Geoffrey Hornblower converted his manor house into something resembling a private hospital well before the loss of his wife – in fact, it was she who aided him in designing matters, ensuring that placement of patients was optimal and would have the smallest impact on the house staff.

Initially, the main floor was set up with the foyer transformed into an office, walled with cabinets. To the left, nearest the door, the room meant to serve as a living and host area was converted into an emergency surgery with two cots available ( making it optimal for dueling related injuries ) and the walls lined with dressers filled with supplies.

The study was lined with books, though the center of the room was cots for the sick, serving as a short term med bay as needs dictated. To the right was originally the servants hall, the dining room and the kitchen, with the upper floor reserved for the bedrooms of the Hornblower family on one side, while across the way the rooms on the other side were converted.

The walls were taken out, leaving a large space that was turned into a cross between a library and a sitting room. With walls lined with books, floors carpeted, and furniture set around fireplaces. It looked more like a gentleman’s club than a living area, everything set with perfect precision – from the piano to every pillow, this was where the Hornblowers would entertain contemporaries and guests, and host parties when the need dictated it.

After the death of Mrs. Hornblower, things took a somewhat dramatic shift over time. The servants quarters were redesigned into yet more sick beds – bleeding into the dining room until the chef put his foot down and made it clear that illness and food should not so closely mix. Geoffrey moved furniture from the entertainment hall to the dining room, slowly turning it into a barricade of storage as he gutted the beautiful home his wife created and used bookshelves as walls.

In the end, he enclosed the piano and a chaise – the rest of the hall became yet more beds, yet more cabinets, yet more work to bury himself behind by the time Horatio was twelve. The servants had been moved upstairs, granted shared lodgings in the master bedroom and two others, while Geoffrey slept in his study and Horatio was left alone to his own.

In essence, Horatio grew up in a hospital as his father used work as his medication for grief. Geoffrey staffed nurses to help him tend his ever growing pool of patients, but as is the way of hospitals, he was often very short handed. Thus, at the tender age of five, Horatio found himself serving as an impromptu medical assistant.  

Being small and young, Horatio started by bringing towels ( often stacked in his arms higher than his head ) around to the nurses as well as various medical pieces at request. He was also sent to trot back and forth with water and linens, and to help wipe down sick patients. Horatio was also responsible for mopping up the floor from time to time, and taking the discards bucket outside for burning. This was particularly unfortunate as the bucket was about the same size as Horatio’s torso, and he was forced to hug it in order to carry it out and dump its contents into the pit outside.

This bucket contained removed limbs as a result of amputation – everything from fingers and toes, to full arms and legs. Needless to say, he was often troubled by nightmares and a great terror of losing his own body parts in his youth, though eventually this grew to be common far enough that it did not bother him as much.

At the age of seven he was deemed steady enough to pinch skin together for stitching, and at eight he was taught to stitch using soft leather. By the time he was nine, he could manage stitching up small wounds without his father’s assistance. Due to his overall experience with  fevers, illness, wounds, death and dying Horatio believed himself ready for Naval warfare.

Unfortunately he failed to account for the noise of battle and, being as Horatio is someone who is easily overwhelmed by an abundance of sensory input, the sounds and bangs can leave him jarred and unfocused from time to time – this is more notable early on, and is something he grows out of, but is notable at the start.

In any case, long and short of it is, Horatio is more than a mere doctors son – he is a surgical assistant and very aware of his shit when it comes to stitching, to what constitutes higher priority, all the way to what drugs to use and what ones to avoid. He is judgemental of surgeons that overuse opiates and will not hesitate to call them out on it. He will personally attend his own minor injuries rather than take time from anyone in the med bay – he knows how class dictates who is served when matters are minor and he refuses to be placed above anyone else.

Horatio grew up reading to sick people, and tending them, so he did not fear Finch or contagion, nor was he shaken by the Plague itself. To him, illness is merely a part of life, as is injury, and there is no use to panic over it.