Prologue #2
There was a long pause before he answered, though Mae could not account for why.
Perhaps he was horrified to find that the people performing this procedure were women?
Perhaps he had noticed her gaping at him and was offended?
She refused to turn around and find out, instead busying herself with tightly securing the apron strings into place and making sure her dress was fully covered.
“His name is Reed,” Mr. Beck announced, so loudly, Mae jumped a little.
She whipped around to find Mr. Beck at the small cabinet next to her grandfather, riffling around for a glass as he thunked a long bottle of clear liquid down on the countertop.
“I … yes,” said the beautiful man, clearing his throat as he watched his employer. “My name is Reed.”
She waited for a moment, glancing over her shoulder and expecting him to turn those remarkable turquoise eyes of his back onto her, but he did not. He continued to watch Mr. Beck as he uncorked the bottle and poured a ration into a glass.
“And your strategy?” she said, dropping her gaze away from his face to keep her mind focused on the matter at hand.
It did not matter how beautiful he was if he wasn’t going to successfully subdue the patient, did it?
What sort of name was Reed, anyhow?
It must be his surname, she thought.
He shifted, stepping toward the bed as though considering the task at hand. “I am going to compress his blood flow at the throat. It will make him faint.”
“You’re going to do what?” the patient whispered as a cup of the clear liquid was pressed into his hand.
“Drink that fast,” Beck told him gently. “It’s going to taste awful. I’ll give you three in a row.”
He heeded the advice, Mae observed with relief. Three drinks went down rapidly, each one making his body sag a little more into the bed. Once he’d finished the third one, he held out the empty cup again and wiggled it, as though prompting for more.
“Maybe after,” her grandfather said with a chuckle, taking the glass away.
Once they were all in position, with the ladies at the foot of the bed and the men at the head, Mr. Reed positioned his fingers on either side of the patient’s collarbones, just at the juncture of the throat, and began to press down, the flesh dimpling and paling against the weight of his fingers.
The patient gurgled a little in protest, though he didn’t jerk or flail. Instead, perhaps in a drunken moment of genius, he turned his head very deliberately and slowly sank his teeth into Mr. Reed’s freckled forearm.
He bit down hard enough that there was an immediate spurt of blood, startling everyone in the room.
“Jesus fucking hell!” the beautiful man shouted, digging his fingers in harder at the pressure points he’d found. He didn’t move at all, even with the teeth latched into him so firmly, and after a moment, the patient did indeed pass out, sagging onto the bed as though he’d fallen into deep sleep.
“Christ!” Mr. Reed barked, and flung himself away from the table, snatching up one of the towels as he went to press it into the bleeding bite mark on his arm.
She wanted to watch him, but there was no telling how long the unconsciousness would last. She took up the scalpel quickly and braced her hand against the bottom of the dead foot, cutting away the skin around his ankle as Sally soaked up the blood and other fluids that escaped.
Once the bone was exposed, the scalpel clattered back onto the tray while Mae grabbed the saw.
The bone, at least, was narrow, and snapped away faster than she had anticipated. Faster than the bovine joint she’d practiced on last night.
As soon as the foot was free, her grandfather came forward to lend the support of his shoulder, holding the man’s unconscious leg aloft while she and Sally pulled the skin into a tight flap and stitched it shut, Mae pinching the skin and Sally wielding the needle with her clean, dry hands.
Before Mae could so much as breathe, she’d stumbled backward and found the thing done. Completely done.
Sally packed the foot away in a waxed paper bag, of which she kept many for reasons Mae had not wanted to inquire about, and disappeared through the door, leaving their patient footless, snoring, and evidently none the worse for his loss.
“I’ll leave that bottle,” Beck said, snapping Mae out of her trance. “He needs it more than anyone else I know.”
“What is that, by the way?” the elderly doctor asked, picking it up and rotating it to squint at the peeling paper label on the bottom. “And where can I buy some? Queimada, is it?”
She blinked, leaning forward to examine her sutures one more time and then letting her eyes drift over to Mr. Reed, who was still slumped in the corner, nursing his bite wound.
He looked so surly and indignant about it, so utterly resentful that such a thing had befallen him, that it cracked through the paralysis that had previously overtaken her.
“Can I see that?” she asked, tilting her head to the side and nodding toward the bloodied towel at his arm as she pushed her bloody hands into the water basin next to the bed and started to scrub them clean.
He grimaced at her, showing perfectly even, white teeth. Of course. “I’d rather you didn’t,” he said, with all the discontent of a toddler with a scraped knee.
She almost laughed but stopped herself, knowing it would only make him resist further.
She couldn’t suppress the grin, though, taking up a clean towel to wipe her hands and then holding a clean one out toward him.
“Come, now,” she said. “His mouth was filthy. If I don’t at least clean it, it is going to fester. ”
“Fine,” said Mr. Reed, and he came begrudgingly to his feet.
She sucked in some air through her teeth as she peeled the towel away, looking at the bite. “I’m going to have to stitch it. What a jaw he has!” she marveled. “If you want to slap him while he’s still passed out, I won’t mind.”
“If I wanted to slap him,” he answered, his eyes following warily as she took out the needle and thread, “I would have.”
Mr. Beck was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, a wide grin on his face the likes of which Mae had never seen before on the usually brooding and serious gentleman. “Don’t like needles, Reed?” he asked his companion, raising his dark brows.
Mae gave him a look that she hoped was reproachful and sat on the stool by the window. She grasped Mr. Reed’s wounded arm by the wrist and pulled it across her lap, placing it on her apron.
She reminded herself to look only at the wound and not at Mr. Reed.
Reed. That wasn’t actually his name.
“Shall I tell you a story while I work?” she suggested, more out of habit than a desire to do so, and then, because she was speaking anyway, she just asked, “What is your Christian name, Mr. Reed?”
“Christian?” he repeated, narrowing his eyes at her. “Don’t have one.”
She scoffed, sparing one flick of the eyes to his face, gratified to see that he looked a bit chastened when she did so.
He was silent as she cleaned the wound, only sucking in a breath when she took up the needle again.
“Roland,” he said finally. “Name’s Roland.”
“Well, Roland,” she said, pausing to finally meet his eye. “I am Mae.”