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She sat up slowly. Nothing impeded her, no ropes or ties. She had a sudden memory of the smell of ether. It had been over her face. That was what had happened to her! Rand had put ether over her nose and mouth. Now the sense of panic returned of a wild moment when she could not get her breath. She was choking, trying not to take in the fumes. Then darkness.
This was not good enough. Slowly she put her legs over the side of the bed and then stood up. She was still a little dizzy, her head hurt, and her stomach was queasy, but she was not injured. She walked with increasing firmness over to the window. It was low, a cottage window as if under the eaves. She peered out. She was right: the roof was thatched; she could see the ends of straw poking out at the upper edge of the window – old straw, dark and slowly pulling apart.
She looked down. She was one floor above the ground. There was an unkempt garden below her; the flowers gone wild, self-seeded all over the place. Beyond was what seemed to be an orchard of apple and pear trees heavy with fruit. Something disturbed a flight of birds, sending them soaring up into the air. A man was passing through the long grass. He was tall, long-legged, and he carried a shotgun casually over his shoulder.
Where on earth was she?
She racked her brain to remember what had happened before the ether was put on her face. She seemed unhurt, and she was still wearing her usual blue-grey nursing dress and white apron. She touched her hair. It was a mess, half-unravelled from its pins. Then she realised that her arms were tender. She rolled up her sleeves and saw the bruises beginning to show. She had struggled.
With whom? Magnus Rand? Surely not the man with the gun, who had now disappeared into the orchard.
She was fully dressed except for her shoes. There was nothing else in the room that belonged to her. She walked over to the door and touched the handle. It barely moved. It was stuck. She rattled it until common sense told her it was locked.
‘Where are you?’ she shouted. ‘Let me out of here!’
There was no answer. She strained her ears to hear if there were any movement below her, or beyond the door.
Perhaps it was stupid calling. If they wanted her to be free, they would not have locked the door. And the window – that was latched too.
Who was it? Where had she been before the ether? What was she doing? Helping Magnus with Bryson Radnor. Radnor had been very weak and tired but unable to sleep. Ill-tempered, but then he often was. He was frightened. She could not blame him for that. He had made no terms with death. It was not uncommon. He was not old, little over sixty.
Then what had happened? Was she kidnapped, or was she just moved out of the way? For ransom? Revenge? What?
‘Let me out of here!’ she shouted again, her voice louder, higher pitched. She could hear the rising panic in it.
The door opened almost immediately and a man stood on the other side. It was Hamilton Rand, his long, scholarly face showing only slight disapproval.
‘You are making an unnecessary noise, Mrs Monk,’ he said irritably. ‘Pull yourself together and get ready to do your job. You look somewhat disorderly. I shall provide you with a comb and a looking-glass. Tidiness gives a patient confidence in you.’
‘Really?’ she said sarcastically. ‘And being rendered unconscious by force, and brought here against one’s will and then locked in a strange room – is that intended to give confidence also?’
‘There is nothing strange about the room,’ he replied levelly. ‘It is quite pleasant and perfectly ordinary. It is clean, and you will keep it so. As for the unconscious part, you brought that upon yourself. Had you kept your duty in mind rather than your personal comfort, you would have come willingly. It is your duty not only to your patient, but to medicine itself. It disappoints me that it is necessary to remind you of this.’
She started
to protest.
‘As for your confidence in me, Mrs Monk,’ he snapped, ‘that you apparently lack it is disappointing, but irrelevant. None of this is about you. It is about the survival of Bryson Radnor, and a discovery in medicine that will save tens of thousands of lives.’ His face was bleak. ‘Now please stop behaving like a child and prepare yourself to care for your patient.’
‘Who is caring for him now?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t even know where we are, or how long we have been here.’
‘Where you are is also irrelevant,’ he dismissed the subject. ‘We have been here a little over an hour. It is however, far longer than that since we left the hospital, and your skills are needed. Control your pettishness, tidy your appearance, and come to attend him. I shall wait for you.’
‘I shall come. You should not leave him alone,’ she replied. ‘If he is ill, he will have little care for my appearance.’
His eyes flared in a moment’s temper.
‘You will do as you are told, Mrs Monk. Let that be understood from the outset. I do not wish to treat you like a prisoner who must be bribed to behave well, and punished if you do not. But do not delude yourself that I won’t, should you make it necessary.’
‘Give me the comb. I can manage without the looking-glass,’ she responded. She could think of no arguments he might listen to at the moment.
He pulled a small comb out of his pocket and handed it to her. He also appeared to consider speaking, and then changed his mind.
She pulled the remaining pins out of her hair, ran the comb through it, then expertly recoiled it and replaced the pins. She handed him back the comb.
He took it without comment. ‘Miss Radnor is with him,’ he told her as he turned to lead the way across the landing and down a very narrow staircase to the ground floor. ‘She is adequate, and diligent, but she has neither your experience nor your skills. You are a very good nurse, Mrs Monk, far too good to indulge your own temperament at the expense of a patient. I will overlook it on this occasion. We have a great deal of work to do. This could be the greatest leap forward in medicine since Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood.’
Without thinking she answered immediately. ‘Since ether,’ she argued. ‘The ability to operate while a patient is unaware of it makes all kinds of things possible that were not before. The next thing we need is to stop infection.’
