Chapter Summary: Bertie has breakfast, meets Gallinger, and experiments on some pigs.
Chapter Warnings: Trigger warnings for blood and mentions of dead animals (pigs, specifically) and the small mention of enthunazing/putting to sleep of the latter for experimentation.
Bertie
May 22, 1899
"Don't upset your father, not now." Mother warned him as she set the table for breakfast, two days later.
She did not look up at Bertie, so realistically this warning could well be for Clara (or maybe the both of them, what with them sharing the same father and each possessing the same tendencies to aggravate the former) but he knew better. Knew better, because he knew Mother, and after twenty-four years of growing up within the strict confines of the household, Bertie knew that anything and everything said in that tone of voice is meant exclusively for him and him alone.
And true enough, Bertie tensed as if it was twenty years ago - or two days ago - and hesitated before he could actually understand why it was he was being warned in the first place.
He paused in the doorway and Clara, blocked out and evidently feeling vindictive in glee at her brother's newfound predicament, discreetly rammed two fingers into his side to get him to move. It was a tried and tested Evil Little Sister tactic, one that never failed to succeed.
Bertie convulsed at the sudden unexpected pain beneath his ribs and scowled at her in wordless admonishment, but nonetheless stepped aside.
"Why?" He asked of Mother instead, ruffled, still half-asleep and feeling very much inclined to make a complete one-eighty and go straight back to bed. He was two days into his internship and already exhausted. "What's wrong now?"
In response she made an amused, knowing noise at the back of her throat, pressing a spoon down onto the tablecloth with the dead-on precision of a well-practised expert. It was either the sarcastic metaphorical what isn't wrong or the you should know what's wrong, and honestly, Bertie cared for little either prospect. Neither of them meant anything good.
At least, not for him anyway.
Indeed, two days on from when Bertie first told his family that he'd taken a position under Dr. Thackery, Father had gone from outright rage to... intense exasperation. He'd be back at full force eventually, of course, but Bertie put up with the snide comments and the straight-up dismissal of Thackery being insane and unproper, or both, because he knew that was in no way, at all, the full capacity to which Father could voice his disapproval.
Quite frankly, if Father truly did not tolerate the Knick, Bertie wouldn't be there. After all, Father wouldn't truly deny him a chance to succeed.
He was mad, but not furious and yet just because Bertie could handle his father's ire doesn't mean he strictly wanted to. So he took what little information he had on his Father's current mood and ran with it.
Almost literally.
Mother only had to look at his face once to see his train of thought. She wagged the fork in her hand at him from across the breakfast table.
"You'll eat first."
Bertie shrugged. He'd never willingly go without a meal and she knew it. "Overworked residents with relentless mentors need to eat, I suppose."
Clara sing-songed from her position at her table. "Overworked residents need not to get fat, either."
Bertie recoiled, wounded. Mother tutted at his sister, smacking the back of her hand with a spoon. "Leave your poor brother alone."
But Mother is smiling, and he is smiling, and Clara is smiling, and none of them are being at all serious because at the end of the day, Clara is his sister and his ally and his rival and his greatest accomplice. She teases him because she cares and because he prefers it over strict expectations and hard-edged disapproval.
"And no fighting at the table, please," Mother warned them, but she's amused, too.
He does admire Mother for it, and at times of this, he's more than glad for her continued presence. He'd never quite grown out of admitting confidences, though over the years the trappings of sentimental, platonic courtship between a mother and her grown boy had given way — as had much of his relationship with his father, which had never been as close. Bertie was too old for all that, now, even while stuck half in and out of late lingering adolescence.
But the quiet appreciation was there. Mother was probably the only person he did not have to prove himself to. Mother only asked of minor redemption and chances — something that would stuff back the acid remarks made about where Bertie's career of soft-heartedness and idealism would end. She only asked, simple and linear: let Bertie succeed, fairly.
She's in his corner, and Bertie truthfully could never thank her enough.
Though he tried, every now and again. When she gave him a napkin, he looked up and said, sincerely. "Thank you."
She squeezed his shoulder as she passed.
Mother is not the only one. Dr. Everett Gallinger, it turned out, had similar desires. However, his desire to see Bertie grow as a reliable surgeon was more out of a desire for Bertie to both like and rely on him. If somewhat forcibly.
He was introduced to the man that morning. It's a clear, glorious day and apparently, both he and Gallinger have a habit of smoking a quick cigarette before their day shift started.
Such immediately turned into a ritual. Just like that, Dr. Gallinger and Dr. Chickering, every morning on the clock. Eight forty-five for exactly ten minutes, come rain or snow, at the bench in the courtyard. Right up until 1901, until The Incident.
But for now, it's May 21th, 1899, and things are just getting started.
"Philadelphia, right, like Dr. Thackery?" Bertie asked as he shook the man's hand, wary of looking up - and there is a great deal of looking up, he realises with Gallinger - lest he gets blinded by the morning sun. "That's two Penn Med graduates I know now, lucky me."
