Chapter Five
Emily
Uncharitable.
That’s what Emily had been just now. Uncharitable in the extreme. It hurt to have done it, a piercing stone in her shoe that demanded she run after the woman and take back what she’d said.
But something within her rebelled against her sense of duty at last. Something that had sprung to life upon meeting these strange people. This mother so certain of what she wanted that she’d risk everything for it. Her alluring companion wandering the earth clothed in full honesty without regard for whether she came across as scandalous or ridiculous. The something in Emily coveted their ease so strongly that when Miss Garcia mentioned the nature of her lover’s publishing business, it screamed in a voice she could not ignore: here’s your last chance, your best-possible excuse, your reason for shutting this down before it begins. You’ll never have to admit that your mother’s ghost has left you unsuited to the only branch of medicine that makes financial and logical sense. You’ll just say the scandal was a step too far. Everyone has their limits, after all.
She warred with herself as she arranged the stray cups on the tray for Betsy, unsure whether she wanted duty or this new thing to win. Before she’d made up her mind, she heard footsteps in the doorway.
Emily took a walk in the garden every morning, rain or shine, and so she knew perfectly well that it was too chilly outside today for Mrs. Smith to be sauntering back into the parlor with her jacket over her shoulder and her sleeves rolled to the elbow. Goosebumps stood up on the woman’s forearms, raising the little hairs there.
Which Emily certainly did not like.
Did not even notice, really.
“Can I help you find your way out, Mrs. Smith?” Emily said, trying to sound as cool as the air outside even as she felt a flush cross her cheeks. “The west garden gate will lead to where your coach is waiting.”
“Not just yet,” said Mrs. Smith. Her tone was warmer than she obviously was as she crossed the room and picked her mug back up. “Wanted one more sip for the road.”
“Of course. All this suburban air must be scratching your London throat up something awful.”
Mrs. Smith, far from looking offended, smiled like she was a companion who’d told a genuine joke. “Look, Dr. Clarke—”
“I’ve made my decision,” Emily snapped, hearing how her voice belied her indecision. “While I am sympathetic to Miss Garcia’s circumstance, an arrangement between her and me isn’t in anyone’s best interest.”
“Not anyone’s?” Mrs. Smith leaned her hip against the back of the couch, a little closer than was comfortable. Her fingers twitched before vanishing into her pockets. Emily had seen that sort of twitch before, the twitch of a tobacco addict. She was struck by a devastating mental image of this woman lighting up a cigarette right in the middle of the Clarke family parlor, a thought not helped by the faint and dangerous smell of smoke and ink that seemed to emanate from her jacket. “There’s no need to feign altruism with me, Dr. Clarke. I’m not one of your pamphlet-wielding bluestocking friends. I’ll not hate you for doing what’s best for yourself first.”
Emily startled at the...accusation? Was it an accusation? Mrs. Smith made such selfishness sound almost positive.
“She ought to have a London doctor,” said Emily, disappointed in how hollow her voice sounded, how uncertain. “Or at the very least, someone whose specialty resides in this branch of medicine. I am an emergency room physician, leaning toward surgery like my father before me. It will be more suitable all around for her to find someone else.”
“You’re worried about your reputation,” Mrs. Smith went on, as if she’d said nothing at all. “You think working with her will hurt your standing, which, I assume, is shaky enough as it is. I can’t blame you. She understands her place. And I think I understand yours.”
“I somehow doubt that,” Emily blurted. Mrs. Smith smiled wickedly, like it was the exact response she’d expected; Emily could hardly believe she’d been lured into participation. She straightened the wrinkles from her jacket and her conduct. “But never mind. Good day, Mrs. Smith.”
Mrs. Smith did not move to go. If anything, she settled in further, hip cocked out like she could stay right where she was forever.
Well. If she wasn’t going to go, Emily would. She wasn’t going to stand here all day. She collected the tray and started for the door.
Mrs. Smith blocked her path, reaching for the rattling cups. “Let me.”
“No.”
“Let me do something.” A hint of begging crept into her tone. “Miss Garcia won’t do as well with the sort of help we can get in London. It’s all there in your little notes—”
“My passionately written notes?” Emily snipped, brow up.
