Nora’s brave chin collapsed. “Then it’s over?”
Gruff hands closed around Nora’s jaw, forcing her head up. “Spotting is the most expected thing in the world. It means nothing on its own.” Ruth’s brown irises blazed defiantly.
Nora nodded as best she could with her chin held captive.
“You know several mothers feel their children very infrequently until late pregnancy. Or if they do, the baby must be in the perfect position. Your child could be in the middle of your womb jumping like a grasshopper as we speak.” Ruth released her but lowered her face to mere inches from Nora’s.
Grasshopper.Such a cheerful creature. A perfect nickname if…
“How much longer do I wait?”
“You just survived the near impossible. Give the poor babe a day or two more of grace.”
“I’m scared,” Nora whispered. She’d admitted it to no one,but she couldn’t lie anymore.
Ruth took Nora’s hand, the touch reminiscent of Magdalena’s firm grip. “I lit a candle for you at church on Christmas Eve. If the Lord child could survive the trip to Jerusalem and be born in a byre, then your child can survive his winter journey as well.”
Nora fought the old, unbidden memories crowding her mind, of a dark room with dishes strewn across the floor, puddles of sick half-soaked into the rugs, and a terrifying mound on the floor that had once been her grandmother. “I’m worried I gave up on miracles the day my entire family died in front of me.” The bleak, brittle voice couldn’t be her own. Nora didn’t recognize it.
Ruth looked at her as severely as Magdalena would have. “You certainly did not. The day you performed your first surgery or attended your first birth, or last week when you saved Fenella Wilcox—”
“Her maid died,” Nora argued. Hope was too scalding to swallow, no matter how frozen her soul.
“And two of you lived.” Ruth glared at her with loving eyes. “If I told you I’d had the same result, you’d be pleased with me. Just because everything isn’t a miracle doesn’t mean one doesn’t show up occasionally.”
Nora’s head grew too heavy with fear and sorrow to keep upright. She pressed it onto Ruth’s shoulder, her eyes wet. “And if I have lost the child?”
Ruth rubbed her back hard enough to hurt the skin. “Then you’ll know the sadness that many of us have felt. I lost two.”
Nora squeezed her eyes shut, a flash of anger rising at the circumstances, at Ruth. It wasn’t that she was wrong, but thatshe had the nerve to be right. This suffering wasn’t new or unique.
Ruth pulled Nora’s resisting body close and rocked her.
“I didn’t take care of myself,” Nora confessed as tears dripped into her mouth, mingling with the salty words. “I didn’t take care of my own child.”
“There, there,” Ruth answered in melody, over and over. “There, there.”
After years of training, the anatomy tomes, the lectures, and debates, no one had discovered a more helpful answer than that.
Chapter 43
“Feels a little better now?” Nora glanced up at her patient, a child of nine or ten, carried to the clinic by an older brother after a draft horse had trod on her foot.
The girl nodded her tear-streaked face.
“Keep still. I’m just going to move the ice,” Nora told her, and slid the chunk to the lateral edge of her foot, where the bruising and edema were most noticeable. She suspected at least two fractured metatarsals, so the application of ice and tight bandaging would help. “Ruth?”
“Everything’s ready,” Ruth assured her. “Will you—”
“No, you do this one,” Nora said, for Ruth was adept at binding. Her wrappings were neater than Horace’s—before his stroke.
Truthfully, Nora was fortunate to have the chance to treat this girl at all. The men were all gone, and over Mrs. Phipps’s protests, Nora had run to help, despite her promises to stay off her feet and leave the patients to the others. It had been four days of spotting. Nothing Nora did now would make much difference.
“Mrs. Doctor,” a timid voice interrupted from the threshold. The new maid pushed her head around the door. “There’s a woman to see you. Urgent.”
“Ruth, I’ll be back in a moment. Keep on just like that—loose enough to accommodate for more swelling, but tight enough to push some of the blood away from the wound.” She turned to the pale girl and her worried brother. “It will feel much better in a few days. You’re being very brave.” She smiled at the girl, waiting until she got a small, watery grin in return before she slipped from the room.
She hurried up the steps, curious what woman had urgent business with her. Just as she stepped into the grand hall, Aunt Wilcox spun around to face her, a filthy, tattered carpet bag at her feet that certainly didn’t belong to her. Nora couldn’t reconcile the fastidious woman willingly touching such a thing.
