Dawn of the Golden Promise

by BJ Hoff

  on the map of his achievements?

  MORGAN FITZGERALD (1850)

  Jakob Gunther was even more of a surprise than his dimly lighted saltbox of an office near the East River.

  With Sandemon, Morgan had been waiting for the esteemed surgeon for nearly an hour. For the last twenty minutes or so he had felt his patience unraveling one thread at a time. His self-composure throughout the morning had been tenuous at best; at the moment he wanted nothing more than to go charging out the door and book the first available passage back to Ireland.

  They were the only ones in the pantry-sized waiting room, which to Morgan’s thinking made Gunther’s self-endorsed skills highly suspect. Where were the patients of this great surgeon, if not clamoring for his attention?

  The door finally flew open to admit a blast of cold air, followed by a lean, black-cloaked figure. As Morgan watched, the new arrival kicked the door shut behind him with a long, narrow foot, then flung off his cloak with a careless toss before turning to face Morgan.

  “You are Fitzgerald, I presume? I am Dr. Gunther—Jakob Gunther.”

  At first Morgan could only stare at the man in surprise, biting back the urge to make a cutting remark. For some reason, he had concluded that Jakob Gunther would be well past his middle years, most likely balding and rotund. Perhaps because of the arrogant tone of the surgeon’s letters, he had conceived the image of an aging eccentric, and a self-indulgent one at that.

  But the man who now stood appraising him with undisguised boldness and a kind of clinical interest looked to be near Morgan’s own age, certainly no older than his late thirties. He was fairly tall, angular, his face sharply molded—lightly scarred as well, probably from an attack of smallpox at some time in the past.

  It took a minute for Morgan to recover. He might have been wrong in his assumptions about the doctor’s age and appearance, but he was certainly not mistaken about Gunther’s arrogance. The iron-gray eyes flitted over him as if he were a questionable side of beef, of no particular value except as a suitable subject for research. The fleeting glance the surgeon afforded Sandemon registered nothing but utter indifference.

  “I am quite late. It could not be helped.” The surgeon was abrupt, even in his speech, the words shearing the air like hailstones. The accent of Vienna was still evident, but considerably Americanized. “So, then—let us begin. I will need your man’s help in the examining room, large as you are. In here,” he instructed over his shoulder as he whisked through a curtained doorway on the right.

  And that was that. No word of apology. Not even the slightest sign of human warmth or interest.

  Morgan ground his teeth as they followed Gunther through the doorway. His first impression of the man who might hold the power to change his life was anything but reassuring.

  The examination itself required far less time than Morgan would have anticipated and seemed much too uncomplicated to be reliable. Neither was he prepared for Gunther’s gentleness. Given the surgeon’s earlier rudeness and brusque manner, it would have come as no surprise had the man taken to kneading him and punching him down like a stubborn loaf of bread dough. Instead, the hands that explored him were deft, but sure and gentle, the instruments carefully placed. Gunther even seemed to suspend his brusqueness, if only for the moment.

  The surgeon hinted at nothing during the examination, other than to make an occasional soft utterance, the meaning of which defied interpretation. When he had finished, he left the room, allowing Morgan time to dress in private.

  “What do you make of him?” Morgan muttered as Sandemon helped him back into the wheelchair. “Aside from his charm, that is, about which I cannot say enough.”

  Sandemon chuckled softly, waiting until Morgan was completely settled before replying. “Certainly, his manners could do with some improvement. But his hands are skillful, powerful. And his eyes hold the fire of genius.”

  “Or madness,” Morgan said dryly. “Your sense of him is that he is capable, then?”

  “More than capable.” The black man’s voice was quiet, his tone thoughtful. “Dr. Gunther would seem possessed of both confidence and competence.”

  “You failed to mention arrogance.”

  Morgan would have gone on, but Gunther swept back into the room at that moment. Seated across the desk—a Spartan, scarred piece that somehow fit Gunther to perfection—Morgan had a good opportunity to notice the man’s hands. Splayed palms down on top of the desk, they did indeed convey the impression of strength and agility that Sandemon had observed. The fingers were unusually long and tapering, with large, rough knuckles and slightly reddened skin.

