“I heard the commotion.” Peckwood joined his side. “What have we?”
“Dockyard injury. Lacerated arm and abdominal bleeding.”
“I’ll take the gut. You do the arm.”
“Yes, sir.”The instant he returned to the surgery, Graham hefted an oak addendum to the table—a smaller slab that connected to two posts beneath—and carefully shifted Hobbs’s injured arm onto it. Leastwise as much as he could without causing further damage.
While he attended to the arm, Peckwood had rolled over a small instrument table on wheels, prepared only this morning for just such an emergency. After a dip of their hands into a basin of water and a cursory toweling off of the moisture, they set to work.
At first, neither of them spoke, each too engrossed in stopping the bleeding then deducing how best to put all the man’s parts back together. Eventually, though, Peckwood broke the silence.
“Quite the boon the fellow is unaware. Makes the procedure much easier when the patient isn’t writhing about like an eel.”
“A boon, yes, but sometimes a curse,” Graham said as he pushed a string of catgut through the eye of a needle. “I’ve seen many a successful surgery give way to a patient who never awakens and eventually succumbs to his coma, which rather negates the whole operation.”
“As may be,” Peckwood grunted, “but at least the poor man will never have known a moment of the agony of surgery. If and when this fellow does come ’round, he may wish he hadn’t. The pain will be excruciating.”
Graham began the suturing process, deftly tying a neat little square knot to complete the first stitch. “It is pain that lets us know we are alive.”
Peckwood squinted at him around his scalpel. “A heady philosophy for a naval surgeon.”
“Death is a constant companion aboard a ship.” He grasped the needle with steady pressure. “The only surgeons that last are those who cling to hope and entreat their patients to do so as well.”
“Perhaps.” Peckwood removed a soiled piece of wadding with his forceps and dropped it into a bowl. “Yet I find it takes more than a positive mind-set to hold mortality at bay. Tenacity. Innovation. The courage to do what you know to be right when others nay-say you. These are the marks of a successful doctor, instilling in the patient confidence in the surgeon rather than allowing a tenuous hope in an invisible unknown.”
“That smacks of blasphemy, Doctor. A surgeon is not God, a truth I’ve learned time and again. Though we do our best, skill or not, it is God alone who numbers a man’s days.” Graham inserted the needle and began a second suture identical to the first.
Peckwood’s blue eyes twinkled up at him. “Religious fellow, are you?”
Graham stifled a snort. Perhaps Mrs. Bap was starting to rub off on him. He’d even picked up his mother’s Bible the other day—yet still hadn’t the nerve to actually open it. No, Peckwood couldn’t be more wrong about him.
He bent his head and returned to sewing. “I should say not, sir.”
“Just as well. Religion never helped me a whit.”
Though the words were lighthearted enough, a certain amount of bitterness clung to the sentiment like a ground fog. Thick and cold. What happened in the doctor’s past that soured him so? From all he’d read of Peckwood in the journals, he’d had a banner career thus far.
Once again tying a knot to set the final stitch, Graham snipped the thread with a small scissors. Then he wrapped a roll of bandages around the arm snugly. “I am finished.” He turned to Peckwood. “May I be of service to you?”
“No, no. Nearly finished here myself. His gut wasn’t as bad as I anticipated, no major organs affected, though he did lose a bit of blood. Still, barring infection, he ought to pull through in no time. Thread me a needle and I’ll truss him up right handily.”
Graham did so then began removing bloodied instruments and dropping them into a basin. Once finished, he retrieved the bowl of spent wads. Before tossing them into the dustbin, he poked them about and counted out of habit. Only nine? Surely not. He recounted and came up one short again. Odd. Unless Peckwood had missed the basin entirely with one of them.
“And there we have it.” Peckwood clipped the thread and tossed the needle and scissors onto the tray. “I leave the rest to you, Mr. Lambert.”
“Just one moment, please.” Graham crouched, studying the floor. Nothing was by Peckwood’s shoes. Save for blood and a few scraps of bandages, the oak boards were clear beneath the table. Rising, he glanced at the tray. Only the scissors, the spool of catgut, and a bloodied needle sat on it. Where was the other wad?
Peckwood cocked his head. “Is there a problem, Mr. Lambert?”
“Yes. There were ten waddings on the tray when you began, yet I only account for nine.”
“Pish! That is hardly problematic. I suggest you count again.” Pivoting, he strode to the washbasin and began scrubbing.
Graham frowned. How could he have made such an error? He snatched up the basin and again prodded through the wads on the off chance that two had stuck together.
But no. A thorough dissection resulted in the same number. He set down the porcelain bowl and faced Peckwood. “There is definitely one missing, sir. Only nine are accounted for.”
Peckwood chuckled while he rolled down his sleeves. “Well, there you have it, then. There must have only been nine on the tray.”
