"She's losing too much blood!" shouted Doctor MacMillan reaching for a clean rag from the nurse. Compressing the hemorrhaging woman's chest with her entire body's weight, she called for the other Doctor on call to start an intravenous procoagulant. Amongst the commotion of white coats and rivers of bloods emerged a heavily embellished indigo bengaline dress, completely out of place.
"Phryne!" scolded Dr. Mac in half-anger, half-disbelief, "What the hell are you doing in my emergency room? Nurse Richards, would you please escort Miss. Fisher out of the ward!"
A young, nervous doctor washed her hands as best she could in the ruddy waters of the wash basin and hurried Phryne out. But Phryne could tell that this Nurse Richards was inexperienced and gullible.
"Nurse Richards, is it?" Phryne asked in mock sincerity.
"Yes, ma'am." Responded the young lady with her head down.
"I don't recall seeing you in the women's ward before today."
"No, ma'am. This is my first week. I just passed my exams this summer."
"How marvelous!" congratulated Phryne, "It's always a triumph to see ladies taking their place in the scientific community!"
Phryne saw that she had built just the right amount of trust in that moment and moved to the next step of her plan.
"What a dreadful trauma case to have to witness during your first week on the job! You must be spent! Perhaps you should take some time to debrief in the morning room."
"Oh no, I mustn't" protested the nurse with slight hesitation. A debriefing was exactly what she was in need of. "I'm needed back. Dr. Macmillan-"
"Dr. Macmillan," Phryne interrupted, "Would instruct you to take care of yourself before you can take care of a patient. We can't have you fainting in there and mussing things up! It could have dire consequences for the patient," she stared intensely at the nurse, "and on your career. Besides there's plenty nurses still running in and out of that room."
After wrestling with her options for a few minutes, Nurse Richards agreed with Phryne's suggestion and after having Phryne promise she would see herself out of the hospital and not return, she went off to the preceding corridor and down to the morning room.
"Almost too easy," Phryne whispered beneath a smile after taking a few more precautionary steps toward the exit. Turning on the spot, Phryne hastened back toward Dr. Mac's emergency room, grabbing a lab coat along the way to make herself slightly less vulnerable to extraction.
She reentered the room and Dr. Mac was either too busy to notice that Phryne had returned or too busy to scold her. Either way, when Dr. Mac needed a nurse's assistance, she did not hesitate to employ the overly made-up nurse pro tempore.
"Clean rag!" Dr. Mac demanded. Phryne passed Dr. Mac the last clean rag in the draw. "I'm going to need at least three more of those!" she reprimanded.
"That's all, Doctor. There are no more clean rags. Shall I try telephoning the men's ward?"
But it was too late. A sudden lull in the room broke the news to the medical staff that the patient's struggle was to no avail. Dr. Mac stood silently over the still body and slowly released her compress. She took a solemn step back and seemed in a disembodied state. The other on-call Doctor brought her back to the present with the grim command.
"Call it, Doctor Macmillan."
Dr. Mac finally dropped her rags, pulled her face away from the poor girl's bloodied torso, and delivered the sterile words-
"Time of death: 2nd November, 1928. Women's Hospital, Melbourne."
As the body was taken out to be brought to the morgue, Dr. Mac wheeled around to glare at Phryne.
"Don't you dare," Phryne pouted, "I just hate it when you look at me that way."
"Phryne, why would you interrupt me in such a dangerous situation?" Dr. Mac was gravely serious. "You could have compromised the procedure. Perhaps if you hadn't disrupted the process, we could have…"
"You could have done nothing." Phryne sighed, "That's what I rushed here to tell you. There was more unfolding of her case once she was taken into hospital with the stab wound."
Mac cleaned off and took a seat with Phryne at the side of the room to hear the missing pieces of the story.
"No matter how much procoagulant you pumped into the woman, she wouldn't have stopped hemorrhaging. The man who assaulted her injected her with a high concentration of a substance he called heparin."
"Heparin? Heparin?" puzzled Mac, "No I don't think I've ever heard of this."
"That's because it's not yet approved for clinical trials. We don't know how he obtained it, but the drug is a highly sulfated glycosaminoglycan. It's being developed by some American chemists."
"An anticoagulant." nodded Mac as the pieces fell into place. Her eyes lit up with recognition, "That would explain the patient's confusion, Phryne. She kept on thinking I was some Aunt Lydia of hers. It must have been elevated potassium."
Through the somber scene of blood and death was the relieved closing of another case. That, and Phryne thought she saw a smile lurking behind Mac's stolid bedside manner.
"Are you smiling?" Phryne inquired taken aback.
Mac turned her head down for a moment and came back up, eyes wide and serious, "Most certainly not, Miss. Fisher. My patient has just passed. It would be vulgar."
