WAH! Thomas-san, you have done some MARVELOUS stuff for me here!! *___* Sorry for not getting back to you in so long--I've been having trouble finishing/revising that surgery excerpt I was going to ask you to take a look at. Thank you so much for all the research (and the illustration--you can't even find a nice pic of a lancet like that on wikipedia~). I'll probably incorporate bloodletting into Emile's convalescence, but during the surgery... hmm, I don't know if it would quite fit (or be as painful as Emile describes it). Not to mention, the surgeon wouldn't be bloodletting from his gaping stab wound, right? ^^; Well, I'll let you read the passage, and hopefully you'll have an idea of what to substitute for the scalpel (or possibly, a reason to be using a scalpel in such a surgery to begin with! ^^; ).
As for the hospital setting--I invented a reason to have Emile wake there rather than at his aristocratic benefactor's sumptuous Versailles residence because I didn't want to erase what I'd written. ^^;; I found an interesting article about hospitals in 18th C France which made them out to be pretty nice places after all, so I guess it wouldn't be inconceivable said aristocrat would have Emile kept there until he's strong enough to go undercover at Versailles, eh? ^__~
Because of LJ's word count limit, I'll stick the excerpt in the next comment! :D
Though most everything else about the surgery remains a vague mess of half-remembered smells and soiled aprons, I remember the pain and that horrible first moment of waking with detestable clarity. While hands hurried to hold me down, I had managed to draw my head up enough to see the skin peeled back like ???? around a hole in my left breast, with the surgeon’s steel scalpel resting in it like a white-hot poker.
I recall screaming a fair bit more until someone shoved a thick piece of fabric that tasted vaguely of vinegar into my mouth while someone was saying in a kind voice, “Just bite down on this. Bite down there now, be a brave lad,” while hands crushed my shoulder and wrist and thigh and calf against the cold, metal table.
It felt like hours--days, perhaps--that I lay on that table, with that horrid pain. It was sometimes jolting like lightning bolts, always deep and penetrating and nauseating; it filled my chest and arms and back and stomach, and the blood pounded like cannon fire in my ears. Lights and faces and strange instruments swam in and out of my vision. Someone kept saying, “be a brave lad, now, be a brave lad.”
I must have passed out eventually, because I awoke in a bed--a pallet, really--with several layers of sheets piled on me for warmth. It was a very plain, wooden room with whitewashed walls and a little window high up. Intensely golden rays of sunrise or sunset poured through it to leave a bright, slightly wavy square of light on a thin curtain to my right. It was drawn wall to wall so that I couldn’t see beyond to the rest of the room.
I drowsed dumbly for a long while after regaining consciousness. There was a dull ache in my breast that I could not explain, and my head and limbs felt as heavy as tree trunks. They felt so solidly implanted in their nooks of bedding that they might have sprung roots while I had slept.
Beyond the curtain, I could hear quiet voices murmuring briefly to one another and the occasional muted clang of a tin plate being dropped or laid carelessly on a tabletop. There was a faint scent in the air of something cooking nearby--something with cabbage in it. I had no inclination to eat, but the parchedness of my throat finally spurred me to make my conscious presence known.
“Hello?” I called, my voice catching and croaking from disuse. It came out barely above a whisper. “Hello?” I tried again, louder.
“There now, who’s that?” said a woman’s voice that had been engaged in a murmured conversation nearby. A few footsteps and the curtain moved aside, producing a plump woman with jolly cheeks and gingery hair that blazed in the golden light.
“Oh! It looks like our little prince has woken at last!” she called cheerfully to whoever was beyond the curtain. She came forward to feel my forehead, which I only then realized was slick with sweat.
“Good, no fever,” she said approvingly as she began wringing out a white handkerchief that had been immersed in a bowl of water on the night stand. “You should be all right, then.”
“Where am I?” I managed, then, remembering why I’d called out, added rather pathetically, “Please, some water?”
“Oh, of course! I’ll be right back, sir,” she said, relinquishing the cloth to its watery inclinations and bustling out of my make-shift room again.
Sir? I thought. Who would ever call a tramp like me “sir?” But this, it seems, was the least mysterious of the odd circumstances that had befallen me since my unfortunate meeting with Felix at the Academie.
My caretaker’s name was Marie, a good midwife servicing the small circle of noble families who made their court around the Duc d’Orleans in Paris. She worked at the well-appointed hospital in which I found myself, mostly as an aid to the Sisters who tended the women's ward, though she helped with the meal distribution as well, it seemed.
