He had moistened cloths and was laying them on the heads of the men in the room. Then, on occasion, he would offer up some chamomile and a strange little potion for their abdomen. All this he accompanied with whispered encouragements that she couldn’t catch.
"I know I'm fairly ignorant," she tried again. "But I'd like to help."
Montgomery turned away, and Emelia did too, as one of the men leaned over and vomited into a pot. Montgomery looked at Emelia with a note of triumph in his face. "With this particular illness," he explained, "most of the nursing is a rather dismal business." He sighed and moved towards the pot. "Don't you think you've helped enough, Emelia?"
She bit her lip, wanting to run and hide. But she was not a child anymore, and an adult faced their failings. She walked forward quickly, holding her breath, and hoisted the chamber pot up.
"I'll take care of this," she said briefly. "Anything else you need while I'm downstairs?"
He looked at her for a moment as though he was seeing her for the first time. "No," he said at last.
"Good. If that changes, let me know."
When she returned with a clean pot, there was another to carry down, and another after that. She worked quickly, looking away from the substance inside; demanding a higher strength from herself. Montgomery didn't need a nurse who was too frightened of bodily fluids to offer any real assistance. He needed someone strong enough to actually help.
She followed him into Brody's room, found the young man sleeping fitfully, and then moved on to Hannah's room. Emelia knocked, made sure Hannah was decent, and then let Montgomery in. Hannah's face was still pale and she lay among her crumpled blankets, evidence that she'd been leaping in and out of bed at a regular rate.
"Shouldn't we let her sleep?" Emelia said as Montgomery moved to her bedside.
"Ordinarily I'd say yes," he said quietly, the first words he'd spoken to her since the chamber pot incident, "but in this case I'm worried about that." He pointed to the full glass of water and the full pot of tea by her bedside. "The biggest concern in illnesses like this," he went on, "is that the patient will suffer from severe dehydration. Unfortunately, this is more likely in women than in men—they tend to avoid hydrating sufficiently, especially at parties like this. You heard Maryanne. She is starving herself to preserve her figure." He sighed. "We should wake Hannah and make sure she drinks something."
"But what if she just voids it again?"
"Then we give her more to drink a little later. Come back at thirty minute intervals." He shook Hannah by the shoulder and, when she opened her eyes, bent down to check her pupils. "How are you feeling?" he asked her. When she shook her head and closed her eyes again he felt the papery skin inside her wrist and then frowned. "See how slowly the wrinkles come back together?" he said softly to Emelia. "She's already a bit dehydrated. Hannah, I'm going to need you to drink something."
Hannah shook her head, but at last relented and, miraculously, the chamomile tea seemed to stay down. When they'd left her resting again, in the hallway Emelia turned to Montgomery.
"Thank you," she said softly.
"For what?" he asked. She thought with surprise that he genuinely didn't seem to know.
"For helping with all this." She waved her hand around. "I can't imagine how you feel getting invited to an event where you end up having to work the entire time. I do appreciate you telling me what you're doing, though. It helps me know how to help." In truth, she appreciated more than that. She appreciated the way he told her what to do—without condescension or any patronising manner. He spoke to her as though she were a student in his surgery; as though she were like any young man who could have studied and was learning on the job.
"In truth," he shrugged, "I'd rather be doing this than attending a party anyway." He turned to go, but before he had taken two steps down the hall he turned back around and looked at her with a moment of rare gentleness. "Emelia, these things happen. Your cook ordered the wrong tea. You didn't do anything wrong; you just have bad luck."
And he was gone.
Chapter 9
Montgomery put down the cup of chamomile tea and looked around the room. For once, everyone seemed to be sleeping soundly. Only a few moments ago he'd sent Emelia out with another brimming chamber pot, and he felt for her. He turned to the maid.
"I'm going to grab a breath of air in the garden. Please alert me if anything changes in the patients' conditions."
He knew that it wouldn't. The tea would only work until it had purged every vestige of food in a person's body. It brought back bad memories—a time when he'd been forced to use it after a sickening mother took too much opium in an effort to escape her pain. The tea hadn't worked then the way it was working now. Or, if it did work, it was too late.
He walked downstairs and ran a hand through his loose hair. The garden outside was brighter than he'd expected, full of sunshine and beauty that belied the sick chambers inside. When all those slumbering guests awoke they would be weak and still light-headed, but desperate to get home; to get out of the Wells house and away from Emelia Wells' disastrous social functions. He felt for her, just as he'd felt compassion when she first made a move to empty the chamber pot.
