Free The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers Page A

sliding fingertips but scales, and he didn't care about that either . . . but a moment later the dream shifted, and they were in a forest clearing where the moon made spots of pale light that winked like spinning silver coins as the branches overhead waved in a Mediterranean wind . . . she slithered out of his embrace and disappeared in the underbrush, and though he crawled after her, calling, unmindful of the thorny branches, the rustling of her passage grew steadily more distant and was soon gone.
    But something seemed to be answering his call—or was he answering a call of its? As in many dreams, identities blurred into one another . . . and then he was looking at a mountain, and though he'd never been there, he knew it was one of the Alps. It seemed miles high, blocking out a whole corner of the sky even though the thin clouds streaking its breast with sunset shadow let him know that it was many miles distant—and, in spite of its broad-shouldered, strong-jawed look, he knew it was female.
    Pain in the stump of his missing finger woke him before dawn.
     
    Two mornings later he was scuffing his way up the broad front steps of Guy's Hospital, blinking at the Greek-looking pillars that stretched away overhead from the top of the front door arch to the roof two stories above; but the sunlight seemed too harsh up there among all that smooth stone, and he let his gaze drop back down to the heels of Keats's boots, which were tapping up the steps just ahead of him.
    For the last couple of days he had been attending lectures at both Guy's and St. Thomas's, confident that he would be able to get Appleton to acknowledge the signature he had forged on his application papers—if Crawford should decide to make it official and actually become a surgeon again under the name of Michael Frankish.
    And he was fairly sure he wouldn't be recognized. For one thing, Dr. Crawford had always worked in hospitals north of the river and, for another, he no longer looked very much like Dr. Crawford—he had recently worked very hard to lose weight so as to look his best at the wedding, and he now found himself losing more, involuntarily; and nobody who had known him a week ago would have described him as hollow-cheeked and sunken-eyed, as he certainly was now.
    At the top of the steps Keats paused and frowned back at Crawford. "Are you sure you're not too sick?"
    "I'm fine." Crawford fished a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. He was dizzy, and it occurred to him that Newton must have been right when he'd said that light consisted of particles, for today he could feel them hitting him. He wondered if he was going to faint. "What have you got today—Theory and Practice of Medicine?"
    "No," Keats said, "this morning I'm helping out in the cutting wards—people recovering from lithotomies."
    "Mind if I . . . follow along?" asked Crawford, attempting a carefree smile. "I'm supposed to hear about Anatomy from old Ashley, but he'll just put me to sleep. And I'm sure I'd pick up more real acquaintance with the subject by touring the wards than by sitting through a damn lecture anyway."
    Keats looked uncertain, then grinned. "You were a surgeon's dresser on shipboard, didn't you say? Sure, you'll be used to dealing with much worse than this. Come along." He held the door open for Crawford. "Matter of fact, I'm taking the exam tomorrow, and then leaving for two months at Margate—you might very well be my successor with Dr. Lucas, so it's only right that I show you around."
    They reported to the senior surgeon, who didn't even look up when told that Michael Frankish was to be Lucas's new dresser; he just gave Crawford an entry certificate and told him to use the boot-scraper before going upstairs to the wards.
    It took a little over an hour to tend to all of Dr. Lucas's patients.
    As a student Crawford had not minded tending to the people recovering from surgeries in the cutting wards; the operating theater itself was far worse, a