Anatomy: A Love Story(14)

“Think he’s scared of blood on his hands?” whispered the other man back.

Whatever the reason, Beecham’s gloves remained on even as he selected a knife from the tray, a long blade with a serrated edge, with a handle of polished silver. Beecham smiled at it, taking his time to examine the way the firelight almost caused it to glow before placing it gently back onto the tray. It seemed as though he forgot there was a theater full of men watching his every move. Hazel was so taken by watching him that it was a few minutes before she realized there was a patient behind him, a middle-aged man lying on a table with his leg covered by a sheet.

Finally, Beecham spoke. “I promised you something extraordinary, gentlemen, and something extraordinary is what I will provide. My grandfather founded this society to be a place where distinguished men of science come together to share their works and discoveries. Today, I shall bring Edinburgh into the nineteenth century.” As he spoke, he turned his attention to the patient on the table and, with a flourish, whipped off the sheet covering his leg.

The audience collectively recoiled. Hazel, too, drew a sharp breath, which fortunately no one seemed to hear. The man’s leg was a nightmarish thing, swollen and greenish in some parts, reddish in others, twice the thickness of a normal leg and lined with bulging purple veins.

Dr. Beecham selected another weapon from his assistant’s tray: a saw. He held it aloft, almost playfully, and now the patient winced. “Now, now, Mr. Butcher. Now is not the time to be frightened.”

Mr. Butcher was not capable of taking that advice. He wriggled like a worm on a hook, kicking with his good leg and thumping with his bad leg and shaking his head from side to side. Beecham dropped the hand holding his knife and sighed. “Gentlemen, if you would.”

From the shadows came two men, one with a tall top hat and the other with a thick red mustache. They stood on either side of the patient’s table and each put a hand on one of Mr. Butcher’s shoulders.

“I assured Mr. Butcher before he came in today that our procedure would be quite painless, but he doesn’t appear to believe me!” Beecham said. The gentlemen in the audience chuckled. “But I would never lie. Gentlemen!”

From within his jacket, Beecham pulled a small bottle of milky bluish liquid. The bottle was no taller than a playing card. Beecham held it high above his head so everyone in the crowd could see.

“In this bottle,” he said, “is the future of surgery. A chemical compound of my own devising. It’s true, what my grandfather wrote in his book, that sometimes a physician must act as apothecary, and in so doing, I have discovered something extraordinary. It is—gentlemen, if you’ll forgive me—nothing short of a miracle.” There were murmurs of disapproval and interest, a few canes banging on the steps, but Dr. Beecham continued: “I have single-handedly devised the secret that will render all surgery painless.

This time, even Hazel could not help laughing. Dr. Beecham smiled slightly and eyed the crowd. “Soon enough, my friends, soon enough. But before we begin, I think I should demonstrate one more of my inventions.” He tilted his head, and then came a pop and a hiss and the sound of tinkling glass, and the stage erupted in blinding white light.

Hazel lifted her sleeve to shield her eyes. Beecham was the only one who didn’t wince at the sudden brightness. The stage was circled with gas lamps Hazel hadn’t seen in the darkness, all connected by tubes, now lit brighter than Hazel had ever seen indoors. “The future,” Beecham said, “is gas lamps. With a few modifications, I’ve found that they make what we undertake in the surgical hall far easier.”

The men applauded. Beecham nodded slightly, bowing to their praise. And then, once the crowd had calmed, he looked at the bottle in his hand. The blue-violet fluid inside seemed to be swirling. Now that the room was lit, Hazel saw its color properly, deep sapphire laced with silver. The gas lamps were so bright that neither Beecham nor the bottle seemed to have a shadow.

Beecham lifted his vial higher, and then uncorked it. For a moment, Hazel smelled a strange sweetness, like wildflowers and rot. Then, from another coat pocket, the doctor pulled a white handkerchief, embroidered with the initials W. B. He held the handkerchief aloft like a magician before plunging it into the blue bottle. When he withdrew the handkerchief, Hazel got another momentary whiff of the wildflower-rot smell. There was another scent uncorked in the vial, too, something specific, but Hazel couldn’t identify it.

Dr. Beecham approached the terrified patient, holding the handkerchief. Though the two stocky men held him down firmly, the patient continued to wriggle as much as he was able. Beecham smiled, but he didn’t show his teeth.

He turned to the audience. “Gentlemen, I give you ethereum. Or, what I have taken to calling in the laboratory ‘the Scotsman’s dodge.’” There were murmurs of confusion and interest in the stands. A few of the men stomped their feet, which caused a spider to fall into Hazel’s hair.

While the patient struggled, Dr. Beecham pressed the handkerchief firmly against his face, muffling his cries. The struggling stopped. The men in the stands were silent. Beecham gracefully plucked the bone saw from his assistant’s tray and began his work sawing at the disfigured leg.

It took fewer than five strokes back and forth and less than a minute before the leg fell with a sickeningly wet thud into the sawdust below. Beecham’s face never changed, even as a spattering of blood painted a bright red line from his forehead to his upper lip. He exchanged his saw for a long metal instrument with a hook on its end, and then pulled at a few of the still-bleeding veins inside what remained of the patient’s leg. He tied each of them into a neat square knot, and then nodded at another assistant, who began to wrap the bleeding stump in linen.