Good Ol Methods

[DrFever]

Hello ! 

I've tried to write an caretaking/fever story involving European History (especially French) as I have understood some of you were interested by stories related to France/French language.


I've tried to render slang/accents and non-academic way of speaking...but I must admit it was a bit hard...Enjoy your reading ! 




 

Good ol’ methods ?



1816, Beddington Charity Hospital,.


Doctor Charles Banthon was a proeminent young alumni of the famous Oxford Magdalene college and it is with a certain satisfaction that he stares at his golden-written diplomas framed at the wall. Chief Physician Beddington Charity was his first assignement...A bitter assignement indeed. He wanted so to be assigned, even as a junior aide-surgeon, at major hospital, where you can learn from top-level practicionner and experiment new potions and ...But his uncle, Mayor of Beddington, promised him a good position with a comfortable salary. And the recent deaths of his parents left him as head of family….So he would, with deep regrets, swap his dream of scientific emulation for a secured position….And, after all, with his free time, he could easily correspond with his fellow colleagues about the scientific actuality

- Sir ?

The strong and surly voice of Bill, his handyman, pulled him out of this contemplation. The young boy was a sort of badly half-backed and dumpy peasent he hired for four shilings a week. Being in the same time his personal usher, servant and translater (Banthon was educated in London by an ancient clerk of the Governor of India, and thus was an absolute illiterate in the local hillbillys’ broken English), Bill was nevertheless a clever and open-minded lad... « Perhaps he would make a decent prosector...He’s so interested in anatomy»

 

- Yes Bill ?
- The janitor tell ya a niou payssient is coaming...in bad, in very bad. Quick, quick !

The physician glanced the young red-headed boy with a severe look. Even if the boy was panting and worried, he dared to use an inappropriate grammar….And thus he would experience a strong reprimand...but later.
Taking his surgical case, Dr Banthon followed the boy outside of his office.


A few minutes later, they arrived to the patient room. Sister Janice, senior nun for the Day shift, welcomed him with the mumbling of I-dont-know-which-prayer in Latin while leading him to the bed number 10.

A young blonde woman, with long hair and a pale face was laying down in the wooden bed. Her blue iris were like sapphire in the middle of her bloodshot eyes and her thin long fingers clutched to her belly. Her forehead was full of a thick and heavy sweat, rolling down on her face.

- Good morning Miss.

The soft, grave and aristocratic voice of the physician was like a whip sound to the young girl. Her eyes went wide and she pulled nervously on herself the thin and coarse covers, avoiding by all means the look of other people. Banthon glanced an interrogative look to Sister Janice

- The Guard has just brought her to us. She was at the Market’s Place, shouting about someone called ...Anto...Antonin..before fainting. She has just recovered her conscience…


- Antonin ! Antonin ! L’es ici ? Ouilé ? Ouilé ? (Where is he?)

 

The physician moanned silently. A French girl….What did she do in the depths of the English countryside, so far away from her native country ? Looking for her Antonin ? Her lover  probably….

 

- Bill, bring me the belongings of our patient (The young boy left the infirmary like a mouse would flee a cat). Mademoiselle….The Guard has brought you here. You were unconscious...dormir…


His French was broken but acceptable enough to make possible a conversation. The young girl was Dorothée, a maid from Calais in Normandy. She fled from her parents in order to follow her lover Antonin Larée, a front-line soldier in the former Napoleonian army, where she herself served as a cantinière. Being captured with her lover by the 5th Prussian Brigade at Plancenoit, in the suburbs of Waterloo, Antonin and her were sent to at a prison hulk in Chatham.

 

- Wee manadjed to escaype but Ay dunno whaat happennaid to Antonin...Aille hame so colde.

Her French accent was strong, but still understandable for those, like the physician, who were already used to the local Gaelic-like dialect. Her thin red lips were nervously closed by a constant shivering. Dr Banthon put a hand on the young woman’s forehead.

- You’re burning up….Sister Janice, the thermometer please….

While the nun give up what he asked, Bill came back with a small bag of rough lint.

- Here is what she had.

Putting the thermometer in the mouth of his young patient, Charles Banthon search the small bag. A little kind of military dog-tag in stain.

- It’s him ! It’s him !

Sister Janice put her hand on Dorothée’s shoulder, incitating her to calm down and rectifying the position of the mercury thermometer with a severe glance.

