Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [46]
Miss F. lay back in the enormous bath and let the water ease her aching spine.
Afterwards Matron helped her onto a trolley and wheeled her through the corridors. The wheels squealed. In her torpid state, Miss F. heard voices leak from rooms as she rolled past them. She thought she was being moved to another ward, one closer to Mr. Baker Brown's own office, perhaps, so he could keep an eye on her state of health himself from hour to hour. Perhaps he would lay his hands on her back to feel if the healing had begun. She had no objection. She had no objection to anything.
There he was, the doctor himself, broad and magnificent in his black jacket. He was pouring something onto a pad of gauze; perhaps some kind of ointment. Miss F. smiled up at him from the trolley.
"Are we ready?" he asked her, and she opened her mouth to answer, to tell him that she had always been ready, that she had been waiting for him her whole life. He brought the pad down over her nose.
The patient having been placed completely under the influence of chloroform, the clitoris is freely excised either by scissors or knife—I always prefer the scissors.
In her dream, she was walking up the aisle on her brothers arm. Mr. Baker Brown stood facing the altar, looking straight ahead, but she could tell by the set of his shoulders that it was her he was waiting for. She turned to smile at her brother but found that he'd put on his policeman's uniform, for some reason, and he was angry with the doctor, and he was pulling his long leather truncheon out of its loop. She tried to get between the two men. She felt the truncheon come down and smash her head into pieces.
In her dream, she woke and went to lift the vast kettle of syrup off the fire. As she set it down she lost her balance and slipped in headfirst. Through the burning she could taste the sweetness. Her screams made no sound.
In her dream, she woke and found herself walking through London to her old house, where she was cook, because she knew she'd lost something. She'd left it behind her, whatever it was; she must have tucked it under her mattress or hidden it under a floorboard. But when at last she got to the right house, instead of going up and knocking on the door, she found herself walking right past. Her legs wouldn't take her up the steps. They wouldn't take her where she needed to go. She looked down and she had no legs, no body at all; she was a ghost.
This time she really did wake. Someone held a tube to her lips, and she sucked, and it was cool water.
"What?" croaked Miss F. at last. "What's happened to me?"
"You've been in a delirium," said Matron professionally. "It's the opium. It's usual, after an operation."
"What operation?"
"You'll be alright now."
The time required for recovery must depend, not only, as has already been hinted, on the duration of illness, also on the peculiar temperament of the patient.
Miss F. was kept in a small private room, far from the others. There was a nurse hemming sheets beside her bed, every minute of the day.
"Why won't you answer my questions?" she begged.
"I'm not here to tell you nothing, Miss," repeated the nurse. "I'm only here to make sure you don't touch that bandage again."
"I just wanted to see. I don't know what's happened to me. I never bled like that before in my life."
"That's because you touched the bandage," said the nurse.
Miss F. was prescribed bread in milk, strict quiet, and no visitors. She had olive oil rubbed into her chest, for strengthening. When she tried to look under the bandage again, her hands were pulled back and tied to the bed. She couldn't stop weeping. "Something must have gone wrong."
"It couldn't have done," said Matron sternly. "Mr. Baker Brown is a most celebrated surgeon throughout the Empire."
"Then what has he done to me?"
No answer.
"Why won't he see me?"
One morning Miss E woke up alone. The bandage had been taken off and her hands were untied. She did touch herself then, slowly and deliberately, for the first time. She learned her new shape. There was no pain, down