The Surgeon’s Lady

by Carla Kelly

  “I will be back, though,” she told him. “I promised Nana I would look after you.”

  He nodded, but he seemed less certain now. He closed his eyes.

  Fiercely disappointed in herself, Laura rose and looked around the room. The men watched her, interest in some eyes, pain in others. You all ask so little, she thought, then looked at Davey Dabney, who stared straight ahead. She sat by his bed.

  He turned his head toward her, and she knew it was an effort, considering his wound. “I’m afraid, mum,” he whispered.

  “I am, too,” she replied. “I would be lying if I said otherwise. I’ll hold your hand.”

  He nodded and closed his eyes. When she was certain he slept, she went to each bed, trying to do out of kindness what she had done for her husband out of duty. She knew how painfully little this was, but the men didn’t seem to see that; or at least, they were too polite to mention it.

  After she made her slow circuit of the ward, the orderly, red-faced, whispered to her that he needed to be excused for a few minutes. “I drunk too much tea at breakfast,” he said.

  “I’ll be fine here,” she told him, forcing down her fear of being the only able-bodied person in the room.

  When the orderly returned, she sat by Davey again, awake now, and alert to every footstep on the stairs. “Dr. Brittle said he is going to explore my neck outside, where the light’s better,” he told her. He sighed. “I’d almost give the earth to be outside. Is it warm today?”

  “Yes. Quite nice, in fact.”

  She could tell he was straining his voice, but he wanted to talk. “I am a foretopman,” he told her. “On a sunny day, there’s nothing finer than sitting in the crosstrees, a hundred feet above the deck.”

  “I’d be afraid.”

  He looked at her, surprised. “Gor, mum, I wouldn’t have thought you could be afraid of anything. Not after yesterday.”

  It was a compliment of real weight and heft, and she knew it. “Thank you, Davey.”

  He only smiled and reached for her hand, which she gladly offered. He was dozing again when Lt. Brittle came into the room, in shirtsleeves and wearing his surgeon’s apron. She felt her heart plummet into her stomach as she saw him. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and he was ready to work.

  Instead of coming into the room, he leaned against the door frame, watching Davey. What are you thinking? she wanted to know. How does a person go about preparing for this? As she watched, he closed his eyes. She wondered if he was praying.

  Lt. Brittle looked up, took a deep breath and came into the ward. He spoke to the orderly, who nodded and went out the door. In a moment, two men came in carrying a chair.

  By now Davey was awake. The surgeon went directly into his line of sight, so he would not have to strain.

  “Ready?”

  “Near as ever, sir.”

  “I’m going to lift you into this chair, tie you to it and then tip you back so the orderlies can carry you below deck.”

  “I’d rather use the piss pot first.”

  “Wise choice. Glad to know I haven’t already scared it out of you.”

  Everyone was awake and watching now.

  “Mrs. Taunton, go below please and hold open that outside door. I left an apron for you at the bottom of the stairs.”

  Without a word, she did as he said, completely unnerved by the thought of what was coming. She hurried down the stairs, wanting to keep running. But there was the apron—one of Brittle’s, she thought—draped over the stair rail. She put it on. Top to bottom it fit. Side to side, she ended up wrapping the ties around and knotting them in front. Her fingers felt almost numb, so it took her several tries.

  She heard the men on the stairs and opened the door, holding it wide as the orderlies carried Davey Dabney carefully into the sunlight. They set him down by a table covered with a cloth, where another surgeon stood, then reclined the chair back slightly and locked it in place.

  “Captain Brackett, this is Mrs. Taunton, who has agreed to hold Dabney’s hand,” Lt. Brittle said, speaking to the other surgeon. “He thought she would be a better distraction than Matron Willett in Block Six.”

  Dabney managed a smile, which quickly froze when he saw the small table. A slight wind had ruffled the cloth, revealing hardware that made Laura wince, too.

  Lt. Brittle quickly stepped in front of the table, blocking the view. He gestured to Laura. “Sit there close to Davey, will you? Davey, I’m going to turn your head so you can admire her beautiful green eyes. Oh, my, she’s even going to blush for us. Prettiest green eyes I’ve ever seen. That’s good. Hold still. Capt. Brackett is going to lash a bandage across your cheek and under your chin just so and anchor it to the chair back so you won’t move. Laura, do what you can.”

