Some of the boys in the class laughed. Hazel didn’t.
Dr. Straine wiped his scalpel on his jacket. “My name,” he said, “is Dr. Edmund Straine. I will be conducting the anatomical portion of your studies from here on out. Dr. Beecham, well connected and famous as he is, prefers to leave this part of the course to me. As you may have already learned, Beecham is not one to get his hands dirty.” Straine waggled one hand in the air and pantomimed putting on a glove. “And one imagines it’s difficult to fit in students when one’s social calendar is filled with teas and autograph signings. But no matter. As I said, it is finally time for you to learn anatomy.”
Thrupp scoffed. “We’ve learned plenty of anatomy already,” he said.
Dr. Straine almost smiled. “No,” he said. “You have learned theory. Dr. Beecham is an excellent physician and quite a learned scholar. But I’m afraid Beecham has never quite mastered the art of surgery the way I have. Yes, art, Mr. Thrupp—the delicate balance of understanding a body as both flesh and vehicle for a living soul, of feeling the hum of it under your knife…” Straine’s good eye took on a distant, faraway quality, but he shook his head and then returned to staring straight at the students. “It also seems Dr. Beecham has grown too accustomed to the fine living rooms of lords and gentlemen to want the stink of a corpse on his body,” he said, smirking. “All of which is to say, twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I shall conduct your lectures on anatomy. Dr. Beecham’s lectures will concern treatment and remedies. Be warned, I am not as easy to impress as my esteemed colleague. And I ensure that the details from my lectures form an integral part of the Physician’s Exam at the end of the term. So those among you with the faintest shred of hope of success: pay very close attention.”
Without any further ado, Dr. Straine brought the scalpel down on the body of the dead woman on the table and pulled the knife through from her breastbone to her navel.
The classroom always had a strong odor: of days-old blood, and iron, and the strange pickling liquids that were used in the specimen jars that lined the walls. But Straine’s first cut of his dissection unleashed a wave of something awful into the air. Several students gagged audibly, although Hazel managed to swallow the bile that rose into her mouth.
“You there,” Straine said, using his still-dripping scalpel to point at Gilbert Burgess. “Name.”
“Gilbert Burgess, sir,” he replied. He looked positively green.
“How many chambers in the heart, Gilbert Burgess?”
Burgess shook. If it had been Beecham asking him, Hazel was certain he would have known in an instant. But something about Straine, whether it was the eye patch or the cape or the stern line of his mouth, turned him into a figure of terror.
“Er—six, sir?” Burgess said, his voice nothing more than a squeaking whisper.
Straine pounded the floor of the classroom with his cane so hard it made the entire floor shake. “Who knows? Hands up, don’t be shy. You, there.” He pointed directly at Hazel, who realized to her own astonishment that her hand had gone up of its own volition.
“George,” she said softly. “George Hazelton. And it’s four, sir. The right ventricle, left ventricle, right atrium, and left atrium.”
“Correct,” he said through clenched teeth. “Continue then, Mr. Hazelton. Name the four valves of the heart.”
Hazel closed her eyes and tried to remember the diagram from the pages of Dr. Beecham’s Treatise. “The aortic valve, sir. The tricuspid valve. The pulmonary valve and—and the bicuspid valve.” She smiled, and relief flooded her body.
“Very good, Mr. Hazelton,” Straine said quietly, although his tone might have been mocking. “Please stand, and come to the front of the room.”
Hazel’s feet obeyed and she walked to the front of the classroom until she was standing close enough to Straine she could pick up the scent on him: port wine and something sour like lemons gone bad.
“Remove the heart, Mr. Hazelton.”
Hazel swallowed hard, held her breath, and obeyed, avoiding looking at the face of the woman whose body her hand had just entered. She held the heart, heavier than she expected, cold with viscous slime.
“Now,” Straine said. “Identify the valves you named.”
Hazel looked at the heart, an alien thing painted in blacks and purples. It was oddly shaped, nonsymmetrical, fatter on one end than the other, coated on one half with a thick beige plaque. It looked so entirely different from the object drawn in neat black lines in Hazel’s textbook that she couldn’t even be certain which way was the top.