Page 8 of Dark Embrace

“There are three on the list today,” Elinor said, jerking her head in the general direction of the surgical ward as she hefted the tray with the bowls of porridge. “Bless their poorsouls.”

“Three?” Sarah asked as they moved between the beds, shoulder to shoulder in the narrow space as they handed out breakfast. “There’s Mrs. Smith.” Her two rotten fingers were to be cut away. An appropriate treatment. Their removal would mean that Mrs. Smith would live instead of die, and since the mangled digits were the fourth and fifth on her left hand, her life would not be so very different with eight fingers rather than ten. “And Mr. Riley.” They were to take his right foot at the ankle. He’d slipped in the muddy road and a carriage had crushed the bones of his foot. There was really no choice. Not if he wanted to live. Both surgeries were to be done by Mr. Simon, the head surgeon. He was an unpleasant person but a competent surgeon. “But who is thethird?”

“Mr. Scully’s doing poorly.” Elinor shook her head. “The blister on his stump burst, and he’s been feverish the night through. Mr. Franks wants to cut away the rest of the limb atthehip.”

“The hip?” Sarah asked. Such a high amputation was fraught with danger. The patient rarely survived, and in this case, Sarah was almost certain he would not. A week ago, the first surgery had taken his limb just below the knee. It had almost killed him. A second such intervention surelywould.

“Pity they must do their grisly work there on the ward,” Elinor said, stopping with the tray to let Sarah pass the bowls to the patients on either side. “My sister was at St. Thomas. In Southwark. For the cholera. Spent a week there, and glad she was for the mercury the doctor gave her. Do you know they have a real operating theatre? Built in the old herb garret of the church. They do their surgeries there.Imagine!”

“An operating theater? I cannot imagine,” Sarah replied then asked, “How are you today, Mrs. Toombs?” as she waited for the patient to haul herself to a sitting position using the rope that was strung between two tall poles attached to the bed, one fore,oneaft.

“A mite better,” Mrs. Toombs said, smiling her toothless smile. “Yesterday, all I could do was lie here and cry. Thought I was done for for certain. Then last night Mr. Thayne came and had me drink something vile—” she made a face “—and then this morning I woke up feeling hungry. Isn’t it awonder?”

“And here I am with breakfast,” Sarah said. “A happycircumstance.”

After passing off the bowl and spoon, Sarah followed Elinor and thought about the operating theater—a grand thing, in her estimation. King’s College had no such luxury. Surgeries took place on the ward, with the surgical and apothecary apprentices gathered tight around the table, and all the other patients watching and listening as the attendants held the patient down. Sarah’s father had not been in favor of such public practice. He believed a calm mind and soul went a far way toward healing the body. He had argued that surgeries ought to be performed in a separate room, but few of his colleagues had been inclined tolisten.

“Was it Mr. Thayne you were so interested in earlier? Was it him you watched through the doorway?” Elinor asked, hertonewary.

“I watched no one,” Sarah said. Truth. She hadn’t watched him. He had already been gone and she had only glimpsed hispassage.

Elinor rested her hand on Sarah’s arm. “He’s a handsome devil, I’ll give himthat.But…”

Sarah said nothing, even when it was clear that Elinor waited for either a reaction or an invitation to continue. She offered no suchinvitation.

Finally, Elinor shook her head, curls bouncing, and sighed. “None of my affair, Isuppose.”

“There is no affair, so it can be neither none nor some,” Sarah replied, hoping that was the end of that. It was one thing to admire the breadth of Mr. Thayne’s shoulders or the timbre of his voice in her own private thoughts. Quite another to have such ponderings noticed byanother.

Continuing along the row of beds, Sarah doled out her porridge to those well enough to eat it, and made silent note of those who were not, intending to return and assess their condition once she was done handing outthemeal.

The situation was frustrating for her. She was a day nurse, in essence a domestic servant in the ward, charged with cleaning and serving meals and little more. The head nurse or the sisters under her supervision were responsible for direct patient care. On the surgical ward, the apprentices were tasked with the care of complicated cases. It ate at Sarah that she was capable of doing more, wanted to do more, but she wasprohibited.

She had been at King’s College for a month when she had braved the office of the matron to request additional duties and chores. She had worked by her father’s side—both in his surgery and at the homes of patients—for almost her entire life, and she wanted to do more than work as a char. Her father’s training should not go to waste. She knew well enough how to clean and dress a wound, lance a boil, treat a carbuncle. She wanted her knowledge to be put togooduse.

But the matron had reminded her that she was lucky to have a position at all and that her presence here was suffered only on the memory of her father’s good work and good name. Then she had sent Sarah on her way with an abrupt dismissal. Sarah was not so unwise as to have visited Matron with that requestagain.

When almost all the bowls had been distributed and only a handful of patients remained to be fed, Elinor offered, “I can finish this, Sarah. You go on to the surgical ward. They’ll want someone to serve the meal there and gather the refuse. I’ll be along when I’mdonehere.”

With a nod, Sarah took her leave and moved along the dim corridor, her black skirt swishing as shewalked.

4

Sarah had not even passedthrough the doors of the surgical ward before she heard an argument already in fullvigor.

“I say we cut just above mid-thigh,” came the voice of Mr. Simon, his tone tight with anger. “We can do it this very morning, before theothertwo.”

Pausing in the doorway, she glanced at the group who stood by Mr. Scully’s bedside. The man had been brought in more than a week ago. He had fractured his tibia and fibula in a fall, and the jagged shards had come through the skin. Open fractures were the most dangerous, the most prone to suppuration, and sure enough, within two days Mr. Scully’s limb had become infected, and he was left with only two options. Amputation, ordeath.

He had chosen the former, and Mr. Simon had sawed off the limb belowtheknee.

For some days, Mr. Scully had done relatively well, but then his eyes had become glassy, his skin flushed and hot to the touch, and red streaks had begun to crawl up what was left ofhisleg.

Sarah had seen such an outcome many times before, and she knew it boded ill for the man’ssurvival.

“And I say we must cut higher, closer to the hip,” insisted Mr. Franks. “Do you not smell it? Sickly sweet? It is not the rancid wet gangrene we deal with here, gentlemen, but the galloping gas gangrene. It will reach high into the healthy tissue and foul it as surely as I live andbreathe.”

There were murmurs of agreement from the group of gentlemen who hung on Mr. Franks’ every word. And all this was said with Mr. Scully lying in the bed, mumbling andfeverish.