Deleted Scene

This is a deleted scene from Chapter 9 of Left to Follow. I decided not to post it because of the violence. Rated R.

This scene takes place in Austria, between Darcy is interrogated by Dr. Trommler and when Darcy sees Dr. Maddox again.

Maddox was shaken out of his frightened stupor to respond, "No." He watched with confusion as the assistants removed his shoes, then his socks, and placed his feet in a tub of lukewarm water.

"Are you not a scientist? Your brother spoke highly of your inquisitive nature and academic brilliance in his letters to you," Trommler said as they cut off the doctor's vest and cravat, leaving only his undershirt. "I suppose you don't read the literature from America. Prejudiced against those colonists, are you?"

"No," he said, confused. "I just - they're an ocean away. I've not been there." Where are you going with this?

"I'm surprised you don't have a pair." Trommler seemed to be fiddling with something inside the strange chest.

It was probably because he was half dressed, but a chill went up the doctor's spine as he watched. "I can see things up close."

No, you are the precise opposite of one. It was a waste of knowledge, really. "What are you doing?"

"Benjamin Franklin made an interesting discovery. That the power of lightening can be captured and harvested in objects of metal."

"You would be surprised, Herr Doktor. Please, you, take those metal cuffs off. We don't want to kill him." He kept talking in a disturbingly innocent voice as they released Daniel's arms from their irons and tied his hands behind the chair with rope instead. "Do you know Doktor Von Soemmering?"

"I've ... heard of him," Daniel stammered. "When I was in school in Paris. Wrote some articles for the Prussian medical review."

"Then we have a real shared interest. I've met the man. I've known him for years, in fact. He has no idea what methods I use in my own practice, of course."

"Of course," Daniel said. He did not want to talk ‘shop' with this man. They were not friends and never would be. The only common interest they had was his brother, and he could give them nothing on him, even if he wanted to. Surely they realized that? Why were they drawing it out? "Look, I don't know what you're getting at, but please. I don't know where Brian is. I don't know where the princess is. I swear to G-d, I don't know anything. I have a wife and children - "

"This device," Trommler interrupted, removing a box from the chest, "is called an electrochemical telegraph. It is meant to transmit signals from water decomposition. Water is an excellent carrier of this electricity." He stood up, holding up two wires. "Remove his glasses and wet him, please."

"No, please, I need those - " but the assistant didn't listen and the world became a blur as his glasses were torn off and a bucket of water dumped over his head, " - to see." He blinked and shook his hair out. Now he was wet, cold, terrified, and couldn't see. Brilliant.

"Sadly, the device doesn't work very well as it was intended, which is why it has not been put into general use by the Prussian government as a device to communicate over distances. It does, however, still generate a significant bolt of energy."

He was burning, like a candle - no, like the wick. It wasn't hot as much as like something running through him, something not meant to be in his body but unable to escape. His body fought against his restraints and itself. He didn't even hear his own screams, so caught up in the intensity of it, until the buzzing died down and Trommler stepped away. Daniel's body collapsed as much as it could as he gasped for breath. He smelled something burning - his hair. Oh G-d.

"Unfortunately, you do not have the information I need, Herr Doktor, and I cannot go to the count without something. So we are at a standstill." Trommler bent down, close enough for Maddox to see him more clearly, though he wasn't much inclined to look at him. "I'm not foolish enough to think you or your relative Herr Darcy are capable of withstanding any methods of extracting information. If you knew where Brian Maddox was, you would have told us back in Berlin."

"I want to know everything, Herr Doktor. I want to know how he thinks. How he acts. What kind of man he was, has been, is now. How many languages he knows. How he fights; where he went to school. How much debt he left you, where he lost it. What he plays. Everything."

"I find this electricity is very helpful to the memory. Perhaps you will make the same observation. Shall we begin with your father's death?"

And so it began. He quickly learned that every ‘I don't know' was met with a jolt of excruciating energy flowing through him, even when he legitimately didn't know the answer.

"Probably a little? I-I've never heard him speak it, I don't speak it, I didn't even know it was a langua - "

Sometimes his vision faded and he lost consciousness. They threw water in his face to wake him and made him drink when his throat became too dry to speak.

Too late. He blacked out again this time. The guards seemed to change. It was hard for him to tell. He was sure time was passing, but did not know how much. It felt like forever.

"Yes. There's a nerve - it goes from the spine all the way down to the leg. I couldn't repair it. I didn't even know about it until he tried to walk."