When she'd offered her help, he'd mistaken her gesture as an attempt to cover her guilt with frivolous, useless, schoolgirl attempts at nursing. No, Emelia, I don't need you to hold a cloth to this man's brow and sing a lullaby. But she'd shown herself a hard worker without complaint, and he admired that.
He took a few steps into the garden and there she was, leaning against a tree with one arm. He walked over to her and only then saw her hand against her stomach. She looked up, saw him, and immediately straightened. She bore none of the symptoms of the other patients, but her face did look a little pale.
"Are you sure you didn't drink any of the tea?" he asked, leading her to a bench in the shade of an arbor.
"Certain." She blushed. "I was just…a bit unwell."
"Ah." Understanding dawned on Montgomery and he smiled. "You know," he said, "in my first surgery I lost my lunch moments after they cut into the cadaver."
She smiled wanly. "I thank you for your indulgence, but there's a good deal of difference between slicing sinew and muscle and dumping a few chamber—" she stopped, holding a hand to her mouth.
"I have an idea," Montgomery said lightly, fighting the smile that threatened his lips. "Why don't we just sit here in this quiet garden and say no more of sinew or—" he whispered, "—you-know-what."
She smiled; an expression that sent the light shooting like sparks into her deep brown eyes.
"Thank you," she said.
He didn't say what he was thinking, but in truth he was impressed. The sickness in the garden, which she clearly saw as a moment of weakness, was only evidence to him that Emelia was affected by all that she had seen inside, yet still she'd completed her duties professionally and without letting the patients know how much it disgusted her. That was the mark of a good nurse, and here he'd found it in a woman he'd previously considered to be a part of the privileged masses.
"Let us talk about more pleasant subjects," she said at last.
"We don't have to talk at all." Montgomery was finding it restful to just sit here with her, not speaking; not trying to be anything or to fend off any teasing. Emelia and Brody had always been so close, hadn't they? He just wanted to spend some quiet time recovering.
But she didn't start with anything mocking at all.
"Can I ask you a question?"
"I suppose." He didn't know why, but it made him uncomfortable.
"Brody told me yesterday that he didn't believe in love. He didn't think it existed—only a sort of friendly affection in the best of circumstances and," she blushed, "lust in the worst of circumstances." She shrugged. "I wonder what you think about it all."
He blinked, shocked that she would broach such an intimate question with him. It was strange, since they'd never spoken on personal matters like these before, but there was someth
ing in the way she asked it that was full of innocence. He looked at her wide eyes; that one tendril of dark blond hair breaking free from the cloth around her head; her slender hands resting in her lap.
"You want to know if I think love is real."
"I suppose. Have you ever considered marriage?"
He laughed uncomfortably. "You certainly are going for the jugular with these questions."
"The jugular?"
He reached forward and pressed against the soft spot of her neck where the jugular was. She tensed, and he followed suit. In fact, Montgomery had meant it as a medical gesture—just showing an interested person where a certain part of anatomy was—and he feared she'd misinterpreted it.
He pulled his finger back from the milky part of her skin as though burned. She saved the moment, laughing a little and touching the place where he'd touched.
"I know what a jugular is, Montgomery, I was wondering why you thought my questions were so very—cutthroat."
"I just meant that you're asking things ladies don't usually ask gentlemen."
She shrugged, her eyes still innocent; interested. "We've known each other forever. I'm just interested in your life."
He bit his lip, the ingrained habits of a bachelor still running circles around his motives. He wanted to make a joke, to talk about how a man like him could never settle down; to say that he didn't want marriage or love or children—but it was a lie, and in that moment in the garden, 11 patients shared between them, he knew that she would see through him.
"I am perhaps more romantic than my brother about the subject of love," he said at last. "Although only barely so. I believe love exists, and I believe if it can be found it is a beautiful thing that bears its truest form in marriage and, hopefully, children. I just don't think it's very often that a couple finds that kind of love. I see far more marriages of convenience, and I've no desire for such a thing."
Emelia nodded, considering. "Is there anyone in the area that has ever caught your eye?"
Montgomery frowned. If it hadn’t been Emelia, he would have thought she was fishing for a compliment about herself, but he knew Emelia well enough to know she would imagine no such thing. He thought she was on the trail of another romance. He wondered what she had up her sleeve.