Gallinger smiled at him. He had a good smile. "Well, we can't all be all from Columbia now, can we?"
"Oh, it'd be insufferable if that was the case," Bertie noted, self-deprecating in his humour and just like that, somehow, he had managed to solidify a newfound friendship in the time it took for him to extract a fresh cigarette and light it.
Well, not a friendship. Gallinger wasn't the kind of man Bertie would be drinking with or tossing a fastball at. In fact, none of his actual companions were in the medical profession at all.
Bertie had been friendly with people at Columbia, of course, but none of his classmates were ever his real friends, and while Everett certainly was not a bad sort, he wasn't either. He was completely and utterly unconcerned by Dr. Chickering Jr., to the extent of treating him like a novice — medically and socially.
Just... friendly. Friendly enough.
Which was something, apparently, that Christensen worried about — or the inverse.
"I'm glad to see you getting along," the man had said, with that infernal knowing half-smile. "Since Thack and I have our hands full, you'll be stuck with one another today. Be sure to keep him near and dear, Gallinger. Where you go, he goes."
"Of course," Galligner had replied, utterly compliant and smiling, too. "Don't you worry. I'll keep an eye on him."
A close working relationship indeed. Stuffiness aside, however, Bertie did like Everett. He was charming and polite, interested in sport and while he was older - married and likely on the road of starting a family soon - they were accepting of one another.
It felt, though he had no real way of knowing, that it might be what having an older brother could be like.
Which was a stroke of luck. Often there was resentment when it came to sharing a mentor. Competitiveness and ambitious dealings were common, and rivalries often soon followed. It was the one area where being affable and inoffensive (and yes, shorter) worked in Bertie's favour.
After all, nobody got mad when the little guy said, 'don't get mad at me' and socking said little guy tended to be unacceptable.
"Thack wants us to start dismantling McBurney's incision by improving upon the Thackery point," Gallinger informed him, sometime around noon. "Which means that Thack has already found a way to improve and he wants us to spend all day trying to come to the same conclusion on our own."
Judging by the look on his face, he seemed to have already decided on Bertie's behalf that they will both be undertaking this task, and now.
Bertie looked down at his scattered papers and wondered if he'd be too tired tonight to write up his notes later on, since there was no chance of doing it now. Setting a new routine was hard, and it would be harder under Thackery — who apparently mentained nothing of the sort. He was supposed to be on the ward in fifteen minutes, but he was also unsure as to how the authority worked and therefore hesitated, perhaps too obviously.
If Thackery told Everett to do this, with Bertie then... Well. Bertie had always made a habit of doing as he was told.
Aware that Gallinger was looking at him, Dr. Chickering nodded.
"Appendectomy study?" He asked. What he really wanted to ask was if this is normal; if they should be just doing this, but he couldn't get the words out, and so just sputtered out something else instead. "What about Semm's theory?"
"It's rather outdated, don't you think?"
"I guess," Bertie admitted, and that is how his day truly started, learning how to humanely euthanize an animal and then how to ruthlessly experiment on said animal (which, with their carless hacking and mistakes and the sheer amount of blood, makes him thankful that this is an animal and not an actual human cadaver) while ruining the pages of at least six different books and ripping a dozen pages out of various journals with their bloody fingers.
Either way, it ends up with Bertie's left hand getting stuck to a page on History of Appendicitis Vermiformsis and it's Diseases and Treatment. Physically stuck, as he leans against the table to grab a reference text only to find that the hand he is leaning on suddenly fixed to paper.
"This cannot be the optimal way to do research," Bertie grumbled as he pulled his hand free from the page and marvelled at the handprint left behind.
Everett actually laughed. "If you find a better way, be sure to let me know. Eleanor would be horrified if she knew what I got myself up to in here."
"But if Dr. Thackery already potentially knows the answer isn't it... wasteful?" Bertie countered the lack of argument as Everett plucked the book out of his hand.
"It is," the man agreed with a lazy shrug. "But Dr. Christensen has some agreement with the Head of the Board of Directors; he gets everything he wants, even replacement material, which means that Thack can put us through the wringer in aid of expanding our minds and nobody cares."
Then he smiled, despite the disappointing lack of success so far.
"And as for these poor subjects," Gallinger slapped one - of the six - pigs on the side affectionately. "They won't go to waste and tonight we can all sit and be amazed when Thack finally makes us see the light, so why force the matter?"
Why indeed? Bertie wiped his hands against the front of his gown and got back to it.
And when his father finally caught him the hallway later that evening, hooking one finger around the back of his suspenders to drag him back so that the man might point out the bloody fingerprint on the back of his collar — a quarter of an inch below where he'd ran his hand across his neck in frustration while searching for a reference made in 18-whatever, Bertie couldn't keep a straight face.
Crazy? Yes, Father is probably right on that account.
But pointless...? Bertie considered the mangle of papers on his desk and the hidden, unspoken knowledge that he wasn't entirely off base — that his own ideas weren't that far from Thackery's in the end, and thought otherwise.
