She’d half expected it to be gone, swept away into a bucket of bloody rags and torn clothing to be discarded, but it sat, the blood on it congealing but otherwise just the same as when Dr. Lawrence had removed it. It had not deflated in any way, and even now it gave no sign of death. She leaned forward, frowning, refusing to blink. If she didn’t blink, she was certain she would see it pulse with the same slow beating of his heart.
“Miss Shoringfield,” Mr. Lowell said from the doorway.
She tore her gaze away. “Yes?”
“I’m about to move Mr. Renton here to the recovery room,” he said.
“Can I help?”
“No, no. But before I move him, do you need anything? Tea? Brandy?”
“Oh, no,” she said, clasping her trembling hands together and lacing her fingers to still the shaking. “I, ah, I’ll just move to the office, then. Oh—our maid, Ekaterina, she might be by soon. You can send her for my clothing. I expect you’re more needed here than running errands.”
“It’s no trouble, but I’ll look for her. Maybe take an apron to sit on, though,” he said, and with a nod of his head, stepped past her and over to the table. She colored, took one of the aprons she should have donned earlier, and hurried out, down the hall and into the office. Dr. Lawrence was nowhere to be seen, though she could hear his voice, far off, too far to make out the words. Closing the door behind her, she looked around.
Could she really live here? Work here? Could she handle another Mr. Renton, whether she was in the bloody theater with him, or across the hall, listening to his screams and speaking with his relatives?
And the way she had felt when Dr. Lawrence had taken her hand—thinking of it now left her adrift. Confused.
She laid the apron out on the chair by the window, but stopped just short of sitting when she heard footsteps. Sound traveled in the surgery, including voices, even those hushed so that she had to strain to hear them.
It was Mr. Lowell and Dr. Lawrence.
“She said she found him in a circle of chalk and salt,” Mr. Lowell said. “Should we call the magistrate?”
Chalk and salt? All thoughts of touches and blood were pushed away. She took a few steps toward the door, the better to hear. Surely chalk and salt weren’t sufficient signs of a crime to send for the local judiciary.
But Dr. Lawrence did not immediately respond, and Jane’s certainty wavered. It rocked entirely when he said, so quietly she could barely hear him, “Superstitions do not cause medical malformations, Mr. Lowell. But they do cause madness, occasionally. Accidental poisonings, certainly.”
“And mutilations?” Mr. Lowell pressed. “Could it be some kind of—ritual?”
Jane frowned. Great Breltain had cast off its church over a decade ago, though of course not everybody had stopped believing. Some of Mr. Cunningham’s clients even clung to practices older than religion, small offerings left to ensure a better harvest, love potions, and the like. But ritual mutilations? She had never heard of such a thing.
No. No, it had to be the fruit of madness only. If anybody were to know the reality of such dangers, it would be the magistrate.
“He cut his own stomach open, sir,” Mr. Lowell pressed.
Dr. Lawrence’s response came quicker this time, his voice firm and growing louder. “There is no way the larger insult to his descending colon was done by his hand. I may not be able to explain what caused it, but such a malformation would have been excruciating enough to drive any man into questionable decisions. I know that is uncomfortable, Mr. Lowell, but you must believe me. He was simply unlucky.”
It was Mr. Lowell’s turn to fall silent. Dr. Lawrence’s words must have wrapped around him in much the same way they had around Jane, the certainty in them bolstering her and dispelling her unease. Superstitions could cut both ways, after all; they could cause people to do irrational things, or to assign irrational meaning where there was none.
“Aye, Doctor,” Mr. Lowell said at last. “Hot or cold, for Mr. Renton?”
“Hot. Build up the fire until he sweats, then bank it.”
Their voices receded, and she sat at last.
He was a good doctor. She had not known it for sure when she proposed to him, had never imagined him the luminary she had seen in the operating theater, but it soothed her soul to know it now.
No; that was a lie. It didn’t soothe her, it sparked something in her that refused to die down or be contained.
If Mr. Renton had lived in any other town, or if Dr. Lawrence had never come to Larrenton, she suspected he would have died. But in Dr. Lawrence’s care, he had survived. She couldn’t forget his screaming, but she also couldn’t forget how deftly Dr. Lawrence’s hands had moved, how his directions had steadied her, how they had worked in concert to set the body to order. She had never before seen the appeal of a physician’s task, but now it made sense to her. They shared the same goals, the same lens through which they viewed the world. She sorted numbers; he sorted humors.