Chapter 9 #3
Alphonse looked at his daughter sorrowfully.
His mouth drooped at the corners as he hunched in on himself, looking deflated and broken.
He crept to the step he’d tripped over and sat down before patting the space next to him and signaling Victoria to sit.
When she did, his gaze lingered on her face a moment before he spoke again.
“I know what it is, Vic.”
Her eyes rounded. “What do you mean, you know what it is? Why wouldn’t you tell me?” The slow, dragging pace of his answers filled her with a sense of creeping dread she had never felt. “Well, then what is it? What is the cure?”
Alphonse’s head nodded slightly, more as if he were encouraging himself to finish what he’d started than a nod to her.
“I believe it to be something called paralysis agitans. Some believe it’s caused by the brain, some believe it’s the nervous system—a surgeon in England believes it’s related to the spinal cord. ”
Victoria gripped his forearms, needing to stabilize herself before she fell from an unseen cliff of panic. “That’s great news! We will figure out how to stop it. We can compare all their findings and—why are you looking at me like that? Papa, why are you looking at me like that?”
“I had this disease long before you knew of it. After your mother passed, it became worse. The thought of leaving you in this world alone, without either Mary or me, was too much. I worked tirelessly to find a cure and—” His eyes glistened in the dark room.
“And what? What is the cure?” Victoria interrupted as her eyes welled with tears, knowing her father too well.
“I don’t believe there is one,” he whispered softly. He picked at a stray piece of skin on his finger.
Victoria shook her head violently, her hand clapped over her mouth as panic set in.
“Then we will find one; I will find one.” She stood, unable to sit another second.
“How have I not read anything about this? You say you’ve studied it extensively, but I’ve pored over all your notes and all your books.
There is no way I would have missed something like this, and I’ve never even seen the term paralysis agitans. ” She turned to her father accusingly.
He rose from the step and tightened his robes closer. “I removed all traces of it because I didn’t want you to know.”
Victoria’s brows furrowed. “Why?” she snapped angrily, furious that he would stop her from helping him.
“Because I had already spent too much time exhausting the material instead of spending my precious and limited time with you. I know you, Vic. I know you would never stop until you found a cure, and I don’t want that.
What I want is to spend the rest of my time with you, focusing on things you want to do—things that I might not always be around to get to see or experience with you. ” He cleared his throat.
Victoria’s anger fell, shot down from the skies at the sight of him struggling. She would keep it to herself and not burden him with her own struggles. “How does it progress? How long do we have?”
Alphonse sighed heavily and rubbed his temples in a circular motion as he sat.
“It’s hard to say. Not much is known about it.
From the case studies, it’s unlikely to cause me any severe harm, only discomfort and difficulty with movement.
It seems to progress quickly in some, slowly in others.
It’s likely that I will eventually require a wheelchair as my legs and arms will continue to be more and more difficult to use. ”
Victoria stood with her thoughts in silence for a moment. “Then perhaps a small cottage would be better for us after all? I don’t think I can carry you up the stairs to your room, and if it isn’t already obvious, I will not marry for money.” Victoria attempted to jest, pointing to the stairs.
She watched as it hit Alphonse differently.
“Yes, well, I have given it a tremendous amount of thought, and I struggle endlessly with the thought of you being forced into a man’s arms whom you don’t love. As a father, it’s far more important to me that you be happy than that you make some other man happy, including myself.”
Wilhelm’s face flashed in Victoria’s mind. Her stomach clenched.
“The world is changing. It is 1795, and things are changing. We are industrializing; some women have entered skilled labor roles. There is debate everywhere about the concept of women taking part in professional or scholarly positions.”
“What does this have to do with our situation?” Victoria pushed as she sat back down on the step next to her father. Her shoulder leaned into his, and she let her head fall to rest on his as she inhaled the sharp scent of laudanum and fire smoke from his robe.
“I read a book the other night when I was unable to sleep. I was pacing about the great room and must have woken Rosamond up. Well anyway, she lit the fire for me while she was half-asleep, the kind woman, and in her haste to return to bed, left her book on the mantel. It was A Vindication of the Rights of Women; it was compelling. Rosamond has since taken it back, but you should borrow it.”
“Papa, what are you talking about?” Victoria was struggling to follow her father’s scattered thoughts.
“It’s a book advocating for women’s education and equality.
Things are changing, Victoria. I believe there will be a time soon that women may be permitted to practice medicine, and I desire to give you a leg up in this world in any way that I can—while I can.
You are making such strides in assisting me.
I think that there is an opportunity waiting.
When I am gone, the people of the Holy Roman Empire and Glen Shire will be more open to a woman surgeon.
They will accept you from our legacy alone…
especially if you can do something that no one else has been able to do. ”
“Resurrection.”
“Precisely.” Alphonse smiled. “Though you are not quite ready.”
“How am I not ready?”
“You will need to take this more seriously.” His eyes were harsh.
How could she tell him that she had been taking it seriously since she was thirteen when her mother had died?
That the hours upon hours of daily education with her father for the last years were as serious as she knew how to take anything?
That she felt the pressure of going out in the day and being talked to like she knew nothing, while inside, her mind spilled over with secret knowledge she wasn’t allowed to admit to knowing.
“How can I take this more seriously?”
“Dr. Paranthal brought up a good point when he was speaking of the impossibility of reanimation. Given the crude and experimental nature of our proposed methods, you were right: a smaller body may have been too fragile or difficult to galvanize. It should be robust for the experiment so that we may clearly see as we attach parts, stimulating nerves. We need to be able to handle the body without it falling apart under the stress of the procedure. The body needs to be stronger than average. We need to reinforce it with something to withstand the electricity. I also insist on a new brain.” He nodded absently.
Both Alphonse and Victoria had let their emotional thoughts fall by the wayside as their infallible scientific interests now fully consumed them.
“I agree with you about reinforcement, but what do you suggest? A chemical compound? He is already abnormally large. Eight feet tall by my specifications. And a new brain? Why? This one shows perfect response.”
“Too much response. I don’t like it. It makes no sense, and I don’t like things that don’t make sense,” Alphonse chirped happily, returning to his normal self.
“Isn’t it a good thing that it is responsive? Where will we get another? We will have to increase his size a bit with various other parts, and where are you finding all of these?”
“Don’t ask me any more questions. I’ve already told you more than is safe; now go to bed.
We double up lessons beginning tomorrow.
It will be St. Martin’s Day, and it’s almost guaranteed we will have patients with the tasting of the new wine of the season.
” Alphonse kissed her cheek and walked off to his no-longer-temporary room on the first floor.
Victoria waited for her father to go to bed before she went for the laboratory, but she stopped herself and dropped her hand away from the handle of the door.
She couldn’t keep treating this dead man as if he were something more.
It was bordering on obsession, and it was just sad.
She turned away and forced herself to her bedroom.