Anatomy: A Love Story(64)

“I—I’m sorry,” Burgess said, pale eyebrows knotting in confusion. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure. But—they said that this was a place for treatment?” He looked beyond Hazel, assuming a male doctor was somewhere behind her. From one of the cots in the sunroom came a low moan.

“Gilbert Burgess,” Hazel said again. “You don’t recognize me. Of course.” She pulled her hair up at the nape of her neck. “George Hazleton, at your service.”

And then—whether it was shock or his fever or both—Burgess fainted.



* * *



“I JUST CAN’T BELIEVE IT,” HE SAID WHEN HE finally woke up in one of the cots in the castle. The examination hadn’t taken long—he had a high fever and fresh sores forming all over his body. It was the Roman fever. Iona had brought him a bowl of oatmeal with jam. He stirred it absentmindedly, unable to bring himself to eat. “A girl, the whole time. Pardon me, a lady. And no one ever knew. God, I would kill to see the look on Thrupp’s face about now.”

“Well, someone knew. Dr. Straine recognized me, and had me banned from lectures.”

“We wondered where you went when you disappeared. A few of the boys thought you got sick, or rushed into a marriage or something like that. Thrupp tried to convince us that you were on the run from gambling debts, but I know that was a load of bollocks.”

“How are things going there?” Hazel said, trying to keep her voice casual. “At the lectures, I mean. What sort of things have you been learning?”

Burgess looked sheepish and stared into his bowl of oatmeal, which had turned a pastel pink from the raspberry jam. “I dropped out,” he admitted. “Few weeks back. I could blame it on the sickness, but really I just was in over my head. My family could barely afford the tuition fees as it was—we borrowed from every relative with half a pulse—and it would have been more than I could bear if I failed the examination after all that.”

“So you dropped out? Burgess, no!”

Burgess brushed her off. “Nah, it’s for the best. I woulda made a lousy surgeon. Not like you—you! You were brilliant. I can’t believe they kicked you out of lecture just because you wear a skirt. The nerve of those men, really. Straine, I swear, I wanted to throttle him half the time. Gives me the creeps, the way he just stands there, you know? With that look in his eye?” Burgess shivered.

“Well, I might still be a surgeon yet,” Hazel said with a small smile. “Or rather, there’s a chance.” She explained the arrangement she had made with Dr. Beecham, how she would still be allowed to sit for the Physician’s Examination to see if she would pass. Success would mean an apprenticeship at the hospital under Dr. Beecham himself and women permitted in the lecture from that point on.

Burgess’s spirits lifted as she told him. “That’s marvelous, Hazel, it really is! You have to pass. Course you will, you’re genius at this stuff.”

“Well, you’re engaged, aren’t you?” Jack said from the corner. Hazel hadn’t even noticed him sitting there, reading from one of her paperback books. “Even if you pass, is your new husband going to let you do anything with it at all?”

“I don’t think that will be his decision to make,” Hazel said stiffly.

“I bet he’s going to think it is,” Jack said with ice in his voice.

“Uh, belated congratulations!” Burgess said, breaking the tension. “On your engagement! Who’s the lucky man?”

“Thank you. And he’s the future Viscount Almont, actually.”

Burgess’s eyes widened. “Hazel, that’s—oh, buttons! I can’t be calling you Hazel! Lady Sinnett, I mean. Lady Almont, rather.”

“Hazel is fine,” she said. “I’ve been engaged to him practically since birth. He just wanted to make things more official, is all. We won’t even be wed for another year, so it’s not as though my life has changed in the meantime in any practical way. The Physician’s Examination is a far more pressing concern than my silly marriage.”

Jack exhaled hard, snapped the book onto the table, and left the room. Hazel ignored him and turned to face Burgess fully. “Please tell me you remember something Dr. Beecham said about lymphatic system structure, because I am completely hopeless with it.”

From that day on, Burgess was her personal tutor and champion. Whenever Hazel finished examining whichever new patients arrived to the laboratory and when she completed her rounds of the patients already in the cots inside Hawthornden Castle, she went to Burgess’s bedside, and he helped Hazel study. Burgess was a brilliant quizzer, with a knack for asking exactly the question Hazel was hoping she could slip away with not quite knowing.

By the time the letter from Dr. Beecham arrived with Charles, Hazel was so distracted with naming all the bones of the inner ear for Burgess that she scarcely registered what she was holding in her hands until the parchment was open in front of her.

Dear Miss Sinnett,

What an unexpected pleasure to hear from you. I do hope you recall our wager and that your studies are progressing in time for the Physican’s Examination. I must confess a profound hope that you succeed.

Unfortunately, I have no more positive tidings to deliver in this letter. Inoculation was tried in Edinburgh back during the Roman fever’s first wave with no positive effects. On the contrary, the few patients who suffered its experimentation succumbed to the illness itself.