Anatomy: A Love Story

Jack awakens to frantic knocking at the theater’s doors. He briefly hopes that Hazel has come “to find him, to run away with him” (227). Instead, he finds a frantic Jeanette clutching her stomach. Jack brings the girl to Hazel. Jeanette stopped menstruating months ago, but she’s never been with a man. When Hazel examines her, she finds a “scar crusting with green pus […] four inches across, below her belly button” (232). Jeanette claims she’s had the scar since her appendix was removed when she was seven, and she mentions having nightmares of a one-eyed monster around the time her recent symptoms began. Hazel cleans and bandages the scar and tells Jeanette to come back if she doesn’t feel better in a week. She also encourages Jack and Jeanette to bring others in need of treatment to Hawthornden Castle.

Over the next two weeks, dozens of people come to the dungeon for help, and Hazel treats everything from toothaches to broken bones. When the first patient with the Roman fever arrives, she tells the household staff that they are welcome to live in the guesthouse if they feel unsafe remaining in the castle. One day, Isabella comes to the dungeon. The woman is already in labor, and Jack and Iona assist Hazel with the delivery. Jack gives the newborn the music box he originally intended to give to Isabella, which he has repaired. Isabella names her child Hazel in honor of the young woman who saved her and her baby, and Hazel tries to conceal the tears that spring to her eyes at this gesture.

Jack likens his prior feelings for Isabella to admiring a masterful painting of a candle, whereas his love for Hazel is like “seeing fire in person for the first time” (243). Jack finds Hazel beside a stream outside the castle and tells her that she’s incredible and brilliant. Hazel admits that she feels like “a silly little girl playing dress-up and pretending” (244). She’s terrified of making a mistake and harming one of her patients, and he assures her that it’s all right to be afraid. It begins to rain, and the teenagers take shelter in the stables. They kiss, and Jack tells Hazel that she’s beautiful. When she says that no one has ever told her that before, he emphatically promises to appreciate her beauty every day for as long as he lives.

A week later, Hazel loses her first patient to the Roman fever, and Jack finds her weeping beside the body. When he begins to dig a grave for the man, she protests that she should study his body. Jack assures her that it’s all right for her to grieve her lost patient instead. Hazel treats the remaining fever patients with wortflower, the herb that Jack’s mother used to brew into tea. The plant improves the patients’ conditions, but she continues to hope for a complete cure. She writes a letter to Dr. Beecham asking for his thoughts on the possibility of inoculation for the Roman fever. Hazel eagerly awaits his reply and imagines herself becoming “the most famous physician in the kingdom, all before the age of twenty” (250). Munro, who now has only one arm, comes to the castle looking for Jack.

Munro tells Hazel and Jack that he went to Greyfriars by himself to dig up a pregnant woman because those bodies fetch a higher price. While he was in the graveyard, a man wearing a top hat appeared and rendered him unconscious with a handkerchief that smelled like death and flowers. When Munro awoke, he was under a heavy veil, and the man wheeled him into a surgical theater. He cried out, and a doctor made him fall back to sleep with another dose of “blue potion” (257). When Munro regained consciousness, he was at Saint Anthony’s hospital, and his left arm was gone. Hazel inspects the tidy stitches in Munro’s shoulder and offers him a job at the castle. Certain that an unknown criminal is targeting the poor, Hazel asks a constable to come to Hawthornden. The officer dismisses Munro’s story as a ploy for the noblewoman’s pity and tells Hazel that he hopes her father returns home “before his daughter becomes a public disruption instead of just a fool” (261).

Hazel continues administering wortflower to her Roman fever patients and reporting her findings to Dr. Beecham, but she has yet to receive a reply. Burgess, a boy from Beecham’s class, catches the fever and comes to the castle. Hazel reveals that she disguised herself as George Hazleton and tells Burgess about her deal with the doctor. Jack interjects by asking whether Hazel’s fiancé will allow her to practice medicine even if she wins the wager, and he leaves the room when she replies that “the Physician’s Examination is a far more pressing concern than [her] silly marriage” (266). Burgess remains at Hawthornden for treatment and helps Hazel prepare for the exam.

A letter from Dr. Beecham advises Hazel to abandon her efforts to treat patients with wortflower, claims that inoculation is impossible for the Roman fever, and states that “the well-being of the patient must supersede a doctor’s overzealous ego” (268). Humiliated, Hazel burns the doctor’s letter, but Burgess insists that the wortflower tea is helping him. Adding to Hazel’s agitation, Jack leaves Hawthornden Castle to look for work. He promises her that he won’t dig up any more bodies, but his promise does little to reassure her when he is gone for days.

Jack tries without success to find employment. Someone advises him that there are jobs in America, but he can’t bear the thought of leaving Hazel. Jack feels ashamed of the differences in their social status and wonders how he could “ask her to give up an earl when he couldn’t even make a decent wage” (274). He decides that his only option is to resume his work as a resurrection man. He regrets breaking his promise to Hazel, but reasons that she doesn’t understand what it’s like to live in poverty.

With the Royal Physician’s Exam one week away, Hazel attends a dinner party at Almont House in honor of her engagement. The men, including Bernard, behave patronizingly towards her. One of the guests is Baron Walford, who has a false eye. The baron claims that he will soon regain his sight thanks to an upcoming operation at the Anatomists’ Society. Hazel attempts to learn more, but Bernard tells her to focus on their wedding. When Bernard escorts Hazel to her carriage, she informs him that she’s currently treating patients and tells him that she may have to call off their engagement if he stands in the way of her medical career. Bernard agrees that they will “figure it out from there” if she passes the exam and makes her promise to abandon her dream if she fails (278).