“You had a terrible night.”
Nora flinched. “How did you know?”
Mrs. Phipps balanced the tray on the bed and turned her attention to fluffing the pillows. “I’ll sit a bit.” Her elliptical response—more a sidestep than an answer—settled in the quiet room.
“Watch me eat, you mean.”
“These sad cases. They always put you off your food,” Mrs. Phipps said. “I know you had one because you tend to forget to remove your boots downstairs after you’ve lost someone.” She nodded toward the tangle of leather and shoestring on the floor. “Mother or child?” Nora saw in her face the hope it wasn’t both.
“One of a set of twins,” Nora confessed.
Mrs. Phipps folded her hands. “Eat some breakfast. You’ve plenty of time. Harry already checked the ward patients, and Horace is in the theater doing heaven knows what. You can give yourself an hour or two.”
Nora managed a sideways smile. “I’ve taken a couple already.” The clock showed that the time was terribly late.
“The world won’t break if you take another.”
Like a child, Nora sank onto the rumpled blankets and took a sip of tea. Mrs. Phipps was right. She had no appetite whatsoever.
“The toast,” Mrs. Phipps commanded, as crisp as the browned crust.
Nora relented. She didn’t want it, but Mrs. Phipps would stay until it was gone, and if she was stealing an hour, Nora wanted at least some of it to talk to Horace. It helped on dayslike today.
***
She found him alone in the surgical theater, working with a corpse, not a patient. Lingering at the threshold, she took a moment to observe him unseen. Usually at least one person shadowed him, listening and learning. Today he mumbled alone, his back insufficiently broad to hide the miniature body before him.
A child. Nora’s mouth drooped, even as her nose twitched at the smells of early decay and something else in the air. Singed hair. Burnt flesh.
Her frown deepened.
Today’s lecture subject must be a burn victim. Nora turned up her cuffs, wondering if she really ought to help with this one. Burns were especially distressing, even on the dead, but more so on a child.
Horace glanced over his shoulder, his face unreadable. “You coming? Or are you going to dillydally some more?”
Of course he’d known she was here. Silly of her to think he was too distracted. “The burns surprised me.”
“Never be surprised; it is an unattractive quality for a doctor. Treat every case as if it were precisely what you expected.” Horace bent and peered at the small raw stub that remained of the child’s left ear.
“What happened?” Nora asked. His commands, though brusque, always helped steady her.
Horace tsked. “She was home alone, cooking for her younger siblings when her clothes caught fire.” He pinched his mouthtogether, a sign Nora recognized as his own concession to grief. “It’s a wonder the whole building didn’t go down. Every year, I’m amazed there isn’t another Great Fire that turns the entire East End to rubble.”
Nora studied the hopelessly disfigured face before them. Nothing could have saved her. “What are you doing with her?”
Horace pointed his thin probe at the burnt face. “I want to attempt to reconstruct a nose with skin from her leg. See if we can update Professor Bünger’s method. Should be a well-attended lecture.”
Her stomach tightened. Sometimes Horace wandered too far into the realm of madness. Rhinoplasty on a burnt child, however interesting it might be, seemed a callous experiment.
“Do you really think—”
“I want your help with this,” he said, cutting her off. “There will be others, which you know very well. Not so burned as this, of course, but unless we try and practice some cure, they will be doomed to live and die in disfigurement.”
With a sigh, she picked up a damp sponge and wiped a smear of ash from the girl’s blackened arm. The small limb rested stiff and cold in her hand.
Horace studied the skin of the upper leg, looking for the least affected area, before marking a spot with a charcoal pencil and drawing a precise ellipse, pinching the skin. “It’s similar to nose skin. Or perhaps the stomach?” He moved his inspection to her abdomen.
“Daniel said you lost a wealthy woman at Bart’s to burns last week.” Nora felt like she’d hardly seen her husband since he’d told her about the case, and that was days ago. “Why doburns almost always befall the girls?”
