“Escaped? You were kidnapped?”
James held his niece’s shoulders and looked into her brown eyes, which were so much like his own. “I cannot believe my sister was right about you. What happened on Samhain?”
“I am not sure, but that can wait. He needs to be properly attended to.”
Chapter Eight:
Meatless Bones
James Hawthorne studied the man huddled behind his niece. His head and torso were obscured with a wool blanket, and while he was hunched over, the doctor could tell he was probably near his height. Below the cloth, what was left of his black trousers was stained and torn, revealing the skin below, which was coated in mud, offal, and bruises. The small portions of his legs and arms that could be seen were punctuated by jutting bones, but beneath the stockings, the tops of his feet appeared swollen. As he drew closer, James caught an eye-searing whiff of the sour odor emanating from his skin, but beneath it was a smell Dr. Hawthorne had come to know well while working in the hospital and morgue, the metallic yet sweet scent of blood. From the strength of the odor, there was probably a lot of it.
“Sir, my name is Dr. James Hawthorne. I would like to help you, but I need to know what is troubling you,” the doctor called as his wife came to his side, picking up the volume she dropped along the way.
“E’ryting,” the faceless man murmured. His fingers groped across the side of his head until he reached the end of the blanket.
His hands shook as the makeshift hood fell away with each section he unwound, revealing his grimy blindfold and distorted features. Both doctors’ eyes widened as they beheld his askew jaw and lips, which glistened with sputum and blood. The man’s eyes were hidden beneath the swath of second skin, but the unseen wound bubbled and trickled congealed plasma. He blindly turned toward the faint gasp that broke from Eliza Hawthorne’s lips. She covered her mouth as he turned his head sideways, silhouetting his distended features as the swelling fought to free itself from the fabric binds. Tears crept into her eyes against her will, but her husband’s hand pressing against her own steadied her.
When she glanced up at James, she realized he, too, had been greatly affected by the young man’s grave appearance. His face had paled, and his eyes refused to leave his patient’s body as he mentally noted each injury. She knew that look well. It had appeared on his face when he had been a practicing surgeon, but recently, she had only seen it down in the morgue when he was trying to discern the secrets of the dead. During his time as Coroner to the Queen, Dr. Hawthorne had forgotten the spectral countenance of human suffering, which flickered with the ebb and flow of life and threatened at any moment to blow out. Something was palpably sad about this man’s condition that had so often been absent in the cadavers who, apart from lacking a pulse, didn’t differ much from the pitiful creature before them.
“I need to get you downstairs, so I can properly care for you.” James was able to conceal the tremor in his voice, but he was grateful that the blindfold shielded the man from their horrified expressions. He deserved better than to be gawked at like some sideshow curiosity. “I am going to take your arms now and lead you to my office. Is that all right?”
The young man nodded and held his aching arms ahead of him.
“Eliza, please take care of Emmeline. If she needs to use the bath, do it now and be quick about it.”
“Will you need any help with him?”
“I do not think so, but he will need—,” he began but stopped their trek to the basement in order to support the other man as his body was racked with coughs.
“I will get a bed ready and prepare something he can eat.”
The doctor heard his wife and niece going upstairs as he led the man blindly through the house, carefully guiding him around the corners of furniture and warning him when his feet neared the upturned edge of a rug. In the hall beside the dining room, there stood a very plain door resembling a cupboard or linen closet, but behind it stood a set of polished steps that led down to Dr. Hawthorne’s examination room. As the younger man navigated the stairs with the doctor’s aid, his heart quickened with each yawning creak. In the narrow, wooden shaft, the musty perfume of dust and earth crept up from the soil outside the walls and into the blindfolded man’s mind. For a moment, he saw the stone and earthen chamber before his eyes, a sharp blow lashed against his face as the man mocked and assaulted him again. When the door at the bottom opened, the catacomb disappeared as the sharp, familiar scent of ethanol burned his nose.
