Page 66 of Once a Gentleman
The pain hardly faded at all, but his head swam more than before. Bloody hell and damnation. It hurt—and Harrison had said his leg might be saved.
Fucking hell,try to save his leg.
“Tell him he can’t bloody well cut it off,” he slurred, forcing his eyes open again. Harrison leaned over him, still pale and sweaty and unsmiling. He tried to reach up, to catch Harrison by the lapels and drag him down, but his hand swung wildly and then fell back to the—bed? Yes, a bed, in some kind of small bedchamber with whitewashed walls and very little light. “He can’t. Can’t cut it off, Harrison, he can’t—”
“All right, sir, all right,” Harrison cried, pushing him back down as he tried, with a grunt of agony, to lever himself up on the one arm that he could almost control. “We’ll do our best for you. Lie still, you’ll only make the bleeding worse.”
Andrew tried to look down at himself. Bandages swathed his left leg, crimson stains soaking through in several places despite the tourniquet digging into his flesh. His swollen, filthy, bare calf and foot poked out below. Flies buzzed around him, their drone an unbearable irritation on top of everything else. He glanced to the side.
He couldn’t see his hand. Bandages wrapped all around it. And he couldn’t feel it, really, not to move his fingers, not for anything more than terrible, terrible pain.
“My arm?” he managed.
Harrison shook his head, grimmer than ever.
Andrew’s belly clenched in horror and dread.
He couldn’t do more than lie back after that, just as Harrison had told him to. He panted for breath, too hot, too damp with sweat, feeling the life draining out of him by the moment.
The door opened, and two men entered: Captain O’Neill, and another man in a civilian suit carrying a bag. The surgeon, he presumed.
“Lieutenant Turner,” he said with a strong Spanish accent, setting down his bag. “I am Doctor Serrano. I will try not to hurt you as I examine you.”
Andrew gritted his teeth as Serrano hurt him very much, in several different places, at some point becoming conscious of the fact that Harrison had moved to his other side and taken his right hand, and that Andrew had Harrison’s in a grip firm enough to grind his bones together. Harrison didn’t let out a single sound of complaint. God, Andrew ought to have been kinder to Harrison. He ought to have…oh, God, Kit, he wanted to see him so badly it hurt almost more than his leg. To have Kit’s hand stroking his hair out of his face, or see Kit’s beautiful eyes…he could imagine their precise shade of brilliant green, recall the tiny flecks of blue and gold hidden in their depths, and lose himself in that.
He bought himself a second or two of respite from the pain, and then Serrano was doing something to his left wrist that made him yelp, and had black spots dancing in front of his red-glazed vision.
“I’m afraid the hand will have to be removed, señor,” Serrano said briskly. “The leg, I do not yet know. I don’t want to manipulate the bone as much until you have something for the pain. Opium,” he added, as he reached into his bag. “I am not one of your military men, chopping limbs with nothing given.”
Andrew blinked at him in horror. His hand. He would lose his hand. He tried to clench his fingers, to show the man that his hand would be well enough, but he could feel nothing but shooting, searing pain. “I need—sir, you cannot—it will heal,” he stammered hoarsely, desperately.
“You’ve already lost three of the fingers, lad,” Captain O’Neill said gruffly, only the hard set of his features showing what he felt. He shifted on his feet and harrumphed. “The doctor knows what he’s about. Best in Cadíz, I’m told. Even if he is—” O’Neill cut off whatever uncomplimentary thing he’d meant to say about the doctor’s nationality with a grumble, running a hand over his face.
Andrew tried again to push up, to see his hand, and Harrison shoved him back down. “For God’s sake rest easy, sir,” he said, sounding rather desperate. “There’s nothing you can do but take the medicine and pray.”
Pray. What would prayer do, now that Andrew would, if he lived at all, be a useless cripple? He’d never sail again, never command his own ship nor even serve with O’Neill and Harrison. And his men, they’d have a new lieutenant…and Kit. Oh, God. Kit.
How could he go home like this, half a man, needing care and cossetting, unable to tie his own fucking cravat, let alone do anything of import? If he could walk…at best he’d walk. At worst, he’d have some ghastly peg or need to be carried, or he’d fall down and—no.
No, he could not. He could hardly bear to live with himself under those circumstances, and perhaps he wouldn’t, after all. Perhaps it would be too much—or too little—to live with.
It all burst upon him in an instant, fully formed: Kit would never leave him in such a state. Whether he loved Andrew or not, and Andrew rather tended toward not, he would never abandon him, because Kit was not the kind of man to leave another who needed him in an extremity. Kit had himself been abandoned by all his friends, left alone in the world. And he would never inflict that on another, particularly one he cared for a little—and Andrew did believe Kit cared for him, even if his feelings didn’t come close to Andrew’s.
And so he would stay. And his pity would grate on Andrew’s nerves, would shame him past the point of bloody endurance. Andrew could never again be the man Kit deserved.
And if Andrew truly couldn’t bear to live like that, how could he end his own life, after the way Kit’s father had chosen to hide in death from his own failings, to take the coward’s way out and leave his son behind? Andrew could not, would not, inflict the same wound again. He would live, and hate himself, and hate everyone, and Kit would be miserable with him.
No. It was impossible, quite impossible to contemplate.
What had to be done seemed obvious, but it must be done now, before the surgeon mutilated him any further. Even if he died under Serrano’s knife, he must at the very least send word to Robinson. His will should be amended to ensure that Kit would never again want for anything. An addendum sent under such circumstances might or might not be thrown out in a legal challenge, perhaps from Andrew’s grasping mother, but Robinson was his executor and could at least see to it that Kit had enough to live.
“I need to write letters, first,” he rasped. “Harrison. Will you? I must dictate them to you. But I cannot die without writing them.”
“You won’t die!” O’Neill snapped. “Buck up, man!”
Serrano shrugged. “You are less likely to die if I operate sooner. But it is best to do these things even if they cause a short delay. They bring peace.”
“He doesn’t need peace!” O’Neill rounded on Serrano, his eyebrows bristling and his aspect fierce. “He won’t be needing peace, because he’s bloody well going to live, or I’ll keelhaul you myself, sir!”
