Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [117]
“Oh, bugger off,” I said crossly.
“Ooh, hear her!” Someone murmured behind me, not without admiration. Wylie blinked, taken aback, but then grinned more broadly than ever.
“Your wish is my command, ma’am,” he murmured, and bowed himself back into the crowd.
I stood up, racked with doubt. It might work. It was a technically simple operation, and shouldn’t take more than a few minutes—if I encountered no complications. It was a small incision—but it did involve going into the peritoneum, with all the attendant risk of infection that implied.
Still, I was unlikely to encounter better conditions than I had here—plenty of alcohol for disinfection, plenty of willing assistants. There was no other means of anesthesia available, and I could under no circumstances do it with a conscious patient. Above all, Myers had asked me to do it.
I sought Jamie’s face, wanting advice. He was there, standing beside me, and saw the question in my eyes. Well, he’d wanted a diversion, damn it.
“Best do it, Sassenach.” Jamie eyed the prostrate form. “He may ne’er have either the courage or the money to get that drunk again.” I stooped and checked his pulse again—strong and steady as a carthorse.
Jocasta’s stately head appeared among the curious faces looming over MacNeill’s shoulder.
“Bring him into the salon,” she said briefly. Her head withdrew, and the decision was made for me.
I had operated under odd conditions before, I thought, rinsing my hands hastily in vinegar brought from the kitchen, but none odder than this.
Relieved of his nether garb, Myers lay tastefully displayed on the mahogany table, boneless as a roasted pheasant, and nearly as ornamental. In lieu of platter, he lay upon a stable blanket, a gaudy centerpiece in his quilled shirt and bear’s-claw necklace, surrounded by a garnish of bottles, rags, and bandages.
There was no time to change my own clothes; a leather butchering apron was fetched from the smoke shed to cover my dress, and Phaedre pinned up my long, frilled sleeves to leave my forearms bare.
Extra candles had been brought to give me light; candelabra blazed from sideboard and chandelier in a reckless expenditure of fragrant beeswax. Not nearly as fragrant as Myers, though; without hesitation, I took the decanter from the sideboard, and sloshed several shillings’ worth of fine brandy over the curly dark-haired crotch.
“Expensive way to kill lice,” someone remarked critically behind me, observing the hasty exodus of miscellaneous small forms of life in the wake of the flood.
“Ah, but they’ll die happy,” said a voice I recognized as Ian’s. “I brought your wee box, Auntie.” He set the surgical chest by my elbow, and opened it for me.
I snatched out my precious blue bottle of distilled alcohol, and the straight-edged scalpel. Holding the blade over a bowl, I poured alcohol over it, meanwhile scanning the crowd for appropriate assistants. There wouldn’t be any shortage of volunteers; the spectators were boiling with suppressed laughter and murmured comment, interrupted dinner forgotten in a rush of anticipation.
Two sturdy carriage drivers were summoned from the kitchen to hold the patient’s legs, Andrew MacNeill and Farquard Campbell volunteering to hold the arms, and Young Ian was set in place by my side, holding a large candlestick to cast additional light. Jamie took up his position as chief anesthetist by the patient’s head, a glass full of whisky poised near the slack and snoring mouth.
I checked that my supplies and suture needles were ready, took a deep breath, and nodded to my troops.
“Let’s go.”
Myers’s penis, embarrassed by the attention, had already retreated, peeping shyly out of the bushes. With the patient’s long legs raised and spread, Ulysses himself delicately cupping the baggy scrotum away, the hernia was clearly revealed, a smooth swelling the size of a hen’s egg, its curve a deep purple where it pressed against the taut inguinal skin.
“Jesus, Lord!” said one of the drivers, eyes bulging at the sight. “It’s true—he’s got three