“Shall I double the thread?”
“Aye, and knot the two ends together. I dinnae want to risk the gut coming out of the needle before I finish.”
Arabella made a neat knot and looked at him expectantly.
“Ye take the forceps again and give me the needle.”
“Yes.” She took the forceps from his left hand and then put the needle carefully, in such a way that it could not poke his skin, onto his left palm.
But when he attempted to transfer the needle to his right hand, his right hand was shaking and he could not get his fingers to close properly around the needle.
He looked at Arabella. Her blue eyes, so trusting, were fixed on his.
She longed to push the errant dark-red lock away from his left eye. But she did not. She focused on his right eye and waited for him. For his direction.
I am here, Alasdair. Tell me what to do. I can be your hands.
“I think,” he said slowly. “I think ye had better do the sewing. I will tell ye what to do. Ye will do nothing unless I tell ye to do it.”
“Aye,” she said without even thinking about her choice of words.
He smiled briefly. “Dinnae worry. There are plenty of good surgeons who are not Scottish.”
But none who are women, she thought.
“I must be behind ye,” he said and stepped behind her. She moved slightly into his former position, still holding tight on the forceps. She felt his breath on her left ear, his left arm coming down and taking the forceps from her then and holding his shaking right palm out to her with the threaded needle on it.
She took the needle.
“First,” he said. “Do ye see where the forceps are, where I made my cut?”
“Yes.”
“This is the most important part of the sewing, Arabella. We must close this stump so that the contents of the gut dinnae leak out into the peritoneum. That has already started because the appendix was perforated and ’tis what has made Lord Morpeth so ill. If we fail in this, the surgery will be for naught.”
She liked that he had said “we.”
“Do ye know how to make a stitch that is like the top of a purse? That we can draw together and it will be tight?
“Yes, Alasdair.”
“Ye might need the tweezers to move the tissue as ye sew. I try not to touch the bowel too much. Go ahead and start and I will stop ye if I see anything amiss.”
“You will tell me if I do something wrong?” She was able to keep her voice from quavering and for that, she was glad.
“Since not a one has ever done this before, in precisely this way, Arabella, it would be a difficult task for me to correct ye.”
Arabella stuck her chin out. He had said that before but she had not taken it in. She was among the first. Maybe shewasthe first. She would do this. She could feel him behind her. He was there.
She started, leaning close, asking for more light, obliging grooms and footmen raising their lamps to help. She sank the needle into the small tube of flesh. Not drawing the knot taut, leaving a sizable tail. She waited.
“Good. Go on,” Alasdair said.
“How many stitches do you think there should be around the edge, Alasdair?”
He considered. “Five to seven.”
She made six careful circumferential stitches around the stump. She waited.
