Shut off from them all, indoors and warmed by a hearth, Horace sat at the breakfast table while his valet stood near, watching him not eat. The valet held up both hands, showed all his fingers. “This many,” he said. “More, also.”
With great care, Horace folded his napkin. “Aren’t they cold? Can we invite them in?”
The valet shook his head. He had served the royal court for a dozen years, and he understood his responsibilities.
Horace lay down his fork and lifted the knife, then put down the knife and asked for coffee. Brewster had given him three chloroform bottles. One had gone to the wounded attendant, another’s liquid had sloshed down the tub drain. Of course he could get more. But how soon could Brewster produce another? Horace had meant to study effects again that coming afternoon.
Some clammy need wormed its way up the back of his neck. The chloroform was his; he did not need to share. And yet.
“I am not a physician,” he said, talking more to himself than to the valet. “I can’t cure what afflicts them. Unless they require dental surgery—”
He glanced away from the table as if he could see out to the street and to the ruddy, agonized faces of those who waited. “Even then, I’d rather not.”
Some minutes later, dressed in overcoat and boots, he shook the last drops from the bottle into the pot he’d filled with chloroform, then soaked kitchen rags in the liquid. When he stepped out into the sparkling cold morning, Horace could smell sour ruin come off the gathered unfortunates, those wrapped in blankets and bandages, propped up by a crutch here or a shaky arm there, this one coughing, that one moaning. One and all turned his way, faces contorted with hope, lurid with pain.
The scrawny man doubled over, snarling, his hands fisted.
“What’s wrong with that man?” Horace asked. “Who speaks English?”
The mother to the boy who could not walk or sleep smiled a pleasant, helpless smile but like the rest kept silent. The syphilitic pressed forward.
Horace reached into the pot and squeezed a rag to rid the excess. Then he waved it near his nose, a demonstration. The scrawny man stumbled up the stairs, his hands seizing Horace by the forearm. He thrust his dirty face into the rag, as if wanting to be smothered, and Horace—alarmed—almost pulled away. The man’s eyelids fluttered. Tears wet his cheeks, and his knees weakened. When he sighed, Horace eased him down, taking care as he lay the man’s head on the polished marble step.
The remaining rags, soaked in relief, he handed to the others, who accepted them as if receiving holy relics or alms from God. And he helped each breathe until those who had cried and those who had ground their teeth and those who had prayed for death now leaned against the iron rods of a garden fence, or slumped into the street gutter, or lay flat on the sidewalk, facing up into the blue. Smothered, yes. But a temporary murder. A kindness.
Sunlight glimmered off the crystal snow. The boy’s mother crouched near her son, touching his cheeks, cooing, and she made a pillow of her coat for his head.
Horace alone stood upright, ears red from the cold, a wet rag clenched in each fist. All these sleeping faces. Such innocence. Such serenity as children know. Astonishing. His eyes misted with a father’s tenderness.
The man with the Scottish brogue and the gavel had asked a question. Horace rolled his tongue into the hole Riggs had left in his mouth, probing the smooth absence as if the correct reply could be found in the empty socket.
“Answer him,” hissed Brewster.
The Scotsman leaned away from the table where he sat with his medical society fellows, whispered to an aide. Why couldn’t Horace remember the man’s question? Why couldn’t he concentrate to answer? Behind his eyes, he felt a pecking thing, a scavenging bird working its beak.
Gray daylight through the chamber’s high windows. Table lamps lit, the oils scented with balsam. The crowd. So many! The medical society itself numbered a dozen or so, and each dignitary had two or three aides—holding themselves in world-weary poses until summoned with a whisper or a finger. Elbow to elbow at the journalists’ bench, too, and in the gallery—the audience conspiring like spies. Horace heard humbug as though from a distance, searched faces for Morton’s or Jackson’s.
“Wells.” It was Brewster again. “Say something.”
“What I know,” Horace said, “is that I needed to find a way to stop pain during surgery. Need drove me. Out of necessity, I was first.”
“But what proof do you have for us, Dr. Wells?”
“Morton recognized an opportunity when I failed in Boston. For all I know, he sabotaged my effort. What he needed, what he has always needed, is money. The only thing he has discovered is how to increase his wealth by disguising my work as his own.”
