Page 19 of The Duke
“Good day, Nurse Pritchard.”
Imogen fled the room, not trusting herself to reply.
By the time she found Dr. Longhurst in the laboratory, her lungs fought for every breath impeded by her corset and a band of desperation.
“Youhavetodosomething, or he’s going to die!” she demanded.
“Nurse Pritchard?” Longhurst blinked at her from behind goggles that turned his dark green eyes positively owlish with astonishment and caused his unruly chocolate curls to gather comically high on his crown. “Say what?”
“Col—His Grace, I believe his affliction is septicemia, not typhus. I think his wrist is infected and making him ill and that no one has noticed until now.”
Carefully, as though handling something volatile, Longhurst set the beaker he’d been inspecting on one of the many workbenches strewn about the room. Imogen navigated them like a maze.
“I watched Dr. Fowler change the dressing, myself.” His eyes moved behind the goggles as though scrutinizing the exact same thing in his memory. “No abscess. No evidence of infection or putridity. No vein discoloration. Though… presence of abnormal discomfort for a wound not entirely recent.” His gaze snapped to her, assessing her with clinical precision. “Explain your theory.”
She’d have to keep this brief to retain his attention. “As you know, I’ve survived typhus, I’m intimately familiar with its symptoms. There’s almost always a very painful rash. It feels as though your chest is full of cotton, and you want to cough and cough, but you expel nothing. And then there’s… digestive complaints, which are unpleasant and embarrassing, to say the least.”
“You don’t have to explain the disease to me, Pritchard. I’ve noted it enough.” Impatiently, Longhurst threw the cuffs of his shirtsleeves and began to roll them to the elbow. “I have a great deal of work to do.”
Terrified that she might be bashing up against the wall of another masculine ego, she hurried on. “My point is, Trenwyth has exhibitedonly oneof these symptoms, and only a little. He’s wheezing more than coughing. It’s just not the same. If it were just the absence of the rash, or that he had the rash but not the cough, then I would assume it was just an abnormal manifestation of the disease. But the absence of both symptoms?”
He considered it a moment, nodded curtly, and removed his goggles. “So, why septicemia?”
“You,yourself,noted the pain in his arm. His fever is spiking ever higher, and he’s having an increasingly difficult time breathing. His pulse is both quickening and weakening, almost to a flutter. William said he hasn’t used the necessary once. All these symptoms point to a terrible infection.”
Longhurst hurried to the door on long legs. “I’ll examine Trenwyth again. If all is as you noted, we’ll inform Dr. Fowler and prepare the surgical theater.”
“I already told Dr. Fowler. He won’t hear of it.” Imogen seized his arm. “I fear, Dr. Longhurst, that if you take this to him, we’ll both be reprimanded. And worse, he’ll forbid us to treat the duke.”
“Fowler,” Longhurst spat, as though the name disgusted him. “How a man that stupid was chosen to run such a facility boggles the mind. The blowhard can raise funds, but is utter shit at practicing medicine.” He flicked her a conciliatory look from behind lashes long and thick for a man. “Excuse my vulgarity.”
“I agree.” Imogen sighed out a breath of relief. “Will you help Trenwyth? I think you’re his only hope.”
“I’m more chemist than surgeon. This isn’t really my purview.” He glanced about the laboratory, indecision disturbing the tranquility of his features. “If I performed an unauthorized procedure, I could lose my position.”
“And if you don’t, a man could lose hislife!” Imogen cried.
For the first time since she’d known him, Longhurst’s eyes altered from sharp to soft as they alighted on her face. “You are right to remind me of that,” he conceded. “Come, let us see to your patient.”
When she was a young girl, Imogen’s family had a cat named Iris, who’d given birth to a litter of kittens. One of the kittens, Icarus, had taken a particular shine to her and followed her everywhere, going so far as to join her in the bath. At night, it would curl up on her chest and Imogen would hold perfectly still, marveling at the speed of the tiny sleeping animal’s breaths. Once, she’d even attempted to mimic the short motions of the creature’s chest, and found it impossible to maintain.
Now, hovering over Longhurst as he examined Trenwyth, Imogen despaired to note that the duke’s breath was every bit as fast and shallow as Icarus’s had been long ago. This time, when Longhurst palpated the wrist, Cole’s body jerked and spasmed, but only a raw sound escaped. It was as though he couldn’t produce the air for a scream any longer.
Time was running out, she thought with despair.
Longhurst looked up at her, his eyes as serious as she’d ever seen them. “Prepare the anesthesia and surgical kit,” he ordered hoarsely. “And hope that it is not too late.”
CHAPTERSIX
Over the years, the definition of hell made many transitions in Cole’s perspective. As a young man, it had been a nebulous place of dubious origin. Some underworld created by old and religious men to threaten those with rebellious spirits and inquiring minds into submission. His mother had been fond of the place as a probable destination for his eternal soul, and had taken every opportunity to inform him thus.
As a soldier, hell had become a tangible thing. The battlefield. Where weapons forged in fire ground men forged of earth into so much meat. Cut living flesh down to nothing but elements and offal that, once dried, returned to dust.
It had been impossible for Cole to imagine anything more hellish, until the smoke had cleared on April 20, 1877. The April Uprising. Hell had become an endless, punishing march to an Ottoman prison somewhere between Bulgaria and Constantinople. A year became an eternity of tedium interrupted by bouts of torture. Where Cole had learned that a youth spent in pursuit of the most exquisite pleasure could be balanced in such a short time with equally exquisite pain. That torment could be as consuming as an orgasm, the veins in his body dilating to allow the pain to flow into his every limb, to set fire to his every nerve. Suspending his muscles with the helpless, pulsating sensation until his body was no longer his own. No matter how valiantly he fought it, groans and screams spilled from him as freely as his blood.
In hell, he’d lost an intrinsic part of himself.
And then he’d lost his hand.
