Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone

“If you lie down by yourself, I’ll put you out before they tie you,” I said. “And I’ll untie you as soon as I’ve finished the surgery. I won’t let you wake up bound. I promise.”

He was getting enough air now, and his face lost the look of incipient seizure.

“Ye want to promise me I’ll wake up?”

He spoke gruffly, and not only because of the choking.

“I can’t promise that,” I said, as steadily as I could. I squeezed his knee. “But I’ll lay you odds of a hundred to one that you will.”

He looked at me searchingly for a long moment, then sighed.

“Aye, well. I’ve been a gambler since I was wee. I suppose this is no time to quit.”

Leaning back on his palms, he brought his legs back up on the table. The effort to move the wounded one made sweat spring out on his forehead, but he kept his lips tight pressed together and made no sound when Roger and Ian took his shoulders and eased him down.

A boiled napkin lay on the counter behind me, displaying four narrow strips of hammered gold. Bree had made them and had painstakingly bored the tiny holes I would use to screw them to the bone—the steel screws courtesy of Jenny’s watch, offered immediately when I asked.

This was going to be a tricky, painstaking bit of surgery, but I was smiling behind my mask as I soaped and shaved, then swabbed the skin of his knee with alcohol. The situation reminded me strongly of the day I had prepared to amputate his snakebitten leg—this leg; I could still see the narrow groove the bite had left, just above his ankle, nearly hidden by the furze of red-blond hair. Today, I wasn’t afraid for his life, and I rejoiced in the knowledge that what I was going to do to his knee wouldn’t hurt him while I was doing it. I glanced up the table at him; he met my eye, and scowled at me.

I wiggled my eyebrows at him and scowled, too, mocking him. He snorted and lay back, but his face relaxed. That was what I was happiest about; he’d fought me, and even though he’d been forced to give in, he wasn’t giving up his right to be cranky about it.

Over the years, I’d seen a lot of sweet, amiable, biddable patients, who succumbed within hours to their ailments. The angry, irascible, difficult sons of bitches (of either sex) almost always survived.

The cotton gauze of the mask had grown damp in my hand, and I wiped my hand on my apron. I nodded toward the ether bottle on the counter, and Bree handed it to me, troubled eyes fixed on her father, who had folded his hands across his belly and was staring doggedly at the ceiling, looking disturbingly like a medieval knight in the crypt of some cathedral.

“All you need is a sword clasped to your chest and a little dog under your feet,” she told him. “And maybe a suit of chain mail.”

He snorted slightly, but his face relaxed just a hair.

“Breathe slow and deep,” I said, in a low, soothing voice. The scent of ether had risen like a ghost when I uncapped the bottle, and I saw Ian hold his breath as it reached him.

Jamie’s eyes met mine and his muscles tensed as I fitted the mask over his nose and mouth.

“Just breathe. You’ll feel dizzy for a moment, but only a moment.” The clear drops fell one by one onto the gauze and disappeared. “Breathe in. Count for him, Bree, backward from ten.”

She looked startled, but obligingly began, “Ten … nine … eight … seven …” His eyelids fluttered and then popped open as he felt it.

“Breathe,” I said firmly. “… six … five …”

“He’s gone,” Roger said quietly, then realized what he’d said. “I mean—he’s asleep.”

“… three, two, one.”

I handed Roger the bottle.

“Make sure he stays that way,” I said. “One drop every thirty seconds.”

I went to wash my hands in alcohol one final time and checked over the instruments and supplies I’d laid ready, while Ian and Bree tied him firmly to the table with rags and linen bandages. His fingers had relaxed and his hands hung limp when they laid his arms at his sides. The light was good; the fine hairs on his arms and legs glowed gold, and the seeping blood in his bandage was the color in the heart of a rose. My own breath had calmed and my heart beat slowly; I could feel it in my fingertips. Some saint was with me now. I wanted to smooth the soft hair back from his brow, but didn’t want to break what semblance of sterility I had, so left it.

Jamie was tied down as securely as a barrel of tobacco in a ship’s hold, but Brianna took hold of his leg and steadied it, just to be sure. I nodded at her, turned to my work, and spread the skin over Jamie’s kneecap as taut as I could.

I picked up a pledget, and the sharp sting of alcohol joined the musky ether, drowning the smell of the pines and chestnut mast from the window.

“Smells like a proper hospital, doesn’t it?” I said, and tied my own mask tight over my face.