Strange and gruesome, all of it. Jane drew back and made to turn, then noticed a newer addition, free from dust. It was a large glass jar, filled with a lump of something floating in pale golden liquid, somewhat cloudy, sediment already accreting at the bottom.
It took her a moment, but then she recognized the mass. It was the warped tissue Dr. Lawrence had excised from Mr. Renton’s abdomen yesterday morning.
The specimen. Was this what Dr. Nizamiev had wanted to see? She frowned but could not take her eyes away from it, even as she remembered it lying, inert, on the operating table, even as she remembered that Mr. Renton’s lifeless body still lay below her.
Would he get rid of it now that his patient was dead? Why keep it in his study? But even as she questioned, she began to suspect the answer.
It was fascinating.
She traced the curves of it, and, this close to it now and with less panic clouding her mind, she could see that it did disappear into itself, the way she had perceived the day before. It twisted not in the way of rope or sausage, nor was it knotted like string. She could not make sense of its exterior and interior, its top or bottom. It made her head ache.
Footsteps on the stairs. She turned to face the door just as Dr. Lawrence entered, still looking worn, drawn. He regarded her silently, then looked behind her to the cabinet.
“What do you think of it all?” he asked. “I confess, I forgot you would see my collection when I recommended you come up here.”
“What is it for?” Jane asked, caught between disgust and interest.
He came to her side and poured himself his own small glass of whiskey, then leaned back against his desk, regarding the shelves filled with stones and wood and jars. “My own education. I collect curiosities,” he said. “I have for many years. Models or samples of medical oddities, strange natural phenomena, that sort of thing.”
“Including that,” she said, nodding to the jar. “Mr. Renton’s…”
“His large bowel, yes,” Dr. Lawrence said.
“Do you intend to keep it?” she asked. “After…？”
“Yes. I’ve never seen anything like it. I may never again. Does that trouble you?”
After some consideration, she said, “No, I don’t think so.” She did still step away from it, and pressed a hand to her eyes. It smelled faintly of death, though she had not touched the foul seepage.
She shuddered and thought again of Renton’s blood on her hands the day before. Her hands inside the wound.
The wound that had been fouled. She had scrubbed her hands before she’d touched it, but she might have done it wrong.
She quailed at the thought. Another mistake. Another misstep that rendered her unfit for … whatever this was.
“What is it, Jane?” Dr. Lawrence murmured, seeing her distress.
“You … blamed yourself down there, for Mr. Renton’s death,” she said, not looking at him. “Do I not share equally in it? I am inexperienced. I distracted you. I—”
“No,” Dr. Lawrence said fervently, setting aside his glass and taking her free hand in his, drawing her farther away from the cabinet. “Don’t think like that, Miss Shoringfield. Jane. Please promise me you won’t think like that, not ever.”
“Dr. Lawrence,” she murmured, stunned by the warmth of his skin and the passion flashing in his eyes.
“Jane, if the fault lies in anybody, it lies in me. I am the one with training and, more than that, I was the one in charge of the operating room. You cannot blame yourself. That shame is a path you cannot come back from, once you start down it,” he said firmly. “I am a doctor; I am built to carry that load. I have sworn to do so. You were simply there, willing to help. You did all you could, and that is all anybody could ask of you.”
“And so did you.”
That stopped him, his jaw working. “Perhaps,” he said at last. “But I’m the one who can bear it, not you. I can’t ask that of you, not even if we are engaged.”
Jane stopped breathing. Her thoughts raced, unable to maintain her guilt, her fear, her confusion all at once. “Engaged,” she repeated, voice barely more than a breath. Her head was full of buzzing, too many emotions in too short a time. She wanted to flee into the night, but also wanted to be here, only here, and for him to look at her again. Instead, he withdrew and straightened his cuffs.
“That is,” he said, “even if you are my potential wife. Forgive me.”
“Dr. Lawrence,” she said.
“I find my thoughts are quite out of order today,” he continued. He was blushing, she realized, beneath his worn pallor. “I should not have asked you to stay; we have hardly agreed to—”