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Anne’s fingers are already stained with blood, though the cut itself is not deep, from removing that minuscule bit of shrapnel. She keeps the skin taut with the pair of forceps in her left hand and brings the needle through with her right, clean and precise, as if she had been doing nothing else all her life. In a sense, she thinks, it really is almost like embroidery. Almost.
She can’t bring herself to look at her husband’s face - which is turned away from her, regardless. But she thinks she can make out the slightest tightening of his jaw whenever she pierces him anew, and her heart misses a beat each time. He remains, otherwise, completely still. Anne thinks: for her sake. And then: for all their sakes.
“Now,” comes the surgeon’s faintly strained voice from his own sickbed, “tie it there. Yes - yes - exactly so.”
Right over left, twice, then left over right, once. The sinew thread draws the skin together perfectly.
So Anne keeps busy, as is her habit, and as is her husband’s (“More industry between the two of you than in all the Admiralty,” Sophia Croft had once remarked). Knowing that he has his own duties to perform, she distracts herself. She fetches cool compresses and takes dictation for those unable to write in the moment, and watches the men around the ship. Their cook has been fussing over bandages in such a manner that Anne suspects the older man rather enjoyed scolding and playing nursemaid to Frederick, whom he had watched grow up from lieutenant to post-captain, boy to man; and she is amused despite herself. She cannot, after all, think ill of the man who once specially prepared zabaione and amaretti just for her.
Turning from the thought, Anne once again asks their doctor what she can do. It is not the first time he has found no new task to give her, and he regards her, not unkindly, over the thin rim of his spectacles. He removes them and folds them neatly, having recovered use of his hands, then tucks the spectacles into his shirt pocket and interlaces his fingers on the small table.
“I believe,” he tells her, “what the Captain needs, Mrs. Wentworth, is his wife beside him.”
And now, as she watches her husband drink his barley broth in his (their) quarters, Anne ruefully remembers her Voltaire. The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient, while nature cures the disease. She would never have dared to think so about a true physician, but regarding herself, the words must be frighteningly accurate. Frederick’s handsome face is no longer pale or coated with sweat and powder-smoke. A healthy flush has returned to his fair skin, and he had done well with a shave from the valet (though Anne wishes that task could have gone to her, as it generally did). He listens assuredly to the first lieutenant currently reporting back to him and she wants so badly to take his hand into hers.
When Lieutenant —— shuts the door behind him, Frederick sets his bowl aside and, thankfully, pulls her to him. Anne allows herself to be gently maneuvered into her husband’s embrace and aids in his efforts by flinging a threadbare quilt over them, careful not to jostle his arm or left side. She relaxes her hands and begins to stroke through his open shirt at his chest, feeling his heart throb beneath her, his grip on her waist tighten and loosen with every brush of her fingers over his muscled torso, an ebb and flow like waves to shore. She sees, through the window, the ocean darken to gold with the light of the setting sun.
“I had always told myself,” she whispers into his warm chest, “that since there was no scarring - no mark or blemish, anywhere - there must have been no injury.” Even before her mouth forms the words, she knows how foolish they are. She notes, unsurprised, that tears have sprung to her eyes.
His thumb brushes away the wet at her lashes before he tilts her chin up, and for some time, they enjoy a delicious quiet.
“You make an excellent physick,” he says at length, with a smile, and brings the hand on his chest up to kiss along the knuckles, the palm, the blue veins shewing faintly through her slender wrist. “And I am glad to have you here, Anne. I am glad to be here, anywhere, if you are with me.”
“And so am I,” she tells him, as he presses his sweet lips to the top of her head. “So am I.”