Eli seemed to relax, dropped back on the table, his cracked and dry lips working. Anxious black eyes jerked back and forth, as though following fevered delusions.
“I seen it in my dreams, ma’am,” Eli whispered. “Clear as you right now. All the world was right while I was dying. Flowers, they growed. Children was a-playing, doing chores. Young people, they’s a-paying court, and young love was a-blooming.” He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing. “It come out of the darkness, a gleaming silver blade. Then … swish. And it done took my leg.”
“What happened then, Eli?” Meg asked.
“The moment my leg dropped away, the blood started. World went crazy. Shooting, yelling, screaming, and dying. Wasn’t just New Orleans, ma’am. No, it was the whole country. Men and boys, their arms and legs popping off their bodies like ticks off a hot plate. Not just no handful, neither, but by the thousands. Maybe tens of thousands, filling fields with legs and arms and heads popping right off their bodies. Crazy, I tell you. Plumb crazy.”
He stared up at her face, panic-glazed eyes probing hers. “You gotta believe me, ma’am. You promise me you don’t cut my leg.”
She patted him on the bony shoulder. “Nothing’s going to be your fault, Eli. Doc’s here to take a look, that’s all. He’s going to make you well.”
Eli sagged in apparent relief. “Thank you, ma’am. Gotta tell you, I’s plumb scared.”
Doc dosed his cloth, stepped past Meg, and said, “Eli? I need you to smell this cloth. It will make you sleep.”
“Don’t want to smell no—”
“This is an order, Eli,” Meg told him sharply. “You want to stay on here, you gotta get well. Now, pull your weight and smell the cloth.”
Eli blinked, allowing Doc to place the cloth over his nose and mouth.
“Breathe deeply, Eli,” Doc told him. “That’s it. No, don’t struggle. Just breathe.”
Doc waited, finishing his count. Removing the rag, he checked Eli’s breathing and heart.
“You’re good at that, Dr. Hancock. And at so young an age? I wasn’t certain when you knocked on my door.”
He gave her a wistful smile. “I studied medicine and surgery for three years in Boston.” He had observed and assisted on several amputations. This would be the first one he’d attempted on his own. He hoped Madam de Elaine remained blissfully ignorant of his tension.
“Your accent?” she mused. “Arkansas?”
“Very good. You have no idea how hard I have to work to keep the backwoods twang out of my voice.” He rubbed his sweaty hands. Nerves. God, he hated the jitters. Eli’s ravings about chaos hadn’t helped.
Come on, Philip. Buck up. You know what to do.
“Arkansas to Boston to New Orleans? You travel, Doctor.” She bent to retrieve the first of the heavy leather straps, and in moments had competently buckled Eli’s passive body into the restraint.
“I think I inherited the wanderlust from my father. As much as he claimed to love the farm, he loved being away from it even more.”
“He was a surgeon as well?”
A smile thinned his lips. “If he’s anything, he’s a rogue and scoundrel. An irresponsible womanizing freebooter.”
Doc squinted in the lamplight as he palpated Eli’s gangrenous leg. “Do I want to know what you use this table and those straps for?”
“What does it look like?” Meg ripped the blanket from Eli’s hips, leaving him naked from the waist down. Businesslike, she positioned his good right leg to the side and tightened it in a strap.
“I’d say you terminate the occasional pregnancy here.”
“That and dose the girls for the clap when they need it. The straps keep the girls from moving at the wrong moment.” She pinned him with her icy gaze. “I wouldn’t like that to be talked about around town. If that’s going to be a problem for you…”
Laying out his instruments, and hoping his hands wouldn’t shake, Doc replied, “Impecunious young physicians, fresh off the boat, and new in town, should not consider themselves too high-and-mighty.”
Her lips curled in a world-weary smile. “Then I guess we see eye to eye.”
He removed the tourniquet from his bag and unwound the strap. “Not that Paw ever let us develop what he called airs.”
She had bound Eli’s left thigh to the table. “Sounds like an interesting man, this father of yours.”
“Interesting covers a lot of territory.” Doc tied on his apron. “I’m taking it at the knee.”
“Do what you must.”
“You don’t have to watch this.” Doc positioned his tourniquet, taking his time to screw it tight on Eli’s skinny thigh.
“You’re right. I don’t.” She crossed her arms beneath her full breasts and fixed her hard gaze on Eli’s ruined foot and ankle.
Doc picked up his knife, reflexively wiping it on his apron. Don’t think. Just do it.
Doc’s blade traced a deep U in Eli’s skin to create enough excess flap to cover the stump. He shot a sidelong glance at Meg, her blue eyes unflinching, face expressionless. Given other things she’d seen, perhaps an amputation wasn’t among the worst.
How many girls have died on this table?
“Boston?” Meg mused. “What were they saying about secession up there?”
“Some are saying good riddance. Others are calling for troops to ‘put down the rebellion.’ Most, quite honestly, don’t care if the country splits or not. Were it not for the abolitionists and Mr. Lincoln’s rhetoric, my guess is that we’d be allowed to go peacefully. Still might as long as some lunatic doesn’t start shooting at federal forces.”
She spared him an inquisitive look. “And why did you choose Boston?”
“The best medical schools are there.” Doc concentrated as he separated the thick web of ligaments around the knee. Synovial fluid drained like water as he punctured the joint. To his relief, the sepsis hadn’t spread past the calf muscles. “After completing my studies I wanted to come home. The first ship bound for a Southern port was headed to New Orleans. Which brings me to your back room