“Yes! That’s the point,” Mrs. Smith put her hands on the sides of the tray, dangerously close to Emily’s, the two of them staring at each other over the fixings. She’d seemed taller before now, an enormous sort of presence, but she wasn’t actually that much larger than Emily. Not vertically, anyway. Emily’s eyes dipped to that strained button and back again to a pair of eyes just as black, just as shining, just as...
“Passion!” Mrs. Smith’s hands tightened on the tray with an obvious and bursting abundance of the stuff. “Passion is the point, isn’t it, Dr. Clarke? Doctoring. It’s your passion. You think you’ll be better off without us, but you won’t be. The denial of your passion will stick in your mouth like this bloody—” She cleared her throat. “This blast—” Once more. “This lemon water. If you’re going to spook at the circumstances of your most desperate patients, why are you even doing this? I can’t imagine that becoming a physician was the easiest path for you. Why bother with all that if not for passion?”
Because someone had to do it.
The words flashed so brightly in Emily’s mind that they quite nearly lit up her tongue, the room, the whole household. With her father having refused any expansion of his family and her only brother choosing to play dress-up for profession as well as for pleasure, what other options had there been?
Marriage or medicine, those had been the options. And she’d been incredibly lucky to have even that much say. Clearly Mrs. Smith didn’t understand that not everyone was in a position to go traipsing about at pornographic print houses and questionable clubs in trousers.
Her options had always been limited and always would be. That passion for the work had come along in its own time was a great blessing and a balm to her resentment. But it was not enough to lead her into a frail woman’s birthing room. If she could feel guilty for her own mother’s death, something she’d taken no conscious part in, how would she ever keep her sanity if harm came to her own patient?
Yet, how might she feel to learn the poor Miss Garcia had died of sepsis in hospital, or of something preventable at home with her actress friends?
Emily’s determination wavered. But she quickly came to her senses. If Emily took on this patient, in this specialty, under these circumstances, she would be pigeonholed into these same cases for the rest of her life, because it was exactly what the world believed she should be doing already. She would receive accolades for her goodness, her social concern, her sober charity.
And then she would be considered ruined for any other type of patient, with any other type of malady. The perfect “female doctor,” doing the most generous, feminine, matronly “female doctor” things. Miss Garcia might end up alright, but eventually, someone wouldn’t. And when the stress of seeing families torn apart, ghosts born in place of children, empty chairs and unchanged sewing rooms, runaway sons and left-behind daughters bickering with each other about what the bloody point of it all was, she would have no way out. No way back to some other specialty. Nowhere else to go.
As she stared at the figure before her, she was filled with an infuriating and burning sense of want. Not just for the woman herself, but for what she represented. Who she was. How she was.
How Emily never, ever could be.
She yanked at the tray, taking it back into her own hands with surprising ease. Mrs. Smith hadn’t been clutching it as hard as she seemed. She wasn’t that desperate, and frankly, neither was Miss Garcia. The woman’s paramour—Mrs. Smith’s husband—probably had enough money in his business to bribe someone closer to home. It would be better anyway; they wouldn’t have to work out whether doctor or patient had to spend the last weeks of the confinement in a strange place. Everything would be simpler.
“I am not taking on Miss Garcia,” she said. “I am not taking on any obstetrics patients for the foreseeable future. Not taking on any private patients, in fact. I am too busy at the hospital, and that’s simply the reality of it.” She hesitated, gripping the tray with the full force of her guilt. “But do tell her...tell her to loosen that corset immediately. It is not helping her sickness in the slightest, and might even be causing its severity.” She tried to stop there, but a ghost appeared from her training in London, screaming at her with all the breath it never got to take: “And if she’s going to continue wearing one, she must switch to a maternity model within the next two weeks. Remind her that those were created so she can expand the lacings as she progresses, never to hide the condition. That is a tragically common misunderstanding of their purpose, with devastating consequences.”