"At present," he said, trying to throw her off base, "I am too employed with my work and additional research to spend any time at all on women. Additionally, it would have to be a very resilient sort of woman to withstand the life that I wish to lead. I will need someone who can stay up at all hours of the night, bear up under extreme discomfort, and on occasion witness really horrifying things. Everyone goes to the town doctor with their ailments, and I wouldn't be surprised if a wife of mine was forced to see a severed limb or two." He knew he was being dramatic, but he wanted to poke some fun at her in return, make her imagine whatever match she'd fashioned in her head opening the door to a grisly sight. "You don't find women like that often in the parlors of fine houses in the country."
He expected her to protest. Emelia had always had modern ideas about the strength and resiliency of women. Instead, she cocked her head to the side.
"Really?" she asked. "Have you really seen such awful things?"
He paused. "Yes, I suppose I have. Not the worst, perhaps, but some difficult things."
"What was the worst thing you ever saw?" She paused, rephrasing the question. "If you can share it. I suspect there are things that were the worst in theory—gruesome and the like—and things that were just hard because of the person suffering."
For the second time that day, he looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. "That is…very insightful."
He sorted through a litany of images in his mind, trying to decide what to share with her. She didn't want to be shocked or scandalised. She was genuinely interested.
"One time," he said slowly, "a farmer came in with his foot all but severed off." He watched Emelia closely, but her nausea from before seemed to have faded. She was looking back at him with a steady gaze.
"What did you do?"
"We had to amputate. In truth, I think it could have been much worse. We were able to catch it before gangrene had spread."
"What do you do if gangrene takes over?"
"Do you really want to know?" He had never had a conversation like this with a girl who was actually interested in his work, especially regarding a subject that was so inherently graphic.
She nodded.
He shrugged. "Gangrene is a condition that occurs when body tissue dies and blood can't get to certain parts of the body. Sometimes this happens because of illnesses or gout, but most often I've encountered it in moments of severe trauma."
"What happens when the blood can't get to a certain part of the body?"
"Blood carries things like oxygen around the body," he explained, "but it also carries nutrients that fight infection. If the wounded area can't receive that life-giving blood, than wet gangrene can spread quickly throughout the body and cause death."
Emelia shivered, but her gaze remained calm. "That's awful. What can you do to stop it?"
Montgomery pursed his lips. "I know it sounds garish, but the best course of action with a seriously wounded and crushed injury is to amputate."
She nodded seriously, and for a moment he thought that she was going to leave off the subject. Then, after a pause, she added, "So that was a grisly sight, but what is one of the harder emotional things you've had to experience?"
He thought about the pale face of William Thimble, a poor country delivery boy who'd died of typhus in his arms two years ago, but when he looked up at Emelia he couldn't bring himself to be honest. She met his eyes, and as strange as it was, seemed to read his discomfort at once.
"Actually," she said gently, "you can tell me of such things another time. Perhaps you could explain something else about your profession. I've always been rather interested in the treatment of the pox. I heard there have been some new developments."
Montgomery smiled. It was a favourite subject of his. "As you well know," he said, "inoculation has for many years been the only treatment to stave off smallpox, and as this involves an incision in the patient's arm and the planting of another person's infected tissue into their tissue. It was often dangerous and could sometimes result in the full infection of the healthy person."
Emelia nodded seriously.
"But you may have heard of Edward Jenner—he is a scientist here in England who recently discovered a way to vaccinate people against the disease using cow pox. It still has some symptoms, but they aren't nearly as serious, and rarely life-threatening."
Emelia raised her eyebrows. "Aren't you concerned about using an animal disease on a person?"
"Not if it produces such solid results. You should read his paper when you come over to my house next time," Montgomery could feel himself growing excited to share something so close to his heart. "He's essentially found a way to do the most good with the least harm, and he did so through a serious of practical experiments." He began laying out the details of the first experiment with an eight-year-old boy, and then he paused. "I'm sorry," he said, catching himself. "I don't want to bore you. It's only that you have a kind ear, and I mistake your patience for genuine interest." He looked up towards the rooms and stood. "I really ought to go back inside and tend to our patients."
Emelia stood quickly too and laid a hand on his arm, smiling kindly. "Your compliment is well meant," she said, "but no one has ever before accused me of patience, sir. I was listening because I am genuinely interested in your profession, and I'd like to learn. Some other time, when you're not putting out fires under my own roof, perhaps you'd take the time to show me that paper of which you speak."
A Lady's Perfect Match: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 7