“You see? We are of precisely the same mind.” Adams tucked both items back in his pocket. After bidding a good afternoon, he vanished with remarkable speed, leaving Daniel uneasy in his wake.
As he readied his instruments for his next patient, the conversation replayed in jagged fragments, almost nonsensically.He’d agreed only to safe standards. If anything, it was an argument in Nora’s favor—to train more midwives. He fumbled placing a retractor next to his scissors.
Focus, he told himself.Distraction is dangerous.
Chapter 13
Nora held her breath as Daniel pried at the crate with a crowbar, the thin wood splintering in protest as the nails held stubbornly.
“Careful,” she urged.
Daniel pressed the crate against the wall to give himself extra leverage, steadying it with his foot as he wrestled the hardest nail.
“Maybe try another nail first,” she suggested.
“It won’t matter,” Horace said. “The lid won’t open until that nail is out. Think of it as a displaced shoulder. Firm, steady pressure until it overcomes the lip of the glenoid and snaps into place.”
Now Nora was picturing a patient screaming as she wrenched his arm back into its socket, which didn’t calm her nerves at all. There was fragile, finely fired pottery inside this box, sent all the way from Italy at great expense. She’d spent money the household couldn’t afford to order these obstetric models, turning the faint black ink of their ledger back to red.
Even Harry had joined them in the surgical theater for the delicate dissection of the shipping box. He leaned against the granite operating table with an amused grin. “Do you need a strong man to help?”
“I’ll ask Horace, if it comes to it,” Daniel muttered, heavingupward as the nail gave way with a screech. He set the splintered lid on the floor, well away from them.
Horace rubbed his hands together the same way he did before touching a feverish patient to avoid chilling them with cold fingers. “Let the men lift it,” he said as Nora reached into the open crate, terrified she’d find only shards wrapped in cotton and paper.
“I can help,” she argued, but Daniel and Harry were already grappling with the oddly shaped bundles.
“Wait.” Nora grimaced at the stone table. “Don’t move it yet.” She rushed to the dispensary and snatched several wool blankets and hurried back, fearful they would proceed without her. The three men watched as she arranged the blankets on the polished slab to cushion the newly arrived treasures. “Go on.”
She held her breath as Daniel lifted a large bundle and, with Harry’s help, hobbled it to the table. “It’s bigger than I imagined.”
With the care of a woman who’d dissected beetles and houseflies beneath microscopes, Nora unwrapped the fragile prize, peeling away the packing paper one layer at a time. How did anything this fragile survive an ocean voyage with careless sailors and bumpy cart rides through washed-out roads?
A mountain of discarded packing gathered at her feet—up to her knees—before she finally unearthed something with the sheen of white ceramic. Nora held her breath.
Intact.
“Quite the contraption,” Daniel said, steadying the strange apparatus on the table—a hollow, headless, limbless torso with a giant, curving glass uterus resting on the tops of the truncatedlegs. The maker had even created dimples of fat in the thighs. She’d expected terra cotta, burnished, like the color of the Bologna hills, but the clay was fired to an immaculate white.
“Bellissima,” she whispered.
“Not quite theVenus de Milo,” Harry said.
Nora gave him an incredulous look. “It’s not—” She stopped. This was art, just another kind.
Horace lifted the glass dome and stuck his great head into the empty belly, assessing the accuracy of the size.
“Horace, she’s not meant to be worn like a hat,” Harry pointed out.
“There’s a hole at the bottom, dilated to ten centimeters,” Horace said approvingly, voice echoing inside the model.
“Let me see,” Harry said, nudging Horace’s shoulder. Daniel steadied the apparatus, making sure their movement didn’t upset the precious sculpture.
“Both of you, step back,” Nora ordered. “We need to lay it down on its back. It’s designed to sit upright or be laid down for lectures.” She oversaw the careful shift in position as they placed the model on her wool blankets. The sculptor had done his job with care, ensuring the piece was sturdy enough to withstand lectures and demonstrations, and yet gracefully crafted.
“If only births were this easy,” Harry said, staring at the yawning hole between the sculpted hips. “So clean and silent.”
“Poor Harry.” Nora gave him a scathing look. “Are the women too loud for your delicate ears?”