“Affidavits? Appointment books? Dr. Morton sent us notes in an envelope sealed the day he made his discovery—”
“Replicated, please. He replicated my discovery.”
“We have yet to decide that, Dr. Wells.”
“Then until you decide, you mustn’t say Morton made a discovery as if it were fact.”
The Scot’s eyebrows lifted, and he took a breath so deep Horace could see his chest expand. Before the man could retort, Horace interrupted.
“I do not have affidavits, because I foresaw no need. I had made the discovery, and it was not important that I get whatever fortune or fame Morton hopes to gain. It was—it is—essential that humanity benefit. Perhaps I rushed things.” Rushing now, he knew. Saying too much, too fast. Head muddled, no stopping. “I’m not good with pain, my mother will tell you. I cried loudest even when it was my brother she caned. Time and again the pain I inflicted on patients compelled me to shutter my practice. Don’t know why I chose dentistry to begin with. Small, quick fingers, I suppose. And I’ve always liked working with tools.”
“Thus,” said the Scot, “lack of proof proves your case? As would a child, you stumbled into a new land and were so excited to proclaim your discovery you forgot to bring back a native species, and now no one believes you.”
“Dr. Brewster believes me. There are others. And witnesses. I will send sworn testimonies.”
“Until then, we have your story and nothing else?”
“You have the truth. Straight as a loon’s leg.”
Over a late breakfast at Horace’s apartment, Brewster translated the journalists’ columns, read aloud as he dropped flakes of croissant to his Bichon Frise mewling at their feet. “It’s your honesty they adore,” he said, “how you admit to your Boston humiliation. The newspaper editors love a story of frustrated genius.”
Clean sunlight shined like a blessing on the table, gracing the porcelain of the cups, the tines of silver forks, the reflective shallows of each spoon. An egg yolk on Horace’s plate was as pure a yellow as he’d ever seen. He shook open a newspaper, dusty in the light, and pointed to a word.
“What does this mean?”
“Snip. Cut. Something like that.”
He pointed to another.
Brewster put a hand across the newspaper, lowered it to the table. “What happened yesterday, Wells? You never answered questions as asked. You told a good story, yes, but in such a confused jumble. You sounded deranged at times—Morton sabotaged you?—and irritable.”
Horace kept his finger on the page. “Can’t you tell me this word?”
Brewster glanced. “Wink.”
Horace pronounced the French silently, then poured more coffee. His hand trembled, so he steadied it with the other, giving Brewster a look to say, it’s all of a piece.
“Quick-tempered,” Horace said. “Bedeviled by headaches. Distracted. Morbidly suspicious? It’s possible. My memories don’t stick. Something happens, but a moment later I can’t grasp it. I reach, but it’s like a sweetmeat canned and locked up for winter.”
“Chloroform?”
Horace shrugged. “This began before. Back home. Though it’s worsened since.”
“You should refrain. From chloroform, ether, any exhilarating gas.”
“Your dog knows more French than I do!” he cried.
Brewster lifted his pet, cradled the dog against his bosom. His eyes searched Horace’s face with such sincere good will that Horace turned away. “Please,” Brewster said. “Refrain. We don’t know all the consequences.”
“When will we know? In this lifetime? In a thousand years? It doesn’t matter.”
Brewster pointed toward a phrase on the page, showed it to Horace. “‘The famous American dentist.’ This is what the newspapers call you. There are other ways to occupy yourself in Paris than experimenting with gases. Especially when you are famous. Your life is about to become hectic. You’ll need to keep your wits about you. You’ll also need a new wardrobe.”
