"Laudanum."
Bertie, disheveled and disconsolate, cast a quick glance past Nurse Pell, who was solemnly packing away Mrs. Alford's belonging in the private room on the patient wing of the Knickbocker hospital.
"What?"
"Laudanum," Dr. Algernon Edwards repeated, holding up a small glass vial and dropper which had been tucked neatly away on the small tabletop next to the patient's bed, ominously close to a nearly empty glass of water. Algernon picked up the glass and swirled the water, sniffing it closely.
"She must have ingested this before the surgery. It's the only explanation."
Bertie, who was leaning against the back wall to support his exhausted, compact frame, seemed to gain a little energy back, "That would explain it perhaps. The laudanum would certainly have depressed and slowed down her functions, most critically her breathing. And then when I applied the chloroform –"
"It was too much for her system to handle. A standstill," Algernon was glum as he fingered the laudanum container, "She must have been taking this for anxiety or insomnia perhaps. We didn't know about it, so we couldn't have predicted the outcome."
Nurse Pell hurriedly picked up as many items as she could, her natural inclination to eavesdrop tempting her to linger a little longer.
"Thackery needs to know it wasn't necessarily the anesthesia which caused the problem, Bertie. As a man it might hurt but as a doctor, I think he would want to know the reason why."
"I'm afraid he blames me. He's inconsolable. He hasn't left his office since we had to move Mrs. Alford down to the morgue."
"It wasn't your fault Bertie, you know that. It was a calculated risk which Thackery himself took for the surgery, just like any procedure, yet with very tragic results," Algernon explained. "Let me try to talk to him."