“Is it? Then why are you always mucking about with things best left out of our grasp? Stop playing God and leave well enough alone because I won’t go down with your foolish need to prove yourself.” Gerard stormed back inside and slammed the door. A second later the door opened again and he huffed back out. “My apologies, chap. I should not have spoken in anger to you.”
Wynn’s defense deflated. As loathe as he was to hear it, his friend had a point. “Anger often reveals our truest meaning when it isn’t being hidden behind good manners.”
“True, but you do not deserve my censorship in so harsh a tone. Please do forgive me.”
Standing, Wynn clapped him on the shoulder. A comradery of candidness was not one he wished to forsake on the grounds of his pride. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
“What happened in there?”
“The heart stopped. I restarted it.”
Gerard gave him a sharp look. “But how did you know?”
“I’ve been reading medical correspondence from the frontline. A similar operation took place at the Battle of Cambrai last year. The surgeons at the casualty clearing station wouldn’t touch the patient, said he was as good as dead. All heart cases are considered such, but the chief surgeon had read in a medical journal years before the war about the groundbreaking research and techniques the Germans were employed in.”
“The Germans and Austrians have always ingratiated themselves to the newest fangled treatment.” A hint of derision laced Gerard’s tone.
“With great success. Consider the sheer number of patients admitting themselves to their spas in the mountains to take the waters. The achievement of their results cannot be denied.”
“My mother goes there, or did, every June for her nerves. Personally, I think it’s to spend the month away from Father when his horse betting kicks into a frenzy.” Gerard grew quiet as two grizzled physicians walked by deep in conversation about a leg amputation. He lowered his voice. “I don’t believe we should be trusting the Jerries when it comes to treatment for our patients. It’s unpatriotic.”
Wynn harbored no such discrepancies as to who heard him. Would do them all some good to open their ears. They ridiculed him enough behind closed doors. Might as well bring it out into the open.
“Disease, sickness, and death have no such boundaries of partisanship. They’re indiscriminate to lines on a map. What that physician did in Cambrai was unprecedented. No one has dared to cut into the heart before to this extent. At least no British physician. Until now.”
“It’s dangerous. Not only for the patient but for you as well. What do you think the board will say when they find out? Or Nestor, for that matter. He’s a real tartar for rule following, and it’s his job as hospital director to ensure we do as well.”
“Nestor should’ve retired decades ago. If it were up to him, we’d still be using leeches and bloodletting. We owe it to our patients to implement the newest advancements, otherwise we are signing their death sentences by not trying.”
“The men in our profession do not often trust what is new. It isn’t safe. By continuing with these practices they will think you aren’t safe.”
“Nothing in our profession is safe. Men are being ripped apart in the trenches and sent to us in pieces. What about bullets, and cannons, and bayonets seem safe to you? As physicians we are charged with seeking the best treatment for those in our care, and if that means bucking against what stuffy old men clustered around their draconian traditions declare, then by God, that’s precisely what I’ll do. I have no use for the doctor whose beliefs are founded on medical authority alone.”
Gerard placed a steadying hand on Wynn’s shoulder. “Tread carefully, Wynn. Your brilliant defiance to toeing the line may be your undoing. How will you care for your patients then?”
“If I toe the line, they might all be dead.”
Dropping his hand to his pocket, a weary smile slid across Gerard’s face. “Do you always have to have the last word?”
Wynn couldn’t stop his own smile from creeping out. “Only if it’s the right one.”
“Speaking of which, how’s that lady of yours?”
Smile fading, Wynn toed a rock embedded in the dirt. “She’s not mine.”
“I thought you were courting her.”
“Courting would involve agreement from the lady. At the moment it’s a one-sided pursuit.”
“Then why persist?”
“Because I’d like it to become two-sided.”
Gerard sighed as if the entire situation weighed him down. Which wouldn’t take much in his case. The man was as lanky as a tattie bogle scaring off the crows.