Horace’s chin rose sharply. “What else?”
“A young woman with failing vision.” Nora scanned the list. “Jaundice and black lung.”
“Jaundiceandblack lung?” Horace sniffed as if smelling something tempting.
“No. Two separate cases.”
He grunted in disappointment. “Child first.”
“That’s where I was headed.” She squinted at the notes, deciphering the address. She lowered her brow in concentration. “I feel like I’ve been to this address before.”
Nora glanced outside. The rain had halted, the cloudshovering benign and cold. “We can walk,” she determined. The fresh air would brush away the lingering strands of nausea that clung to her.
Nora recognized the place even before they arrived at the house. It stood at the end of a row of grimy buildings, walls streaked black with coal dust. The odor of a nearby tannery drifted on a teasing breeze beyond the confines of poverty toward the nicer shops and neighborhoods. She had been here before, but she couldn’t remember for what. It must have been years ago.
A young woman paced the front steps, wringing her hands. “My brother’s inside with my mother. We”—her voice caught as she beckoned them into a claustrophobic hallway—“need help.”
Mrs. Morse. Nora remembered the name once she stepped inside the family’s quarters—a single room with a potbellied stove and narrow beds stacked three to the ceiling, weighed down with filthy blankets. It was more crowded than the last time she’d been here. A table took up the entire walking space and left only room for a pile of bedding. Nora had delivered a baby boy here before she went to Italy.
Horace didn’t wrinkle his brow; he’d started his career aboard navy ships that barely fit an extra thought, but he’d spoiled Nora with stately dissection rooms and a spotless lecture theater. She crowded in close to a woman who had one child in her arms, another at her side, as she sat on the pile of bedding.
“Age?” Horace asked without preamble.
The woman looked up at the two strangers withoutexpression, her forehead creased with suffering. “Five. You… Are you the doctor’s girl? The one who delivered me years ago?”
Nora fought to keep her face smooth. The family had been poor then, but not so poor as this. “Yes. And a doctor myself, now. I remember you and your boy. He arrived quickly, as I recall. Too quickly for Dr. Croft to attend you. It was just you and me. You were one of my first deliveries.” Nora took the small bundle from her arms. “But I haven’t met this newest one yet.”
She pulled back the blanket to reveal waxy blue skin and mottled cheeks—a dead infant.
“Oh.” Dismay tinted the shocked word as Nora stifled an instinctive recoil, unable to set down the tragic bundle.
“He was fine yesterday,” Mrs. Morse said brokenly.
Nora tried not to let her eyes film with moisture. The mother’s sunken face spasmed with grief before turning back to the child in the bed.
Horace had the living boy’s wrist in his hand, measuring the pulse. “No fever. Weak pulse. Sunken eyes. Has he been vomiting?”
“A few times,” the mother replied in an empty tone, more like the echo of a living voice.
Horace pulled back the blankets, and Nora saw at once the bedding was soaked as if doused with a bucket of water.
“I try to clean, but it keeps coming out,” the mother said.
Nora leaned closer, unwilling to believe her eyes. White grains scattered across the sodden sheets. “Rice water stool,” she murmured woodenly, her thoughts congealing into an opaque paste. “Cholera.”
Horace narrowed his eyes. “What have you been giving him?”
“Milk with oats. Water.”
Nora shook her head reflexively, reviewing what she’d nearly memorized over the years—tersely written case notes Horace had published in theProvincial Medical & Surgical Journal. Other than the dim shadows of her memory, it was the only account of her family’s demise. “We need brewed liquids. Fermented ones. Tea, weak wine. Put the kettle on,” she commanded the sister. Horace and Mrs. Phipps had plied her with these, day and night, when she was eight years old, and she’d survived. It might work for this child.
For thisfamily, she corrected herself, surveying mother and daughter again. Both were chalky pale.
“Are you feeling unwell also?” Nora drew closer to study the color of the woman’s eyes and skin. The mother shrugged, and would have denied it if not for Nora’s delving gaze.
“A bit.” The words were mouthed, barely spoken.
“Nora.” Horace took a firm grip of her arm. “We must go. We’ll send—”