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That's it for now! [had to cut yet more b/c of word limit @__@] I hope it wasn't fraught with too many horrible inaccuracies (and was at least mildly entertaining? ^^; ...Despite the fact that it's just Emile being cut up, wounded, and dribbling... *sigh*). Please let me know if there's anything glaringly wrong in there! Thank you so much~~ ^___^ <3
As for the hospital setting--I invented a reason to have Emile wake there rather than at his aristocratic benefactor's sumptuous Versailles residence because I didn't want to erase what I'd written. ^^;; I found an interesting article about hospitals in 18th C France which made them out to be pretty nice places after all, so I guess it wouldn't be inconceivable said aristocrat would have Emile kept there until he's strong enough to go undercover at Versailles, eh? ^__~
Because of LJ's word count limit, I'll stick the excerpt in the next comment! :D
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I woke on a surgery table. I screamed.
Though most everything else about the surgery remains a vague mess of half-remembered smells and soiled aprons, I remember the pain and that horrible first moment of waking with detestable clarity. While hands hurried to hold me down, I had managed to draw my head up enough to see the skin peeled back like ???? around a hole in my left breast, with the surgeon’s steel scalpel resting in it like a white-hot poker.
I recall screaming a fair bit more until someone shoved a thick piece of fabric that tasted vaguely of vinegar into my mouth while someone was saying in a kind voice, “Just bite down on this. Bite down there now, be a brave lad,” while hands crushed my shoulder and wrist and thigh and calf against the cold, metal table.
It felt like hours--days, perhaps--that I lay on that table, with that horrid pain. It was sometimes jolting like lightning bolts, always deep and penetrating and nauseating; it filled my chest and arms and back and stomach, and the blood pounded like cannon fire in my ears. Lights and faces and strange instruments swam in and out of my vision. Someone kept saying, “be a brave lad, now, be a brave lad.”
I must have passed out eventually, because I awoke in a bed--a pallet, really--with several layers of sheets piled on me for warmth. It was a very plain, wooden room with whitewashed walls and a little window high up. Intensely golden rays of sunrise or sunset poured through it to leave a bright, slightly wavy square of light on a thin curtain to my right. It was drawn wall to wall so that I couldn’t see beyond to the rest of the room.
I drowsed dumbly for a long while after regaining consciousness. There was a dull ache in my breast that I could not explain, and my head and limbs felt as heavy as tree trunks. They felt so solidly implanted in their nooks of bedding that they might have sprung roots while I had slept.
Beyond the curtain, I could hear quiet voices murmuring briefly to one another and the occasional muted clang of a tin plate being dropped or laid carelessly on a tabletop. There was a faint scent in the air of something cooking nearby--something with cabbage in it. I had no inclination to eat, but the parchedness of my throat finally spurred me to make my conscious presence known.
“Hello?” I called, my voice catching and croaking from disuse. It came out barely above a whisper. “Hello?” I tried again, louder.
“There now, who’s that?” said a woman’s voice that had been engaged in a murmured conversation nearby. A few footsteps and the curtain moved aside, producing a plump woman with jolly cheeks and gingery hair that blazed in the golden light.
“Oh! It looks like our little prince has woken at last!” she called cheerfully to whoever was beyond the curtain. She came forward to feel my forehead, which I only then realized was slick with sweat.
“Good, no fever,” she said approvingly as she began wringing out a white handkerchief that had been immersed in a bowl of water on the night stand. “You should be all right, then.”
“Where am I?” I managed, then, remembering why I’d called out, added rather pathetically, “Please, some water?”
“Oh, of course! I’ll be right back, sir,” she said, relinquishing the cloth to its watery inclinations and bustling out of my make-shift room again.
Sir? I thought. Who would ever call a tramp like me “sir?” But this, it seems, was the least mysterious of the odd circumstances that had befallen me since my unfortunate meeting with Felix at the Academie.
My caretaker’s name was Marie, a good midwife servicing the small circle of noble families who made their court around the Duc d’Orleans in Paris. She worked at the well-appointed hospital in which I found myself, mostly as an aid to the Sisters who tended the women's ward, though she helped with the meal distribution as well, it seemed.
--
That's it for now! [had to cut yet more b/c of word limit @__@] I hope it wasn't fraught with too many horrible inaccuracies (and was at least mildly entertaining? ^^; ...Despite the fact that it's just Emile being cut up, wounded, and dribbling... *sigh*). Please let me know if there's anything glaringly wrong in there! Thank you so much~~ ^___^ <3
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