“Five seconds.” Yellow’s voice is all breathy and stunted.
“Done!”
I fiddle with her watch, giving it a half turn back. My hands are covered with blood, and my fingernails clatter against the face. I wipe my hands on the old lady’s dress before I turn my own dial.
“Here we go. We’re going to 1782. I’m sorry.” And then we project.
There are even fewer buildings than there were before. 1782. I try to remember my history. Is the Revolution still being fought? Dammit, are we going to walk into a battle? I should have been more careful.
But there’s no one around. I think it’s really early in the morning, judging by the sun. Yellow is grumbling beside me. She’s taken off her sweater and pressed it around her arm as a tourniquet, but blood still spills down her shirt and gray corduroy skirt.
“This hurts so much.” She pants.
I want to tell her it’s her own damned fault, but I don’t. “Come on.” I take hold of her shoulder and drag her across the empty plot of land, toward the Old State House. We need to find people.
Yellow stumbles, and her knee lands on the ground. I pick her up. And then in the distance I see a boy atop a horse, guiding a wagon. He can’t be more than twelve or thirteen.
“Help!” I shout at him. “Help, please!”
The boy turns his head and sees us, then turns the reins so the wagon heads toward us.
“Hold on, Yellow, he’s coming.” My head whips over to her as she stumbles. I loop my arm under her elbow and yank her up.
The boy’s face scrunches up into a confused expression the closer he gets. It’s understandable. I’m wearing an old lady’s blood-stained muumuu, and Yellow’s in a miniskirt. Not exactly colonial garb. But then he takes one look at Yellow’s arm, and his eyes grow wide. It’s clear our clothes are instantly forgotten.
“We need a doctor,” I tell him.
“Who are you?” He sounds horrified.
“Does that matter?” I snap as I guide Yellow into the back of the wagon. I jump up behind her. “Please, just take us to a doctor.”
The boy looks back at us, then snaps the reins, and the horse starts toward the harbor.
Yellow sits slumped over, cradling her arm.
“How are you?” I ask.
“This hurts,” she whispers. But I have to say, she looks a lot more coherent than I was. Of course, I did do a better job of cutting the tracker out of her arm than I did my own. I was more careful. More precise. I didn’t go digging around for the damned thing, probably nicking several arteries in the process.
A few minutes later, after we’ve passed the Meeting Hall, a very primitive form of Fanueil Hall—hard to believe that will be a tourist mecca someday—and a street that will one day house a line of bars, the boy stops the wagon in front of a shingled two-story house.
“Dr. Hatch lives here,” the boy says.
I jump from the back of the wagon. “Thank you.” As I help Yellow down, I turn back to him. “Is the doctor at home?”
The boy shrugs his shoulders. His eyes are wide, as if he’s afraid of us. He looks away, flicks the reins, and the wagon takes off.
Yellow pulls away the sweater to examine her injury. “Looks like the bleeding is slowing down.”
I peer in to look, too. She’s right. The blood’s still flowing, but it isn’t pouring out of her arm like it was before. And Yellow seems fine. Well, not fine, I guess, but she’s in no danger of passing out like I was. Although it probably wasn’t the smartest idea to use cashmere as a tourniquet. Little ivory fuzzies are now mixed in with the blood.
“Do you think we can just leave it?” she asks.
I glance at her arm again and shake my head. “The cut is too deep.” I reach up and knock on the door. “It won’t heal without stitches.”
Yellow nods.
A few moments later, the door swings open, and a very small man stands before us. He’s practically Yellow’s size. He’s wearing a white shirt with wide, puffy sleeves, brown short trousers that stop at his knees, white stockings, and black shoes with a big buckle on each of them.
“Are you Dr. Hatch?” I ask.
“I am.” He looks Yellow and me up and down. He has a distant, distrustful look on his face.
“We need your help, sir. My friend was . . . was stabbed. With a knife. In the arm. Can you stitch it for her?”
The doctor takes another look at Yellow, and his eyes fall on her supershort skirt. “No.” Then he takes a step back and slams the door in our face.
I recoil. I can’t believe that just happened. What about the Hippocratic oath? Is that just a load of crap? I look at Yellow, expecting her to mirror my shock and disgust, but she just shakes her head with a sad expression on her face.
“Dr. Hatch!” I shout as I bang on the door with my fist. “Dr. Hatch, you open this door this instant! You are doing harm by refusing to help us.”
A few seconds later the door swings open again, and Dr. Hatch is back. He’s staring at me with squinted, angry eyes that I can look right into, seeing as he’s about an inch shorter than I am.
“I know what you are,” he spits. “The both of you. I don’t help common whores. I am a God-fearing man.”
My eyes get really big as the door slams in my face again. Did I just hear that right? Whores. This asshole just called me a whore.
I whip around to look at Yellow. “It’s because of how we’re dressed,” she says.
I know, and I don’t care. I reach for the doorknob and turn it. The door swings open into a living room. It practically bangs into the staircase. There’s a fire going in a fireplace across the room. Only a few wooden chairs and a dining table stand between me and Dr. Hatch. He jumps.
“What are you doing? Get out of my house!”
“We need your help,” I repeat, enunciating every word. “I know what you think of us, but you’re mistaken. We’re not . . . what you said we are. We’re just two lost girls from . . . from Philadelphia.”
I shouldn’t have said that. Philadelphia is a long way from Boston. How the hell would two young girls have made their way from Philly to Boston alone in the middle of the Revolutionary War? I’ve always been bad at lying on the fly. Those were my lowest Practical Studies grades.
“Philadelphia?” the doctor repeats with raised eyebrows.
“Yes, our fathers are in Boston . . . doing business . . . with . . .” I’m making this ten times worse. I should just shut up. But instead I try to rack my brain to think of anyone I can remember from history class who lived in Revolutionary Boston. “With Paul Revere!”
Yellow’s face scrunches up into a disgusted expression. Paul Revere? she mouths. And then she turns to the doctor. “Please, sir, I’m a good Christian girl myself.” She reaches into the neck of her shirt and pulls out a small gold cross. It’s dwarfed by the owl pendant lying on her chest.
“What’s that?” The doctor points to the Annum watch.
“A gift from my father.” She pops open the lid to reveal the watch face. The doctor’s eyes light up.
“I’ll stitch you up, but that’s my price. I want that as payment.”
“No way,” I scoff. “Give me a needle and thread, and I’ll do it myself.” This isn’t true. I would have no idea where to start. But I could try.
“Okay,” Yellow says. “I agree to your terms.”
I grab onto Yellow’s other arm. “Are you insane?”
But Yellow just slips the necklace over her head and hands it over. The doctor takes it in his hands, examines it, and closes his fist around it. “I’ll be right back.” Then he disappears through a door into a back room.