Mrs. Molloy didn’t take the news of the impending surgery well. “Ye canna do that ’ere,” she growled.
“He’ll die if we delay any longer,” Ambrose retorted, rolling up his shirt sleeves.
“I dinna want a deadmonin my house. We’ll all be arrested. Sheltering Jacobites, indeed. My husband grants refuge, then goes off. And where is he now?”
Having no answer, Ambrose continued setting out his instruments—the bone saw and the sickle-shaped amputation knife, neither of which he’d used before.
“They look new,” Eala murmured.
“Aye,” he replied, too nervous to admit this would be his first unassisted amputation. “’Tis important to keep them spotlessly clean,” he added lamely.
Like moths drawn to a flame, the curious, snotty-nosed bairns gathered around the bed. Thankfully, it was Eala who shooed them away. “Ye’ll have to take them out,” she told Mrs. Molloy.
The farmwife opened her mouth, no doubt to protest, then seemed to think better of it. “Mind ye clean up afterwards,” she hissed.
Her remark struck Ambrose as hysterically funny given the state of the place, but he sobered quickly. If he gave in to nervous laughter…
Reluctant to delay the family’s departure, he gathered his scattered thoughts. “Before ye go, where’s the whisky?”
“Need a swig o’ courage, do ye?” Mrs. Molloy goaded sarcastically. “Weel, ye’ll nay be stealing mymon’sbrew. He’ll...”
Tempting as a wee dram sounded, Ambrose lost his temper. “’Tisna for me, daft woman. I dinna have anything else to dull his pain or cleanse my instruments.”
Chastened, she reached up to retrieve a flagon from a high shelf behind the hearth. Her husband chose that moment to lumber into the hovel. From the amount of dirt caked on his clothing and the stench that came in with him, Ambrose guessed he’d been mucking out a piggery. He yanked the flagon out of his wife’s hands. “What are ye planning to do with that, woman?” he growled.
If Ambrose had expected the crofter’s arrival to temper his wife’s outbursts, he was sadly mistaken. She launched into a diatribe of what he could only assume were recriminations since he didn’t speak Gaelic. Before he knew it, the flagon was in his hands and the entire family had disappeared.
He looked across the bed at Eala’s stricken face. “Ye’ll need to be strong,” he warned, pulling out the stopper.
She nodded. “I have faith in ye.”
Wonderful! Now, he had guilt to deal with as well as uncertainty and dread. Ignoring the intoxicating aroma of the fumes, he sloshed whisky on his hands, then on the patient’s gangrenous arm. He poured a generous tot of whisky into the water dipper and held it to his patient’s lips. “Ye’ll need this.”
He plied Evan with liquor for what seemed like hours until the wretch rambled and shouted incoherently. Deeming his patient sufficiently intoxicated, Ambrose filled his lungs, trying to recall exactly the steps for amputation outlined in the new handbook by Dr. Joseph Charrière. “We’ll need a piece of wood for him to bite down on,” he told Eala.
She hurried off to search, returning with a strip of kindling from the hearth. Evan opened his eyes when she wedged it between his teeth. “Eala,” he stammered. “I’m…tho…thorry.”
She smoothed the matted hair off his forehead, then took hold of his good hand. “Dinna fash. Dr. Pendray will take care of ye, but ye must be brave. For me.”
Struggling to get his mind off the loving way she looked at Evan and back on toThe Treatise of the Operations of Surgery, Ambrose found himself babbling about the French doctor’s opinions concerning the best time of year to conduct surgery. “Supposedly, winter isna the opportune time to do this. Makes the blood run colder, so…”
It was a good thing he glanced up and saw the stricken man’s puzzled frown, else he might have rambled on further and never begun the task. In any case, Charrière’s theory about the weather suddenly struck him as utter nonsense.
* * *
Eala’s confidence in Ambrose’s abilities was restored as she watched him carry out the horrendous task. He’d trembled as he poured whisky over her hands, had trouble keeping hold of the instruments he was cleansing, and looked at her with dread in his eyes as he took up the knife. However, that nervous fellow disappeared the moment the curved blade delicately sliced into Evan’s skin.
She gripped her betrothed’s hand when he cried out in agony, pressed her whole weight on his upper body when he writhed, and uttered a prayer of thanks when he lapsed into whisky-fueled unconsciousness.
Through it all—the screaming, the blood, the sickening sound of metal sawing through bone—Ambrose remained calm and methodical. His confident demeanor kept her upright when nausea threatened to buckle her knees. She looked up at his sweat-sheened brow and knew she was falling in love with him.
Evan’s throaty moan brought her back to reality. Her allegiance was to this tormented soul. She smiled when he slowly opened tear-filled eyes. “’Tis over,” she said. “Dr. Pendray is bandaging yer…”
Dread rose in her throat. She’d been about to saystump. In the throes of his drunken delirium, Evan may not have fully understood what had happened, what he had to live with—if he survived.
“…yer arm,” she ended, bolstered by Ambrose’s nod of approval.
* * *