Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [110]
“Vite! Dépêchez-vous!” the surgeon uttered a peremptory shout, aimed presumably at the shaken orderly, who hastily reassembled his tray and came on the gallop to the spot where the tall, dark man was poised, bone saw in hand, ready to sever an exposed thigh bone. The orderly bent to tie a second tourniquet above the site of operation, the saw descended with an indescribable grating sound, and I took pity on Mary Hawkins, turning her in the other direction. Her arm trembled under my hand, and the peony lips were blanched and pinched as a frostbitten flower.
“Would you like to leave?” I asked politely. “I’m sure Mother Hildegarde could summon a carriage for you.” I glanced over one shoulder to the vacant darkness of the hallway. “I’m afraid the Comtesse and Madame Lambert have left already.”
Mary gulped audibly, but tightened an already firm jaw in determination.
“N-no,” she said. “If you stay, I’ll stay.”
I definitely intended staying; curiosity and the urge to worm my way into the operations of L’Hôpital des Anges were much too strong to weigh against any pity I might feel for Mary’s sensibilities.
Sister Angelique had gone some distance before noticing that we had stopped. Returning, she stood patiently waiting, a small smile on her plump face, as though expecting that we, too, would turn and run. I bent over a pallet at the edge of the floor. A very thin woman lay listlessly under a single blanket, her eyes drifting dully over us without interest. It wasn’t the woman who had attracted my attention, so much as the oddly shaped glass vessel standing on the floor alongside her pallet.
The vessel was brimming with a yellow fluid—urine, undoubtedly. I was mildly surprised; without chemical tests, or even litmus paper, what conceivable use could a urine sample be? Thinking over the various things one tested urine for, though, I had an idea.
I picked up the vessel carefully, ignoring Sister Angelique’s exclamation of alarmed protest. I sniffed carefully. Sure enough; half-obscured by sour ammoniac fumes, the fluid smelled sickly sweet—rather like soured honey. I hesitated, but there was only one way to make sure. With a moue of distaste, I gingerly dipped the tip of one finger into the liquid and touched it delicately to my tongue.
Mary, watching bug-eyed at my side, choked slightly, but Sister Angelique was watching with sudden interest. I placed a hand on the woman’s forehead; it was cool—no fever to account for the wasting.
“Are you thirsty, Madame?” I asked the patient. I knew the answer before she spoke, seeing the empty carafe near her head.
“Always, Madame,” she replied. “And always hungry, as well. Yet no flesh gathers on my bones, no matter how much I eat.” She raised a stick-thin arm, displaying a bony wrist, then let it fall as though the effort had exhausted her.
I patted the skinny hand gently, and murmured something in farewell, my exhilaration at having made a correct diagnosis substantially quenched by the knowledge that there was no possible cure for diabetes mellitus in this day; the woman before me was doomed.
In subdued spirits, I rose to follow Sister Angelique, who slowed her bustling steps to walk next to me.
“Could you tell from what she suffers, Madame?” the nun asked curiously. “Only from the urine?”
“Not only from that,” I answered. “But yes, I know. She has—” Drat. What would they have called it now? “She has…um, sugar sickness. She gets no nourishment from the food she eats, and has a tremendous thirst. Consequently, she produces large quantities of urine.”
Sister Angelique was nodding, a look of intense curiosity stamped on her pudgy features.
“And can you tell whether she will recover, Madame?”
“No, she won’t,” I said bluntly. “She’s far gone already; she may not last out the month.”
“Ah.” The fair brows lifted, and the look of curiosity was replaced by one of respect. “That’s what Monsieur Parnelle said.”
“And who’s he, when he’s at home?” I asked flippantly.
The plump nun frowned in bewilderment. “Well, at his own establishment, I believe he is a maker of trusses, and