Down Jasper Lane (Amherst Island Trilogy)

“The right leg is gangrenous,” Dr. Trowbridge intoned to the medical students leaning forward in their seats, their faces bright with curiosity, “and will be amputated above the knee. I expect the amputation to take no more than two minutes.”

There was a murmur of admiration, and the assisting surgeon announced that the patient was unconscious.

Dr. Trowbridge brandished his metal serrated saw, and Ellen closed her eyes. She didn’t dare look as she heard the doctor’s methodical sawing, first a soft, easy sound and then with a loud, harsh grinding noise as he cut through the bone.

Her hands grasping the leg were slippery, and she felt lightheaded. In her six months of nurses’ training, she’d had to do a fair number of unpleasant and menial tasks, but nothing quite as bad as this.

Standing there, trying not to sway as spots danced before her eyes, Ellen wondered what she was doing there... in the theater, in the hospital, in Kingston. Had she chosen this path simply because it was safe? Familiar?

Nothing about this moment felt either of those things. She swallowed the bile in her throat, determined not to make a fool of herself, or worse, endanger the operation.

Then it was finished. Ellen stumbled backwards, the bloody appendage still clutched in her hands, the swollen, putrid skin already cooling.

The students were clapping, Dr. Trowbridge was smiling easily, and Ellen was left holding someone’s leg. She felt faintly ridiculous as well as sick.

The assisting surgeon mopped up the blood as Dr. Trowbridge began to sew the wound, and another nurse nudged Ellen towards the bucket in the corner.

It looked like a slop bucket, and she dropped the leg in dubiously, wincing as it landed with a dull thud.

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until the nurse, one of the second years, grasped her by the elbow and steered her towards the door.

Ellen stumbled out of the theater, gasping in lungfuls of air that did not smell of blood and rot, overlaid with carbolic.

“I don’t think I was meant to be a nurse,” she told Amity as they sat in the parlor that evening. “I nearly fainted when Dr. Trowbridge amputated that poor man’s leg.”

“I’d faint if I were near Dr. Trowbridge,” Amity replied, and Harriet rolled her eyes.

“It happens to all of us. It’s a shock, the first time. You’ll get used to it.”

Ellen shuddered. “I’m not sure I want to get used to it.” She thought of the students, craning to see Dr. Trowbridge’s handiwork, the smell of antiseptic covering the sweet rot of gangrene. Just the memory was enough to make her stomach turn over unpleasantly.

“You will, though,” Harriet said with the confidence of someone who had already endured this particular trial and succeeded.

Ellen leaned back against the settee and closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure she wanted to admit to either Amity or Harriet how much the experience in the operating theater had shaken her, not simply because of the nature of the operation, but rather because it made her question her vocation.

What vocation? An inner voice mocked, and Ellen forced herself to listen to it, to acknowledge that she might not, after all, want to become a nurse.

“I’m going to get some fresh air.” She stood up, to the surprise of the other nurses cozily ensconced in the parlor.

“Go outside?” Harriet squeaked. “It’s got to be well below freezing and pitch dark! You wouldn’t!”

“I would,” Ellen replied firmly, and Amity, watching her with a rather knowing expression, simply said,

“Don’t forget your coat, then.”

Outside it was every bit as cold as Harriet had said, and Ellen strode through the hard, frozen snow until she came to the shore of the bay. It was strange to think this icy little bay was part of the same lake that surrounded Amherst Island so many miles away, that Rose and Dyle, yes, even Jed, might at this moment be gazing at its flat, frozen surface, the moonlight casting the untouched snow in silver.

A wave of homesickness and longing swept over Ellen so she had to blink back tears. It wasn’t longing for the island, which had been made strange by her new feelings for Jed, or Seaton, which had never been a home. It wasn’t a longing for the stuffy little flat in Springburn, or any home she’d known.

Rather, it was a longing for a home she’d never had, a sense of belonging she’d never felt anywhere, perhaps not even at Jasper Lane. She wanted to be known and loved completely, utterly, without regret or shame or fear. She wondered if it ever would happen.

He’s been good to me, Ellen. Don’t doubt it.

“Oh, Mam,” Ellen whispered. “Did you feel that? Even then?” If only she could feel it too. Yet in the cold silence of that icy shore she felt nothing. “It’s too late to want that now,” she said aloud, trying to be sensible even though she felt far from it inside.

Inside she felt as lost as the little girl coming off the train with a Scottish burr and tangled hair.