  He said the last in a lower voice, as Davey began to shiver. Without giving it a thought, she stood as close to the foretopman as she could get, one hand on his head and the other across his chest and holding him tight until he was breathing normally again. As Capt. Brackett expertly bound him to the chair, she rubbed Davey’s chest, then pulled up a blanket that an orderly had draped across the man’s legs.

  He opened his eyes. “Sorry for that,” he murmured.

  “Nothing to be sorry for,” she told him.

  “Davey? Should I secure your hands?”

  “No,” he said, his face muffled by the bandage. “Not if mum will hold them.”

  “I will.”

  “Very well.” Lt. Brittle glanced at the sun. “Captain Brackett, let us imagine a day when an operating theatre will be this light indoors.”

  The surgeon and orderlies chuckled.

  Other men came closer now. “These are two of my surgeon’s mates, Davey,” Brittle said. “Everyone here does what I tell them. I’m going to widen the entrance wound a little and see what I can see, out here in God’s light. You’ll feel grippers on your neck. That’ll be my mates pulling back the edges of the wound with tenacula so I can get a good look. Are you ready? We’ll go fast. Captain, a smaller bistoury, if you please.”

  It couldn’t be fast enough for me, Laura thought. Davey stared at her, his eyes desperate now, and she knew she had to keep her expression calm. Focus on Davey, she told her brain. Don’t even think about what is going on just inches from you. Don’t let your expression reveal anything except the brave mum he thinks you are. When this is over you can go home to Torquay and Nana.

  Davey’s eyes widened and he groaned as Capt. Brittle deftly sliced into the wound and murmured, “Sponge.” Davey flinched when the tenacula went into place to hold the wound open wider. All it took was a tiny glance to convince Laura she would concentrate on the foretopman, who clung to her hands with a grip she had not expected.

  She wished she could have appreciated the speed with which Lt. Brittle operated, widening the wound, then peering inside that cramped space for as good a look as he could get.

  “Probe, Captain,” he said, then delicately reached inside with the long instrument Brackett slapped into his open hand.

  Laura’s fingers ached from the strength of Davey’s grip, but she returned the pressure and hoped she sounded rational as she babbled about summertime and green leaves, and how nice that it wasn’t blustery and cold, and how on earth did he keep from getting seasick on the top of a swaying mast.

  Lt. Brittle probed some more, then Davey closed his eyes and went slack.

  “Excellent,” the surgeon murmured as he stepped back and his mate dabbed at the wound. “Stay unconscious, my friend. It’s a better world. Keep a hand on him, Laura.”

  She was only vaguely aware he had used her first name. She kept her eyes focused on the sailor, free momentarily from pain. She glanced at Lt. Brittle, who had stepped back and was talking with his colleague. She wondered why he was operating, and not the surgeon who outranked him. She focused on Philemon Brittle then, seeing him for what he was, an enormously talented surgeon brave enough to try something unorthodox to keep a man alive.

  H
ow can you do this? she thought. How can you be so calm? She watched the surgeons, Brackett nodding, his hands in his pockets, and Brittle now wiping the probe on his apron.

  “We agree then, Captain. Find me the smallest bistoury on the table. That one will do. Brian, swab away, lively now.”

  The mate dabbed again at Davey’s neck, and then Lt. Brittle continued, talking in a low voice to the other mates. It dawned on her that he was teaching them.

  “The artery wasn’t nicked after all. The biggest problem seems to be that necrotic tissue was pressing against it and wearing it down. I will trim it.”

  She winced as he quickly flipped a strip of black matter onto the grass, and another. He took a wad of gauze and held it against Davey’s neck as the foretopman groaned and came to again. Laura tightened her grip on his hands.

  He groaned only because he hadn’t the strength to scream, but in another few seconds, the mates released the tenacula and the surgeon reached for short strips of adhesive as fast as Captain Brackett handed them over. Davey watched her, his eyes tortured, but his breathing slowing, as he sensed the unendurable was winding down.