  Morgan realized with a jolt that these were the hands of a man who was no stranger to physical labor. He remembered James Dunne remarking at some time in the past that the actual meaning of the word surgery had to do with “laboring by hand.” He was struck by the seeming appropriateness of those words as they related to Jakob Gunther.

  The surgeon lifted a hand and passed it through his straight, sand-colored hair, disheveling it even more than it had been. “So, then—if I might ask, how well do you endure pain, Mr. Fitzgerald?”

  Unprepared for the surgeon’s bluntness, despite his earlier behavior, Morgan tensed. “As well as the next man, I expect,” he said guardedly.

  “The procedure your condition seems to suggest would involve a great deal of discomfort and pain. Not so much in the surgical process itself, you understand, for I would employ ether as an anesthetic.”

  It was the period of recovery—which would be quite extensive, he went on to explain in his terse manner—that would be most difficult. “While you would seem to be in remarkable physical condition for a man with your injury, surgery has a way of breaking down the body’s natural defenses, depleting you of your stamina, and weakening you in general. Recuperation would undoubtedly be long and difficult.”

  The entire time he spoke, Gunther’s eyes probed Morgan’s as if taking his measure. If he had arrived at any conclusions, he was keeping them carefully masked.

  Morgan’s mind fumbled to grasp the details of Gunther’s explanation. Although he had heard the surgeon’s warnings about pain and discomfort, at the moment he could not seem to move past the words, “a surgery such as the one I am proposing.”

  “Are you telling me then that surgery is possible?” Morgan abruptly broke in.

  Gunther continued to hold his gaze. “Possible, perhaps. But highly risky and with no guarantees whatsoever.”

  Morgan slumped back in the chair. He felt Sandemon’s strong hand on his shoulder and was infinitely grateful for his friend’s presence in the room.

  He let out a long breath. “Tell me all of it, if you will. Spare me no detail, please.”

  Gunther propped his elbows on the desk, his hands forming an arch in front of his face. “To be altogether honest, you would be an experiment. This sort of surgery has never been performed in the States. I know what I’m doing, of course, but there is no convincing the plodding old men who govern the medical profession in this country—or in Europe, for that matter—that we must take risks if we are to learn. In Europe they are not quite so timid, but neither do they understand the value of research and experimentation to our work.”

  Morgan sat up. “Do I understand that you have never performed such a surgery?”

  Gunther actually smiled—a quick, thin slash that did not approach his eyes before it disappeared. “You would be the first. Let me explain that our knowledge of anatomy is still severely limited by poor educational methods. The entire surgical field suffers from a lack of subjects on which to experiment, not to mention a dearth of professors who know anything more than a first-year student. That’s why students are stealing cadavers from the famine hospitals on which to study, a practice that will no doubt be sharply curtailed once the authorities catch up with them.”

  He lowered his hands and began to tap his fingers on the desk. “A procedure such as I am suggesting to you will not be widely performed, at l
east in this country, for years to come. But I am not willing to wait until I am a palsied old man to attempt what I already know can be accomplished.”

  The uneasiness that had been circling about Morgan since Gunther had begun to speak now swooped down like a hungry vulture and began to peck at him in earnest. “Why—what makes you so certain you can perform such a surgery?”

  Gunther seemed to bristle. “I have seen it done, on the Continent. By somewhat primitive methods to be sure, but I have seen it. I have observed, and I have learned. I can do the surgery, I assure you, Mr. Fitzgerald.”

  He paused, again turning that unsettling iron stare on Morgan. “What I cannot assure is its success. There are any number of possibilities, most of them unpleasant. You might awaken with the paralysis extended to your upper extremities. You might not awaken at all. If you do survive, you will surely suffer. In addition, there is no guarantee that you will walk. There has been considerable atrophy of your muscles by now—and there will be even more during recovery. As yet we cannot know the extent of nerve damage. Only your own strength of will and divine intervention—if you believe in that sort of thing—will ultimately determine whether or not you will walk.”

