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Do I detect a bit of theatrical mockery as Gray folds back his cuffs and then extends his hands to Dr. Mackay to check them? Oh yeah, Gray knows this is bullshit. He also knows, from his studiously closed expression, that his sister’s praise means nothing. And yet, beneath all her mockery, she must think he’s a capable doctor or she wouldn’t insist he examine her husband.
“Mallory?” Gray says. “Please assist me.”
Leslie, his sister, and the doctor all blink at me, as if surely I’ll transform into a man at any moment.
“She is his assistant,” Annis says.
“His…” Dr. Mackay chokes on the next word, unable to get it out.
“My assistant.” Gray turns and fixes the doctor with that same unflappable expression. “Therearewomen in medicine, particularly in the United States, which is embarrassingly ahead of Scotland in this regard. Are you truly surprised that a doctor who looks, as Annis says, like me might also employ a female assistant?”
Sarah struggles to hide a smile.
“My brother is quite the radical,” Annis says. “Now, dear brother, please do what you can to save my husband’s life, as little as he deserves it.”
Sarah lets out a long-suffering sigh, but no one else seems the least perturbed.
When we move over to Leslie, the dying man glares at Gray. Then I come into the light, and his head whips around fast enough to make him wince with the effort.
“I say,” he murmurs. “What have we here?”
“May I introduce Miss Mallory Mitchell,” Gray says.
Leslie smirks. “Assistant, indeed. Never thought you had it in you, boy.”
“What are his symptoms?” Gray asks Mackay.
“I’m right here,” Leslie says. “Ask me. I can’t keep anything down, and my bloody hair is falling out in clumps. My feet feel as if they are on hot coals, and if you touch them, I will strike you down with my bare hands, even if I can scarcely draw breath.”
“Severe abdominal pain,” Mackay says. “Evacuation of the stomach andbowels. Difficulty breathing. Pain in the feet and lower legs, and a sensitivity to touch. Also, unexplained hair loss.”
“I said all that, didn’t I?” Leslie says.
Gray examines Leslie. As he does, I murmur, “Thallium?”
His brows knit.
“It’s presenting like thallium poisoning,” I whisper, as low as I can.
“I do not know what that is.”
Has it not been discovered yet?“I’ll explain later.”
When Gray is done with the examination, he motions for Dr. Mackay and Annis to join us in the hall.
“None of that nonsense,” Leslie wheezes. “Whatever you have to say, say it in front of me.”
Gray glances at Annis, who shrugs.
Gray clears his throat. “I agree that it is acute poisoning. I am not certain I would have prescribed any course of action different from Dr. Mackay’s. Clean out the system in an attempt to rid it of the poison. That did not work. While there is always hope, I would personally prescribe morphine, in as heavy a dose as is needed.”
“To let me die in peace?” Leslie says.
Gray meets his bother-in-law’s gaze. “Yes.”
EIGHT
Leslie does not accept the morphine. He insists he isn’t in that much pain, despite the fact that he can barely stay upright. More important, he is not letting anyone inject him with anything that might later let his wife’s lawyers claim he wasn’t in his right mind when he changed his will. He wants his lawyer here with those papers he’d drawn up, and he wants him here now.
