standing in her eyes. He felt terrible for her.

  “Why?” she asked, her voice trembling. “Why do they do that to each other? Isna life hard enough for them without fighting each other?”

  Lo Sing muttered something under his breath.

  Jason heaved a huge sigh. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

  “It’s not a simple proble
m,” said Lo Sing.

  A tear slid down Marjorie’s cheek. Jason’s heart squeezed painfully. “Here now, don’t cry, please, Marjorie. You did splendidly. We couldn’t have asked for a better assistant.”

  “But it’s all so senseless.” Marjorie’s voice was thick.

  Without thought, Jason stripped off his blood-stained coat and took her in his arms. He didn’t give a care if he ruined his suit. “There now, Marjorie. It was a horrible experience for you, but you helped, and that’s the important thing.”

  Her shoulders shook and she clutched him as if he were her lifeline. Jason’s heart expanded a couple of cubic feet. He glanced at Lo Sing over Marjorie’s head and found his assistant shaking his head.

  As he patted her heaving shoulders, Jason spoke softly. “The tongs in and of themselves aren’t the problem. They’re only meant to be social clubs for a disenfranchised people. The problems come about when tong leaders become like the gangsters you read about in New York and Chicago. They each want the major portion of the illegal trades, and that fosters these so-called tong wars.”

  “Th-the trade in w-women?” Marjorie asked shakily. Her sobs were quieter now.

  Both Lo Sing and Jason sighed in unison. “Women and drugs,” said Jason. “If the United States Congress would repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act, the slave trade would probably die a natural—or perhaps an unnatural—death. I don’t know what to say about the drug trade. People have been taking drugs to escape from reality for centuries. I don’t suppose anything the government does or doesn’t do will wipe out the drug trade.”

  “If you had to live like some of the Chinese people live, you might want to escape, too,” Lo Sing said bitterly.

  “Too true,” Jason said upon yet another sigh.

  Marjorie lifted her head, and Jason sensed her desire to pull away from him. He didn’t want to let her go. Because he knew her, and knew that if he didn’t release her, she’d pitch a fit, he gently drew back, still gripping her shoulders tenderly. “Will you be all right, Marjorie?”