Episode 100: Wuthering Heights…? [4]
Don’t look at me like that… I wanted to change the shape a little. It was not even in its original form. Did I cut it? Kind of.
“Please… help me!”
I also thought about grinding it into a finer powder. But what if the medicine lost its effect in the process? It looked dry and crispy, but if you touched it, there was still moisture inside. Was that water really just water? No. It was cerebrospinal fluid, and it should contain attenuated rabies virus. I gave it to the patient in this state because if I broke it up too much, it would just become a tasteless piece of dried dog medulla.
“I’m doing this to save you.”
“You said the same thing yesterday! You bastards wrecked my arm yesterday saying the same crap!”
“Uh… well, yes…”
He probably did hear that yesterday. Some other doctor, whose name I did not even know, likely said it, and with even more confidence than I had now. A proper nineteenth-century doctor. But I was not like them. Even if I was holding him down and forcing his mouth open… this was different.
“This is different!”
“Damn it… Mmph! Ugh!”
It was not really working. He was thrashing around like he was trying to die. But if he ate this, he might live…
Will he live?
Maybe not. Maybe it was already too late. Maybe the attenuation was not sufficient. Still, at this point, no treatment would offer better odds than this.
“Hold his nose.”
“Okay.”
I pinched his nose shut so he could not breathe, then shoved the piece of medulla into his open mouth. I kept my hand over his mouth until he swallowed. If he suffocated, he would die, so he had no choice. He had to swallow it. And spitting it out would not be the end either. Why? Because the dog was huge. Did he know how many pieces I had left?
“Mmgh… Ugh…”
He must have realized it too. He looked at the row of remaining chunks and cried while swallowing what was already in his mouth.
Good.
If I had to feed him three doses a day, it would be a nightmare. Thankfully, this medulla was a one-time attenuated vaccine. The goal was to stimulate the immune system and produce antibodies, so a single dose should be enough. Come to think of it, syphilis treatment was also just a one-shot thing…
I’m lucky.
That was really all there was to it. Pure luck. If all internal medicine worked like this, one dose and done, everyone would have become an internist. But real internal medicine was long and tedious. In that sense, this was fortunate. Honestly, surviving even once like this already made a person lucky.
“Ugh… I’d rather just die at home than go through this…”
I smiled at that, but the patient clearly misunderstood. He probably thought I was mocking him. I was not. I was trying to save his life, and he was saying he would rather die? Come on. Then again, from his point of view, after having just eaten a piece of dried dog spine, maybe everything seemed insane.
“It’s over now.”
“My life is over.”
“No, no. The treatment is over. Now let’s check your wound.”
“Ugh.”
“It won’t even hurt.”
I turned back to his arm. Looking again at the upper arm, I could not help but sigh. Where did the idea of using a hot iron even come from? Not even the Middle Ages were this extreme.
What the hell… People don’t even bathe anymore because they’re scared of syphilis…
Apparently, there was a rumor that you could catch syphilis at public bathhouses. Sure, there was a tiny risk, but did that mean you just never washed? I would bet more people died from not bathing.
“Water. Let’s wash it one more time.”
“Huh? But it hurts…”
“It’ll be better than leaving it.”
“If you say so…”
With that, I carefully washed the affected area again. Using nitrous oxide for anesthesia here felt like too much, so I did not. Fortunately, people in this period tolerated pain better than expected. He writhed, but he did not faint. Yes, at least I did not have to tear off skin again.
“Ugh! Aaghhh!”
“I know it hurts, but you have to endure it.”
“Just kill me instead!”
“What? No. You don’t get to die after making it this far.”
“This guy’s crazy, right?!”
That was what he said, but in the end, I still had to tear away a little.
Why? Because that crazy doctor yesterday had wrapped the wound with the thinnest, cheapest cloth, basically nothing, and now the bandage had fused to the burn. That was debris. A foreign body. And that made it a breeding ground for infection. The skin’s protective barrier was gone, and if this stayed in, he would not die from rabies. He would die from sepsis.
When are we finally going to teach these ignorant bastards that germs exist?
I picked out threads with tweezers and seethed with rage. To others, I probably looked like I was overreacting. Like I was going overboard for no reason.