“Stand right here, and I will get you a chair,” Hawthorne said as he finally released the stranger’s arms.
He swayed unsteadily with nothing to hold onto, but as he groped behind him, his hand landed on the cold, marmoreal surface of the examination table. Despite the bright, electric lamp shining down over the table, his swollen eye and dirt-encrusted blindfold only allowed the darkest of shadows through. Across the room, the leg of the chair squealed against the tile floor, and as it clattered, he flinched and clenched his eyes shut against the grating sensation. The next bang erupted only inches from his feet. As the doctor reached out to guide his patient into the seat, the younger man jerked away, hitting his back against the edge of the table. James caught his arm to steady him, but the other grimy fist swung frantically, nearly knocking the glasses off his face as he narrowly avoided the blows. Finally, he let go and watched the other man whimper and pant as he scurried heedlessly toward the corner. A bottle from the apothecary shelf teetered with the sudden motion before crashing to the floor in countless shards of glass and particles of powder. The deformed man dove under the table and clung to the farthest leg. Silent sobs shook his fragile body. James sighed at the sight and quietly crawled toward him while still staying out of reach.
“Don’ hurd me,” he begged, the words barely audible through his labored, tear-laden breaths.
“My boy, I have no intention of hurting you, and I most certainly did not mean to scare you.” When the man finally looked up at him, he continued, “If you come out from under there, I will take off your mask, and we can discuss getting you patched up. I know you have no reason to trust me, but I want to help you.”
His heart bounced out of rhythm, and suddenly he felt faint. His body was telling him not to come out from under the table, but the man’s voice was not like the one who beat him. It wasn’t harsh or mocking. Instead, it was sonorous despite its softness and deep, like Professor Martin’s. He shouldn’t trust him, but he had to if he wanted to live. The young man felt the floor in front of him for obstructions and hesitantly crawled out toward the doctor.
“The chair is beside you on your left.” As Dr. Hawthorne silently drew his surgical tools from the cupboard, he watched the young man grope his way to the chair, feeling the seat and back before finally settling on the edge. “If you will allow me, I will cut the blindfold off, but I need you to hold very still.”
His patient nodded and held his breath as the other man slipped behind him and lightly pulled the edge of the fabric away from his hair. After three snips from his scissors, the binding was severed, but it was still enmeshed in the clotted blood across his eye. The doctor soaked a wad of gauze in alcohol and wiped the edge of the wound until finally the fabric peeled off. Behind the blindfold, the left side of his face had distended until the skin was shiny and so filled with fluid that his features were lost. From an inch above his eyebrow down to his cheekbone, a laceration cut through the swelling as well as his eyelid, pulling the wound asunder. Surrounding the cut was a deep purple and red bruise that blended with the one around his nose. The man’s nose was unnaturally bent to the right, but from the darkness of the bruising, James was fairly certain he could still set it back in place if he would allow him to do so. His patient tried to open his eyes, but dried blood clumped in his lashes and sealed his eyes shut at the corners. With the square of gauze, the doctor carefully cleaned around his eyes until the right one shot open, revealing a crystalline blue iris.
He clenched his eyes shut
against the searing brightness of the electric examination lamp. The vessels in his head and neck dilated, increasing the pressure and pounding in his temples and sinuses. When he opened them again, he discovered his left eyelid was so swollen he could barely lift it, and for the brief time it was open, it throbbed and was too blurry and dim to see through. Finally, he saw the man who offered to put him back together. James Hawthorne’s soft features stared back at him. His dark eyes casually caught his patient’s gaze from behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, and his chestnut brown hair was parted to the side and had begun to grey at his temples. The doctor turned to the counter behind him and brought back a piece of paper and a pencil.
“If you are able, I would like you to write your name for me.”
