“Oh, hello,” Pandora said faintly, drawing in quick, reedy breaths and looking up at the woman with dull, pain-hazed eyes.
Smiling briefly, the nurse took up Pandora’s wrist and checked her pulse. “When I invited you to tour the new surgery,” she murmured, “I didn’t necessarily mean as a patient.”
Pandora’s dry lips quirked as the woman noted the dilation of her eyes. “You’ll have to patch me up,” she said.
“I certainly will.”
“You know each other?” Gabriel asked, puzzled.
“Indeed, my lord. I’m a friend of the family.” The nurse picked up a contraption with an earplate, a flexible silk-covered tube, and a trumpet-shaped wooden piece. Lifting one end to her ear, she applied the other end to various places on Pandora’s chest and listened intently.
Increasingly perturbed, Gabriel glanced at the door, wondering where Dr. Havelock was.
The nurse reached for a swab of cotton, dampened it with solution from a small bottle, and cleaned a patch of skin on Pandora’s left arm. Turning to a tray of instruments, she picked up a glass syringe fitted with a hollow needle. She tilted the needle upward and depressed the piston to drive the air out of the chamber.
“Have you had an injection before?” she asked Pandora gently.
“No.” Pandora’s free hand crept toward Gabriel, and he engulfed her cold fingers in his.
“You’ll feel a sting,” the nurse said, “but it will be brief. Then you’ll feel a wave of warmth, and all the pain will vanish.”
As she searched for a vein in Pandora’s arm, Gabriel asked abruptly, “Shouldn’t the doctor be doing that?”
The nurse delayed answering, having already inserted the needle. She depressed the plunger slowly, while Pandora’s fingers tightened on Gabriel’s. He watched her face helplessly, and he fought to keep himself calm and steady, when everything inside was imploding. Everything that mattered was encompassed in this frail body on the leather table. He saw the morphine take effect, her limbs relaxing, the strain easing from around her eyes and mouth. Thank God.
Setting aside the empty hypodermic, the young woman said, “I’m Dr. Garrett Gibson. I’m a fully licensed physician, trained by Sir Joseph Lister in his antiseptic method. In fact, I assisted him in surgeries at the Sorbonne.”
Caught thoroughly off guard, Gabriel asked, “A female physician?”
She looked wry. “The only certified one in England so far. The British medical association has done its best to ensure that no other woman will follow in my footsteps.”
Gabriel didn’t want her assisting Havelock. There was no way of knowing what to expect of a female physician in the operating room, and he didn’t want anything unusual or outlandish connected with his wife’s surgery. He wanted steady, experienced male doctors. He wanted everything to be conventional and safe and normal.
“I want to talk to Havelock before the surgery proceeds,” he said.
Dr. Gibson didn’t seem at all surprised. “Of course,” she replied evenly. “But I would ask that you delay the conversation until after we’ve assessed Lady St. Vincent’s condition.”
Dr. Havelock entered the room and approached the examination table. “The nurse arrived and is washing up,” he murmured to Dr. Gibson, and turned to Gabriel. “My lord, there is a seating area beside the operating room. While you wait there with the Winterbornes, we’ll have a look at this young lady’s shoulder.”
After pressing a kiss to Pandora’s chilled fingers and giving her a reassuring smile, Gabriel left the examination room.
Finding the waiting area, he strode to where Winterborne was seated. Lady Helen was nowhere in sight.
“A female physician?” Gabriel demanded with a scowl.
Winterborne looked faintly apologetic. “I didn’t think to warn you about that. But I can vouch for her—she oversaw Helen’s childbirth and lying-in.”
“That’s a far different matter than surgery,” Gabriel said curtly.
“There have been female physicians in America for over twenty years,” Winterborne pointed out.
“I don’t give a damn what they do in America. I want Pandora to have the best possible medical treatment.”
“Lister has said publicly that Dr. Gibson is one of the best surgeons he’s ever trained.”
Gabriel shook his head. “If I’m to put Pandora’s life into strangers’ hands, it has to be someone with experience. Not a woman who barely looks old enough to be out of the schoolroom. I don’t want her assisting in the surgery.”
Winterborne parted his lips to argue, then appeared to think better of it. “I would probably have similar thoughts, were I in your place,” he admitted. “The idea of a female physician takes some getting used to.”
Gabriel sat heavily in a nearby chair. He became aware of a fine vibration running through his limbs, a constant hum of nervous tension.
Lady Helen entered the waiting room with a small, folded white towel. The cloth was damp and steaming. Wordlessly she approached Gabriel and wiped his cheek and lower jaw. When the cloth came away he saw that it was smudged with blood. Lifting his hands by turn, she began to clean the bloodstains from the creases of his knuckles and between his fingers. He hadn’t even noticed that. He began to take the cloth from her to do it himself, but her grip tightened on it.
“Please,” Helen said quietly. “I need to do something for someone.”
He relaxed and let her continue. By the time she’d finished, Dr. Havelock had entered the waiting area. Gabriel stood, his heart pounding with anxiety.