An hour later Wynn sat on the back steps of the hospital, arms looped over his knees and head dragging down. Exhaustion wearied every bone of his body until the angles seemed to morph into one sagging mass. Yet the thrill of success could not escape him. It bounded from one fatigued muscle to the next, skipping over synapses like sparks of lightning that blazed through his nervous system with blinding excitement.
He’d done it. He’d kept his promise to Harkin.
The sheer magnitude of what had been accomplished in that operating theater deprived him of words. A rare occurrence indeed, but mere mortal words could not express the awed response demanded by this unprecedented surgery. The practice of medicine existed in closed, round rooms where the select privileged were admitted to trod. There to bloat themselves among the shelves of practices deemed favorable for centuries, hardly daring to open the door for new possibilities but for the fearless souls in search of better treatment. The doors to Wynn’s medical chamber had been flung wide open. What might exist beyond the walls?
The door banged open behind him. Gerard huffed down the steps. Orange hair blazing like a crinkled carrot, he furrowed his hands through it as he paced on the grass in front of Wynn. Back and forth he strode with a determination lacking conviction of direction.
Wynn sat quietly in the fading heat of day and waited for his friend to settle on the words tossing about in his mind. It wouldn’t be long. Gerard never could bottle his reactions for extended amounts of time.
Gerard stopped directly in front of him. “That was the most insane, terrifying, mad, not to mention off the chump stunt I have ever witnessed.”
Wynn dropped his head. “Anything else?”
“It was bloody brilliant. I’ve never seen anything like that.” Gerard bent over and grabbed his knees. “Don’t ever do it again. My heart can’t handle the theatrics.”
“You call saving a patient’s life theatrical?”
“The way you perform, yes. Always invoking the most drama into theater instead of sticking to the rules.”
Wynn’s head snapped up. “I hardly think Harkin would agree with sticking to the rules in there. He’d be shoving daisies on the table.”
“You were reckless. Sometimes I think you care more for the triumph in the challenge than the actual patient.”
“That’s absurd.”
“Is it? Then why are you always mucking about with things best left out of our grasp? Stop playing God and leave well enough alone because I won’t go down with your foolish need to prove yourself.” Gerard stormed back inside and slammed the door. A second later the door opened again and he huffed back out. “My apologies, chap. I should not have spoken in anger to you.”
Wynn’s defense deflated. As loathe as he was to hear it, his friend had a point. “Anger often reveals our truest meaning when it isn’t being hidden behind good manners.”
“True, but you do not deserve my censorship in so harsh a tone. Please do forgive me.”
Standing, Wynn clapped him on the shoulder. A comradery of candidness was not one he wished to forsake on the grounds of his pride. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
“What happened in there?”
“The heart stopped. I restarted it.”
Gerard gave him a sharp look. “But how did you know?”
“I’ve been reading medical correspondence from the frontline. A similar operation took place at the Battle of Cambrai last year. The surgeons at the casualty clearing station wouldn’t touch the patient, said he was as good as dead. All heart cases are considered such, but the chief surgeon had read in a medical journal years before the war about the groundbreaking research and techniques the Germans were employed in.”
“The Germans and Austrians have always ingratiated themselves to the newest fangled treatment.” A hint of derision laced Gerard’s tone.
“With great success. Consider the sheer number of patients admitting themselves to their spas in the mountains to take the waters. The achievement of their results cannot be denied.”
“My mother goes there, or did, every June for her nerves. Personally, I think it’s to spend the month away from Father when his horse betting kicks into a frenzy.” Gerard grew quiet as two grizzled physicians walked by deep in conversation about a leg amputation. He lowered his voice. “I don’t believe we should be trusting the Jerries when it comes to treatment for our patients. It’s unpatriotic.”
Wynn harbored no such discrepancies as to who heard him. Would do them all some good to open their ears. They ridiculed him enough behind closed doors. Might as well bring it out into the open.
