She turned up the gas lamps in the wall sconces and began to withdraw from the bureau drawers the implements she would need—catgut and a sewing needle—then asked Sinclair to lie back on the table so that she could better see the wound. Her hands were shaking as she threaded the sutures through the needle, and Sinclair put out his own hand, on top of hers, and said, in a calming voice, “Steady.”
She swallowed and nodded twice, then continued, slowly and deliberately. She bent low to study the skin, then decided on a plan of action: She would begin at the bottom of the wound, where the skin was most separated, pinch it together, put the needle through, and then, as if completing a hem, stitch upward. It would take, she estimated, no more than eight to ten stitches…though she knew it would prove quite painful for the lieutenant. She would have to work as speedily as she could.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
He had thrown his other arm behind his head, and was resting as if he were lying on a riverbank in June. “Quite.”
She touched the needle to the skin and hesitated several seconds before she could bring herself to put it through. She felt his muscles flex, saw the arm go taut, but he didn’t say a word. She knew that he was loath to appear anything but stoic in front of his companions…or, she suspected, in front of her. She drew the flap of skin from the other side closer, put the needle through that, too, and then, as if holding a pinch of salt between her fingers, held both together as the needle came back in the other direction. She had seen patients, in the midst of painful procedures, often look away, as if focusing on some idyllic, faraway vision, but his eyes, she could tell, were fixed—in that same way—upon her.
She drew the needle through again, and again, and again, and the wound gradually closed, until it was more of a puckered scar running several inches up his arm. When she had finished, she tied off the knot, but rather than biting it off, as she would have done with ordinary thread, she used the tailor’s scissors to cut it short. Finally, she glanced up at his face; his forehead was gleaming with sweat, and the smile wavered on his lips, but he had not flinched.
“That should hold,” she said, turning to dispose of the leftover suture. She gently coated the skin with the carbolic acid once more, then took a clean bandage from the bureau and wrapped it tightly around the arm. “You may sit up, if you like.”
He took a deep breath, then, without leaning on his right arm for support, sat up. For a second, due to the effects of the surgery, the brandy, or both, he swayed from one side to the other, and Frenchie and Rutherford quickly stubbed out their cigars and came to steady him.
And that was how Miss Florence Nightingale found them.
She stood like a pillar of rectitude in a long, hooped skirt, with her black hair perfectly and severely parted down the middle, her pale hands crossed in front of her. Her dark eyes, under high uplifted brows, flitted from the soldiers, who appeared no doubt inebriated, to the night nurse, her bonnet askew, her hands wet with water and carbolic acid, then back again. It was as if she were trying to make sense of an elephant in her parlor.
“Nurse Ames,” she said at last, “I expect an explanation.”
Before Eleanor could summon a single word to her parched lips, Rutherford stepped forward, hand extended, and introduced himself as a captain in the 17th Lancers. “My friend here,” he said, gesturing toward Sinclair, “was injured in the act of defending a woman’s honor.”
Frenchie put in, “Quite nearby.”
“And we required immediate assistance. Your Miss Ames has rendered it, and in a thoroughly professional manner.”
“That is for me to decide,” Miss Nightingale said, frostily. “And were you gentlemen unaware that this is an institution devoted solely to the care of gentlewomen?”
Rutherford looked over at Frenchie and then Sinclair, as if unsure how to answer that one.
“We were,” Sinclair said, managing to step down onto the floor. “But as my regiment leaves for the east in the morning, we had no time to seek out an alternative.”
Rutherford and Frenchie appeared happy with that improvisation.
And even Miss Nightingale seemed mollified, somewhat. She swept into the alcove, and closely examined the newly stitched wound.
Eleanor was quivering in fear, but when she glanced at Sinclair, he winked at her.
“And are you happy with the result of this…unorthodox procedure?” she said to Sinclair.
“I am.”
She straightened up, and without looking yet at Eleanor, said, “As am I.” She then turned toward Eleanor, and said, “It appears to have been expertly done.”
Eleanor took her first full breath in minutes.
“But we cannot have this sort of thing here. The reputation and public standing of this hospital is in constant review. I will require a full account, in writing, by eight o’clock in the morning, Nurse.”
Eleanor bowed her head in assent.