Page 20 of Adam, Mine

Jonsi sniffed the air and seemed pleased, so Victor handed him a glass first.

“Champagne for the viewing,” he explained. “Put your coats on the backs of the chairs.”

Petyr raised an eyebrow at him. “Confident,” he said.

Victor smiled at him. “My lab is downstairs. Please mind your step. The railing is on the right.”

He watched as they removed their coats and gathered themselves together to follow him. Victor had spent so much time looking at them all through his years of study, but never before did they look so young and innocent to him. Foolish. Whispering among themselves, ready to mock him and witness his failure.

Victor knew things that wouldn’t even enter their dreams. Did it give him the right to look down upon them? Perhaps. But that was to be seen.

He led them down the dark staircase and into the lab. His patient was waiting beneath a sheet, bathed in the light of nearby candle and electric lamp.

The men behind him giggled nervously as they found their places in the circle around his table. Victor walked slowly to the head of the table and waited until their nervousness turned to discomfort, then silence.

“From the first day we met, you’ve viewed me as lesser,” Victor started. “I have been subjected to your scorn, ignorance, isolation, and rejection.”

Henry started to object, but Victor held up a hand. “Don’t . . . I’m not angry, and I’m certainly not here to punish you for that, I just wanted to say that I understand.”

Henry released an anxious breath.

“I understand,” Victor continued, “that my presence was a disruption to class, and I understand that my curiosity tires people. It must have gotten old to listen to, and I cannot hold that against you. But the way I feel about our study in alchemy, as irritating as it must have been, is that it is fruitful in ways far beyond what most of our contemporaries thought possible.

“We are entering a new age of science, stretching the possibilities of medicine in pursuit of a tomorrow greater than today. The cost of that is steep and the labor of it is high. So please, if you would accept my apologies for the struggle of these last few years, I would greatly appreciate it.”

Victor waited, but no one took him up on his offer. Gregor just crossed his arms and looked impatient.

Victor grit his teeth and scowled. They wouldn’t even allow him that false humility when it was they who would soon be apologizing to him.

“Fine, then. We may begin.”

He peeled the sheet down the patient’s body.

At the first glimpse of the patient’s long hair there was a horrified gasp, which settled into muttering curiosity as his guests realized with relief that Victor’s patient wasn’t a woman.

Elias lay there, colder than any living body should be, his breath shallow beyond detection, heart weak without the assistance of Victor’s devices.

As always, Petyr was the bravest of them. He strode forward and brushed an ungloved hand against the stitches, assessing the mock autopsy and feigned reconstruction, then looked at his fingertips.

“Iodine?” he asked Victor, then without waiting for an answer, he turned to his friends. “The body is cold.”

Victor opened his arms to allow them to view the body.

“Be gentle with it,” he said as they began their examinations.

“With him,” Petyr corrected sternly. He put a hand above Elias’s mouth to check for breath. Henry lifted Elias’s arm and let it flop down as far as the restraints would go. Gregor put his ear to Elias’s chest, waiting for a pulse so slow from a heart so weak.

Gregor hmmed, then snatched a scalpel from the side table and stabbed Elias deep in the shoulder.

Elias lay unmoving, and Victor’s heart sang.

“He bleeds,” Henry pointed out.

“Quiet,” Petyr snapped. He nodded at Victor to continue.

“Of course it bleeds. Please step away from the body so I can begin.”

Victor shoved the breathing tube down the patient’s throat, started the bellows for his blood and lungs, and flipped the switch that jolted his heart.