Mrs. Bug paused to pound him helpfully on the back, leaving him purple and gasping.
“Well, wha’s amiss wi’ him, then?” she asked, coming round to squint critically at Bobby’s face. “Ye’ve no got the shits again, have ye, lad?”
“Again?” I said.
“Oh, no, mum,” he croaked. “Perish the thought! ’Twas only eating green apples, the once.” He choked, coughed, and sat up straight, clearing his throat.
“Can we please not talk about me bowels, mum?” he asked plaintively. “Not over breakfast, at least?”
I could feel Lizzie vibrating with amusement next to me, but she kept her eyes demurely on her plate, not to embarrass him further.
“Certainly,” I said, smiling. “I hope you’ll be staying for a few days, Bobby?” He’d come the day before, bearing the usual assortment of letters and newspapers from Lord John—along with a package containing a marvelous present for Jemmy: a musical jack-in-the-box, sent specially from London by the good offices of Lord John’s son, Willie.
“Oh, I s’all, mum, yes,” he assured me, mouth full of muffin. “His Lordship said I was to see if Mr. Fraser had a letter for me to carry back, so I must wait for him, mustn’t I?”
“Of course.” Jamie and Ian had gone to the Cherokee a week before; it was likely to be another week before they returned. Plenty of time to make my experiments.
“Is there anything I might do, mum, in the way of service to you?” Bobby asked. “Seeing as I’m here, I mean, and Mr. Fraser and Mr. Ian not.” There was a small tone of satisfaction in this; he got on all right with Ian, but there was no doubt that he preferred to have Lizzie’s attention to himself.
“Why, yes,” I said, scooping up a bit of porridge. “Now that you mention it, Bobby . . .”
By the time I had finished explaining, Bobby still looked healthy, but a good deal less in bloom.
“Put me asleep,” he repeated uncertainly. He glanced at Lizzie, who looked a little uncertain, too, but who was much too used to being told to do unreasonable things to protest.
“You’ll only be asleep for a moment,” I assured him. “Likely you won’t even notice.”
His face expressed considerable skepticism, and I could see him shifting about for some excuse. I’d foreseen that ploy, though, and now played my trump card.
“It’s not only me needing to judge the dose,” I said. “I can’t operate on someone and give the ether at the same time—or not easily. Malva Christie will be assisting me; she’ll need the practice.”
“Oh,” Bobby said thoughtfully. “Miss Christie.” A sort of soft, dreamy expression spread across his face. “Well. I s’ouldn’t want to put Miss Christie out, of course.”
Lizzie made one of those economical Scottish noises in the back of her throat, managing to convey scorn, derision, and abiding disapproval in the space of two glottal syllables.
Bobby looked up in inquiry, a bit of pie poised on his fork.
“Did you say something?”
“Who, me?” she said. “O’ course not.” She got up abruptly and, carrying her apron before her, neatly shook crumbs into the fire, and turned to me.
“When d’ye mean to do it?” she demanded, adding a belated, “ma’am.”
“Tomorrow morning,” I said. “It needs to be done on an empty stomach, so we’ll do it first thing, before breakfast.”
“Fine!” she said, and stamped out.
Bobby blinked after her, then turned to me, bewildered.
“Did I say something?”
Mrs. Bug’s eye met mine in perfect understanding.
“Not a thing, lad,” she said, depositing a fresh spatulaful of scrambled eggs onto his plate. “Eat up. Ye’ll need your strength.”
BRIANNA, CLEVER WITH her hands, had made the mask to my specifications, woven of oak splits. It was simple enough, a sort of double cage, hinged so that the two halves of it swung apart for the insertion of a thick layer of cotton wool between them, and then back together, the whole thing shaped to fit like a catcher’s mask over the patient’s nose and mouth.
“Put enough ether on to dampen the cotton wool all through,” I instructed Malva. “We’ll want it to take effect quickly.”
“Aye, ma’am. Oh, it does smell queer, doesn’t it?” She sniffed cautiously, face turned half away as she dripped ether onto the mask.
“Yes. Do be careful not to breathe too much of it yourself,” I said. “We don’t want you falling over in the midst of an operation.”
She laughed, but dutifully held the mask further away.
Lizzie had bravely offered to go first—with the clear intent of deflecting Bobby’s attention from Malva to her. This was working; she lay in a languid pose on the table, cap off, and her soft, pale hair displayed to best advantage on the pillow. Bobby sat beside her, earnestly holding her hand.
“All right, then.” I had a tiny minute-glass to hand, the best I could do by way of keeping accurate time. “Put it gently over her face. Lizzie, just breathe deeply, and count with me, one . . . two . . . goodness, that didn’t take long, did it?”
She’d taken one long breath, rib cage rising high—and then gone limp as a dead flounder as the breath went out. I hastily flipped the glass, and came to take her pulse. All well there.
