“Then how does he stand sticking his nose into all the…” Ruth waved a hand, struggling for a word to name the cadavers.
“Bodies,” Nora supplied. It was kinder than corpses, and Ruth was particularly resistant to learning from the deceased. “He’s adjusted somehow.”
“What about you? Most of my…my patients”—she was resistant to adopting other doctor words too—“are troubled by smells. It’s often one of the first symptoms.”
“I’ve had a harder time working with the bodies. Lately, I seem more susceptible to strong smells.”
Ruth nodded, her hair the color of a field after gleaning, when streaks of silver glistened on brown stalks. “You probably are, then. Some women seem to know instinctively within days. I’m surprised you don’t have a sense, with all your training.”
Nora smoothed the top of the box, watching the gray light from the windows play over the glossy wood grain. She still had smudges of watercolor paint on her hands from an earlier project. “Everyone says I’ll have to abandon my work after I have a child.”
“You’ll need a good lie-in, for certain,” Ruth confirmed. “You can’t be standing for hours and running all over town.”
Nora dipped her head.
“Not for a good two months,” Ruth continued. “Some midwives say less. And I won’t fib and say I haven’t seen mothers back at work in less than five days, but that’s only the ones who would starve without it.”
“Yes, but,” Nora fumbled, “some say I mustn’t practice at all after I’m a mother.”
A deep frown pressed itself onto Ruth’s face. “I have five children. I work every day.”
Nora’s eyebrows flexed, something coming into focus. Somehow, she had never considered Ruth’s work as…work.
“You can’t be a midwife unless you’ve had your own.” Ruth crossed her arms against her lean chest. “The more, the better.”
“What do you mean? Surely there are women—” Her thoughts moved faster than her tongue, listing the midwives she knew: Mrs. Howell, Mrs. Bailey, Ruth…
“Nah.” Ruth shook her head emphatically. “No one will come to you until you’ve endured it yourself. I had a skilled aunt who never married, and no one would go to her. She had to assist my grandmother.”
“Do you mean there are prerequisites?” Nora pinched the cloth foot of the infant doll tightly, rolling the lumpy batting between her fingers. She’d assumed they came to their careers by necessity or happenstance, but if there was some sort of regimen, wouldn’t that evidence help in the coming confrontation with London’s doctors?
“Aye. You can’t be a midwife until you’re married, and you must be taught by someone with a reputation. My mother could coax a child out of anyone. She lost far less than other midwives she knew.”
Nora checked the windows to see if the storm had lifted, but rivers of water still twisted down the panes. The dawning light was in her mind and nowhere else.
Motherhood is a prerequisite for them—a qualification no male doctor could claim. Obstetrics was a fully recognized branch of medicine, and shouldn’t it function hand in hand with midwives, experienced women who knew all the facets of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood?
“You’ll only be better once you’re a mother yourself,” Ruth pointed out, still perplexed.
Nora shook her head. None of this should have been news to her. She’d seen midwives hustling about their work for years, but in Italy, most of the women she’d worked with were nuns. She hadn’t stopped to think that here…here they were all married women with children.
She squeezed her hands into fists, the dig of her nails inside her palms reassuring and welcome. She could confine her work to obstetrics and still practice surgeries. Complex ones. Hysterectomies. Cesareans. Hemorrhages. A thrill careened up her back, raising the hairs on her neck. Horace and Daniel never objected to Mrs. Franklin doing her work, so how could they object to Nora practicing women’s medicine?
The other physicians might not recognize it, but she was about to become even more qualified. No longer would “contractions of the muscles” or “compression of other organs” beillustrations in an anatomy book, but her own experience. What the men said in theory, she would know viscerally, with the scars and stretch marks to prove it. She could advocate for the midwives more effectively once she had benefited personally from their expertise, and advancing the cause of mother-midwives also allowed her to take on Magdalena’s charge to improve opportunities for women to work and study.
Protecting and training midwives wasn’t just a cause for her. It was her future, and Ruth’s, and—
Don’t get ahead of yourself, Nora cautioned silently.
Her mind might be reeling with possibilities and precedents, but she must be wise. If Adams was determined to oppose her, she’d face him, one move at a time.
If only his petition didn’t bear Daniel’s name.
Chapter 21
“Thanks for coming with me. I know you’ve put in a long day already.”
Harry’s voice—low, mumbled, half-buried under the clamor of the busy street—breached Daniel’s cluttered thoughts. It was true. He’d had a taxing day, but not as many in a row as Harry.