Phryne didn't buy it. She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow until she coaxed the smiled out of hiding. Mac giggled against the unfit backdrop, "It amused me when you talk science," she confessed.
"I shall do it more often, then," Phryne teased as she stared into Mac's exhausted eyes. Mac stared back, for longer than Phryne would have expected. Neither one of them broke their gaze until the orderly came into the ward to clean up the mess.
"Come over for a brandy?" Phryne offered as they left the room, "I've got two men waiting to take us home in a handsome cab on the street."
"Well I certainly can't say no to a stiff drink after losing a patient," admitted Mac following Phryne out of the hospital and across the street to where Bert and Cec were waiting in the car.
A few drinks later, Mac and Phryne had completely moved on from the bloody end of their last client. The case was closed and so was the door to her bedroom where they laughed about Phryne's attempt to pronounce the word "glycosaminoglycan." Mac suspected Phryne didn't actually know what the word meant at all and she was right.
"I read it off the bloody report, Mac!" Phryne laughed, "You know my years of medicine are far behind me! And my how things have changed since I was a nurse. I don't know how you keep up, my girl!"
"Oh, it is a full time job," boasted Mac not so subtly. "But regardless of whether or not you are up to speed on the terminology, do continue to use it. It amused me so!"
Phryne spewed off some medical babble- completely pointless words strung together. A line of "dermoidectomy," "galactosis," and "pneumonitis," haphazardly vocalized drew Dr. Mac closer with each syllable.
"Dreadful bodily nastiness has never sounded more alluring." Dr. Mac commented in Phryne's ear. Phryne brushed away loose strands of ginger curls and stared into the Doctor's appealing grey eyes.
"Vitreous humor!" she identified the most sciency-sounding part of the eyes she was staring into. Dr. Mac closed her eyes and tossed her red head back in a loud laugh and before she had come back up, Phryne continued-
"Lactiferous duct…" and placed a delicately gloved hand on Mac's chest. Mac buoyed back to place and her laughter cut off instantly. An uncomfortable moment of silence followed "Yes," commented Mac, her head turned to a sideways glance in confusion, "That's correct."
"Alveoli," continued Phryne in a hushed voice and she place her other hand on the other side of Mac's chest. Mac was frozen in place, waiting nervously in her inability to anticipate where this was heading. Phryne wasn't sure whether or not Mac understood, so she went in for physiological confirmation.
"Pulmonary artery." Phryne moved her right hand up over Mac's silk cravat and felt out a beat. It was quick and becoming increasingly faster. She had never lost her gaze into Mac's eyes and her own dashed from one to the other as if reading them for a sign. Mac's lips parted as if to say something but then closed without a word and her gaze fell onto Phryne's lips. Her old friend. Her oldest friend. She had loved her since they were girls but never imagined anything would come of it. Mac had cast that into a pile of hopelessness never labeling it as anything that would surpass unrequited. But here it seems the chemistry she'd always dreamt of was bubbling. Phryne noticed the change of focus and moved in slowly taking Mac's face gently in her hand. Mac shivered at the touch and Phryne reassured her with a gentle stroke of the thumb over her lips. Without looking up, Mac felt Phryne's lips land on her own. Her brow contorted in confusion and her eyes shut squeezing out a tear. Phryne backed away and looked at her friend in what she thought was pain and promised she would never again do what she had just done. With that, Mac finally lifted her gaze once again and became reanimated. Jumping back toward Phryne, Mac took her head of silken black hair in hand and wrapped their lips in a powerful hold.
The two tossed their kisses back and forth, rocking the divan with the motion of their unexpected make-out session. Without needing to free her face from Mac's, Phryne moved her hands in search for a certain silk cravat. She found her target, began to remove it from the crisp white shirt it was stuffed into, and then started at one button, then a second, revealing cleavage that Phryne almost didn't believe existed underneath all that menswear. Mac grabbed Phryne's hand preventing her from unbuttoning any further and stood up next to the divan where Phryne looked up at her hungrily. The Doctor, with surprising strength, reached down and lifted Phryne up by her hips allowing Miss Fisher's legs to wrap around her own hips. Lips locked once again, Mac carried Phryne blindly toward he elegant bed, always turned down exquisitely by Dotty, laid her down, and took a step back. Phryne struck a sexy pose,
"Is that all?" she flirted, one hand on her chest and one over her pelvis like Botticelli's Venus.
"Well, one can't simple stop at such a point, can they?" teased Mac as she removed her dapper grey waistcoat and tossed it onto the divan.
"Perhaps not," smiled Phryne, "the moment your lips left mine, I felt the worst sort of feeling. It almost made me feverish."
"Well I hope it's not serious," winked Mac, "I'm the Doctor. I'll have to take a look.
