And yet where she analyzed impartial numbers, he cared for the most human of concerns. He was likely with Mrs. Renton even now, and Jane pictured him holding the woman’s hands lightly, telling her all that would need to be done to care for her suddenly incapacitated husband.
Husband.
She had thought of Mr. Renton as a body just now, so easily, and as meat in the heat of the surgery.
What sort of monstrous woman was she? Perhaps she was not as like Dr. Lawrence as she thought, or as she would need to be to remain here. That remove had kept her on her feet through the surgery, had helped save him, but guilt rocked her. He wasn’t a body. He was a man. He was a living, breathing, thinking man.
She heard footsteps again, and the creak of the office door, but didn’t look away from the window where she gazed unseeing onto the street. It was the clink of a saucer and cup that made her, at last, turn.
Dr. Lawrence had placed a cup of tea on the small side table by her elbow.
“When I said there might be blood, I didn’t expect for today to be quite this exciting,” he said, after a minute.
“But it is part of a doctor’s life.” She made herself pick up the cup. The porcelain rattled against the saucer.
“Sometimes. Not all the time. Is that too much?”
Too much? Yes, of course. And the match was hardly settled. All she had to do was say, Yes, it was too much. I have reconsidered. Or perhaps she should echo his words from the night before: It would not be appropriate for me to marry you.
But she found she couldn’t say, either. She didn’t know what to say, but she didn’t want him to stop talking.
“I just need time to think,” she managed at last.
When he had looked upon her in fear the night before, yet still yielded to her demands, what had he felt? She had run roughshod over his logic and desires with her own. She should have accepted the first no, for both of their sakes.
He was still looking at her, though, and when she glanced up, she found his expression had gentled. There was no impatience there, no judgment at her weakness, no relief in finding her unable, perhaps, to meet his requirements.
“And what exactly are you thinking of?” he asked.
You. She turned away, searching for a better answer. She’d never been talented at talking past an issue. “The patient,” she settled on. It was closest to the truth, not really a lie at all. “Who else?”
“Who else, indeed,” he said, and crossed the remaining space between them, settling down on the footrest. The apron had spared the majority of his clothing, but there was drying blood spattered across his sleeves. It was nothing compared to what she must look like.
She was just about to beg off, to send him back to his patient where he belonged, when he said, “You were incredible in there.” It stopped her cold. He flushed, rubbed at the back of his neck. “For somebody with no experience, no training, you were able to keep your wits about you. To do what had to be done.”
What could she say to that? She fumbled for some matching compliment. “And you were a virtuoso with a needle,” she said, thinking of how he had handled the flesh. And there it was again, the immediate jump to meat instead of man. She winced.
“Miss Shoringfield?”
“I … that is, I think I was only able to help because I stopped seeing him as a person.”
She watched him for horror. It didn’t come.
“Is that not monstrous?” she pressed.
He offered a gentle, almost patronizing smile. “Hardly. I was the same, in my first year of medical school. It made bearing their pain easier, made inflicting the pain that was needed to save them easier. Many doctors never get past that, but many more grow beyond it. It becomes a tool, rather than a retreat. You recognize what happened—that is a good first step.”
He was being too kind to her. They were not made of the same stuff. She frowned down at her tea.
“I’ve sent for that specialist,” he said. “She may be able to help Mr. Renton’s recovery. No matter what, her work will benefit from our efforts. You should be proud of yourself, Miss Shoringfield.”
His words touched her with a surgeon’s precision, and she did feel pride. She shivered with momentary relief, and in that breath of weakness, she said, “I believe you can call me Jane, now. If you like.”
“I would like to.”
Her heartbeat syncopated. “His recovery,” she said, hurriedly returning to sobering ground, away from the strange intimacy that the heat of the surgery seemed to have created between them. “What will it entail?”