That very afternoon a tailor arrived to fit Horace for coats and shirts and ruffled collars, all of which the government purchased. He wore his new clothes the following Tuesday to lunch with a comte and comtesse, and on Wednesday to a gallery where he purchased a bawdy scene (the painting recalled Dutch Point, except with finery—crudeness and elegant fashion), and then to a piano concert that same evening. Brewster brought him invitation after invitation, so Horace asked for a secretary, who then wrote in a leather-covered appointment book the addresses and names of those who would host the six-course dinners on mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi. By the end of one week Horace had lunched or dined, it seemed, with every important Parisian except King Louis-Philippe. Over and again he amused hosts with the tale of his discovery (“This way, that way”), and when they showed him the bladder of nitrous oxide they had just obtained “for this occasion,” he’d illustrate its use, then enjoy the results (this lady reveals her corset, that gentleman licks her décolletage). The king’s portraitist asked him to sit, which he did over several mornings, and when he saw the finished painting—his face glowing with health, his grin contented, his hair thick and lustrous (all falsehoods)—he lied to the artist in turn, saying, “You have painted me as I see myself.”
“Of course,” cried the painter. “I do not paint the man. I paint the genius!”
L’Académie des Sciences Parisien. La Société des Philosophes de la Médecine. Hearing after hearing after hearing, and Horace began to wonder whether every Parisian belonged to a separate medical association. Then, at last, what Brewster deemed the most prestigious: La Société Médicale de Paris. Brewster made his argument to the learned men, and though Horace hadn’t understood a word, he nodded at the applause that followed, his jaw set to convey gravity, significance.
Then another man stood. Ancient and fat, he placed his hands on the lectern, and the fingers spread like melted cheese. He wore a dark cloak and a crimson waistcoat. A wart protruded from the corner of his left eye, and his short white hair was uncombed. He fit a monocle over an eye, then read from a sheaf of papers in a voice that a senator would envy. Brewster whispered to Horace, “His name is Courbet, a physician of good reputation. He’s here, he says, to represent Morton.”
“Should we be concerned?”
Brewster didn’t answer. When Courbet finished with his pages, much mumbling and discourse followed. Members of the academy asked questions and allowed Brewster a query or two as well. Then Courbet raised his hand to request a last word. He pointed a sausage of a finger at Horace and Brewster, saying slowly in French a phrase that sounded to Horace like Eel moan comb something something.
People laughed, even those with the academy, even Brewster.
“What did he say?” asked Horace, feeling heat in his cheeks.
“It’s a French proverb. Il ment comme un arracheur des dents. It means, ‘He lies like a tooth puller.’ ”
Then he answered the question apparent on Horace’s face.
“Don’t worry,” he said, sighing his pleasure at the fat man’s joke. “This won’t hurt a bit.”
Morton! Adder!
Horace yanked off his fancy clothes—turning sleeves inside out, popping buttons—and left them heaped on the bed in his apartment, discarded as his hopes. Bitter and caustic, his gorge rose, and as if summoned by that hateful name, here came again the papery fluttering in his chest: Boston’s parchment bird, nesting in his lungs. The fat man’s arrival seemed the final jewel to crown Morton’s elegant lie, the French legitimacy that Horace’s champion could never offer (“I’m an American,” Brewster had admitted. “Un étranger. It does make a difference.”). So why dress Horace in French clothes? Why the charade? He imagined Morton installed in this very apartment, saw the tailor run a measuring tape across Morton’s shoulders, envisioned the king’s portraitist with a fingertip on Morton’s chin, turning his face to the light. And what of Horace? Likely a life spent hunched over a chair in an office without even a rug, scraping the yellowed incisors of some Hartford insurance peddler. Such images ballooned in his mind’s eye, interrupted only when the valet knocked. He had brought an envelope on a silver tray.
Horace walked to his reading desk, but hesitated to open the letter, addressed in Elizabeth’s handwriting, the too-tight H and the too-small e. Was this five she’d sent, or six? And despite several starts, he’d not finished one reply. None to Charley, either. Chagrined, he turned the desk lamp brighter, read:
How do you do this evening! I wish you would answer me; I imagine I could hear you. To day old Mr. Whitman has been buried—the old gentleman who has been so long with Mr. Robins in the retreat. He was buried in the back yard of the Center Church.
Her charity work with the insane. But who were Whitman and Robins? She mentioned them as if he’d know. He searched his memory and recalled that disrobed fellow from the long-ago day when he pulled the tooth of Maggie, Nan’s daughter. “You ring like a bell,” the madman had said. Unredeemed in Connecticut. Had that man died?