“Wait for a bit; you can feel it, when they start to come round, a sort of vibration in the flesh,” I instructed Malva, keeping one eye on Lizzie and the other on the glass. “Put your hand on her shoulder. . . . There, do you feel it?”
Malva nodded, nearly trembling with excitement.
“Two or three drops then.” She added these, her own breath held, and Lizzie relaxed again with a sigh like an escape of air from a punctured tire.
Bobby’s blue eyes were absolutely round, but he clung fiercely to Lizzie’s other hand.
I timed the period to arousal once or twice more, then let Malva put her under a little more deeply. I picked up the lancet I had ready, and pricked Lizzie’s finger. Bobby gasped as the blood welled up, looking back and forth from the crimson drop to Lizzie’s angelically peaceful face.
“Why, she don’t feel it!” he exclaimed. “Look, she’s never moved a muscle!”
“Exactly,” I said, with a profound feeling of satisfaction. “She won’t feel anything at all, until she comes round.”
“Mrs. Fraser says we could cut someone quite open,” Malva informed Bobby, self-importantly. “Slice into them, and get at what’s ailing—and they’d never feel a thing!”
“Well, not until they woke up,” I said, amused. “They’d feel it then, I’m afraid. But it really is quite a marvelous thing,” I added more softly, looking down at Lizzie’s unconscious face.
I let her stay under whilst I checked the fresh blood sample, then told Malva to take the mask off. Within a minute, Lizzie’s eyelids began to flutter. She looked curiously round, then turned to me.
“When are ye going to start it, ma’am?”
Despite assurances from both Bobby and Malva that she had been to all appearances dead as a doornail for the last quarter hour, she refused to believe it, asserting indignantly that she couldn’t have been—though at a loss to explain the prick on her finger and the slide of freshly smeared blood.
“You remember the mask on your face?” I asked. “And my telling you to take a deep breath?”
She nodded uncertainly.
“Aye, I do, then, and it felt for a moment as though I were choking—but then ye were all just staring down at me, next thing!”
“Well, I suppose the only way to convince her is to show her,” I said, smiling at the three flushed young faces. “Bobby?”
Eager to demonstrate the truth of the matter to Lizzie, he hopped up on the table and laid himself down with a will, though the pulse in his slender throat was hammering as Malva dripped ether on the mask. He drew a deep, convulsive gasp the moment she put it on his face. Frowning a bit, he took another—one more—and went limp.
Lizzie clapped both hands to her mouth, staring.
“Jesus, Joseph, and Mary!” she exclaimed. Malva giggled, thrilled at the effect.
Lizzie looked at me, eyes wide, then back at Bobby. Stooping to his ear, she called his name, to no effect, then picked up his hand and wiggled it gingerly. His arm waggled limply, and she made a soft exclamation and set his hand down again. She looked quite agitated.
“Can he no wake up again?”
“Not until we take away the mask,” Malva told her, rather smug.
“Yes, but you don’t want to keep someone under longer than you need to,” I added. “It’s not good for them to be anesthetized too long.”
Malva obediently brought Bobby back to the edge of consciousness and put him back under several times, while I made note of times and dosages. During the last of these notes, I glanced up, to see her looking down at Bobby with an intent sort of expression, seeming to concentrate on something. Lizzie had withdrawn to a corner of the surgery, plainly made uneasy by seeing Bobby unconscious, and sat on a stool, plaiting her hair and twisting it up under her cap.
I stood up and took the mask from Malva’s hand, setting it aside.
“You did a wonderful job,” I told her, speaking quietly. “Thank you.”
She shook her head, face glowing.
“Oh, ma’am! It was . . . I’ve never seen the like. It’s such a feeling, is it not? Like as we killed him, and brought him alive again.” She spread her hands out, looking at them half-unconsciously, as though wondering how she had done such a marvel, then closed them into small fists, and smiled at me, conspiratorially.
“I think I see why my faither says it’s devil’s work. Were he to see what it’s like”—she glanced at Bobby, who was beginning to stir—“he’d say no one but God has a right to do such things.”
“Really,” I said, rather dryly. From the gleam in her eye, her father’s likely reaction to what we had been doing was one of the chief attractions of the experiment. For an instant, I rather pitied Tom Christie.
“Um . . . perhaps you’d better not tell your father, then,” I suggested. She smiled, showing small, sharp white teeth, and rolled her eyes.
“Don’t you think it, ma’am,” she assured me. “He’d stop me coming, as quick as—”
Bobby opened his eyes, turned his head to one side, and threw up, putting a stop to the discussion. Lizzie gave a cry and hurried to his side, fussing over him, wiping his face and fetching him brandy to drink. Malva, looking slightly superior, stood aside and let her.
“Oh, that’s queer,” Bobby repeated, for perhaps the tenth time, rubbing a hand across his mouth. “I saw the most terrible thing—just for a moment, there—and then I felt sick, and here it was all over.”
“What sort of terrible thing?” Malva asked, interested. He glanced at her, looking wary and uncertain.