The patient was still. Not limp—it was not like working on a man deep under an opiate—but he was most wholly and completely motionless. Good.
There was nothing more his body could say to her. She sat back on her heels and touched her way from instrument to instrument one last time. She would go in through the entry wound. That would minimize damage and clean it, too. She took up the long, slim forceps. Wordlessly, she rearranged Grey’s hold and settled herself at a new angle.
Her left hand pressed the skin above the site, over the tiny lump of the bullet. Through her palm, she mapped the plateaus and valleys of the ribs. She snicked the forceps open and closed, twice, loosening up her fingers.
Now to do it. Fast. No hesitation.
She took a deep breath and went in with the forceps. Push. Spread forceps slightly. Push. Follow the path of the bullet through muscle. All her concentration flowed to the tip of the forceps, sensing the route, nudging along bone and fascia. Warm blood streamed between her fingers.
Push. Farther. Grit on metal. Her quarry. Open. Soft, soft now. Nibble at it. The tiny, slippery hardness. Catch it. Close the forceps. Yes! She had it. Bring it out. Fast now. She could go fast now. The patient held his breath. His muscles—neck, chest, arms—like steel. Next to her, a voice gave firm orders about a wall of darkness, solid as bricks.
She dropped the ball in the palm of her hand and rolled it. The lead was flat with impact against the rib. It wasn’t smooth. A chunk was missing. She must return. She made a single, unbroken motion of it, testing the bullet, going back in.
The missing piece would have been chipped off by the impact with the rib. She must go deep to look for it. Slide in. Keep to the path. Deeper. The patient gasped. Jerked. Go loose on the forceps, ride the movement lest she jab at him. Not her job to keep him still. Think about the metal.
He was still. Good. At the rib, delicate as a fencer, she probed. Blood vessels all up and down the ribs. Between them. She was searching for a grain of hardness where it should not be. Smooth, soft strokes. Soft…soft.
Deep on the lateral surface of the first rib, she found the brittle nub of bullet. The placement! Mon Dieu, the placement. It was as bad as could be. The forceps pulsed in her hand. The artery. Close. Deadly close.
“Do not breathe,” she ordered. The muscles beneath her hand were stone. Quivering. The fragment rested directly against the artery. It pulsed. He must not move. Not move. She eased forward. No pressure. She must take it without the least pressure.
She closed the forceps and gently took hold and gently, gently brought the last of the bullet out. She fitted one piece of metal with the other. There was nothing missing.
“It is done.” She laid the forceps onto the blanket, took bandages from her lap, and pressed them to the wound.
“My God,” Doyle muttered.
The patient panted fast and shallow, hissing out through his teeth, an animal sound.
“Finished. Right.” Grey sounded as shaken as she felt. “That’s the worst of it, Hawker. Now we’re going to build a wall between you and the pain. A big, dark wall. Thick darkness. The pain’s on one side, you’re on the other. Breathe in. Slow. Breathe out.”
She herself had not breathed for a while, obviously. The ground swayed under her, which was an unmistakable sign.
Adrian—he was Adrian again to her—was losing blood. It soaked through the layers she held. Sluggishly, thank the bon Dieu. She had not nicked the artery. She had not killed him. This was not the hot rush of bleeding that meant death.
Never before had she operated on someone she knew. It was of a horribleness unimaginable. She would avoid this in the future.
“I got that.” Doyle set her hands aside. Took over. He discarded the soaked bandages, twitched a clean one into place.
Adrian groaned and tried to roll. Grey, who thought everyone should do as he commanded, told him to hold still. Told him how to breathe. Again and again, told him how to breathe. It was most odd.
“We going to close this?” Doyle asked. “I got a hot iron. I can do it.”
“No fire. He will stop bleeding soon.” She wiped her sticky palms on her skirt. Adrian’s blood. “We will let it drain, as the great Ambroise Paré taught. There is less of…of infection that way. No stitches, unless it bleeds and bleeds. Then one or two small ones to hold the edges together tomorrow.”
“Lean on Grey, why don’t you. He ain’t busy,” Doyle said.
“I am fine.” She started to push her hair back from her face, remembered what was on her hands, and stopped. She took various deep, helpful breaths. “We are wise in this, we French. Paré taught that such wounds, we leave open…to heal from within…”
Grey abandoned his endless, one-sided conversation with Adrian and abruptly stood to walk around. When he returned, he put a cold cloth to her forehead.
“You should not let me touch you.” But she rested her cheek on his thigh in an intimacy which seemed wholly natural at the moment. The ground still wished to tilt under her. “I am entirely gruesome with blood. I have ruined this dress, though it was probably not decent in any case. But I do not have a great number. One must be provident.”
He used the cloth to wash her cheeks, then folded it and held it on the back of her neck.
“You are doing this so I will not faint. I never faint.”
“That’s good. I’m sorry about the dress.” He was apologizing for several things at once. She became certain the dresses he had given her were improper. “Thank you for saving Adrian’s life.”
“This was not so bad. Once I took fifty-two pieces of metal out of a man and he lived. An Austrian sergeant. He melted them down to make a paperweight, I heard.”
“Sounds like a good idea.” Grey was thinking a number of things. She could almost hear thoughts humming and clinking inside him. “Annique…I would have killed him.”
“Almost certainly. The second tiny piece was close to the axillary artery. I felt it pulsing. Will you let me go free, since I have spared you from killing your friend?”
He did not hesitate. “No.”
He was unreasonable, right to the soles of his shoes. “Then I will go wash blood off me and not sit here at your feet in this spineless fashion.” She put her legs underneath herself and stood up, which she would probably have managed even without Grey’s assistance. He put the useful stick in her hold and it supported her very handily without the help of any Englishman. She did not feel at all like fainting.
“Your bag’s on the far side of the fire,” Doyle said. “It’s…No. More to the right. That’s got it. There’s soap and a towel on that rock. Yes. There.”
“I am well provided for, then. I shall take these and go wash myself in privacy. Monsieur Grey may again talk to his Adrian with great tediousness. Certainly he has nothing of interest to say to me.”
“No, miss,” Doyle said pacifically. These English spies spent much of their spare time laughing at her.
“You will press down upon those bandages until the bleeding stops. As you well know.”
“Yes, miss.”
She batted away at the small bushes with her stick and found where the path descended to the stream. “And put a blanket upon him.”
She was angry with herself. Stupid, stupid woman that she was, she wanted to stay with Grey and allow him to coddle her. He was destroying her, that one, with his kindness and his strong arms that held her and felt so full of caring, while he continued to be, inside, utterly ruthless.
He tempted her. He was a trap in every part of him. It would be so treacherously easy to place herself into his hands. But she did not trust him in the least. She had not yet lost her mind. Not quite.
When she came to the water it was pleasant, and warmer than she expected, which relieved her feelings somewhat. So did the deep silence on every side. As she worked her way downstream to find the bathing place for women, she reflected that these were thick woods around her everywhere. One could hide in them very well, at night, when one was escaping.