  Morgan moistened his lips and tried to swallow, but gave it up when he found his mouth as dry as batting. “Have you no hope at all for me?” he said, his voice hoarse. “I hear no reason—no sane reason—to submit to such a procedure. It seems you are predicting only my doom. I am no rat on which you may ply your tricks. I am a man.”

  Sandemon’s hand tightened on his shoulder, but Morgan was fast losing his patience with the man across the desk from him. It did not help that any hope he might have felt before the examination was quickly being extinguished by the surgeon himself.

  Jakob Gunther seemed to consider his words, then pushed back from the desk and stood, hands clasped behind his back. “How much is it worth to you, Mr. Fitzgerald? How much do you want to walk again?”

  Morgan stared at him. The blunt question seemed in incredibly poor taste, and the words hovered between them for a long time, until they were no more than an echo in Morgan’s mind.

  How much indeed?

  “Enough to risk what would appear to be a fairly decent quality of life at the present?” Gunther probed. “Enough to risk your very life?”

  “I cannot answer such questions. Not until I have had time to consider the implications.”

  Gunther looked as if he were about to dismiss them from the room, but Morgan did not intend to be put off without more information. “Explain to me, if you will, why you responded to James Dunne’s correspondence in the first place. I will admit that your letters to him and to me were anything but optimistic—and what I have heard from you thus far is even less encouraging. If the risks are so great, and the possibilities of success so slight, why would you presume I would agree? It seems to me that only a madman or a fool would involve himself in such a venture, and I like to think that I am neither.”

  Gunther lifted an eyebrow, the thin line of his mouth again curving in a slight smile. “Perhaps it is the surgeon who is mad. A mad surgeon on the hunt for another wild-eyed adventurer like myself. Except that what you call madness, I prefer to call boldness.”

  Morgan studied him, and without any basis for his judgment came to the conclusion that Gunther was anything but mad. Prideful, cynical, perhaps without human warmth—but not mad.

  “Where would you perform the surgery?” he asked abruptly.

  Gunther seemed surprised by the question. After a second or two, he came round the desk and stood, his hands still locked behind his back. “At Bellevue,” he said, “for the practical reason that no other hospital in the city is willing to let me…‘ply my tricks’ on their premises.” He smiled a little. “Bellevue has grudgingly allowed me to practice on the indigent and a number of the poor wretches in the insane facility. As one of the administration so delicately put it, ‘Who would care?’”

  He went on then to explain something of the surgical process itself, which Morgan did not understand in the least. He did notice that Sandemon seemed to be taking it all in with some degree of comprehension.

  “From what I know of your injury, Mr. Fitzgerald, and the nature of your present condition, I am inclined to believe the bullet caused a fracture in your spinal cord. There would have been severe bruising and swelling, as well as some nerve damage, which is irreversible. But the bullet itself could still be contributing to the paralysis—and, of course, could cause additional paralysis if it shifts.” He continued, sounding more as if he were explaining the process to himself than to Morgan. “After the surgery, I would immobilize you in a type of plaster cast—much like a cocoon—from the neck to mid-thigh. For how long, I cannot say as yet. Certainly for several weeks.”

  Morgan flinched but said nothing. His mind rebelled against the grim details Gunther was disclosing with such clinical impassiveness. Only by sheer force of will did he make himself hear every word of the surgeon’s explanation.

  “Once the cast is removed—” Again the eloquent shrug, the lift of the eyebrows. “After that, we would see what we have accomplished. If anything.”

  For the first time since the surgeon had begun his explanation, Morgan took in a deep breath, albeit an unsteady one.

  “I will ask you again,” he said tightly. “Can you give me any hope at all?”

  Gunther looked at him, his expression unreadable. “Hope? What can I tell you, Fitzgerald? Your Dublin surgeon mentioned that you are a man of great faith. So, then—perhaps the answer depends on you. How great is your faith? Men of faith often believe that hope can be found in places where others would not think to look.”