“Disease, sickness, and death have no such boundaries of partisanship. They’re indiscriminate to lines on a map. What that physician did in Cambrai was unprecedented. No one has dared to cut into the heart before to this extent. At least no British physician. Until now.”
“It’s dangerous. Not only for the patient but for you as well. What do you think the board will say when they find out? Or Nestor, for that matter. He’s a real tartar for rule following, and it’s his job as hospital director to ensure we do as well.”
“Nestor should’ve retired decades ago. If it were up to him, we’d still be using leeches and bloodletting. We owe it to our patients to implement the newest advancements, otherwise we are signing their death sentences by not trying.”
“The men in our profession do not often trust what is new. It isn’t safe. By continuing with these practices they will think you aren’t safe.”
“Nothing in our profession is safe. Men are being ripped apart in the trenches and sent to us in pieces. What about bullets, and cannons, and bayonets seem safe to you? As physicians we are charged with seeking the best treatment for those in our care, and if that means bucking against what stuffy old men clustered around their draconian traditions declare, then by God, that’s precisely what I’ll do. I have no use for the doctor whose beliefs are founded on medical authority alone.”
Gerard placed a steadying hand on Wynn’s shoulder. “Tread carefully, Wynn. Your brilliant defiance to toeing the line may be your undoing. How will you care for your patients then?”
“If I toe the line, they might all be dead.”
Dropping his hand to his pocket, a weary smile slid across Gerard’s face. “Do you always have to have the last word?”
Wynn couldn’t stop his own smile from creeping out. “Only if it’s the right one.”
“Speaking of which, how’s that lady of yours?”
Smile fading, Wynn toed a rock embedded in the dirt. “She’s not mine.”
“I thought you were courting her.”
“Courting would involve agreement from the lady. At the moment it’s a one-sided pursuit.”
“Then why persist?”
“Because I’d like it to become two-sided.”
Gerard sighed as if the entire situation weighed him down. Which wouldn’t take much in his case. The man was as lanky as a tattie bogle scaring off the crows.
“There are any number of women in this sweltering metropolis, or London or Edinburgh, for that matter, who would adore nothing more than to acquire the title Marchioness of Tarltan. Why must you chase after the one who doesn’t want you?”
“Precisely for that reason.”
“Because you’re a glutton for punishment? Because you have to do everything the hard way?”
How many times had Wynn asked himself that very question only to be stumped by the mystery? He couldn’t ignore the inexplicable draw he felt toward this woman. As if there were a piece of her calling to him, pleading for discovery. Any woman in her position would’ve given up long before now, but not her. There was a fierceness about her pride that refused to accept defeat. Nothing was more admirable.
Wynn kicked the rock across the grass patch. “Because she intrigues me and I need to find out why.”
“Like I said, reckless.” Gerard started for the door, his feet dragging on each step. Surgery was an exhausting business. “Up for a g
ame later tonight? Your choice after you nodded off during chess last time.”
“Too much sitting for me, but we’ll need something to keep us awake while we adjust swinging onto the night shift.” Wynn checked his wristwatch, a gift from a colonel whose leg he’d saved from being amputated after the Somme. The handy timepieces were a brilliant advancement deployed by the men in the trenches to better synchronize tactics and were far more maneuverable than bulky pocket watches. Perhaps in time, their uses would prove a trend far from battle. “I need to check on Leonid Sheremetev first. His bandages are about ready to come off.”
“Odd company you keep. I realize the Russians are allies, or they were until the country turned on itself in civil war, but they’re not like us. A whole other culture. Bears, beets, and a sentimental longing for misery.”
“Don’t believe everything you read. Leonid Sheremetev has an unbeatable zest for life in his bones.” Despite his initial concerns—after all, upstanding citizens didn’t get into alleyway shootouts—Wynn had come to like his gregarious patient since meeting him nearly two weeks ago. He had heart.
Gerard snorted. “Alexander Pushkin is said to be the greatest Russian poet who ever lived. If he stakes a claim of his own country, then I am faultless to believe him.”