Mac brought herself up onto the bed, sitting up on her knees and looking down at her eager patient. Throwing one leg on the other side of Phryne, Mac straddled her friend as she began undressing her from the top down while never breaking her gaze with Miss Fisher. First, she pulled her scarf off, slowly, deliberately, and tossed it aside with a flourish. Next, the crêpe de chine jacket was slid down around her waist and then pulled out from beneath her. Then the flowy white blouse was unbuttoned: one button, then the next, down to the bottom where it was untucked from a pair of exquisite high-waisted trousers and sent to join the other articles of clothing. Phryne rolled around between Mac in teasing impatience and Mac reached her hands down, scooping beneath Phryne's soft white torso to unhook her custom made lingerie from her favorite salon, no doubt. She lifted the delicate lace garment away with surgical precision and placed it down with more care than the other pieces she's thrown around. What was revealed were two perfectly round alabaster breasts boasting, what Mac believed were the most excellent specimens of areolae and nipples that she'd ever seen. Miss Fisher noticed Mac's fascination with her chest and happily told her, "You are free to all of me, Mac, darling."
Mac looked with awe into Phryne's eyes and kissed her again. Their lips came together for a few more minutes and then Mac began to move her kisses lower. She left Phryne's face for her neck, and then finally for her chest. She kissed figure eights around her breasts before lunging, open mouthed, for the right nipple, and then the left, sucking and licking lustfully. Phryne sighed in ecstasy and helped Mac out by stripping down the rest of the way. When she Phryne laid back down, completely nude, Mac proceeded with her downward journey caressing her breasts once again with her tongue, trailing down to her navel, and further and-
"Oh!" reacted Phryne caught off guard although cunnilingus was her favorite sexual activity (even though most of the men in her life don't enjoy it equally). Mac expertly set herself to a tonguing pattern about the clitoris. Contrary to what she heard Sigmund Freud was lecturing about in Germany. She had heard rumors that he was working on research to prove that female sexuality was focused in the vagina, but she believed the possibilities of that actually getting published was dubious. Although science was yet to timid to explore the true nature of women's sexual experience, Mac had hypothesized through… field studies… that the clitoris must have more nerves, significantly more nerves, than the vaginal passage. But Mac was distracted from her medical reverie by a tightened shuddering of Phryne's thighs about her head that forewarned an imminent orgasm. Tighter… tighter… and… and…
"OOHHHH! DOCTOR MACMILLAN! MY GODDD!" Phryne carried on as she writhed in her first orgasm of the evening. Energized by the flow of pleasure rushing through her every inch, Miss Fisher sat up and began, almost literally, to tear the shirt from Dr. MacMillan's body revealing a medical-grade binding device of sorts. Phryne hesitated, unsure of how to remove of these… or if she should remove of these wrappings. Mac saw her confusion and understandingly took her hands and placed them out of the way while she removed of her own binds. Layer after layer fell as Phryne watched silently. This modern woman thought that she'd seen it all, but was mesmerized by this garment that was so alien to her. Finally the last layer fell to the side revealing quite an exquisite set of breasts. It certainly was a surprise. Mac took the rest of her clothes off as Phryne remained in awe. Mac without clothes was hardly what she was used to. A gentleman's physique gave way to a near-hour glass figure, sizeable chest, and lithe limbs. Her shoulders, however, were just as broad as they existed within their tweed jacket.
"Are you alright?" asked Mac observing Phryne's silence as most unusual.
Phryne paused and asked what she believed was the more relevant question here, "Are you?"
"Well, of course." assured Mac. "I may play the gentleman out of doors, but in the bedroom, I am just as woman as anybody else. And that," Mac continued cozying herself into bed next to Phryne, "is exactly how I love it."
"I'm glad, because I…" whispered Phryne cuddling next to Mac, feeling their smooth bodies fall seamlessly together, "I believe… I… love you."
Mac blinked in disbelief and as if she shed her stoic attitude when she shed her menswear exterior, she broke down into tears on Phryne's pillow. Face down and sobbing, Phryne put a gentle hand over her friend, moved closer to her, and placed a gentle kiss between her shoulder blades.
"Phryne Fisher," Miss Fisher heard her name muffled beneath tremoring lacrimosity and a very fine Egyptian cotton and down pillow "I have always loved you- ever since we were girls. But you were always out with men… so many men! I never thought… I couldn't fathom." Mac sniffed and ceased her crying, turning her head to face her friend. "I thought it was futile."
"Oh, Mac," Phryne assured, "Love is never wasted. And true love… true love is always fulfilled."
Phryne lay with Mac in an embrace for what seemed like hours and Phryne would have returned Mac's generous cunnilingual gift, but Mac had fallen asleep. She was an absolute angel… so fragile out of her trousers and lab coat and hospital ward. She was Phryne's angel. She always was.