Chapter 5

Blake and Ashley, both fully dressed and bundled up in greatcoats and protection from weather, went out after breakfast. Cam kissed them at the top of the stairs, long and deep, and walked down to the front steps with them, and opened the door to a big blue cloud-studded sky, spring-crisp above tall new buildings and old winding streets.

He stood there gazing out, for a while, after they left. Coatless, hatless; sleeves shoved up and trousers more comfortable than fashionable. The wind nibbled at his hair, his face.

He breathed in and out. The world went on around him: the noise and bustle of markets, shopkeepers, flower-sellers, a street-musician with a fiddle. Elsewhere, the call of gulls, the crash of the sea, the shouts of sailors and men at the docks, though that was distant enough he couldn't properly hear. More houses, more buildings, were going up, here in the New Town; he knew about the plans for new squares, symmetrical classical architecture, shining expansions.

He would not be here for it.

He went back inside, and shut the door, and went to his consulting room, which would not be his consulting room very shortly now.

He leaned a shoulder against the door frame. He gazed at the private space, the neat couch, the shelf of useful books and issues of Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, including the recent one with the article about a treatment for persistent fatigue using a preparation of iron. He'd meant to correspond with that physician, to learn more. He still could, he supposed. At his new address. On ducal stationery.

The air tasted clean and dry, like soap and herbs.

This room was primarily for consultations; he remembered Hugh being adamant about having the surgery as well, about actually treating people, regardless of whether that lowered their social status as physicians by committing hands-on labor: of course we will, Hugh had said, bristling with fierceness, of course we'll help people, anyone who comes to us—do they think we wouldn't, do they think we shouldn't, as physicians, and what sort of doctors would we be if—oh, Cameron—

Cam, who had agreed, hadn't interrupted, only let him vent and grumble and burn with passion. Listening patiently, while Hugh cared so very much.

The smile tugged at his mouth now, unbidden and welcome.

He wandered across the hall, to open the door to the surgery. Sunbeams and memories sliced in across the floor, golden, scouring. He stopped in the doorway because the stab had gone right through him.

The house, the building, lay empty around him. No appointments; young James was busy upon errands, the post and the market; Ashley and Blake were out, because they'd gone out, giving him space, giving him this—

And Hugh was gone, and the sunbeam lay over the table like a gleaming scalpel.

It shouldn't. It'd been so long. He'd been here, working, nearly every day. It shouldn't feel like this.

But it did. It felt.

Cam came in, slowly. He touched the table, a shelf. Instruments, lancets, forceps, syringes. He'd have to pack those away. Someone—James—had brought in packing-straw and a trunk, which sat open and ready, gaping like a wound.

He ran a hand across his face. He put his other hand on the bandage roller, half-blindly, and oh wasn't that a metaphor, an instrument meant to help and heal and patch up wounds.

He said, ragged, to the sun and the table and the bandages and the empty space, "I'm sorry."

Nothing answered, not in words. He bit his lip, tasted the sting of it.

He looked at the bandage-roller again. His hand, just there. Beyond that, a jar of river-reeds, a small wooden tube, the kind used to listen to heartbeats, watched him in silence.

He'd improvised a hearing-tube when Blake had summoned him for Ashley, back in London. It'd helped. Someday those would be popularized, he thought: in every physician's practice. Soon, he hoped.

He'd helped Ash, then. He knew he had. He'd helped Blake—he still did not have a diagnosis for that one, which bothered him, but he'd done something, or some combination of his skills and Blake's own strength had done something. Enough, anyway.

He'd saved them. He'd done that, for people he loved.

He could continue to do that. He'd be at Ashley's side, and at Blake's; perhaps he could ask to see Blake's journals, to search for clues about mysterious illnesses and sources of infection. He could ask that Ash's planned grand library include medical volumes, references, journals: perhaps a wing full of knowledge, for helping others.

He would have his work, opening up a new practice. He already had a patient list, not only his partners but Straithern and his wife, and everyone David had promised to send his way.

It would be new. It would be different. He was not the bright-eyed young man he'd been, fresh from medical school, having walked away from his family but beginning a life with the man he loved.

Both Ash and Blake, he thought, would understand about the surgery. About getting one's hands dirty, plunging in, wholehearted. Regardless of social standing.

They would've liked Hugh. He would've liked them.

They'd given him space because he'd needed that. For what, precisely, he wasn't sure—he couldn't name the emotion, but he felt the ball of it, the large tangled skein that unraveled and fell out of his mouth in a tiny sob, before he pressed his hand against the sound to stop it.

He wasn't alone. Not here, not in this room. Not in London, either: in Ash's slim fanciful townhouse, now their house, full of plans and hopes and dreams.

He had this life to build. He could see it, extended before him.

He wanted it. He truly did. And his heart did a small leap of recognition, admission, freedom, in his chest.

Bandages, he thought. Oh, yes. Both his partners would no doubt appreciate the metaphor.

He looked over at the open trunk. Not a wound, perhaps. An invitation.

He said, "Right, then; let's see what we'll be fitting in you…" and considered fitting in, shapes and how they came together, and how much he could get packed up before his scholar and his adventurer returned.