  “I prefer adhesive to sutures, mates,” Lt. Brittle said, continuing his lecture in the sunlight of the Stonehouse quadrangle. “It’s less of an insult in places like this. I would do the same around genitals. The body’s full of interesting nooks and crannies.”

  Then he was done. The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes.

  Laura let out a sigh and glanced up at Lt. Brittle. To her surprise, he was watching her. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes seemed to speak his thanks. You’re welcome, she wanted to tell him, except that her mouth wouldn’t move.

  With the last strip in place, Lt. Brittle wiped his hands on his apron then took it off before he walked around to the other side of his patient, still lashed to the chair. He squatted on the grass by Laura’s stool. She could see the perspiration on his face, and knew it had been more of an ordeal than he had let on.

  “I would like to climb again, and give Boney what for,” Davey said, his eyes on the surgeon.

  “No promises, Davey,” Lt. Brittle said. “I’ve done all I can.”

  He did something then that Laura never in the world would have expected. He rose to his feet, leaned forward and kissed the sailor on his forehead. “Do your best now, lad,” he murmured, then nodded to the orderlies to pick up the chair.

  Laura sat there, dumbfounded by what she had just witnessed. She was barely aware that Lt. Brittle now leaned his hand on her shoulder, as though he was suddenly more tired than fifty bricklayers. She wanted to say something—what, she didn’t know—but suddenly a bell down by the creek that flowed behind the administration building began to toll.

  “God damn,” Captain Brackett said, sounding as weary as Lt. Brittle looked.

  “Blame Boney instead,” Lt. Brittle replied. “Captain, go home. I’ll take it.”

  The other surgeon stood where he was, and they both seemed to be listening.

  “What are you listening for now?” Laura asked.

  “If there is another bell in a higher pitch that means…” He chuckled and looked at Captain Brackett. “How do we delicately phrase this for a lady?”

  “Lady Taunton, it means hell has broken loose and shake your asses, all surgeons,” the captain supplied. “I don’t hear it, Phil. Can you truly spare me?”

  “I can.”

  “I’ll come, too,” Laura said, almost amazed to hear the words leave her lips.

  “It’s grim, Laura. They’re fresh off the ships.”

  He wasn’t telling her no. He waved a hand at his superior officer, who started across the quadrangle at a trot, then told another mate to stay with Davey upstairs.

  “Come along,” he said.

  “Where is he going?” she asked, gesturing after the other surgeon, who by now had reached his own quarters in the same row of houses where Lt. Brittle lived. “Surely you have had less sleep than he.”

  “No. His wife was in confinement all last night and delivered a son. The baby is doing well, but his wife is not. I don’t think she will live.”

  “Poor man,” Laura murmured.

  “Sometimes it’s hard to believe that anyone dies in this world except soldiers, sailors and Marines, but it is so.” He picked up his apron, turned it inside out, and put it back on. “If you were dipping your toe in the River Styx with Davey, it’s time for a complete dunking now. Just do as we tell you. Remember this—there isn’t anything you can’t wash off your hands.”

  What am I doing? she thought, as she hurried to keep up with the running men. Casting dignity aside, she pulled up her skirts and lengthened her stride as a seaman in a jolly boat cast an expert line to another sailor on the pier and snugged the boat tight to the dock.

  Other orderlies and mates had arrived at the dock and were helping the men in the jolly boat onto land, where some of them sagged and then collapsed on the pier, unable to move. She saw two women in black already moving among them gesturing and then kneeling beside the wounded.

  “They’re matrons from other blocks,” Lt. Brittle said as he slowed his pace enough for her to catch up. “Good. Brian already has a bandage satchel. Here we go.”

  Laura stayed on the dock for three hours. It seemed strange to her that birds could still sing in such a place of carnage, but they did. At intervals between the groans and shrieks of men in more pain than she could imagine, she could hear the sound of hammering from the nearby drydocks, and in the distance, a knife grinder calling. Somewhere, at least, life was going on as usual.

  She did what Lt. Brittle told her to do, asking no questions.

