Nora waited until he’d finished suturing the muscle before she stepped in and brought the lip of the wound together. The scar would be small compared to the tumor she’d coaxed out from the breast. She commenced with straight, careful stitches.
“What’s the news from Bart’s?” she asked as she worked, her shoulders tightening when she realized this might lead back to the petition and the fight against midwives.
Daniel was smarter than that. “Jeffers had the latestProvincialtoday. Have you read it?”
“Haven’t seen it. I suppose Horace is hoarding it.” Nora leaned closer to her work, carefully maneuvering a stitch so it wouldn’t pucker.
“An article by a Dr. Conway,” Daniel continued as he monitored the vaporizer. “He claimed he’s seen cholera cases in London. He classified the cases as Asiatic.”
Nora’s eyes flitted up. “How many? Where?” Horace had seen the one on the ship, but no other sailor had contracted the terrible blight.
“Only two. Last year Conway reported six, and nothing came of it. Horace says he’s an alarmist.”
Nora’s shoulders rounded with relief. “Two cases doesn’t sound like cholera.” Though immune to the common fears of corpses and dismembered limbs, if Nora had a monster that haunted her, it was the sallow, yellow cloud that had swept over her childhood like the grim reaper, only to lose its grip on her collar as it bore her family away.
“Horace is going to the club to talk with Conway tonight,” Daniel said, watching her face. “I’m sure it’s an isolated case, like the sailor.”
Nora’s teeth found the inside of her lip. Horace would find out the truth. She’d watched him lure, cajole, flatter, and intimidate his way to information before.
Daniel took Miss Rawly’s pulse. “Pulse fifty-five beats per minute. Respiration slow and deep. Tongue pink. I’m removing the mask.” He glanced over Nora’s work. “What stitch is that?” he mused. “I would have used simple continuous, but yours look stronger.”
Nora didn’t let her warming cheeks show as she dipped her head. “A variation of herringbone.”
“Herringbone?” he asked in confusion.
“Particularly useful in needlepoint for making crosshatches,” she admitted.
Daniel gave a laugh. “No fair having all those womanly arts to draw on.”
If he was being gracious, so could she. She anointed the sutures with wine and olive oil—a practice Horace, Daniel, and Harry had also picked up, more as a good luck talisman than anything else. Horace was even testing the effect, inflicting sutures on dozens of sedated mice.I do believe the wine diminishes inflammation, he admitted.The red perhaps better than the white.
But she was stalling. She rubbed her hands together, trying to strike up the flame of courage. With the wound cleaned and Miss Rawly sleeping peacefully and painlessly, there was no better time to tell Daniel what Horace and Mrs. Phipps suspected.
What she herself was beginning to suspect. Her stomach quivered mercilessly. She had no doubts he’d be giddy with joy. But her work—her future as a surgeon—existed in a dark mist her searching eyes couldn’t penetrate.
Her lips parted, words stirring like seeds reaching for the sky, until she recalled Daniel’s face on Friday evening. He’d looked confused, almost appalled, that she’d want to continue working after having children. If he didn’t sympathize with her goals, who would ever be on her side?
Nora surveyed the smooth, hard tumor glistening in the bowl. She’d made clean work of the removal in less than ten minutes, possibly saving a woman from future torment. And yet, even with such skill, Mrs. Phipps surely wouldn’t approve of her cutting away with an infant in the nursery. Daniel’s family would be freshly horrified, though she could accustom herself to their tantrums. Julia adored babies. She’d be baffled that anyone would put one down in order to take up a scalpel.
Perhaps only Horace would understand. And Magdalena.
Nora blinked, hiding a long second in the darkness.
An eccentric genius and a philandering single woman to back her. That hardly buttressed her argument.
“Are you well?” Daniel asked as she continued her careful stitching. “You’re quiet.”
Nora swallowed. “Just concentrating.”
As soon as she told—if there was even anything to tell—there’d be a hurricane of opinions swirling around her. She’d be ordered off her feet, away from sick patients, forbidden to attend strenuous births. But it had been almost four weeks now, and the longer she waited to tell him, the more hurt he’d be.
Nora pulled the sheet up, covering Miss Rawly’s exposed breast. “Let’s hope we got it in time,” she said. “I didn’t see or feel any others.”
Daniel carefully poured the hot water from the vaporizer down the floor drain and buffed away a stray drop from his glossy shoes. “If you didn’t, no one would.”
He glanced at her, relief plain on his face that had nothing to do with the patient. Nora understood instantly. He’d expected another row—thought she’d demand an explanation and apologyfor his cowardly act of giving in to Adams. At least, she chose to believe it was temporary cowardice and not a true endorsement. She knew it well—the fear that kept one from telling the truth.
She wiped down her instruments, replacing them in their leather sleeves as she tried again to construct an opening sentence that stubbornly refused to form in her brain. Everything in her shouted to delay, at least a little longer. There were too many patients counting on her. Ruth and Mrs. Howell were beginning to trust her more, and both had so much to learn.
