Death of Connor Sanderson: Chap 1:Part 2.

Chapter One: Part 2.
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Striking a match to light a candle, Connor held it aloft and rubbed at the space below his clavicle with a wet finger. A cleaner patch confirmed it was not a shadow. “What in God’s name?” Confusion chilled his spine as the hole in his memory rattled like bones in the closet. What happened last night?
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Panic began as the weight of a cold wet flannel on the back of his neck. A grimace clung to his features as droplets of sweat sprouted on his brow, his scalp tightening as a vice gripped his skull. An agonised groan escaped his lungs as he dropped like a stone to his knees and vomited over the hard flagstones. When the hitching of his chest had faded to dry heaving that burned his throat, he rocked forward and rested his hot brow on the cold stone floor.

The respite was short-lived as his muscles jerked violently into spasm, and he keeled over onto his side, his arms clutched around his body as relentless cramping gripped his stomach, and a fist of pain reached in to twist his guts and rip them out. Connor’s last conscious thought was...am I dying?

His slack body lay where it had fallen until the discomfort of the hot-ash burn of pins and needles penetrated, and the black clouds parted. His face was stiff where his relaxed cheek muscles had molded to the hard cold flagstone, and for a moment, opening his eyes and seeing the fallen, extinguished candle embedded in a puddle of cold wax, his disorientation was complete.

The confusion dissipated as his nasal lining burned with the bile of his stomach contents, and his guts ached. How long was I out? He felt like a coach and horses had driven over his body as he unfolded stiff limbs, and fought to stand up. Avoiding the urge to look once again in the mirror, he walked with a labored stride through to the small bathing room, and finding relief in routine, he mindlessly kept moving.

He wound open the faucets to fill the bath, listening as the pipes knocked with more ferocity than he had ever remembered hearing before. Stripping his vomit-soiled clothes from his body, he stepped into the water, and recoiled with a gasp at the biting pain of the scalding water. His nerve endings danced on that point where ice and fire felt the same as he looked for the steam that his brain told him should be condensing on the mirror...nothing.

His carefully dipped fingertips told a different tale, and he scowled as he directed a blast of ice-cold water into the tub. How can it be boiling? Great! The tank must be rusted up again. Must get Baxter on to it. He ignored the worm of discomfort that suggested that maybe...his flesh was cold.

Uneasy and disgruntled, but not grasping why, he tried again. Stepping into water that was merely hot now, he lowered himself down, reclined back onto the slope of enamelled metal, and billowing clouds stained the water pink before the eddying currents of his movement swept them away. What on earth?

Puzzled, he rubbed his fingertips over his stained collarbone and inspected them in the dim light...blood? He sat up fast, sloshing the water over the side of the cast iron bath to hit the floor in the crashing descent of a waterfall.

A wave of disgust drove him under the water, submerging him completely. He surged upward like a deep sea diver rushing up to the surface, sluicing both hands through his saturated hair, and quickly scrubbed tensed palms covered with lathered carbolic soap, over his neck and shoulders. Standing quickly, he continued the harsh treatment over his abdomen, which felt tender beneath the rigid girdle of muscle that framed it. After he scoured every inch of his skin, he stepped out, grabbed a white towel from the wooden rail, and repeated the brutality with the roughened cotton fabric.

Without pausing for thought, he strode across the small room and stood naked in front of the mirror. Driven by the distraction of perpetual movement, he used a soft bristled brush to smother his jaw and neck in shaving soap, and frowned in concentration as he attended to the grating sweep of the cut-throat razor. Running the blade methodically up his neck, he leaned his head to one side and then the other. Ouch!

He pressed his fingertips to his jaw, inspecting a line of small bruises that formed a crescent shape on his neck. He leaned in closer, rubbing harder, and picked at the scabs he felt, and they came away easily, with no bleeding...so, three days old? Staring hard into the mirror failed to jog his memory. Three days? So, nothing to do with last night, then. And the blood?

He shrugged, shaking off the cloak of confusion. He at least felt clean as he pushed his arms into a starched white shirt, buttoned the fly on his high-waisted charcoal-grey trousers, and pulled the suspenders in to place. He donned a V-neck waistcoat and threaded the chain of his pocket watch across his chest from one button hole to another, to leave it hanging over his breast pocket in plain view.

Running a tortoise shell comb through his hair smoothed the raven wing sweep back from his forehead, forming a sleek black skullcap that accented his chiselled features. He was considered handsome by most of the nurses, with a streamlined nose, full lips, and high cheekbones that arrested their glances. But, the most compelling aspect of his attraction was that he was oblivious of the effect that these attributes had on female hearts.

Filling his head with the day's gruelling timetable of lectures and surgical rounds, he ran from the puzzle pieces inside his head that were fusing into pictures that he did not want to look at.

He grabbed his jacket, pulled open the door, and fled down the gloomy hallway. His footsteps rang out, bouncing from the walls, and a headache that he had not registered before amplified the sound to an eardrum piercing volume. Slipping both arms into his jacket at once and jerking the thick flannel fabric up over his shoulders, he headed purposefully to his morning meeting with Sir John Creedy.

He mounted the steps that took him up into the public area of the hospital, opened the door and stepped into the whitewashed corridor, pausing abruptly as the harsh cocktail of carbolic soap, uric acid, and antiseptic stung his sinuses as though he had walked into a wall of stagnant water. Distaste curled his lip as he glanced at the high level vent in the wall opposite, and cursed softly. He could easily cope with the odours of stale sweat on fevered brows, and the soiled bedding of the incontinent, but he had not expected to combat it here, in the students’ quarters.

“The place is falling to pieces. The ventilation shafts from men’s surgical must be blocked.”

He closed the door behind him, and with his hand still folded around the door handle, his head jerked around as a sickly sweet aroma clung to his nasal passages and his mouth flooded with saliva. The familiar rustle of cotton under starched linen whispered through his head, and he waited a seemingly interminable time for the young nurse to finally appear.

His eyes focused on the nurse’s face, affording himself a view of her delicate features with a snub nose. A frown flitted across his face as her softly gasped breath ricocheting from the white walls curled a knot of inexplicable excitement in his stomach. Most of her brown hair was demurely swept back, hidden under a starched cap secured like a bonnet under her chin. Her throat was covered with an impeccably starched white detachable collar, that formed part of her crisp white apron, and her back was ramrod straight, and yet...he could almost taste the air of agitation that surrounded her.

Confusion folded his brow as her footfalls were accompanied by a galloping beat, like a tenderising mallet smacking against a bloody steak. As she drew closer, the wet pounding sound separated into four harmonised mallet strikes with an accompanying shushing descant note, and Connor’s gaze darted around the corridor...What is that sound?

“Are you feeling unwell, Doctor Sanderson?”