He had a feeling he was out for longer and longer periods of time. They were giving him some local juice, but despite his general emotional fatigue he was beginning to feel the effects of hunger. The passage of time in this windowless room was an unknown. All he knew was that he was cold, exhausted and his wrists were soar and bleeding from his various struggles against his restraints. He could only see about as far as where Trommler usually sat when he was up close, but the rest of the room was largely a blur, and even that was fading. Occasionally there were breaks - probably for his interrogator to take care of his own needs. G-d, it might be days now.

The result was expected. Was it longer? In his moment of extreme panic, he couldn't tell. Pain obliterated all thought. Screaming hurt his throat. His feet involuntarily kicked at the metal pail. His toes were bruised and bloodied at this point.

He was given a considerable pause to recover. Dr. Maddox had grown to truly hate the smell of singled hair as he gasped for breath when the prods were removed from his chest.

This time, he blacked out from the pain. It was not an unusual occurrence, but every time it was harder to come back. Sometimes he had to be nudged back with cold water thrown at his face. His body wanted to keep sleeping; his interrogator would not allow it, of course. When he woke he was already seething, fighting against his restraints.

"You should be more careful with your health, Herr Doktor," Trommler said. "Do you know how much stress your heart can take from electric current? Because I do not. You are one of my first test subjects. Are you willing to die for a simple question?"

"I -," he was going to say ‘don't' but he had learned that lesson. "Please," he pleaded with tears in his eyes. "Please don't make me do this."

"Was she or wasn't she? She was thirty, after all, or whatever you like to call it. Surely she could have had some moment of improper weakness - "

"No!" he screamed, as best he could, which wasn't very loud. "She was - she was a maiden." He was still tearing. "Please, are you satisfied? What does this have to do with my brother?"

"It is an interesting comparison." And he continued the questions, most of them of a less intimate nature, but all the same, very descriptive, veering far from the subject of Brian Maddox. Trommler wanted everything - his intimate life, his children, his professional relationship with the Regent. Slowly but surely, Maddox gave it.

Once he woke to Trommler in a totally different position, taking tea in the fuzzy distance. The water beneath his feet had gone cold.

"You understand, of course, that your brother brought this on himself, and you," Trommler said calmly, not turning to him.

"Of course Her Highness couldn't conceive. The midwife determined that, years ago. And she warned him, too, before they married. But the fool was, how do you say, besotted. He had to have her. He had to try. He could have run away and honestly, His Grace the count doesn't have the ability to pursue him to England. He would have let him get away." He paused. "Do you think Brian thought himself noble?"

Daniel didn't like it when Trommler used Brian's Christian name as if they were close friends. This man had spied on his brother and was a sadistic madman. He deserved to be friends with no one. "I think he was in love."

"He certainly wrote that he was. And they were hardly ever apart, once they were married. He was quite a stallion. Honestly, he was certainly doing his best to impregnate her."

"Do you think it was just sexual? After all, who doesn't dream of the virgin princess locked in a castle somewhere? Straight out of a silly Arthurian romance. He must have thought himself Lancelot. Flawed, but the perfect knight nonetheless. You like those sorts of stories, don't you? He would mention them in his letters. He purchased a copy of the Nibelungenlied for you, but he never sent it. Too busy running away. I have it here." He held up something, but all Daniel could see was a vague red book-shaped block. "Would you like it?"

He didn't know the correct response. All he knew was the incorrect one would probably get him killed. He eyed the device suspiciously on the stool by his side. There was only so much he could take.

"Yes," he whispered. Actually, he wanted nothing from this man, except for him to go away, but he was willing to say almost anything to make it happen.

"The count doesn't know it, and I don't officially know it, but he and the princess left on a ship out of the port on Magadan in Russia over a year ago. The ship turned up as a wreck on the island of Sakhalin. The crew had been infected with typhus and most died at sea. A few survivors turned up in lifeboats, but Brian and ‘Mrs. Maddox' were not among them. Nor were their bodies found, but I'm a realistic person."

"Then why - why all this?" Maddox had no way to gesture, so he just nudged his shoulder. "Why?"

"Because I'm not paid to tell His Grace what he doesn't want to hear. If his daughter his dead, he must remarry and produce an heir or his holdings will default to his brother-in-law. I'm paid to look into things and try to extract information from you, whether you have it or not. And much like you, I do the job I'm paid to do, no matter how horrible - until his money runs out."

"What? In comparison to you?" Trommler laughed. He actually laughed. "Like your brother, you are a master of self-delusion. Your profession means you are little more than a hired killer."

"But it is. How many of your surgical patients survive, Herr Doktor? What is the rate? Maybe forty-percent?"

"I-I'm told it is about half," he mumbled. This was not comfortable territory for him, not that any of this was.

"And that eases your conscience?" Trommler leaned over, and started fiddling with the telegram device again. "Tell me - have you ever killed a patient by accident? I believe it is called in England - ‘malpractice' - no?"