“Do we really need to get rid of all this?”
“Of course.”
Even the two beside me, Joseph and Alfred, who had at least started believing that cleanliness mattered thanks to me, were still like this. Imagine what the rest were like. To me, these were not “threads.” They were culture media. Incubators. Anyone who had seen what retained fabric could do in trauma patients would never leave it in.
“Whew…”
It took a long time. And… it was still taking a long time. The cloth was a disaster. And this was supposed to be the Industrial Revolution, so why was the quality so bad? It tore too easily, and the fibers were mushy… Medicine could not progress in a vacuum. Other industries needed to evolve too.
“Ahhh…”
Of course, it was even harder for the patient than for me. He eventually passed out from exhaustion. That was not ideal. Vaccines only worked if the host could build immunity, and his physical condition mattered.
Protein… There’s no way he’s had enough.
People thought “Western food” meant plenty of meat. But eating meat in nineteenth-century London? Not as easy as it sounded. Most workers lived off potatoes and bits of salted fish, if they were lucky. Honestly, many had even less than that.
Sleep… Please let him sleep well.
You needed to eat and sleep to build immunity, but I could not do much about that. Most of the money I was using right now came from Joseph and Alfred’s father. I could not afford to feed my patients too.
What’s going on with the condoms?
We would only find out once Blundell and the other libertines wrapped up their social season. But I was not too worried. It would work out. Obviously. If people had not figured out how useful condoms were, how would those fancy vending machines have appeared in the twenty-first century?
“Alright. Get some rest.”
“Just… go away already…”
I patted him on the shoulder and stepped out. After putting the dried brain and medulla into a tray, I headed to Dr. Liston’s lab. Emily Brontë was there.
I knocked. No answer. So I let myself in and found the child asleep.
Fuck?
Was she dead? I rushed over, but no. She was just sleeping. Rabies was terrifying, but it did not move that fast. She had not been bitten near the neck either. There was no way she would already be in the final stages within a day.
“Hmm?”
She looked peaceful. No obvious pain. On the table beside her were sheets of paper covered in scribbles.
“Why are you looking at a child’s doodles?”
“Wait… Isn’t this Professor Liston’s paper? You can’t just waste something like this!”
These ignorant fools… they did not realize what kind of mark this girl was going to leave on human history.
You idiots… You don’t know what kind of legacy this girl is going to have.
If I did not know her name, I might have dismissed it too. I was not exactly a literary expert.
Heathcliff.
One word snapped me to attention. Heathcliff. The main character of an immortal masterpiece.
“Ha…”
Was that name already in her mind? If this was not genius, what was?
Before I knew it, I had read all of her notes. The prose was rough, but some sentences were familiar.
“Put those books aside and look for work. Always pay for your sins that offend me.”
I had read this line in a book before. At the time, I had not thought much of it. Just another quote. But now… seeing her, just a child, fast asleep, poor, fragile, and unmistakably gifted, I felt something else entirely.
This world is so harsh for children, especially girls.
If I help her…
I still felt awkward about funding someone’s future with money I earned from selling condoms. Was that so wrong? But standing here, face to face with this girl, a literary giant born in the wrong era, I felt like a ray of light had pierced the fog.
Alright. Even if it’s just so she can write without fear of punishment at home… Let’s make that happen. Who knows how many more lines she’ll write?
Translator’s Notes
Cerebrospinal fluid — Fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord.
Attenuated rabies virus — A weakened form of the rabies virus, used here in the narrator’s crude attempt to imitate early rabies vaccination.
Medulla — Part of the brainstem involved in vital functions such as breathing and heart regulation.
Antibody — An immune protein produced in response to a pathogen or vaccine.
Nitrous oxide — Also known as laughing gas; a gas later used as an anesthetic.
Foreign body — Any material inside a wound that does not belong there, such as cloth fibers, dirt, or debris.
Culture medium — A substance used to grow microorganisms. The narrator compares retained cloth fibers in a wound to a medium where germs can grow.
Sepsis — A life-threatening systemic reaction to infection.
Heathcliff — The male protagonist of Wuthering Heights.