- Calm, Calm Dorothée….You need to rester….

But his patient was more and more agitated, with her eyes rolling more and more rapidly in her orbit. The thermometer was taken out prematurely in order to avoid any break. Dorothée’s condition was already worrying, a mercury intoxication would’nt help her to recover !

- Itsss im ! Itsss im ! Antonin ! Antoninn !!!

 

 

Trying to put away the hand of Sister Janice, she tried to reach out the small metallic object but Bill forces her to go back to the bed. Her frantic call became more and more unintelligible before fading into a long moaning, under the firm pressure of Bill.

- Sister Janice, Prepare a cold bath ! Immediately !

Attracted by the shouts of the young girl, the janitor went into the infirmary

- Wats this fuss, Doc !?
 

The physician gave a quick chin move toward his patient.

- Help Bill to pick her up. We need to make her take a bath. Move on ! Or the fever will kill her.


Bill and the janitor came closer to the bed, their arms being as thick as wooden logs.

- No ! No ! Lette mi ! Lette mi aouways ! Antonin Antonin ! Aide moi ! Aide moi ! (Help me!)


In the blick of an eye, Dorothée was lifted away from her bed, Bill taking her under the arms and the janitor lifting her thin and long legs, moaning under the small kicks given to them by the frantic patient.

The strange convoy ran in the blick of an eye to the baths in a white and blue tilded room with leaded pipe system. The prepared bathub was full of water, with small of irregular ice cubes floating in it.

- Put her legs at first ! Otherwise her heart won’t support the thermic difference !

Under the frantic shouts of a burning-up Dorothée, the janitor let Dorothée’s feet diving in the
colded water, followed by the rest of her body.


- Haaahhhh it’s cold ! It’s cold !

Her agitation created a thin foam in the cold water but little by little, she calmed down, her panting breath became more and more regular, before she faints.

- Put her back to bed. Billy, ask the Pharmacy to prepare a potion of quinina. Sister Janice, go and look for a jar of leeches. A bloodletting is necessary to expel the humors that clog her body.

- Yes, Doctor.



Five minutes later, Dr Charles Banthon pulls on his lap the meaty and chubby right foot of Dorothée and puts, one after the other, five leeches on the sole. The small, wriggling hirudinae stick themselves to the hard skin of the heels, doing their office.
Dorothée was still unconscious but the bloodletting would surely bring her back.In the meanwhile, Dr Banthon resumed his search in the woman’s belonging. Two guinea, a small flask of pure alchool…and a yellow piece of paper. «  Beddington Municipal Guard : The Bearer is recognized safe and able to exercice her office ».

The physicien hid the document in the pocket of his jacker. A prostitute. This woman was a hooker...

The leeches would have soon finish their work, and Dorothée’s foot was covered with pieces of cotton fabric.

 

- Mhhhhh

A feminime mumble informed the physician of the awakning of the young French woman.

- Are you okay ?

- A bit...dizzy. What...What happened to my foot. It itches !

The physician smiled. She came back from her feverish delirium and still had nervous responses.

- I had to make you a bloodletting...Une saignée...with...sangsues (He shown her the small glass jar full of leeches).

Dorothée look at the jar with a certain surprise.

- Was it so...grave ? So important ?

 

- Oui it was...I need now to take your temperature...Open your mouth.

With a gentle smile, the young woman obeyed. Her lips opened to welcome the metallic cap of the instrument as the physician take her pulse.
 

 

- 100,76 °F (38,2 °C) You’re still a bit feverish...You have to rest. Now take your potion and you’ll recover soon.

The young woman smiled weakly…

- And I will have to….

- To do your job….

She stared at her covers, sad or perhaps grumpy.

-Non non non non ! J’veux pas ! J’veux pas !

Sure you don’t want, ! Who would do « this » on their own will….

The physician stared at the poor creature with a look of pity….Poor girl brought away from her land by the bitterness of Lady Fortuna ? She is alone, lost, like a lone and rotten plank on the wave of History...Hippocrates and his Oath states that a Physician would help their fellow brothers, without consideration of their nationality...And if Bones-aparte was one of the braviest and hardest ennemies Albion did ever defeat, it was the physician human duty to help a poor and lost maid….

Taking her quinina potion and exhausted, she little by little goes to Morpheus's arms, under the protective look of Dr Banthon.


To be continued...