Chapter 3: Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
It’s always good to have a backup plan. That’s what his mum had told him, growing up. Always be sure you have a backup plan of some kind because you never know where life might take you, and having only one plan limits your options so much.
Back then, at 19, Edmund had thought he was clever, going to study medicine at St Bartholomew's. What could be more lucrative, more ‘door-opening’, than being a doctor? The world always had need of more doctors. So long as people kept getting sick and hurt – which is a tendency with humans – he’d have a job. Anywhere. Anytime.
“You’re pathetic,” Aures hurls abuse as she digs in with her scalpel and levers the worm up and out of the cow’s hide.
She hadn’t even broken a sweat doing it. Merely took a second’s pause to give Edmund a long-suffering glare, as is her way, before getting straight to work.
Now, there are arguments to be made that being a medical professional does not make one immune to simply disgusting things.
During his time in Her Majesty’s Royal Army, he’d seen plenty of gruesome things – things that had made him relieve himself of plenty a meal – but he’d done the work. He’d treated his patients. He hadn’t backed down.
So, Aures and her frankly inhuman knack for never being utterly disgusted by anything can take a long walk off a short pier. This worm-parasite-thing is horrendous-looking and the wound it made in the cow’s hide is septic and gangrenous. Any sane person would find this at the least nauseating.
“Then, I bow to your superior gag reflex,” Edmund smiles lightly, trying to look anywhere but at the worm.
“Just go back to the house before you faint,” Aures sighs.
In one swift motion, she’s tossed the worm on the ground and severed its head.
Edmund will not admit to feeling secretly better. He does, however, do as she says and starts making his way back to Wynne House. Aures will catch up when she’s ready. Besides, she did this all on her own. She deserves to keep the money. Being paid upfront means he can leave the salary with her, regardless of the farmer’s prejudices about women and medical work.
It’s been a few days here and, to the best of Edmund’s knowledge, no attempt at his rescue has been made. Hence the veterinary work and his eagerness to help out around the Wynne farm for food and board. It’s not like he can collect his army salary all the way out here.
Besides, keeping busy keeps his mind off… Well, it helps him sleep better at night. Exhaustion is a friend to troubled minds, and he only finds himself dreaming near waking hours, when he can gladly rise and begin his day, despite the folly of his unchecked mind.
Wynne House has an air of immense graveness upon his return. He steps in through the backdoor and it’s as though the temperature drops by ten degrees and the sun ceases to stream in through the windows. The kitchen is frigid and hollow-feeling. It all reminds of the time Harry––
“Edmund! Oh, Edmund. Come quick! Please? He needs a doctor.”
Mrs Wynne stuffs his kit into his hands and promptly turns back up the corridor, her eyes wide as saucers and her skin pale as death. Edmund doesn’t hesitate to follow her, finding himself feeling calm and resolute in the face of the unforeseen stressor.
The small spectacle is convened in the lounge, where Mr Wynne is in his armchair, leaning forward, with his eyes glued to a figure on the sofa.
This figure appears to be a man: tall and pale with a mop of dark, luscious hair and enough of his bones showing for him to make a very convincing anatomy classroom skeleton – especially because of all the dark, inky bruises blossomed all over him.
Some look infected; septic as the cow he’d just left to Aures. Others look almost stuck beneath the skin, as though his body had given up on healing them midway through, choosing instead to start eating away at him.
Suddenly, the man’s eyes open. A pair as icy, bright and inquisitive as Mrs Wynne’s stares up at him. Edmund gets the odd impression he’s being sized up, figured out, read like an open book; as though the damage done to the man’s body had not even come close to affecting his mind.
He reminded Edmund of an angel, battered and bruised and resting, but no less beautiful.
Someone clears their throat and Edmund is almost shaken to notice the other figure on the sofa, his lap a resting place for the injured man’s head. This one is also tall, with lighter hair and eyes just as sharp, though instead of curiosity, his gaze cuts.
Where the injured man and Mrs Wynne appear almost infinitely curious, this other man and Aures look as though they already know everything and are judging everyone else for the fact that they do not.
Aures, it seems, has brothers.
The other man, not injured, has his eyes trained firmly, expectantly, on Edmund. This spurs him into action and he begins to examine the injured man furiously. Gently, though. Very gently. One thing is abundantly clear and it is that the injured of the two is in a great deal of pain.
“Edmund Bolton,” he introduces himself quietly. “And you are?”
“Ai-Aidan,” the injured man coughs, a fine spray of blood coating his teeth. “Aidan Wynne.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Aidan. Could you attempt a nice, deep breath for me?” Edmund asks, pressing his stethoscope lightly to Aidan’s chest.
Distantly, he wonders if all the Wynne children have ‘A’ names. Makes him rather curious about the one who is so obviously the eldest by several years.
Aidan does, in fact, attempt such a breath, which immediately devolves into wheezing, ragged coughing and more blood. Taking a deep, steadying breath of his own, Edmund faces the parents.
“He needs surgery. He has a punctured lung, five broken ribs, internal bleeding, head trauma and that’s just what I can discern at a glance. Is there a room we can use? Or would you rather we have him flown out to a hospital?”
“The butchery ought to suffice,” the eldest Wynne sibling says. “Aures can assist.”
“She’s on the farm over,” Edmund says, then. “Deworming cattle.”
“I’ll fetch her,” the elder responds without a second’s hesitation. “You, Dr Bolton, care for my brother.”
“Yes, sir.”
The commotion is minimal. Aidan’s parents help clear and freshly sterilise the butchery, while Edmund preps for surgery. Aidan’s clothes are cut off him while he lies on the slab, doing what appears to be his best impression of a plane-crash victim. Edmund winces at the irony.
By the time he’s ready, Aures is scrubbed in as well, so to speak. Edmund searches her face for a hint of worry or concern for her brother’s fate, but all he finds there is a morbid kind of fascination with his injuries.
Odd duck, indeed.
“I can’t have morphine,” Aidan whispers, right as Edmund preps the drip, a listless, but graceful hand on his arm. “I-I’m an ad-dict.”
“Then we pump you full of saline, adrenalin and then morphine. Aures, would you mind getting that ready for us?” As she leaves, Edmund absent brushes a few sweaty tufts off Aidan’s forehead.
With an almost fervent clarity Edmund would not have expected from Aidan, the man grips Edmund’s arm harder before saying, “Thank you, Dr Bolton. Would you please thank Aeron for me, too?”
Edmund frowns slightly.
“Aeron,” Aidan explains. “The tall, sullen one. Also occasionally moonlights as my big brother.”
This rends a chuckle from Edmund. “I’ll tell him. Now, you focus on healing, yes? Don’t you worry about a thing.”
The look in Aidan’s eyes pleads for Edmund to be trustworthy – to save him. Out of all the lives Edmund has ever been responsible for, Aidan Wynne might just be the only one he’d particularly like to keep around.