For today’s entry I wrote in my planner that it was LG, and then I circled the LG with a red pen, so I’ll obey this message from myself and get these done right away.
September 6
This day’s entry comes in two parts. The first is a telegram from Dr. Lobotomy to Van Helsing, telling him there’s been a change for the worse and Van Helsing must come at once.
I hold over telegram to Holmwood till I have seen you.
I read this is as “I won’t tell anything to Holmwood till you get here,” but I wonder if I’m mistaken as the second half of today’s entry is to Arthur.
His letter to Arthur doesn’t get into details about Lucy’s condition, but it alarms her mother too and Dr. Lobotomy is able to reassure her that Van Helsing is on his way so he can come and go as he pleases without mom dropping dead from shock. He tells Arthur he’ll be in touch as soon as he can.
September 7th
Okay here’s our doozy of a day. Let’s find out what’s up with poor Lucy.
This section is written like prose with dialogue between our players, which is fun. Van Helsing shows up and asks if Dr. Lobotomy has told Arthur about Lucy’s turn in condition. Dr. Lobotomy says no. Van Helsing is appeased and tells Dr. Lobotomy that just like he doesn’t tell everything to his mentally ill charges, some things should stay just between the two of them. Van Helsing says he has some ideas but isn’t ready to tell Dr. Lobotomy yet. When Dr. Lobotomy protests, we get this bizarre dialogue:
“My friend John, when the corn is grown, even before it has ripened—while the milk of its mother-earth is in him, and the sunshine has not yet begun to paint him with his gold, the husbandman he pull the ear and rub him between his rough hands, and blow away the green chaff, and say to you: ‘Look! he’s good corn; he will make good crop when the time comes.'”
He’s good corn! I love corn.
Basically he’s saying that he has an idea but he doesn’t want to go off half-cocked with it. In explaining this to Dr. Lobotomy, Van Helsing grabs him by the ear and yanks it a bit, which is adorable.
Even if you have not kept the good practise, let me tell you that this case of our dear miss is one that may be—mind, I say may be—of such interest to us and others that all the rest may not make him kick the beam, as your peoples say.
“Kick the beam” is a mysterious idiom that I’ve never heard in my life. It apparently refers to an old set of scales, where if there’s more weight on one side than the other, the light scale will go to the top and hit the center beam of the scales. So the idiom means that something has no value, and is of no consequence, as it weighs so little it might as well weigh nothing, as the scale flies up and “kicks the beam”.
What this amounts to is Van Helsing telling Seward to keep thorough notes, because they’ll probably have some interesting results to show at the end. Dr. Lobotomy might even reach the same conclusions that Van Helsing is cultivating. Van Helsing concludes his monologue, saying “We learn from failure, not from success!” Which I think we could all stand to remember.
He took with him a bag in which were many instruments and drugs, “the ghastly paraphernalia of our beneficial trade,” as he once called, in one of his lectures, the equipment of a professor of the healing craft.
I just really like this line and I wanted to save it.
Mrs. Westenra greets the doctors and Seward gets poetic about how “death has some antidote to its own terrors”, suggesting that she might be too preoccupied with her own health to appreciate the gravity of what’s happening to her daughter. Dr. Lobotomy concludes that maybe egoism is okay actually, but if he thinks coping and disassociation is self-centeredness, I guess the only thing to do is add this to his list of horrible things for a doctor to do and believe.
He advises Lucy’s mom to keep her head down and not even think about Lucy too much, and she acquiesces.
When they get to Lucy’s room we finally get deets about her condition. Apparently all color from her skin is gone and her cheeks are sunken, completely rose-free and corpselike. It seems she’s struggling to breathe. Dr. Lobotomy and Van Helsing gawk for a bit and then go back into the hall. They tuck into another room and Van Helsing declares she needs a blood transfusion at once. As they head downstairs to get the tools, Arthur walks in. His dad is well and he came in a hurry. Van Helsing volunteers Arthur, with his fresh and hardy masculine man blood (never mind its type—blood types weren’t discovered until 1901. Lucy is lucky they understand that doctors wash their hands). Van Helsing sedates Lucy, who is too weak to speak at all, and gives Arthur a moment alone with her while they prepare.
Van Helsing turning to me, said:
“He is so young and strong and of blood so pure that we need not defibrinate it.”
Apparently “defibrinating” blood is a method to prevent clotting. So I guess he thinks that Arthur’s blood is so hardy it’ll just blast into Lucy like the Niagara Falls.
It seems to make Lucy better at any rate and totally exhausts Arthur, who now deserves a cookie. As Van Helsing attends to Lucy, he shifts her and:
the narrow black velvet band which she seems always to wear round her throat, buckled with an old diamond buckle which her lover had given her, was dragged a little up, and showed a red mark on her throat.
Bizarre that this thing she always wears has never come up before. I’m glad the bite is finally here.
After Arthur is packaged up and sent away, Dr. Lobotomy goes to inspect the mark on Lucy’s neck. He wonders if the wound could have lost her so much blood, but if so it would be all over the place. Dr. Lobotomy is at a loss and tells Van Helsing as much. Van Helsing tells Dr. Lobotomy to watch over her and not sleep a wink while he himself runs back to Amsterdam to pick up some things. “And then we may begin.”
What a difficult time for Dr. Lobotomy, surrounded by hottie exes while his sub at home is eating flies and waiting. But I don’t really feel sorry for him because he’s never heard of ethics.
Hopefully Lucy doesn’t die from incompatible blood types with Arthur. I doubt that Stoker would want to waste a character on something that lame though.