The Essex Serpent(40)
Luke saw the blows land, and that his prey was weak; laying a hand on her shoulder he said: ‘What I mean is – he will die, unless you let me help.’
There was a moment of struggling against the truth, then she began to cry. In a quiet voice that carried through the weeping with more authority than Spencer had ever seen him muster, Luke said, ‘You are his mother: you brought him into the world, and you can keep him in it. Will you let me operate? I …’ – his belief in the possibility of success did battle with his honesty, and reached an uneasy truce – ‘I am very good – I’m the best, and I’ll do it without payment. It’s not been done before and they’ll tell you it can’t be done, but for everything there’s a first time and it’s the time that matters most. You want me to promise, I know, and I can’t, but can you trust me, at least?’
Outside the door there was a brief commotion. Spencer suspected that Rollings had alerted various administrative authorities, and leaned against the door with his arms folded. He caught the nurse’s eye, and each conveyed silently Oh we are sailing very close to the wind. The commotion subsided.
The woman said, between gasps, ‘What will you do to him?’
‘Really, it’s not so bad,’ said Luke. ‘His heart is protected by a kind of bag, like an infant in the womb. The cut is there – I have seen it – I could show you? – yes, perhaps you’d rather not. The cut is there, no longer than your little finger. I’ll stitch it up, and the bleeding will stop, and he will – he might – recover. If we do nothing …’ He spread out his hands in a gesture of dismay.
‘Will it hurt?’
‘He will know nothing about it at all.’
She began to gather herself piece by piece, beginning at her feet, which she set a little further apart on the floor, and ending with her hair, which she brushed away from her face as if to show off her newly acquired resolve. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Do what you like. I’m going to go home now.’ She did not look at her son, only grasped his foot as she passed the bed. Spencer went out with her, to do as he always did: soothe, and placate, and with the authority conferred by wealth and status protect his friend from the consequences of his actions.
Garrett meanwhile stooped over the bed and said briskly, ‘In a little while you’ll have a good deep sleep – are you tired? I think you are.’ Then he took the man’s hand, feeling foolish, and saying, ‘I am Luke Garrett; I hope you’ll remember my name when you wake.’
‘One rook is a crow,’ said Edward Burton, ‘but two crows are rooks.’
‘Confusion’s only to be expected,’ said Garrett, and replaced the man’s wrist on the white sheet. He turned to Sister Fry, and said, ‘Are you able to attend?’ though it was merely politeness, since it was inconceivable that she would not. She nodded, and in that silent response conveyed such quiet confidence in Garrett’s skill that his pulse – not yet settled since running there – began to slow.
When he and Spencer entered the operating theatre, hands raw from scrubbing, the porters had departed. Edward Burton lay high on the bed, eyes fixed on Sister Fry, who’d changed into a fresh uniform and was withdrawing with practised monotony a series of bottles and instruments which she laid out on steel trays.
Spencer would’ve liked to explain to the patient what was to come next – that the chloroform worked slowly and sickly, and that he should not fight the mask, but would wake (would he wake?) in due course, throat aching from the tube through which the ether passed. But Garrett required silence, and both Spencer and the nurse had come to anticipate what he required next by little more than nods and nudges, and how directed were the black looks he gave above the white mask.
The patient immobile, the rubber tube tugging at his lip to give the impression of a sneer, Garrett removed the plaster and surveyed the wound. The tension of the skin had caused it to open in the shape of a blind eye. Burton had so little fat on him that the grey-white bone of the rib was visible beneath the severed skin and muscle. The opening was insufficient, and having first washed the flesh in iodine Garret took his knife and made it larger by an inch in each direction. With Spencer and Fry attending, to suck and swab and keep clear his view, Garrett saw it would be necessary first to remove a section of the rib that covered the wounded heart. With a fine bone-saw (he’d used it once to amputate a girl’s crushed toe, despite her protestations that she couldn’t possibly dance in sandals if she was down to just the four) he cut the rib to four inches shorter than creation intended, and put it in a pan held nearby. Then with steel retractors that would not have looked out of place in the hands of a railway engineer he opened up a cavity and peered within. We’re so tightly packed, thought Spencer, marvelling as always at how bright and beautiful it was. The marbling of red and purplish-blue, and the scant deposits of yellow fat: they were not the colours of nature. Once or twice the muscles all around the opening flexed slowly, like a mouth arrested in a yawn.
And then there was the heart, thrumming in its slick case, the damage seeming so slight. Garrett had promised that the cut was to the case alone and had gone no further, and believed himself truthful, and now with a probing finger saw that he was. The chambers and valves were undamaged: he gave a little cry of relief.
Spencer watched as Luke slipped in his hand – the wrist angled a little, the fingers curved – to cup the heart where he could, to feel it, because (he’d always said, even with the dead ones) it was the most intimate thing, and sensual, and he saw by touch as much as by sight. With his left hand he steadied the heart, and with his right he took from Fry the curved needle threaded with a catgut ligature so fine it would have been fit for wedding silk.