Anatomy: A Love Story(73)

“Bernard, I can explain it all later, I swear. Can I bring him to Almont House? He was stabbed, I’m afraid he’s going to die.”

Bernard hesitated for just a moment. “Yes, of course. Here, let me help you.”

The two of them together managed to wheel Jack down Lothian Road, past Saint Cuthbert quicker than Hazel would have managed on her own. “Who’s he?” Jack croaked as they turned onto Princes Street, twisting his neck to stare blankly at Bernard.

“Shhhh. Hush now,” Hazel said. “We’re almost there.”

To his credit, each time Bernard looked at Hazel with his mouth agape, as if he were about to ask one of the many questions no doubt on his mind, he shook his head slightly and returned his gaze straight ahead until the pair of them reached the servants’ entrance of Almont House.

“There’ll be a bedroom on the second floor that’s empty,” Bernard said. Two footmen came out to assist when they saw the group approaching, and helped Hazel gently lift Jack up the staircase in the servants’ corridor to a small room with a bare cot. Though there was a minuscule window above the bed, the room was still deep in shadow. “Could we get a candle, please? And a basin of water? And linen cloth if you have it?” Hazel asked.

Once Jack was lying down, Hazel was able to better see the extent of his injury, the damage that Beecham’s knife had done to his chest. Gingerly, she started to peel away Jack’s shirt, though some of the cloth was stuck, crusted to the dried blood. The wound was deeper than she had thought; the flesh around it was already hot and bright pink, and the stab wound, several inches long, burbled with fresh purple blood. Bernard winced and retched, then left the room, and Hazel got to work.

Once Jack’s skin was cleaned, Hazel could finally exhale, release the breath it felt like she had been holding tight in her chest for hours. The wound was deep, yes, but it also hadn’t hit any vital organs, and it being such a clean incision, Hazel was able to stitch it up neatly and keep the skin together to prevent infection.

Sometime in the afternoon, Jeanette entered the room, her hair tucked under a maid’s bonnet, with a stack of clean linen clothes and flint to start the fireplace. “When Hamish—that’s the footman, I mean—said we had a lady doctor come in, I figured it had to be you, miss.” Her eyes landed on Jack’s stomach. “That’s Jack,” she said, her face blank as a confused child’s. “That’s Jack there. It’s Jack.”

Hazel nodded.

“Jack,” she repeated numbly, seemingly unable to accept it. She took a step forward and handed Hazel the linens. “Jack wouldn’t get hurt. Jack never gets hurt. Jack wouldn’t die.”

“I don’t think he’s going to die, Jeanette,” Hazel said. “I think he’s going to be all right.”

At that, Jeanette gave a strange barking laugh. “Well, course he is! He has a doctor like you.”

Hazel smiled weakly. “I’m not really a doctor yet, Jeanette.”

“More of a doctor than plenty of those frauds at the almshouse,” Jeanette whispered, newly energized and tending to the fire. “’T’least you listened to me. Anyone else would have said that I was mad.”

Once the fire crackled in the grate, the two women sat vigil over Jack for a short while until Jeanette stood. “I’ll bring up some dinner for you. Ye must be famished.”

Hazel hadn’t thought about food all day. She had no idea how long she had been in the room with Jack, only that the small square window, formerly in sunlight, now showed dusk. Jack was sleeping, but his breathing was steady and even. His eyes flickered and Hazel could make out the red blood vessels that traced their way beneath his eyelids. She ran a finger along his cheek, the pale skin darkened by the shadow of his unshaven stubble.

The moment was so quiet and so intimate that Bernard, standing in the doorway, glanced at his feet in discomfort. Instead he exited, and returned a few seconds later with a brief rap of his knuckles on the cracked door.

“I saw a maidservant about to come up with your dinner, so I figured I would bring it myself,” Bernard said, depositing a plate of roasted chicken on the small desk pressed against the hall. He sat down in the only other chair in the room. “I hope I’m not disturbing anything, my love?”

“Of course not,” she said, looking away.

“Good. And he’s— How is he doing?”

“He’s going to be fine,” Hazel said, looking down at Jack’s face. Had he always been that beautiful? Had his lips always curved in a Cupid’s bow that way, so that a fingertip would fit perfectly in its arc? Had his ears always been so soft and downy, curled like shells? Had his hair always been so thick and curled? His chest, she could see even through the bandages, was broad but concave at the collarbone. Hazel wanted to rest her head against it forever.

“I suppose now you might be able to tell me what the hell is going on,” Bernard said, trying to make his voice sound friendly.

Hazel described it all, the bodies that she had found missing limbs and organs, and then, finally, what she had seen when she sneaked into the Anatomists’ Society. “They’re taking poor men and women from the streets and selling their bodies, piece by piece. He uses this—this ethereum to cause them to be unconscious while he operates, and then he— Beecham had something else, some vial of something that he used during the surgery to make the parts take. I don’t know how, exactly, I don’t know what it is, but Jack—I mean, this boy and I barely escaped with our lives.”