His hands quavered as he scrawled Immanuel Winter for the first time in months before handing the paper back to the doctor. Dr. Hawthorne studied it before writing several lines in his ledger. His eyes darted from Immanuel to the book as he rapidly inventoried the injuries that were visible and needed to be treated. As the doctor drew near, Immanuel shrunk back but stopped when he realized he was staring at his jaw. James’s fingers probed the hinges and edges of his mandible, feeling for any cracks or loose bones.
“Immanuel, there is good news and bad news. The good news is your jaw is only dislocated. The bad news is I need to put it back in place, which may not be very comfortable for you. Try and hold your head still.”
He watched as Dr. Hawthorne wrapped his thumbs in gauze before inserting them between Immanuel’s slack lips. His hands clamped onto the younger man’s jaw and pulled down hard until he felt the condyle pop out of place. Pain radiated through his swollen features and made his eyes water, but the pressure from the pulling was not nearly as bad as he anticipated. Taking a deep breath, Immanuel clenched his eyes shut as James pushed his jaw back and up until it fit snuggly back in place and the pressure dissipated. The doctor gently felt the side of his face to ensure everything was properly aligned before manually opening and closing his mouth and examining his teeth.
“That should fix it.” He grinned as he examined his patient’s mouth, which no longer drooped or hung cockeyed but only gaped slightly from the muscles being stretched for so long. “For a few weeks, you should not open your mouth too wide because it will be susceptible to dislocation until the muscles return to their proper shape. As you are probably aware, your nose is also broken, so I am going to clean your face and then realign the cartilage.”
“Thank you,” Immanuel whispered, hearing his own voice, his real voice, for the first time in weeks.
James soaked a cloth in the sink and stripped away the months of caked on dirt and blood that had run and dried before being coated over again like paint. The doctor was careful not to linger on the inflamed laceration or swollen cheek, but soon it was clear that the other cuts on his face were superficial and would heal in their own in time. The skin from his hairline down to his collarbone finally returned to its natural pallor, but his cheeks were flushed with the unmistakable heat of fever.
As Immanuel’s eyes traveled over the instruments, machines, and shelves of chemicals, Dr. Hawthorne wrenched his nose to the left. He whimpered and jerked his head away with tears in his eyes, but when he brought his hand to his nose, he realized it was nearly straight again.
“Sorry, but it always hurts less when you do not know it is coming.” James sighed. “I cannot treat your wounds with you in this state, or they will all be infected if they are not already. Are you strong enough to walk on your own?”
Immanuel grabbed the back of the chair, and after a moment’s hesitation, hoisted himself to his feet. At the top of the first set of stairs, his lungs tightened, and by the time he climbed the steps that led to the next floor, his head was swimming. The damask wallpaper swirled around him. With each step, he moved further off kilter until finally he stumbled over his own feet. His heart sputtered as he hung precariously near the top of the stairs, but the doctor’s arms caught him and pulled him away from the edge. James placed his fingers over Immanuel’s carotid artery and counted the beats as they weakly pumped past.
“Are you all right? Do you want me to get you a chair?”
He drew in several deep breaths and shook his head as the doctor kept his arm around Immanuel’s back to keep him standing. The bathroom was only a few feet away, and once the hall stopped spinning, he began to shuffle toward the open door. James Hawthorne smiled when he spotted the pile of towels, clothing, and soap along with his Gladstone bag. After ten years of marriage, Eliza always knew exactly what he would need before he ever asked and had it ready for him. It was the role she had assumed after realizing she would never be allowed to use the medical license she earned alongside him. As he released the young man and turned on the tap, his eyes ran across the bathroom walls. Something was missing. The mirror over the sink was gone, but when he looked at the stranger’s face, he realized why his wife had taken it down. In his fragile state, even seeing his distorted reflection could send his body into shock.
Immanuel stared at the water as it ran from the spigot, wondering how much it would burn. He couldn’t fathom that it wasn’t scalding hot, that the doctor wasn’t tricking him and only pretending to help him. When he finally worked up the nerve to stick his hand under it, he felt only balmy water washing away the residue of the catacomb from his hand.
