Now, in the strange quiet of late morning—she’d overslept again—she stood in front of her washstand, the mirror tilted to reflect the small curve of her abdomen. The oval glass caught a corner of the heavy floral quilt of her empty bed, and she cast her eyes down. Daniel occupied it for shorter spans every week as his nights grew later and his mornings earlier. There weren’t enough doctors to meet the cries of suffering across London.
She donned her skirt, concealing the slight evidence of the burgeoning child, determined to help until her condition was noticeable. Despite the horrific failure of her lecture, she could still teach the new midwives, who managed to appear at her door as if conjured from air. Ruth was adept enough now to help with the rudimentary training. Nora had hoped to train dozens of women—more, if possible—and release them onto the streets of the city like angels of mercy, but even the small handful who’d sought her out would make a difference. She could still make her hospital a fit and welcoming place for women to work and seek treatment.
It was much harder without funds, but she wasn’t a girl anymore, railing against events that were over and done. She wouldn’t let upsets, even ones this large, destroy her. When facing an intractable problem, the only thing for it, as Horace said, was work. There was certainly plenty to be done.
She met Horace in the cholera ward, his face strained after another too-short night and too-full morning. He rubbed his twitching right eyelid with a thick thumb, then handed a rubber tube to Nora. They needed no words in this dance that was reflexive now. She fitted it gently between a woman’s blue lips.
“Goring died of an undisclosed illness in Sussex,” Horace said as he started a trickle of tea into the tube. “Took him in one night.”
“Goring the MP?”
He nodded. “And Gloucester is enduring a violent increase in cases.” Horace shifted the stethoscope on the woman’s thin chest and listened intently before continuing. “London workhouses are seeing more deaths, and the papers are making it worse, saying people are in such a hurry to dispose of the deceased that no one is adequately checking to see they are truly dead before burying them.”
Nora flinched as her eyes shot to their patient. Nothing terrified the sick like stories of being buried alive. Unfortunately, there was no need to worry they’d frightened the patient beside them. The gray-tinged woman was in no state to understand their conversation. She stared sightlessly, her lips trembling as if in attempted conversation with beings only she could see.
Nora turned away from the pitiful sight and back to Horace. “Did Goring’s death or the newspaper articles start any riots in Mayfair?”
“Don’t be bitter. The brouhaha at your lecture was a singularity.” His critical eyebrows reproved her even more eloquently.
She pressed her lips together. What a fitting word,singularity—like herself.At least for now.Perhaps someday there would be more women licensed as midwives and nurses—women she understood far better than the ones who pored over dress catalogs and advertisements for face creams.
She held out a hand, and Horace passed her another filled syringe. More broth to slip down this poor woman’s dry throat.
“What are numbers like at Bart’s?” she asked, dreading the answer.
“Filled to the rafters,” Horace confirmed. “It’s like a continual water brigade, only we’re tossing out buckets of dia—”
“Effluvia,” Nora corrected, and Horace gave her another stern look.
“Don’t let women like Daniel’s aunt make you mealymouthed. If you are talking about diarrhea, call itdiarrhea.”
Nora stretched her shoulder blades backward, the ache in the middle of her back spilling down her spine. “All right,” she conceded. “At least with you.”
She handed him the empty syringe, picturing the overflowing wards of St. Bart’s, her husband navigating the aisles of filth and death. They weren’t doing much better here, now that they’d filled one ward with more than twenty cholera patients, all women or children. Even with her handful of midwives willing to risk infection to help, they struggled against the power of this violent disease.
Horace pushed their patient’s lip aside to check the color of her gums, frowning at the gray flesh beside her yellow teeth. He picked up her hand, inspecting her fingernails. “Have you tried oatmeal to slow this one’s stools? Her hands are puckered.”
“I know,” Nora admitted with a sigh. “I’ll try some gruel again. She’s done nothing but sink since she stumbled in yesterday.”
Ruth appeared at her side with a tray. “I’ll get the gruel from the kitchen. No cream,” she promised. It tended to curdle in the sour stomachs of the patients, so they avoided it all together. “But there’s a new patient in the last empty bed. I brought herin this morning before you came down.” She pointed with her elbow down the row since her hands were full.
“How bad?” Nora asked.
Ruth wrinkled her nose for a moment. “The cholera or the stench? I need to clean her.”
That was hardly encouraging. Ruth had spent decades working in the poorest neighborhoods and was as accustomed to unpleasant smells as any doctor. Horace followed Nora to the next bed, the odor of old fish ripening with every step.
“Fisherwoman,” Horace muttered beside her. Probably one of the poor souls who tried to scrape a living picking mussels and crabs at low tide on the Thames. He shook his head. “She’s been in the Thames just this morning. I can smell the dirty water. If we allow the foul air—”
“What do we do?” Nora asked.
Horace motioned to Ruth. “You need to take patients’ clothing before you bring them into the common ward. This one ought to be scoured in lime water, before the smells contaminate the entire room.”
“What do I put her in if I take her clothes?” Ruth asked, scanning the room as patients leaned forward, vomiting into their buckets.
“Don’t worry,” Nora reassured her. “We’ll find something.”
“We can’t keep cutting holes in your old nightgowns, Nora,” Horace insisted.
