Waiting for the Moon

The touch was so damned normal that he wanted to cry.

His fingers moved gently along her scraped flesh, through her blood-and-seaweed-matted hair, to the hairline crack at the base of her skull. He tested, probed, cataloged her injuries the way he'd done so often at New York Hospital, talking quietly to himself. "Left occipital cerebral contusion. Enlarged right front cerebral contusion. Basilar skull fracture, just above spinal column." He drew back, shaking his head. "Jesus, she was lucky.. .."

Footsteps thundered up the staircase and burst into the bedchamber. Ian turned slightly as Edith slid into the room, her arms loaded with sheets and fabric and bottles. "I'm here, Doctor," she wheezed. "What c'n I do?"

"Get Maeve and Victoria up here with the ice. We're going to have to pack her in it. We've got to keep her head cold."

"But the poor wee thing'll catch pneumonia?"

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"Don't question me, Edith."

"Sorry, Doctor." Edith swallowed hard and raced from the room.

Ian turned back to his patient, blotting the blood from her nostrils. He was so engrossed in the task that he barely heard Andrew come up behind him. "The bandages are done, Doctor. Are you going to operate?"

He wanted to. Sweet Jesus, he wanted to hold a scalpel as he'd done so many times, wanted to feel the energy pulse through him, the confidence, the unbelievable arrogance that came from his skill. He wanted?once more?to be God. But he couldn't, not this time.

"I can't, Andrew. The surgery is too advanced; besides, she'd die of infection. This damned carbolic acid isn't perfect. All I can do is try to relieve the pressure on her brain?hopefully she'll keep bleeding from her nose and ears. That, and keep her cold. She's going to have to win this battle on her own."

For the next hour, Ian worked like a demon to save her life. He shaved, cut, bandaged, and wrapped until his fingers were shaking from fatigue and slick with her blood.

Finally, he'd done all that he could do. Throwing everyone but Maeve out of the room, he slumped forward on the stool beside her bed, cradling his face in bloody hands. The woman lay stretched out before him, her arms pressed close to her body, her head layered in bandages. Blood was everywhere; on his hands, his clothes, the floor, the bed.

A three-inch layer of crushed ice covered her whole body, caught the lamplight and gave her the shimmering look of an illusion. More ice was her pillow, the clear peaks stained pink with her blood. Half of her face was covered in bloody bandages; the other half was a bloated, indistinguishable mound of purple bruising, her one eye stretched beyond recognition.

He'd shaved a triangular section at the back of her

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head and brought the rest of her hair forward, tying it in two twisted, matted tails that trailed along her arms. He should have shaved her whole head, but he hadn't had the time, and it probably wouldn't matter anyway. She was so damned weak. Her pulse was sporadic and shallow, her breathing almost nonexistent. Her teeth weren't even chattering, for God's sake, though she lay in a bed of broken ice.

"Don't die," he whispered, hearing the scratchy desperation of his plea and not caring at all. He knew he was being selfish in his wish to save her?he'd always been selfish in his need to perform miracles. But he needed her, this broken patient whom he could touch and heal, needed her as he'd never imagined needing anyone. She could save him, give him back his profession, his reason for living. She could be his first true patient in years.

"Will she live?"

Maeve's quietly spoken question invaded his thoughts. With a tired sigh, he looked at his patient through his objective clinician's eyes. The horrible swelling on her brain had abated a little, helped by the stream of blood that even now trickled from her left nostril. He'd bathed her head in carbolic acid and covered it in a layer of waterproof silk, then added precisely eight layers of carbo-lized linen bandages and finished with two layers of soaked gutta-percha. The whole stinking mass had been coated in liquid resin and paraffin and encased in two more layers of waxed taffeta. Her swollen, bruised head looked like a cracked gray croquet ball shoved atop a rag doll's body.

He'd followed Joseph Lister's technique to the letter, but still there was precious little hope that she would recover.

"I've done all I can, Mother."

Maeve kneeled beside him, her hands coiled in her lap, her red hair tied in a loose cluster of curls at the base of her neck. Her body moved in a ceaseless back-

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and-forth motion, her fingers gripping a small, tattered scrap of old satin. The ribbon she hadn't released in fifteen years. A tawdry scrap of her wedding veil. Her eyes lacked the clarity they'd held earlier. He recognized the signs; his mother was slipping back into her delusional state of mania.

He sighed again, ran a hand through his hair. "Go get Edith, Mother. Tell her to bring up the man."

Maeve stopped rocking for a second and stared blankly at him. "What man?"

"The lobsterman who brought the woman here." "Oh, him. I gave the poor old man a cup of coffee and sent him on his way."

Ian was so stunned, it took him a moment to respond. Slowly, steeling himself not to explode, he pushed the words out. "You got his name, I assume?"

She heard the anger in his voice and started rocking again, faster, not looking at him. "Of course I did." "What is it?" "What's what?"