Page 26 of The Viking’s Captive

A hole in his WHAT? …

A short time later, they were in her father’s bedchamber.

With an authority and expertise he hadn’t displayed before, Adam ordered everyone from the sickroom except his assistant and the king’s resident healer, Father Efrid, a monk from a monastery in Ireland. Thorvald practiced the Norse religion, but was Christian, too, when it was convenient. And everyone knew the monk healers were the best physicians … next to Arabs, that is.

Adam had also ordered Tyra to depart, but she’d dug in her heels, and he’d finally relented, saying firmly, “Stay, but keep your distance and shut your teeth, or I will remove you bodily myself.” She stood at the back of the room, watching with silent fascination as he did his work.

Adam laid his various vials of ointments, linen packets of herbs, and instruments such as lancets and cautery rods on a small side table before turning to examine her father. With gentle efficiency, he removed the king’s garments, exposing a big body which was still wide-shouldered and barrel-chested and bulky, though his muscles had no doubt lost their firmness from lying abed so long.

He pushed back the king’s eyelids and examined the whites of his eyes. He pressed his ear against her father’s chest and seemed to be listening to his heartbeats. He examined her father’s fingernails and toenails, even his genitals. The wound itself at the back of his head garnered the most attention.

Quietly he asked questions of Father Efrid, whom Tyra knew from experience to be a good man and a good practitioner of the healing arts when less serious injuries were involved. In truth, she knew of no physician who had a high rate of success when mortal wounds were involved. Mostly, it was luck, or in the hands of the gods. Still, she had heard of Adam the Healer’s reputation and knew she had to let him try his particular talents on her father, even if it turned out to be a futile effort.

“How long has he been thus? Does his condition never change?” Adam asked.

“Do you manage to get food and liquid into his body?”

“Does he pass water regularly? What is the color of his waste?”

“Any fever?”

“Does he appear to be in pain? No screams, or excessive groaning?”

“When did the bleeding stop?”

On and on his questions went. During the course of the examination, her father’s eyelids fluttered occasionally, and once or twice he even muttered aloud. Father Efrid reported that the king had regained consciousness a few times while Tyra was gone. They’d been able to feed him thin gruel and liquids, and he did swallow with ease. All these things Adam seemed to take for good signs.

When they left the room, after an hour-long examination, Tyra walked with Adam back to the great hall. “Can you help him?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I just don’t know. There are some good signs, but the length of his unconsciousness troubles me deeply. There is something I could try, but … nay, I will not do it.”

“What?”

“You have put me in an untenable situation, and I resent it mightily.”

She tilted her head in question.

“I could try drilling a hole in his skull to reduce the swelling. Trepanation the procedure is called. It has been done afore, and even successfully in some of those cases. But …”

“But?” she prodded when he did not immediately explain.

“But it is extremely dangerous. And once again, I find another person’s life in my hands, and I do not want that responsibility. I do not!”

“What is the alternative?”

“There is always the possibility that someday your father would awaken on his own, but, frankly, that would be practically a miracle. ‘Tis more likely that his brain would continue to swell within the confines of his skull, and his body will begin to wither away, and he will die a slow death.”

“Nay!” she asserted, much too harshly. Realizing she was directing her outrage to the wrong person, she lowered her voice and told the physician, “My father would abhor that kind of death. He would rather die on the battlefield, but if not that, then under your knife.”

“Do you have the authority to make that decision on his behalf?”

“I do.”

“I just don’t know. I did not think it would be this bad. I was hoping … well, I was hoping for something else.”

“Please,” she said, putting a hand on his forearm. “Try this trepanation.”

He looked at her hand, big and callused; then he looked into her eyes.

“Please,” she repeated … a hard word for her to say and one she could not recall using for years and years.

His face was rigid and unyielding. She could see that a myriad of emotions warred beneath the surface.

“So be it,” he said finally. “God help me, but … so be it.”