“As I am faultless if I fall asleep during your waxing of poetry. A fate I cannot succumb to for the sake of my patient who happens to serve delicious beets.”
It was nearing ten o’clock by the time Wynn left the hospital. He hurried down the street as the streetlamps flickered one by one to douse the City of Light in darkness. They, too, well-served as beacons for German zeppelins and their Fokkers mounted with deadly machine guns swooping in on nighttime raids. It was an eerie experience walking through the great city in absolute obscurity when it should be teeming with life. As if he were trespassing on her hesitant breath of survival.
Arriving at Leonid’s flat, Wynn reached for a note stuck between the door and the frame. He pulled the note out and scanned the uneven writing.
Mac,
White Bear. Come join.
L
The club was the last place he wanted to go, much less attend a patient, but said patient wasn’t making recovery easy. Two nights prior Leonid had engaged in a one-armed fist fight with a man who insulted the vodka being served by not taking a fourth glass. Why he’d taken three before deciding it was beneath his taste buds Wynn couldn’t puzzle out, but it had earned the man a bloody nose and Leonid bruised knuckles.
Wynn glanced at his wristwatch, calculating how long it would take him to rush home, change, and get to the club. Too much time. The stuff-shirted men and glittering ladies would have to find another direction in which to look if his working clothes offended them. Hopefully he’d managed to avoid any unseen blood splatters today.
The White Bear’s guard opened the door without a word, and once more Wynn found himself swept away to another world. One clogged with thick smoke, chilled bottles, glittering gold, and weeping music. A world desperately trying to spin itself into resurrection and teetering from its pinnacle like a top with a faulty axis. Truth be told, he felt a wee bit sad for them all swanning about as they once had in courts of royalty.
A woman with too much rouge painted on her cheeks and smelling heavily of violets draped herself across Wynn’s arm and whispered in his ear.
Wynn turned his nose from her sour breath. “Sorry. I don’t speak French.”
“Buy drink.” She jabbed a gloved finger into his chest, then into the creased flesh of her sagging bosom. “Thirsty, oui.”
“Nyet. Em, non.” Once more his mind had to rework itself in speaking French to a Russian.
“I countess. Command you.”
“Apologies, your ladyship, but I believe you’ve had enough to drink and I’m fresh out of vodka.”
“Never run dry in Russia. It flow like River Neva to Petersburg palaces. It still Petersburg. No call Petrograd. War never changed that. It no change me countess.” She poked herself again. “Countess Pletnyovna. You kiss.” She swung her hand up to Wynn’s face, smearing her fingers across his lips.
“A pleasure to meet you, Countess, but I have a rather important matter to attend to.”
“I many important matters in Russia. Balls, parties, operas. Here, nothing. Sit. Wait for home return. Live in palace with many jewels. All gone now.”
“My sympathies for your loss, Countess. Please, excuse me.” Wynn tore himself away as a far-off mist clouded her eyes. Whether from the drink or the memories of diamonds lost, he couldn’t decide. Most likely both if forced to give his professional diagnosis.
Wynn angled his way to the VIP table where Sheremetev was customarily found holding court. Dodging a harried waiter with a loaded tray, he sidestepped into a cluster of men smoking cigars. He could handle all manner of smells from gangrene, to putrid flesh, to chlorine gas bubbling first thing in the morning, but being able to endure cigar smoke was not one of his nasal-suffering attributes.
“Vrach.” One of the men’s arms landed across Wynn’s shoulders and tugged him close. Much too close as he felt perspiration seeping through the man’s dinner jacket. “You here, vrach.”
It hadn’t taken long for Wynn to decipher that Russian word and the universal response being announced as a physician achieved. An unequal mixture of awe and suspicion that undoubtedly led to—
“Vrach, here bump. You look.” Warning given, the man hiked up his shirt and pointed to a dysplastic nevus below his third rib. “It turn red.”
“It’s turning red because you’re touching it.”
