“It’s not so different for us.” Nora cut him off. “The current guidelines for physicians and surgeons suggest we attend two lectures on midwifery. That means you could leave here today half-finished with your education on childbirth.”
One of the midwives burst out in a humorless laugh. “I was called to a birth last week after the family realized thequalifieddoctor had no clue what he was about. He knew nothing about turning the child or lessening the pains.”
“We are not in the business of abating pain. We are in the business of keeping mother and child alive,” an older man calledfrom the back.
“Sometimes that’s the same thing!” the midwife retorted. “Sometimes easing the pain is a matter of life and death. If the mother is frightened, she cannot obtain the correct positions—”
“The pains force her into the correct position eventually.” The man crossed his arms as if the argument were over.
It wasn’t. Shouts from both sides only mounted.
“Stop!” Nora’s voice snapped sharp and clear in the commotion. She scanned the men in varying states of agitation. “If you want to leave, please do so now so we can get back to work. I need to know how to bring a child safely through a mento-anterior birth, and if none of you can answer my question, I have a woman here who says she can. I’m sure Dr. Horace Croft will be thrilled to hear her account.”
Not even the name of her mentor could persuade them all. Three more men gathered their papers and exited in a cloud of grumbles and discontent. To Nora’s surprise, the rest stayed, their skeptical eyebrows raised and curiosity twitching the edges of their mouths.
“Perhaps we can get on now,” Nora continued, smoothing the sides of her skirt to dry her palms. She gestured the midwife forward. “Mrs. Franklin?”
Chapter 5
Daniel lifted the edge of a yellowed bandage, assessing the degree of drainage. The slightest disturbance of the wrapping released a putrid odor. Dying flesh. Gangrene.
He looked up, met Horace’s eyes, and gave an infinitesimal shake of his head.
Horace frowned, pushing past Daniel and his best dresser, Bernard Jeffers. “Don’t be hasty. You haven’t taken a full look. Hand me the scissors.”
Daniel had mastered human anatomy and a dozen different sutures, but he was most proud of his hardest-earned skill—not rolling his eyes at Horace. “I can smell gangrene from here. You can too,” he whispered, keeping his words from the resting patient, a sixty-year-old man, half-deaf, who’d been knocked down last week by a slow-moving engine in a train yard. His demolished fibula normally dictated immediate amputation above the knee, but this unfortunate man had already lost his other foot in childhood. Horace declared him the perfect case for a risky procedure to save the broken limb, since conventional treatment would prevent the patient from ever standing again. “If we cut the leg off now, we can still get it all,” Daniel pressed.
Horace tsked and waved Daniel back.
Under Horace’s direction, Daniel had stifled his ownprotests and attempted the novel surgery, aligning the four pieces of bone and wrapping the limb in plaster. Plaster that, four days later, was yellow, soggy, and foul.
“The leg has to go, Horace,” Daniel insisted. “Now. Before it kills him. Clean up his leg for surgery, Jeffers.”
“Don’t be a fool. And don’t touch him.” Horace’s command carried fierce authority.
Jeffers looked between them, unsure which to obey. Daniel was about to repeat his order when another wave of stench rose up, forcing him to cough and turn away. The fetid odor was as bad as a week-old cadaver.
“Here you are.” Jeffers offered a handkerchief liberally anointed with menthol. Daniel thrust it under his nose, the fumes blurring his eyes with tears.
“Give me a moment. All I want is a thorough look.” Horace continued his steady cutting, dropping the sodden plaster into a bucket at his feet. Daniel circled his shoulders, sore from the work of today’s earlier surgeries. The heel spur removal was delicate work, not terribly taxing, but he’d also amputated an arm, set a fractured femur, and supervised Jeffers in three small procedures.
With practiced discipline, he inhaled through his mouth and closed his eyes. The sooner this leg came off, the better. Horace chuckled, and Daniel whipped his head around despite the smell.Hesaw no reason to laugh.
But Horace grabbed a pitcher of warm, weak tea, one of his favorite anointings for wounds, and flushed the leg. “Granulating!” Horace crowed once the multicolored pus was rinsed away.
“What are you talking about?” Daniel stepped closer,peering at the sutures.
The flesh around them was angry, red—and healing—not a putrid black, gray, or yellow. Daniel pressed one hand to the skin above the knee and the other to the ankle. Warm. “Dammit,” he muttered.
Horace chortled. “Feeling foolish?”
The patient shifted, angling for a look. Catching a whiff, his face went pale. “What’s appenin’ to my leg?” he moaned.
“Fair question.” Daniel turned to Horace. “It looks much better than I expected, but you have no idea what’s happening beneath the skin.” He touched the leg again, aching to see inside and know if the bones were knitting. “We have no way of knowing if there is infection in the bone or if it will ever hold weight. We both smelled it!”
Horace leaned close to the patient, ignoring Daniel. “Your leg is healing very well so far.”
“Then what’s that awful smell?” the old man demanded.