  Morgan found himself strangely irritated by the surgeon’s words, as if Gunther were deliberately attempting to mock him. Yet his dizzying heartbeat was finally beginning to slow, his hammering pulse ebbing to a more normal rhythm. He was starting to move past the threats implied by the surgeon’s recitation to the possibilities as yet unrevealed.

  He answered Gunther’s question with one of his own. “What of yourself, Doctor? Are you a man of faith?”

  The smile turned to a cynic’s sneer. “Doubtless you would like me to be, eh, Fitzgerald? Then we could pray together for a miracle. If the surgery is successful, you would give credit to your God, as if I had had no part in it. Well, I am sorry, Fitzgerald, but I fear that if you decide in favor of the surgery, you will be under the knife of a heathen. There’s little I believe in besides the depravity of my fellow man.”

  Morgan studied the sardonic face, the mocking eyes. He did not miss the edge of bitterness in the surgeon’s voice. He sensed that Jakob Gunther lived with some private pain of his own, a pain beyond the help of even the most skilled surgical hands.

  “God can use the hands of a heathen just as easily as the hands of a saint,” he told Gunther in all sincerity. “He has even been known to use madmen and jackasses for His purposes now and then.”

  The surgeon made no response other than to crook an eyebrow, but Morgan felt a certain satisfaction. He had at last breached the man’s armor, if only slightly.

  “Interestingly enough,” he went on, “that depravity of man you referred to was the very thing on which my own faith was ultimately founded. Once I recognized it in myself, that is.”

  He gave the surgeon no opportunity to respond. “Thank you very much for your time, Doctor,” he said, a bit surprised that he could actually be civil to Gunther with so little effort. “I am sure you will understand that I need to consider all this very carefully. If I send you my answer by tomorrow, will that be soon enough?”

  The surgeon gave a curt nod and merely stood watching Morgan as he and Sandemon turned to leave.

  Outside the office, Morgan drew in a deep breath. He barely noticed the vile stench of the river, so relieved was he to escape Gunther’s cold cynicism. With his response to the surgeon weighing heavily upon him, again he questioned whether he might be foolish entirely even to consi
der placing his life in the hands of such a man.

  But there was no one else. Jakob Gunther was his best hope, perhaps his only hope. A chilling thought, but one to keep in mind as he made his decision.

  It was late afternoon before they got back to Michael’s house.

  Inside, Sandemon wheeled him to the parlor. They came to a sharp halt just inside the door. The room teemed with people. Finola was sitting by the fire. Annie and Johanna occupied the opposite corner of the room, playing with Gabriel and Teddy. Also present, watching Morgan with anxious eyes, were Michael and Sara, Nora and Whittaker—even Daniel John.

  In a moment of alarm, Morgan wondered if some tragedy had occurred in his absence. Then it dawned on him that they all seemed to be waiting for him. Going the rest of the way into the room, he managed to force a note of lightness into his voice. “Well, now—we have had the reunion already, and I don’t see a corpse, so it must not be a wake. What, pray, is the occasion?”

  They all glanced among themselves—except for Finola, whose gaze clung to his.

  Michael broke the awkward silence. “The truth is, you see, none of us seemed to be of much account, anxious as we’ve been for your news. We thought we might just as well wait together.”

  By this time, Gabriel had spotted his father and came running. Morgan lifted the boy onto his lap and gave him a squeeze, then turned his attention to the others in the room.

  For an instant—and an instant only—he felt a slight edge of disappointment. All the way back from Gunther’s office he had craved nothing so much as Finola’s serenity, longing to talk things through with her and hear her response, knowing that no matter how she felt about the surgery, she would soothe him.

  Then he realized how altogether foolish, if not selfish, he was being. Was he not a man blessed, to find a room filled with people who cared so about him? He would have his time alone with Finola later, but for now he would be with his loved ones.

  Finola had risen and now came to kneel beside him, studying his face as if to read his thoughts. Morgan set Gabriel to his feet and sent him running back to Teddy and the girls, then took Finola’s hand in his. He turned to the waiting faces, and with a smile that was not in the least forced, began to tell them what he had learned from Jakob Gunther.