“But it red.”
Not wanting to give a formal examination standing next to the dance floor, Wynn gave the spot a once-over to ensure the man wasn’t suffering a lethal mole, then gently tugged the shirt back down.
“I see no cause for concern. However, if you’re distressed about its appearance, you may come to Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur tomorrow. Give my name, Dr. MacCallan, and one of the physicians will attend you.”
Frowning dubiously at being put off, the man went back to poking his side with his cohorts as audience. Wynn moved quickly through the crowd before another potential patient required medical attention. It never failed. Attend a party and before long he ended up in a side room taking consultations without even a glass of punch to remind him why he’d come in the first place.
At last he arrived at the circle of sidearm-strapped men guarding Sheremetev’s private booth. “Evening, gents. I see you haven’t moved since last I saw you.” It wasn’t uncommon for a club, hotel, or fancy restaurant to have discreet crowd control should the need arise, but the stipulation was always discreet. These men made no bones about their inclusion and intent to the establishment. An unsettling insight into the owner himself.
One of the guards grunted and peeled back an inch of the velvet curtain that sectioned off the private table. A few words of Russian and the curtain pulled back as a man wearing a thick coat and a tall wool hat like many of the émigrés he’d seen in the Alexander church basement slid from the booth and slunk away. The guard grunted for Wynn to enter.
“Our own savior. Come in. Come.” Managing to surround himself with his own atmosphere, Sheremetev assembled himself in the center of the booth with his bulbous belly pushing against the table. He was dressed in immaculate evening clothes that were too fine for wartimes with the same double-headed eagle stickpin glistening from the folds of his white ascot. Like a drop of blood on snow. A ruby that size could feed the entire 8th Arrondissement for a month.
Wynn stepped into the cordoned-off space and remained standing. “Forgive the intrusion.”
“Never could you intrude. Our business at conclusion.” The folds around Sheremetev’s eyes twitched as they followed the man out of the club. “Heat addling him.”
“Perhaps he should have taken off his wool hat. It’s nearly thirty-three degrees Celsius outside.”
“Russians these days wear all worldly goods no matter
temperature wherever go. One never know.”
The unspoken fear hung in the air, like a basin suspended on a thread. A word, a shift could tip it from the precarious balance to rain panic on their heads. Was this the anxiety Svetlana lived each day? Never knowing one hour to the next if she was in danger. Always one eye hunting ahead while the other searched behind for threat.
“But you’ve found safety in Paris. The troubles of your country can’t touch you here.” It was not with naivety Wynn made such a statement, rather one of earnest conviction. One he was fervent to see unbroken.
“You thinking no? It presumed surface of safety. One we vigilant protecting at all costs.” As with the precarious basin of fear, Sheremetev, too, held his own balancing act. A manner of ease and affability as a mask to the ring of steel within. A ring of steel that grasped tightly to the reins of control. Woe to the one standing in defiance of such a claim.
Danger lurked as Wynn’s constant companion in the operating theater, but it was a danger he understood, one he could defend against to the best of his learned knowledge. Sheremetev pulsed a peril of incurability. Like a heart beating at its own time, but a closer examination detected an erraticism of the rhythm from its fixed course.
Wynn shifted the medical bag in his hand, eager to conclude his own business and be on his way. “Is Leonid about? I found a note saying to meet him here for a short exam.”
Sheremetev snapped his pudgy fingers and one of the guards appeared, silent as an apparition. A quick command in Russian and the guard disappeared, presumably in search of the prodigal patient.
“Death of me that boy will be. Much play and work not enough. He on the mend, da?”
Wynn nodded, grateful he’d picked up the minimal Russian word for yes and even more grateful that his Russian hosts spoke enough English to communicate, otherwise there would be a lot more hand gestures. He was terrible at charades.
“I’m preparing to remove the bandages tonight. Fresh air does wonders for a wound after the initial phase of recovery has passed. Any chance of finding who did this to him?”
The Ice Swan Page 11