Chapter 20
N othing Gabriel had ever been through had felt like this, real and yet not real. A waking nightmare. Nothing had ever made him afraid like this. Staring down at his wife, he wanted to howl with anguish and rage.
Pandora’s face was strained and white, her lips blue-tinged. Blood loss had weakened her severely. She was propped in his lap with her legs extended across the carriage seat. Although she was weighted with coats and lap blankets, she shivered continuously.
Tucking the coats around her more snugly, he checked the bandage he’d fashioned with a pad of clean handkerchiefs.
He’d bound it with neckties that went around her arm, crossed over the joint of her neck and shoulder and wrapped beneath her opposite arm.
His mind kept returning to the moment when she’d collapsed in his arms, blood welling from the incised wound.
It had happened within seconds. He’d looked up to make certain Pandora had crossed the short distance to the carriage.
Instead, he’d seen Dragon fighting his way through the crowd and running full-bore toward the corner of the building, where Pandora was standing with an unfamiliar woman.
The woman had been pulling something from her sleeve, and he’d seen the telltale shake of her arm as she flipped open a folding knife.
The short blade had flashed in the reflected theater lights as she’d raised it.
Gabriel had reached Pandora just a second after Dragon, but by that point the knife blade had already driven downward.
“Wouldn’t it be strange if I died from this?
” Pandora chattered, trembling against his chest. “Our grandchildren wouldn’t be at all impressed.
I’d rather have been stabbed while doing something heroic.
Rescuing someone. Maybe you could tell them.
.. oh, but... I s’pose we wouldn’t have grandchildren if I died, would we? ”
“You’re not going to die,” Gabriel said shortly.
“I still haven’t found a printer,” Pandora fretted.
“What?” he asked, thinking she was delirious.
“This might delay my production schedule. My board game. Christmas.”
Winterborne, who was sitting with Helen in the opposite seat, interrupted gently. “There’s still time for that, bychan . Don’t worry about your game.”
Pandora relaxed and subsided, her fist closing in a fold of Gabriel’s shirt like a baby’s.
Winterborne glanced at Gabriel, seeming to want to ask something.
On the pretext of smoothing Pandora’s hair, Gabriel settled his palm gently over her good ear, and gave the other man a questioning glance.
“Was the blood spurting?” Winterborne asked softly. “As if in time to a heartbeat?”
Gabriel shook his head.
Winterborne relaxed only marginally, rubbing the lower half of his jaw.
Removing the hand from Pandora’s ear, Gabriel continued to stroke her hair, and saw that her eyes had closed. He propped her up slightly higher. “Darling, don’t go to sleep.”
“I’m cold,” she said plaintively. “And my shoulder hurts, and Helen’s carriage is lumpy.” She made a pained sound as the vehicle turned a corner and jolted.
“We’ve just turned onto Cork Street,” he said, kissing her cool, damp forehead. “I’m going to carry you inside, and they’ll give you some morphine.”
The carriage stopped. As Gabriel lifted Pandora with care and brought her into the building, she felt terrifyingly light in his arms, as if her bones were hollow like a bird’s.
Her head rested on his shoulder, rolling slightly as he walked.
He wanted to pour his own strength into her, fill her veins with his blood.
He wanted to beg, bribe, threaten, hurt someone.
The interior of the building had recently been renovated, with a well-ventilated and brightly lit entrance.
They went through a set of self-closing doors to a large block of rooms identified with neatly lettered signs, including an infirmary, a dispensary, administrative offices, consulting and examination rooms, and an operating room at the end of a long corridor.
Gabriel had already been aware that Winterborne employed two full-time physicians for the benefit of the hundreds of men and women who worked for him.
However, the best doctors usually attended upper-class patients, whereas the middle and working class had to make do with practitioners of lesser talent.
Gabriel had vaguely envisioned a set of shabby offices and a mediocre surgery, occupied by a pair of indifferent physicians.
He should have known that Winterborne would have spared no expense in building an advanced medical facility.
They were met in the surgery lobby by a middle- aged physician with a shock of white hair, a broad brow, penetrating eyes, and a handsomely craggy face. He looked exactly how a surgeon should look, capable and dignified, with decades’ worth of knowledge earned by vast experience.
“St. Vincent,” Winterborne said, “this is Doctor Havelock.”
A slender brown-haired nurse strode briskly into the lobby area, waving away Winterborne’s attempt at introductions.
