The Winter Garden (IMD #2)

Chapter Eight: Meatless Bones

Chapter Eight:

 

Meatless Bones

James Hawthorne studied the man huddled behind his niece. His head and torso were obscured with a wool blanket, and while he was hunched over, the doctor could tell he was probably near his height. Below the cloth, what was left of his black trousers was stained and torn, revealing the skin below, which was coated in mud, offal, and bruises. The small portions of his legs and arms that could be seen were punctuated by jutting bones, but beneath the stockings, the tops of his feet appeared swollen. As he drew closer, James caught an eye-searing whiff of the sour odor emanating from his skin, but beneath it was a smell Dr. Hawthorne had come to know well while working in the hospital and morgue, the metallic yet sweet scent of blood. From the strength of the odor, there was probably a lot of it.

“Sir, my name is Dr. James Hawthorne. I would like to help you, but I need to know what appears to be troubling you,” the doctor called as his wife came to his side, picking up the volume she dropped along the way.

“E’ryting,” the faceless man murmured. His fingers groped across the side of his head until he reached the end of the blanket.

His hands shook as the makeshift hood fell away with each section he unwound, revealing his grimy blindfold and distorted features. Both doctors’ eyes widened as they beheld his askew jaw and lips, which glistened with sputum and blood. The man’s eyes were hidden beneath the swath of second skin, but the unseen wound bubbled and trickled congealed plasma. He blindly turned toward the faint gasp that broke from Eliza Hawthorne’s lips. She covered her mouth as he turned his head sideways, silhouetting his distended features as the swelling fought to free itself from the fabric binds. Tears crept into her eyes against her will, but her husband’s hand pressing against her own steadied her.

When she glanced up at James, she realized he, too, had been greatly affected by the young man’s grave appearance. His face had paled, and his eyes refused to leave his patient’s body as he mentally noted each injury. She knew that look well. It had appeared on his face when he had been a practicing surgeon, but recently, she had only seen it down in the morgue when he was trying to discern the secrets of the dead. During his time as Coroner to the Queen, Dr. Hawthorne had forgotten the spectral countenance of human suffering, which flickered with the ebb and flow of life and threatened at any moment to blow out. Something was palpably sad about this man’s condition that had so often been absent in the cadavers who, apart from lacking a pulse, didn’t differ much from the pitiful creature before them.

“I need to get you downstairs, so I can properly care for you.” James was able to conceal the tremor in his voice, but he was grateful that the blindfold shielded the man from their horrified expressions. He deserved better than to be gawked at like some sideshow curiosity. “I am going to take your arms now and lead you to my office. Is that all right?”

The young man nodded and held his aching arms ahead of him.

“Eliza, please take care of Emmeline. If she needs to use the bath, do it now and be quick about it.”

“Will you need any help with him?”

“I do not think so, but he will need—” he began but stopped their trek to the basement in order to support the other man as his body was racked with coughs.

“I will get a bed ready and prepare something he can eat.”

The doctor heard his wife and niece going upstairs as he led the man blindly through the house, carefully guiding him around the corners of furniture and warning him when his feet neared the upturned edge of a rug. In the hall beside the back parlor, there stood a very plain door resembling a cupboard or linen closet, but behind it stood a set of polished steps that led down to Dr. Hawthorne’s examination room. As the younger man navigated the stairs with the doctor’s aid, his heart quickened with each yawning creak. In the narrow, wooden shaft, the musty perfume of dust and earth crept up from the soil outside the walls and into the blindfolded man’s mind. For a moment, he saw the stone and earthen chamber before his eyes, a sharp blow lashed against his face as the man mocked and assaulted him again. When the door at the bottom was opened, the catacomb disappeared as the sharp, familiar scent of ethanol burned his nose.