The commotion brings the doctor with pleasing haste. Gavroche's eyes are fluttering closed, but still Javert retreats until he is sure the boy can no longer see him. "He needs immediate surgery," the doctor says, and with that little ceremony Gavroche is whisked away.
The nurse lingers. "He is in good hands, Monsieur." She's a young thing and plain, but there is a stubbornness to the set of her jaw that Javert finds reassuring. "Do not be afraid."
She looks very much like she means to pat his shoulder.
Javert scowls. It is well-practiced, that scowl, and more than one hardened criminal has wet himself at the sight of it.
The nurse only smiles again. There's sympathy in it, but by the crinkles about her eyes Javert thinks she is laughing at him.
"Attend your duties," he growls.
Now she laughs openly but does as she is told, skirts rustling as she hurries after her patient.
There is nothing now to do but wait. Javert rights the fallen chair and settles out of the way. Even allows himself to slump and rub at his wrists where the ropes have bitten deep.
A patient man, Javert. To be still, to be silent...they were arts he'd learned young, in the days when to go unnoticed meant survival. He'd first found the stars then, had taken to counting them to distract his mind while his body crouched small in the dark.
But now patience proves elusive. Javert rises. Paces. Settles again into his chair. Rises again with a muttered curse.
And so it goes for a time. More men are brought in, until the wounded lie in rows upon the floor. One by one the barricades have fallen, but the rebels have taken their full measure of blood, an impressive feat for men armed with ancient muskets and sodden powder.
The space within which Javert paces has grown tighter. He is hemmed in by men who bleed and moan, but still he turns on his heel.
Only to pull up short when he finds himself confronted by an unfamiliar nurse. She stands solidly in his path, her arms crossed over her ample bosom, her round cheeks beaded with sweat.
She looks him over. Frowns, and clucks her tongue.
"Come along then," she says, and when she turns he follows along behind like a dutiful dog.
Javert holds steady a gutshot soldier while the nurse administers an injection that will do but little. Assists in bandaging a man's thigh where a musket ball has smashed through flesh and bone alike, a temporary measure until a doctor finds time to cut away the ruined limb.
He wipes vomit from a man's chest. Fetches and carries. Moves the dead to make way for the living.
So the long hours pass, and Javert is grateful.
Gavroche survives the night.
It is a good sign, the doctor says, but no cause for celebration. The bullet shattered the blade of the shoulder, and if not for fear of Javert's wrath the man would have taken the arm. As it stands, he makes no promises.
Nothing will be sure until Gavroche wakes.
"If," Javert says. It is nothing so crude as a superstition, but he finds thin comfort in naming the worst.
Still the doctor admits the boy is stronger than expected. Javert snorts at this, for what is the street but a proving ground? That Gavroche has reached his tender age is proof enough of a will the coddled doctor cannot guess at.
With the boy deep in drugged slumber Javert feels safe to approach the bed. Gavroche is paler yet, and Javert had not guessed such a thing could be. The nurse dips cloth in water and washes the blood from the boy's cheeks, and for this Javert thanks her with a nod.
Javert has thought much on the possibility of the boy's death. Where he would bury the lad, the words to be craved on the headstone.
Only now does Javert come to wonder what his plan will be if Gavroche should live.
Return him to the very streets that weaned the boy so roughly? Certainly no orphanage...Gavroche would fly the very day he healed enough to gain his feet. An apprenticeship perhaps, if only Javert knew someone trustworthy for the task.
Sentiment. This is the very reason Javert prefers the sharp edge of the law, which cuts so neatly between what is right and what is wrong. But this...this cuts both ways, and Javert has been bled dry.
Perhaps better if the boy had been allowed to remain in the arms of his friends. Death is not so unkind a thing. Perhaps better if the boy never grew to be a man, for it is life that is unkind, life that scours away the best of a soul. Gavroche's brave smile, his bright eyes...
He will lose them, should he live. Little by little, and surely much too soon.
Javert shakes away his guilt, his regret. He cannot well return the boy to the students now. If he has inflicted harm on Gavroche in saving him, then it is upon Javert's shoulders to mend the damage best he can.
He does not mean to leave this rescue half-done.