He knew it was coming, but bracing himself did no good. It just made his teeth clatter harder. Would they melt, eventually? He really had no idea.

"Be serious, Herr Doktor. I've been questioning you for some time now - I can tell quite easily when you're lying. How many?"

"Please don't make me," he said, shaking his head, his singed hair shaking back and forth. "Don't make me do this."

"One. G-d, I swear, it was just one!" Maddox did not have it in him to resist the tears. The subject alone could make him cry, much less the circumstances surrounding it.

"No," his voice a hoarse whisper. He hung his head. He would not let Trommler see his tears. He closed his eyes to his surroundings. "I gave him - I make pain medicine."

"No, but also with opium. No alcohol, different recipe. It's more effective, but it tastes foul," he said. "I didn't - I couldn't tell. He was a large man, but I didn't take the blood loss into account, I was so tired, and he was begging me for more. And more. Five spoonfuls - and he stopped breathing. So quietly, I didn't even notice it at first."

"Every experiment has its risks," Trommler said. Was he actually being sympathetic? No, not with his next question. "Did you ever kill a patient intentionally?"

"Once," Maddox said, head still low. He couldn't meet this man's eyes. It was just too much shame. "He begged me. He had tumors everywhere - I opened him up to excise them, but it was hopeless. Too advanced. He might have lived another few days, but in agony - and he begged me. So hard."

Why did he care? What did it matter to Trommler? "Four. He was old and sick. It was only four."

"I didn't know what else to do!" he protested with his last ounce of dignity. "I was hired to stop his suffering - he couldn't be cured! And I couldn't think of a better way - I didn't want to do it. Oh G-d, I didn't. He begged me. He offered me a fortune."

"No." Finally, he could say something with pride. "Only the fee for the surgery. Nothing else."

Maddox was tired, his thoughts largely incoherent at this point. He raised his eyes to finally meet Trommler's eyes that merely looked curious. "Why - why are you doing this?"

"I am a professional. There are two things that make me that way. First, I take pride in my work. Second, I am always looking for new ways to go about things, to perfect my art. Yes, I can strip away your sanity - though you did hold up for quite a long time, I must say. But at least at the end, you're still alive and may well recover, if the count decides to ransom you. I don't kill my subjects, Herr Doktor."

"Perhaps. But on a higher level than you, certainly." He stood up. "The count is going to enter in a few minutes. He has his own men and his own methods. You will find them quite barbaric. I've driven you nearly to death without leaving but the smallest mark on your body. I think that's a far superior method. Don't you agree?"

Maddox looked up helplessly as Trommler finally replaced his glasses, and he got the clearest look yet at the man he had faced for what was surely days now. He did not answer him.

"Very well, Herr Doktor. You are quite a complex man - it has truly been an honor." Trommler closed the box with the machine, bowed, and left.

Daniel Maddox was fairly sure, with what little sanity he had left, that he would have wept if the strength were left in him to do so. Instead he hung limply in the same cramped position and was nearly asleep when the count stormed in, followed by several burly men.

He had no idea where he had the strength. Maybe the count was just less scary now. Maybe he was just too exhausted to be frightened. He felt like he was floating, like this was all so distant. "My answer is the same."

The mallet came down on his hand. Despite all of the screaming, gasping and the men holding him down as the question was repeated, he still felt removed. Not enough to not feel pain but like there was a wall between him and the events. When his hand was a smashed, bloodied pulp and he was quivering, he put up a final protest as they took away his glasses. "No, please, I need those - " The sound of glass shattering on the floor was enough. His last vestige of hope, dignity, strength - whatever he would call it - disappeared.

They dragged him in front of the table, where paper and a pen were put before him, and he was told to write to his wife, asking for money. Not ransom, just some money, and to give away nothing about his condition. He stared at the paper for a few moments before saying simply in the remains of his voice, "You smashed my glasses and my writing hand."

The pen was forced into his left hand and he barely heard their shouts. He had to put his tired eyes so close to the page that he narrowly avoided getting ink on his face as he slowly drew out what he hoped would be readable words with his unschooled hand. It took awhile, and there was much shouting, he heard little of it, clutching his right hand to his chest. Slowly the words came out of him - he had to tell her. The distant image of his gaelic goddess Caroline was enough to put his wits together. He constructed his lines most carefully, before awkwardly signing both his and Darcy's name.

They gave him back his socks and shoes, but no other clothing. They told him to stand, but his unused legs buckled and he fell to the ground. The blackness he found there was most peaceful.

Samuel Thomas Von Soemmering (1755-1830) - physician and scientist from Germany. In 1809 he created an electrochemical telegraph where the signal was transduced electrochemically as bubbles originating from electrochemical water decomposition.