‘Edward Burton,’ said Luke, and turned to the man beneath the sheet.
He was so slight that he hardly lifted the white cloth covering him, but tall, so that his feet and shoulders were visible. His collarbones were sharp, and between them the declivity of his throat fluttered visibly. Spencer thought: He’s swallowed a moth, and felt sick. A high colour spread across the patient’s cheeks, which were broad and high, and marked with moles in black clusters. His hair had begun to recede early, leaving a white stretch of forehead on which beads of sweat stood out. He might have been twenty; he might have been fifty; he was probably more beautiful at that moment than he had ever been before. He was conscious, and had about him an air of great concentration, as if the expelling of breath were a skill that had taken years to perfect. Listening carefully to his mother, he interjected where she paused, but only to say something about crows and rooks.
‘He was all right a few hours ago,’ said his mother, apologetically, as if they’d missed seeing him at his best and would go away disappointed. ‘They put a plaster on. Can you show them?’ The nurse lifted first the thin arm, and then the sheet. Spencer saw a large square plaster fastened over the left nipple and extending a few inches down. There was no blood or suppuration: it looked as if a cloth had been draped over him as he slept. His mother said, ‘He was all right when they brought him in. He was talking. They patched him up a bit. There wasn’t much bleeding, there wasn’t much of anything. They put him away in here out of sight and I think they forgot about us. He’s just getting tired, that’s all. Why didn’t anyone come? Why can’t I take him home?’
Gently, Luke said: ‘He is dying.’ He left the word in the air a while to see if she’d take it up, but she only smiled uncertainly, as if it had been a joke in poor taste. Luke crouched by her chair, and touched her lightly on the hand, and said, ‘Mrs Burton, he’s going to die. By morning, he’ll be dead.’
Spencer, who knew how eagerly Luke had awaited a wound like this – had seen dogs and corpses cut and probed in preparation, and once let Luke stitch and restitch a long cut of his own to perfect his needlework – saw his friend’s patience with astonishment and love.
‘Nonsense!’ the woman said, and they heard the fabric of her handkerchief tear between her fingers. ‘Nonsense! Look at him! He’ll sleep it off!’
‘His heart is cut. The bleeding is all in there, all in here’ – Garrett thumped his own breast – ‘his heart is getting weak.’ Reaching for words she might understand he said, ‘It will get weaker and weaker like an animal bleeding in the forest, and then it will stop and there’ll be no more blood anywhere in him, and everything – his lungs and his brain – will starve.’
‘Edward –’ she said.
Luke saw the blows land, and that his prey was weak; laying a hand on her shoulder he said: ‘What I mean is – he will die, unless you let me help.’
There was a moment of struggling against the truth, then she began to cry. In a quiet voice that carried through the weeping with more authority than Spencer had ever seen him muster, Luke said, ‘You are his mother: you brought him into the world, and you can keep him in it. Will you let me operate? I …’ – his belief in the possibility of success did battle with his honesty, and reached an uneasy truce – ‘I am very good – I’m the best, and I’ll do it without payment. It’s not been done before and they’ll tell you it can’t be done, but for everything there’s a first time and it’s the time that matters most. You want me to promise, I know, and I can’t, but can you trust me, at least?’
Outside the door there was a brief commotion. Spencer suspected that Rollings had alerted various administrative authorities, and leaned against the door with his arms folded. He caught the nurse’s eye, and each conveyed silently Oh we are sailing very close to the wind. The commotion subsided.
The woman said, between gasps, ‘What will you do to him?’
‘Really, it’s not so bad,’ said Luke. ‘His heart is protected by a kind of bag, like an infant in the womb. The cut is there – I have seen it – I could show you? – yes, perhaps you’d rather not. The cut is there, no longer than your little finger. I’ll stitch it up, and the bleeding will stop, and he will – he might – recover. If we do nothing …’ He spread out his hands in a gesture of dismay.
‘Will it hurt?’
‘He will know nothing about it at all.’
She began to gather herself piece by piece, beginning at her feet, which she set a little further apart on the floor, and ending with her hair, which she brushed away from her face as if to show off her newly acquired resolve. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Do what you like. I’m going to go home now.’ She did not look at her son, only grasped his foot as she passed the bed. Spencer went out with her, to do as he always did: soothe, and placate, and with the authority conferred by wealth and status protect his friend from the consequences of his actions.
Garrett meanwhile stooped over the bed and said briskly, ‘In a little while you’ll have a good deep sleep – are you tired? I think you are.’ Then he took the man’s hand, feeling foolish, and saying, ‘I am Luke Garrett; I hope you’ll remember my name when you wake.’
‘One rook is a crow,’ said Edward Burton, ‘but two crows are rooks.’
‘Confusion’s only to be expected,’ said Garrett, and replaced the man’s wrist on the white sheet. He turned to Sister Fry, and said, ‘Are you able to attend?’ though it was merely politeness, since it was inconceivable that she would not. She nodded, and in that silent response conveyed such quiet confidence in Garrett’s skill that his pulse – not yet settled since running there – began to slow.
When he and Spencer entered the operating theatre, hands raw from scrubbing, the porters had departed. Edward Burton lay high on the bed, eyes fixed on Sister Fry, who’d changed into a fresh uniform and was withdrawing with practised monotony a series of bottles and instruments which she laid out on steel trays.
Spencer would’ve liked to explain to the patient what was to come next – that the chloroform worked slowly and sickly, and that he should not fight the mask, but would wake (would he wake?) in due course, throat aching from the tube through which the ether passed. But Garrett required silence, and both Spencer and the nurse had come to anticipate what he required next by little more than nods and nudges, and how directed were the black looks he gave above the white mask.