She was dressed in a divided skirt and wore the same kind of white linen surgeon’s gown and cap as Havelock.
Her face was young and clean-scrubbed, her green eyes sharp and assessing.
“My lord,” she said to Gabriel without preamble, “please bring Lady St. Vincent this way.”
He followed her into an examination room, which was brilliantly lit with surgical lamps and reflectors.
It was also immaculately clean, the walls lined with glass plates, the floor paved with glazed tiles and scored with gutters to divert liquid.
Chemicals scented the air: carbolic acid, distilled alcohol, and a hint of benzene.
Gabriel’s gaze swept across an assortment of metal vessels and apparatus for steam sterilizing, tables bearing washbasins and trays of instruments, and a stoneware sink.
“My wife is in pain,” he said curtly, glancing over his shoulder and wondering why the doctor hadn’t accompanied them.
“I’ve already prepared a hypodermic of morphine,” the nurse replied. “Has she eaten during the past four hours?”
“No.”
“Excellent. Lay her gently on the table, please. ”
Her voice was clear and decisive. It grated a bit, her authoritative manner, the surgeon’s cap, the way she seemed to be posturing as a doctor.
Although Pandora had compressed her lips tightly, a whimper broke from her as Gabriel settled her onto the leather table.
It had been constructed with moveable framework, and was positioned to elevate the upper body slightly.
The nurse whisked away the coat draped over Pandora’s blood-soaked white lace bodice and covered her with a flannel blanket.
“Oh, hello,” Pandora said faintly, drawing in quick, reedy breaths and looking up at the woman with dull, pain-hazed eyes.
Smiling briefly, the nurse took up Pandora’s wrist and checked her pulse. “When I invited you to tour the new surgery,” she murmured, “I didn’t necessarily mean as a patient.”
Pandora’s dry lips quirked as the woman noted the dilation of her eyes. “You’ll have to patch me up,” she said.
“I certainly will.”
“You know each other?” Gabriel asked, puzzled.
“Indeed, my lord. I’m a friend of the family.” The nurse picked up a contraption with an earplate, a flexible silk-covered tube, and a trumpet-shaped wooden piece. Lifting one end to her ear, she applied the other end to various places on Pandora’s chest and listened intently.
Increasingly perturbed, Gabriel glanced at the door, wondering where Dr. Havelock was.
The nurse reached for a swab of cotton, dampened it with solution from a small bottle, and cleaned a patch of skin on Pandora’s left arm.
Turning to a tray of instruments, she picked up a glass syringe fitted with a hollow needle.
She tilted the needle upward and depressed the piston to drive the air out of the chamber.
“Have you had an injection before?” she asked Pandora gently.
“No.” Pandora’s free hand crept toward Gabriel, and he engulfed her cold fingers in his.
“You’ll feel a sting,” the nurse said, “but it will be brief. Then you’ll feel a wave of warmth, and all the pain will vanish.”
As she searched for a vein in Pandora’s arm, Gabriel asked abruptly, “Shouldn’t the doctor be doing that?”
The nurse delayed answering, having already inserted the needle.
She depressed the plunger slowly, while Pandora’s fingers tightened on Gabriel’s.
He watched her face helplessly, and he fought to keep himself calm and steady, when everything inside was imploding.
Everything that mattered was encompassed in this frail body on the leather table.
He saw the morphine take effect, her limbs relaxing, the strain easing from around her eyes and mouth. Thank God .
Setting aside the empty hypodermic, the young woman said, “I’m Dr. Garrett Gibson. I’m a fully licensed physician, trained by Sir Joseph Lister in his antiseptic method. In fact, I assisted him in surgeries at the Sorbonne.”
Caught thoroughly off guard, Gabriel asked, “A female physician?”
She looked wry. “The only certified one in England so far. The British medical association has done its best to ensure that no other woman will follow in my footsteps.”
Gabriel didn’t want her assisting Havelock.
There was no way of knowing what to expect of a female physician in the operating room, and he didn’t want anything unusual or outlandish connected with his wife’s surgery.
He wanted steady, experienced male doctors.
He wanted everything to be conventional and safe and normal.
“I want to talk to Havelock before the surgery proceeds,” he said.
Dr. Gibson didn’t seem at all surprised. “Of course,” she replied evenly. “But I would ask that you delay the conversation until after we’ve assessed Lady St. Vincent’s condition.”