“See?” said Mrs. Smith with an impressed sort of chuckle. “You can’t help but—”
“I have helped all I can.” Emily forced the words out through her teeth and the ghost back into the recesses of her mind, refusing to take even one more look at that beguiling grin before it shattered her into a million pieces. “Good day, Mrs. Smith.”
Emily wasn’t as relieved as she’d have liked after Mrs. Smith’s departure. Fortunately, there was a full day’s work ahead of her. Due to this strangely-timed appointment, she still had an afternoon at the hospital. Between the assessment of maladies, the fraught task of convincing male doctors of her diagnostic opinions, and the comfort work of pillow fluffing and blanket fetching that the troublesome nurse refused to handle for her yet again, there was very little time to think about her brother’s bizarre friends.
She arrived home with her body pleasantly exhausted. After some time whittling at a new queen’s curves in her study, a simple supper, and the swapping of hospital stories with Papa, her muscles ached for a bath, an herbal infusion, and the mattress. Since she and Papa had their home’s plumbing brought up to the cutting edge of sanitation every few years, she had quite a lovely bath to look forward to, with a porcelain claw-foot and hot tap in a dedicated bathroom. A soak was always just the thing after a trying shift.
But the thoughts started up as soon as she’d gotten her hair unpinned, like they’d been twisted in the coils and were suddenly set free. She found herself wondering what it might be like to let one’s hair down and see, not frizzy blond waves, but a lush, coal-black tumble that Mrs. Smith had certainly been hiding in her own voluminous, messy knot.
Madness. She shook the idea off, starting up the taps and letting them splash into the tub while she undressed.
And yet, the crashing sound of water could not chase out the next thought, which came when she started on the buttons of her blouse. With a slim figure and a tailor in the family, Emily’s simple clothes fit modestly and impeccably, each button secure and every piece of her well-situated even by society’s corseted standards. While everything about Mrs. Smith’s attire had been decadent and incorrect, it was that loose button, that barely contained excess of her form, that suddenly had Emily slipping on her own fastenings, blinking her eyes like mental images could be cleared the same as soot.
She shouldn’t let this woman bother her so much. She turned the cold tap down, letting the water go scorching. When she’d finally hung her outer-clothes and put the underthings in the washing basket, she gave herself a good, hot scrub with carbolic soap. That epitome of cleanliness would certainly take care of the day’s troubles, in addition to its microbes.
The tactic failed. As did the calm application of her healthful woolen night clothes and the careful braiding of her damp hair. She boiled and infused some water with chamomile, rosebuds, and lemon peel, adding a few drops of the gentle tonic she’d been sending to David. Far from distracting her, the task was tainted with accusations of sour babies that had her smiling to herself as she recalled their ridiculousness. She had to remind herself that there was nothing cute about such myths. She added an extra lemon slice to her infusion and brought it to her room, where she tried to read but could not, because the text had her wondering: Might there be something to the idea of handwriting analysis after all?
She snapped the book shut on the nonsense coursing through her. Enough was enough. Perhaps it was misplaced guilt over turning Miss Garcia away. Or the disappointment her father had expressed over supper when she’d told him that the appointment hadn’t gone well. Or annoyance at the audacity of Mrs. Smith to show up here, practically wink with those long lashes of hers, and act like any of them could just do as they pleased. Like she obviously did.
Whatever exactly had stirred up these torments, they were clearly becoming hysterical in nature and would need to be treated as such.
The conscious recognition made an impatient warmth blossom between Emily’s legs. She used to try to talk herself out of this, but science was on her side. Far from causing blindness or other problems, the release of feminine frustrations was medically indicated.
With her heart picking up at the anticipation, she went into her bedside drawer and very quietly drew out the smooth, polished wooden instrument that was her favorite. Snug in bed as she was, she kept the bottom buttons of her union suit fastened. The frustrations of Mrs. Smith were certainly not worth the bother of crossing the cold floor to clean up. She opted instead to glide the tip of the instrument along the seam of her sex through the cloth, swirling around the clitoris and back down again, until her breathing became harsh, her limbs grew tense, and when she knew she needed just a little bit more, it was the image of a strained and swelling waistcoat that propelled her into the crisis that would let her put this from her mind forever.