“If it is warm enough, you can get in,” Hawthorne stated as he closed the door.
Immanuel stood rooted beside the tub and stared at him with one wide eye.
“I won’t look, but you must understand that I cannot leave you in here alone after you nearly fell down the stairs. If you should fall again, you may not be able to call for help.”
James kept his eyes locked on the back of the door until he heard three faint splashes. As the man in the tub scrubbed at his arms and chest, the doctor silently gathered his ruined clothing into the rubbish bin. He tried to busy himself with his medical bag, but from the corner of his eye, he watched Immanuel’s movements slow as he attempted to wash and lather his hair. When he finally released a stifled groan, Hawthorne cautiously drew closer. The poor man panted with his head resting on the edge of the tub and hugged his ribs beneath the murky water.
“If you were kicked, your ribs may be broken. I would rather you let me wash your hair than have you hurt yourself trying to be independent too soon.”
Dr. Hawthorne had expected a fight or at least a disgusted glare, but instead, the young man stared up at him with tears in his eyes and nodded. He quickly let out the dirty water and refilled the tub before turning to inspect his patient’s body for the first time. The nails of fingers and toes were splintered and torn. His breast, torso, and legs were littered with bruises in varying stages of healing overlaid by an inflamed rash caused by the offal he had lived in for so long corroding his flesh. Among the purple and green blotches were several nasty cuts that would require stitches, but it wasn’t until he sat behind him to work on his hair that he felt the bile rise in his throat. A dozen small, perfectly circular burns were seared into his back and side, but what disturbed him most were the man’s meatless bones, which jutted under his sallow skin and threatened to tear through at the slightest movement. Dr. Hawthorne choked down his outrage and pushed away the plaintive thoughts. He couldn’t think that way. Immanuel Winter deserved the chance to live.
Chapter Nine:
Saviors
As they worked their way to the foyer one hesitant step at a time, James Hawthorne kept his arm tightly wrapped around the small of Immanuel’s back to keep him standing. With a fresh set of clothing and a bath, he appeared nearly normal, but they merely hid the source of his infirmity and the torture he endured. Since he arrived, he had braved the sting of antiseptic and the pull of the doctor’s needle and thread without ether or chloroform to dull the pain, but with each wound that was stitched closed, his breaths came more rapidly and a little more color drained from his cheeks. When they reached the bot
tom, James lowered him onto the steps to catch his breath before they joined the others. Immanuel hung his head as his lungs fought to expand against the pressure of his cracked ribs. The slightly salty yet comforting scent of chicken broth and carrots wafted from the dining room along with the soft chatter of his wife and niece.
The doctor knelt in front of him to meet his gaze. “If you are not up to it, I can bring your food here. You do not need to go to the dining room to eat.”
He shook his head of loose golden curls and covered his mouth as he began to cough again. James knew the steam from the bath would only clear his lungs for so long, but he had hoped it would have lasted through dinner. When he was finished, he drew in one more tremulous breath before climbing to his feet with the support of the newel post. Immanuel made his way into the dining room with the doctor trailing a step behind him. The table was set for two, but by the time he arrived, Emmeline was already halfway through her plate of cold chicken and bread.
As she looked up from her plate, her already large eyes widened and the chicken tumbled off her fork. Emmeline stared at the man’s swollen face in disgust, unsure of why she had to be subjected to his bloated features while she ate. His skin was unnaturally purple and distorted to the point that she wished they had left the blindfold on. His cries echoed through her mind. Couldn’t they have kept him upstairs and away from her now that she had fulfilled her promise to her mother? They were both safe now, and she wanted no part of that horrible place, including him. Feeling eyes upon her, she glanced to the side and found her aunt glaring at her. Eliza Hawthorne smiled kindly at the young man on the other side of the table as she doled out a portion of chicken broth with vegetables she had mashed up for him.
The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Box Set Page 33