I wish you would be punctual and write as often as possible. Don’t think me foolish. I have as much courage as possible during your absence. Your letters will do me more good than you are aware. Even writing this has done me good. Our folks say I have acted today as if I had a load off my heart. If you are sick let me know. It will be better than suspense.
Charley lies here fast asleep on the sofa; he has been brimful of mischief today.
Your aff wife. Elizabeth W.
As always when he read her letters, he felt part of himself returning home to Lord’s Hill: Charley pushing a model tallship across the floor, and Elizabeth sewing nearby in a straight-back chair. Horace folded the pages of her letter into the envelope, but Hartford was not so easily put away, and his family lingered until the valet knocked to ask his needs.
In Hartford, he would never have the services of a valet.
Perhaps that’s why he’d not finished any letter home. To write Elizabeth was akin to sending himself back, to becoming again a provincial tooth-digger rather than a celebrated scientist. Once again, a humbug.
“Monsieur?” the valet asked.
No. Not a humbug. Never again.
He pushed himself away from the desk. When he asked for wine, he received it in a crystal goblet. In the parlor, he struck a few keys on the piano, each note a symphony. “Can you play?” he asked. The valet shook his head, so Horace excused him.
At his bedside, Horace shook out his Parisian clothes. He slipped into the shirt, buttoned the collar, snapped the jacket straight, buckled the shoes. Thus arrayed, he stepped through the balcony doors. The city and its lights opened, vast and twinkling. He lifted his face to the sky, so the night might wash over him. Raising his crystal goblet of wine, he toasted himself, who had given painless surgery to humanity.
You see? he told himself. Nothing is preordained. Not failure. Not even pain.
On the eve of his last day in Paris, coal fires burned furiously against
the cold, and their smoke choked the stars. Horace and Brewster staggered from a carriage parked before a monument of a building—some offspring of a Roman temple and a Gothic palazzo. In Horace’s breast pocket he carried a flask filled with chloroform. Brewster wielded a half-empty bottle of red that he had uncorked in the carriage and shared.
“Promise me you’ll take what this night gives,” he said. “You deserve what this city can offer. Let it leave its imprint on you. Paris wants to be remembered.”
“Tonight,” Horace shouted. “I will leave my imprint on Paris!” Then he felt silly.
“But no vapors, yes? Can we agree?” Brewster waved his wine bottle at Horace’s face. “Let the time-tested vices suffice.”
Horace received the bottle, drank from its mouth, then gave it back. Now valets took their coats and hats, and Brewster said something about women, and Horace meant to reply, but the two had reached the ballroom, and the vision struck him dumb.
Never had he seen such a vast indoors—a canyon of a room possessed of its own geography. The ceilings high as sky, each wall a distant and hardly visible horizon. The room even had shifting weather, a pocket of warmth here and a coolness there, wind currents carrying an air of perfume and cigar smoke. The crowd—surely it equaled Hartford’s whole population. Everywhere Horace looked he saw splendor: sashes and canes with ornate, often grotesque pommels; plumed hats; military pins; brocade gowns and silk gloves; hair twisted into impossible architectures. So many red mouths. Did everything in Paris exceed proportion? Conversation in the hall echoed into a muddled curtain of sound through which he could just discern distant music, like no tunes he’d ever heard except, perhaps, in vaporous dreams.
Brewster? How had he lost Brewster?
Without his guide, he wandered, drifting where the crowd allowed. He imagined himself in a boat at sea, bedazzled by sunlight sharp off the water—except the flashes came from that brooch, or that ribboned medal, and all those gems around all those French necks. Seeking better vantage, he climbed stairs to a less crowded concourse and spied over a rail into the swarming heads below. When he still could not spot his companion, he stayed above, near where servers attended to a group of buffet tables, each bountiful with game sausages, small baked hens, sauces, dried figs, pickled cucumbers, sugared nuts. At the center were a half dozen roasted hogs, skin crackly. It seemed enough to feed Paris twice over, yet only a few people partook, including a smartly dressed woman—plump, he noticed, even sumptuous, perhaps his age, and with an ideal neck—who picked at small somethings.
The Strange and True Tale of Horace Wells, Surgeon Dentist Page 25
