Mrs. Franklin’s eyes widened. “Are you as well?”
Nora shook her head. “My husband and I are both trained in medicine and surgery. He studied at the Sorbonne, and I trained at the University of Bologna, but we each had to get a license from the Royal College of Physicians of London to practice here.” Such tidy words to summarize a nearly impassable road. Flashes of breathless surgeries and hateful faces whipped through her mind before she returned to Mrs. Franklin. “I still have my troubles. Few male patients let me practice on them. Even many women are reluctant.”
Mrs. Franklin grunted, uncannily in the same pitch Horace used to denote disapproval.
“I knew Dr. Croft was up to something with all the construction on the home, but I never imagined anything on this scale. A lift, a dispensary… My aunt compounded some remedies in her lying-in house. Still-room recipes, mostly, but women swore by them. She was a fine hand at it, but her house…” Mrs. Franklin shook her head. “Her house was nothing like this.” She looked directly at Nora. “He thinks the world of you, doesn’t he?”
Nora blushed. “We did keep patients here before.” There’d been a laboratory and surgery here when she’d arrived as a sick and dying orphan. But when she’d left for Italy, Horace had truly outdone himself constructing the current facilities.
“This is our new exam room.” Nora took a few more steps and opened another door. Three faces spun toward her in surprise, and Nora realized, in her embarrassment, that she’d ignored the muffled sounds of conversation that ought to have warned her away. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she apologized, closing the door.
“Don’t go. You’re just who we need,” Julia called after her.
Nora leaned into the room, still hesitant. The place was crowded, with Julia and Harry bent over a seated female patient.
“You can prevent a disaster,” Julia said. “My husband is trying to cut this lady’s hair.”
“She needs sutures,” Harry said, scissors poised a few inches above the patient’s long, brown hair.
“Please don’t cut it off,” the woman pleaded.
“Mrs. Parley,” Harry said with exaggerated patience. “I am holding a bandage to your bleeding head. Your husband will not appreciate me sending you home in this state to spare a few curls.”
“You don’t understand.” Julia blocked the scissors, hands spread protectively over Mrs. Parley’s tresses. “If you take off that entire piece, she can’t put her hair up at all. You need to take locks from the middle so she can use this piece to hide it.”
“Do you often get this kind of trouble?” Mrs. Franklin whispered to Nora.
Nora grinned, holding in a laugh. “More often than you’d think.” Julia was the real expert at these impromptu hairdressing consultations, even if she was less skilled at wielding the curved needle.
“She’s bled through this one,” Harry said, tossing aside a wad of folded linen and reaching for another. “Nora, can you interject some reason?”
“This is Dr. Trimble and his wife, Julia, who assists us in the clinic,” Nora whispered to Mrs. Franklin. “I’m afraid I—”
“Go right ahead,” Mrs. Franklin said, obviously highly entertained by the scene already. “I can wait.”
Harry removed the soaked bandage, revealing a gaping cut at the base of Mrs. Parley’s occipital bone—which Nora could see glistening white—flowing with unstanched blood before he quickly covered it again. The woman flinched as Harry pressed hard on the back of her head.
“What happened?” Nora demanded.
“It was stupid of me. I was just down the street when I dropped my package. I stooped to get it and didn’t see the railing above me. I saw stars for a moment.”
“That will do it,” Nora agreed. “Dr. Trimble’s right. We’ll need to cut the hair for him to close the wound safely.”
“Thank you.” Harry huffed.
“But we don’t need to make a hack job of it,” Julia objected. “Let Nora cut it.”
“Please let her,” Mrs. Parley begged. “I’m proud of my hair.”
“Proud enough to bleed to death,” Harry grumbled.
“He’s teasing,” Nora reassured as the woman’s eyes went wide. “But it won’t stop bleeding on its own.”
“Just trust me,” Julia said, taking the scissors and passing them to Nora. “I’ll be certain no one ever knows until it grows back.”
Harry relented and looked on skeptically as Julia directed while Nora cut and shaved until just the straight split was bare.
“This is a novel one,” he muttered in mock complaint. “If you’d like to consult on all my head wounds, there’s plenty to be found in local pubs.”