  The surgeon was scarcely recognizable, covered in blood. Once or twice, he stood away from the tree and let an orderly throw a bucket of water on him, then give him a new apron.

  Then it was over. The matrons returned to their blocks, following a macabre parade of the walking wounded. The orderlies began to throw buckets of water on the bloody pier, and one gathered up Lt. Brittle’s capital knives.

  “Careful of those,” he called. “When they’re washed, sharpen them.” He smiled then, for the first time in hours. “Oh, hang it. You know how to take care of them better than I do! Sorry, lad.”

  Another orderly helped her to her feet. She wanted to at least smile her thanks to him, but her face was stiff. She put a hand to her cheek and felt the dried blood there. She wanted to cry, but that would have taken more energy than she possessed. She just stood there and stared at the surgeon.

  He came to her then and did nothing more than take her in his arms. She still could not cry or speak, until he took her chin in one hand and gave her a little shake. She gasped, and then looked at him.

  “Can you manage?” he asked.

  “I can,” she said, only because that was the answer he needed.

  He spoke to the closest orderly. “Would you walk this nice lady back to my quarters and turn her over to my housekeeper?”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the orderly said with a grin. “This makes me the most fortunate bloke in the Royal Navy and the envy of me peers.”

  What he said struck Laura as funnier than anything she had ever heard before. She laughed, which only made Lt. Brittle look at her closely.

  “I am not given to hysterics, sir,” she told him, and saw the relief in his eyes. “You must admit what he just said is funny, and indicative of the rascals this navy seems to attract. I’m a sad case and I’ve ruined my one remaining dress.”

  The surgeon’s relief was almost palpable, confirming her belief that the last thing he wanted on his hands right now was a woman who could not stop laughing. He turned to the orderly. “Lad, I agree with you. She’s a pretty sight, even now.”

  “I will never understand men,” she declared, standing still and letting the surgeon wipe off her face with the damp cloth in his hand.

  “Nature never intended you to,” he replied. “We are an entirely different species.”
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br />   When he did not come, too, she asked, “What about you?”

  “I’ve just started my night,” he replied. He followed her, wiping his hands on his apron. “Thank you, Lady Taunton,” he said, “thank you a thousand times. I’ll probably not be around when you leave for Torquay in the morning, but…”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she interrupted. “Nana might be disappointed, but I’ll write her a letter and explain everything.”

  “Home to Taunton, then?” he asked gently. “I’m sorry we were so hard on you.”

  She shook her head. “Taunton is not home. You are so dense. I’m staying here, Lieutenant. I promised Matthew I would read Robinson Crusoe, and someone has to hold Davey Dabney’s hand.” She fingered her stiff dress. “Besides, I am not even fit to ride the mail coach. Twenty-five pounds a year will hardly keep me in dresses, at this rate.”

  “Are you…”

  “Serious? Staying? Of unsound mind? I am, indeed, sir,” she told him. “All three. And know this—I intend to fight Boney in my own way, too.”

  Chapter Eight

  Maybe it needed to happen. The jetty had pushed her beyond tears.

  “I don’t even know what this is in your hair, and I’m not going to look too closely,” Aunt Walters said as she scrubbed Laura’s hair over the large sink in the scullery. “If I thought he would listen, I would give my nephew a generous helping of my mind.”

  “I volunteered,” Laura said, in Lt. Brittle’s defense. She tipped her head forward while Aunt Walters poured warm water over it. “I wanted to,” she added, when she came up for air.

  “You’re braver than I am,” Aunt Walters said frankly, handing her a towel. “I’ve never screwed up enough courage to go to the landing jetty.”

  “It’s a terrible place.”

  She protested, but the housekeeper insisted on delivering supper in bed. Propped up with lavender-scented pillows, she ate stew, then wrote a letter to her sister. She knew she was disappointing Nana, but Laura didn’t think she could fight Napoleon in a sitting room in Torquay.

  She was glad Aunt Walters sat with her as darkness came, telling her about Stonehouse, then stories about her nephew: his earlier years as surgeon’s assistant on a frigate in the Mediterranean, Trafalgar, school in Edinburgh and London Hospital, and his most recent years in a fever hospital in Jamaica.