“And if we’re looking for enemies, we’ll make the most powerful ones there,” Daniel countered.
“She’ll be addressing MPs and aristocrats.” Again, if Mrs. Phipps could have looked a little less distressed at the prospect, it would have bolstered Nora greatly.
“I’m more than capable of lecturing,” she reminded them.
Julia turned her eyes politely elsewhere, which only worried Nora more.
“We haven’t the best record.” Harry didn’t have to expound. They all knew what happened the last time she’d addressed London society.
Daniel leaned an elbow against the zebra’s sharp fur. “Not to mention, secrecy becomes even more important. If the attendees found out you’re with child, it would be a scandal. And with my aunt—perhaps a homicide. She’d surely kill me.”
Nora didn’t appreciate the dramatic use of words. “How would they know?” she demanded with more bite than necessary. The detail of her pregnancy seemed utterly unrelated. “I don’t have any visible signs.” She cast a furious stare at Horace, quelling whatever he had started to say about the shape of her nose. “None that normal people would see.”
“Eventually, my family will need to know. They might becurious when we appear with a fat infant in a pram.” Daniel’s eyebrows raised half in surrender, half in warning. “And when Aunt does the math, she’ll know we did all this campaigning for the midwives and training while you were pregnant. And there’s nothing more dangerous than my aunt when she’s affronted. Then what happens to your support and funding?”
“Can’t you placate her—” Nora began.
Harry laughed mirthlessly. “He cannot. That woman visited us in Paris when we were in medical school. I’ve been in navy battles less terrifying.”
Nora sighed. “Then do I refuse?”
Daniel sputtered. “Absolutely not. She arranged this as a favor. I only mean we need to be strategic about how we share news of the pregnancy. Perhaps swear we didn’t know.”
Nora rolled her eyes. “We’re both doctors.”
“We’ll think of some excuse.”
Horace made a few excited gestures from his chair. “I once arrived at a home for abdominal pain and delivered a full-term infant to a very surprised mother. She’d already had three children and had no clue she was expecting.”
“What about her monthlies?” Harry asked.
“She’d not had them since she started nursing her first child. She thought she had an acute attack of the bowels.”
“But her abdomen? How did she not notice a massive belly?” Harry countered.
“Hardly distended at all,” Horace announced enthusiastically. “Mind you, I can’t be sure the child was full term, but it was nearly six pounds and it lived.”
“May we return to the matter at hand? Marylebone, if yourecall,” Julia chided.
Harry and Horace both looked back to the annoyed group as if they’d forgotten the rest were there.
Daniel cleared his throat. “And we need to decide what we’re doing in the ward. We’ve tried to do the right thing by keeping Amelia. It’s right for her, at least. I’m still worried about Meg Prather and her consumption. She cannot survive a bout of cholera on top of it. Nor can our other patients.”
Horace cleared his throat, his eyebrows tangled in contemplation. “We have the facilities to handle twenty patients, but not the hands. Not for cholera patients. We need help.”
“And the midwives need work,” Nora answered. “No one wants to hire them after they found the Surrey girl guilty of manslaughter this week. But Julia had an idea…” Nora looked to her friend, who nudged her on with a nod. “We could offer the midwives a salary to help nurse the cholera patients. They need the work, and it is a ripe opportunity to give them training.”
“Who would pay money for a nurse?” Mrs. Phipps demanded. “Every household has a medicine cabinet stocked with essentials, and it takes no training to wipe a forehead. I did it with you.”
“Not true,” Nora disagreed. “You had Horace to tell you what I should drink and when and how to keep me clean and warm. But we all know there aren’t enough doctors and medical students for London on a good year. Harry can’t see half the people on his list most days.”
Harry inhaled in wordless consensus, and Nora continued with a nod. “But if we train the midwives in nursing, they wouldbe more useful to the doctors and perhaps earn their respect.”
Daniel hung his shaking head like a man about to deliver dismal news. “They’ll be useful so long as cholera is overrunning us,” he agreed, not looking at any of them. “And if we have the resources, we can pay them to make up for Adams’s campaign against them. But the doctors will only be angrier. They don’t share their territory.”
“It’s an absurd stance,” Horace growled. “If they stopped being such fools—”
“How can we change their minds?” Harry asked as if he already knew it was a lost cause. “And also, what did the woman—that patient of yours, Horace—think the quickening movements were?”
