Daniel didn’t wait to hear more. One of his most traumatic patient fatalities had come after delivering a placenta. There was no room for error. “Who’s Wilkins?” Horace asked as he managed to keep up with Daniel. “Not a doctor here.”
“Student. I don’t think he’s ever seen a delivery.”
They reached the room at the same time as Adams, nearly colliding. “What are you doing here?” Daniel asked, not sparing time for manners.
“Wilkins is my student.”
“And this is my ward,” Daniel returned. “Wilkins should have told me he was delivering.” He rushed to the bedside, where Wilkins sweated in a panic as the mother moaned quietly.
“The placenta doesn’t look right,” Wilkins said, eager to move aside and hand the stippled mass to Daniel. “And it’s not coming away.”
Daniel slid into position, his blood going cold as his eyes surveyed the scene. The firm, veined flesh was no placenta.
Horace swore. “Inverted uterus. Fully exterior.”
“Dear Lord,” Adams muttered behind them. “What happened?”
“What’s wrong?” The woman yelped, catching the dismay in Adams’s voice.
Horace tamed his anger long enough to give her a smile. “Nothing we can’t fix.”
Horace turned back to Adams, his eyes burning blue flames as his voice dropped to a vicious whisper. “What happened is your student has been tugging this woman’s organ out of her body.”
Wilkins’s eyes reddened desperately. “I did everything they said in the lecture last year. I wouldn’t even be on this ward at all, but the other students have cholera and you were in surgery,” he said to Daniel as if he was to blame.
“Lecture last year,” Horace scoffed. But when it came to midwifery, few doctors started their own practices with more than a lecture or two and, if fortunate, a birth they’d seen from the back of a flock of students.
“What is it?” the woman cried again, trying to sit up for a view.
“Just a displacement of the uterus,” Horace said, soothing, coaxing her back down, knowing the words meant little to her. “Get me a long-necked bottle and a pitcher of salt water,” Horace ordered, pushing up his shirtsleeves. Wilkins stared, perplexed, until Horace shouted, “Now!”
Wilkins scrambled to obey.
“We need the vaporizer,” Daniel said. “If she’s awake, we’ll never overcome the after contractions.”
“Never?” Horace challenged. “Nonetheless, it will be easier when she’s unconscious.”
When Daniel returned with the device, Horace fit themask over the mother’s confused face, promising all would be well. “Just a slight complication, but when you wake, it will feel much better.”
“Her eyes are closing,” Daniel announced after a few frightened jerks of the woman’s head.
Horace anointed the inside-out organ with water, which pinked as it collected traces of blood and spilled onto the floor. Daniel watched in confusion. Whatever Horace had up his sleeve, Daniel was as in the dark as anyone else.
“Salt will shrink the engorged uterus, making it easier to work it back into place,” Horace explained, taking up a jar of salt and sprinkling grains liberally across the bloody landscape like falling snow. “Just another sprinkle and a bit of wine, as well.”
Adams scowled. “Why do all your treatments sound more like recipes, Croft?”
Horace grunted and ignored the man, keeping his eyes on Daniel. “Let Jeffers man the ether for a bit. This part is laborious.”
Daniel winced. From Horace, that meant a nearly impossible task.
“Thread some sutures and have them standing by, in case,” Horace instructed without taking his eyes from the patient. “There!” Lightning quick, he indicated a spot with a probe. “A tumor. Inside the womb.”
Sure enough, a misshapen ball of tissue, the size of a small pocket watch, glistened white and yellow through the membrane of the uterus.
In two minutes or so—twice as long as it would have takenhim before, but still an impressive time—Horace held the offending tumor in his palm. He set it aside and began sliding sutures into place with more care than a tailor. “Now, start easing it back into place,” he directed.
Daniel frowned. Easier said than done when everything insisted on slipping through his fingers.
