Chapter 8
“Oh Jenny,” Maggie whispered as she hurried down the stairs to kneel at the girl’s side.
Jenny’s face was bloodless, her body seemingly lifeless, but at least she was breathing. Maggie saw the faint rise and fall of her chest and felt a thready pulse in her wrist. Thank God the poor girl hadn’t broken her neck.
“That old trick,” Elizabeth, the oldest of the group, said on a sorrowful sigh from the top of the stairs. “I know she was worried she was in the family way, and I guess maybe she thought she’d end it.”
“Was she?” another girl asked, sounding curious as well as sorrowful before dropping her voice to a frightened whisper. “Did… did Miss Jessie know she might be… you know… expectin’?”
No one answered, but looking up from Jenny, Maggie saw them all exchange uneasy glances, and she felt a frisson of alarm. Was Jessamine really someone to be so feared?
“We need to send for a doctor,” Maggie stated firmly, and was again met with anxious silence. “Does anyone know of a doctor?” she demanded.
No doctor or nurse had had any need to come to the parlor house since Maggie had arrived.
In reply to her question, Emma Mae merely shrugged, and Elizabeth sighed again, shaking her head.
“Miss Maggie,” Elizabeth called down the stairs, “Miss Jessie ain’t going to pay for no doctor, and Jenny won’t have enough to swing it.”
“Miss Jessie won’t pay?” Maggie couldn’t hide her shock. Jessamine Conant might be a hard-nosed businesswoman, but a woman’s—a girl’s—life was at risk, judging from the blood that was soaking her skirts. “But Jenny might… die.”
No one responded to this.
“There’s the women’s hospital, on California Street,” Emma Mae finally offered dubiously, after a long, tense moment.
“They might send someone, and they’re charity.
You don’t pay unless you can. But…” She shrugged, disconsolate, almost indifferent.
“They might not be willin’ to come to a place like this.
Not many of those God-fearin’ folks are. ”
“I’ll go.” Brendan came down the stairs, already dressed, his face set in determined lines. He glanced swiftly at Maggie and then looked away again. “I’ll bring someone back. A doctor, or at least a nurse.”
“Thank you, Brendan,” Maggie whispered. She glanced back down at Jenny, who hadn’t even stirred. The crimson stain spreading across her skirt of yellow satin was getting wider.
Just then, Miss Jessie came to the top of the stairs. She was still in her gown from the evening, lavender silk with black buttons down the front, her hair dressed elegantly. Her narrowed gaze took in the girls loitering in the hallway, and then Jenny at the bottom of the stairs. She said nothing.
“She fell, Miss Jessie,” another of the girls, Marina, small with dark eyes and masses of dark hair, volunteered in little more than a whisper.
Her parents had died on the ship from Italy, and she’d been at the parlor house almost from the moment she’d arrived in this city.
She shrank behind another girl as soon as she’d spoken the words.
“I can see that, Marina.” Miss Jessie’s voice was cool and brisk, not without, Maggie hoped, a touch of pity. “We’d better bring her upstairs,” she decided.
Without further instruction, Brendan took Jenny in his arms and carried her up himself, laying her gently on her bed, before going to fetch the doctor.
“The rest of you, back to bed,” Miss Jessie commanded the girls, who were crowding outside Jenny’s room, some looking scared, others just tired.
“We will open as usual at noon, and you all need your sleep.” And with that, she shut Jenny’s door in their faces, leaving her and Maggie alone in the room, with the girl supine and unconscious on the bed.
“Do you have any nursing skills?” Miss Jessie asked curtly, and Maggie hesitated.
“I nursed my mother when she was ill,” she admitted, “but that was a long time ago.” And hadn’t involved much more than bathing her forehead and urging her to drink more water. “She was always quite sickly. But nothing… nothing like this.”
“She’s bleeding through her skirts,” Miss Jessie remarked dispassionately. “I suppose the silly fool got herself pregnant.”
“She didn’t get herself pregnant,” Maggie replied sharply, before she could think better of it, and a small, sad smile touched the older woman’s lips.
“No, she didn’t,” she agreed quietly, and Maggie was gratified to hear a soft tone of sympathy in her voice.
“But, as far as anyone else cares, she did. You won’t find a man in this whole city who would put his name to her bastard, which is just as well, because it looks as if she might be losing it.
” She nodded toward Jenny’s skirts, the scarlet stain spreading.
“And she’ll likely lose her life along with that of her babe’s, if we don’t do something about it,” Miss Jessie continued.
“It will take an hour at least for Brendan to fetch a doctor, and that’s if any will come. ”
“All right.” Maggie straightened, stiffening her spine as she hid her trembling hands in the folds of her nightgown. “What should we do?”
Miss Jessie sighed, and for a moment, despite her beauty and her relative youth, she looked old and tired. “Staunch the bleeding, is my best guess,” she answered after a moment. “But I’m no nurse.”
While Miss Jessie watched, Maggie started to lift Jenny’s sodden skirts.
Looking at the girl, so pale and lifeless, with her painted face and her curled hair, she felt a stirring of pity as well as anger.
No fourteen-year-old child should have to live—and maybe die—like this.
Her hands tensed on the slippery satin of Jenny’s gown, and then, taking a steadying breath, she began to unfasten the skirt from the bodice, and with Miss Jessie’s help, remove it.
Her petticoats were drenched with blood. Maggie gulped, tasting bile, before she resolutely swallowed it down. “I imagine we’ll need something to keep her from bleeding further,” she said, and she was glad her voice didn’t shake. “Are there spare sheets we could use as bandages?”
Miss Jessie’s mouth tightened and, with one curt nod, she left the room. She came back a few minutes later with several worn sheets already torn into strips. As best as she could, Maggie bundled them between Jenny’s legs, tying them securely to try to keep the blood from flowing further.
Miss Jessie watched her, her eyes narrowed, her lips pursed. “You’re angry with me,” she remarked after a moment.
Startled, Maggie glanced at her. “No?—”
“You think I’m being heartless,” Miss Jessie continued with a brisk nod. “And most likely I am. But there are a thousand girls like Jenny up and down this city, Maggie. I was one of them once.”
“But this one,” Maggie replied after a moment, her gaze on the strips of linen as she finished securing them, “is in your house, as well as in mortal danger. The others up and down the city aren’t your responsibility.”
“And Jenny is?” There was a touch of scorn to Miss Jessie’s voice that made Maggie stiffen.
“I would have thought so,” she replied quietly as she glanced down at the girl, smoothing the damp hair away from her forehead. Her eyelids fluttered once and then closed again, her breathing alarmingly shallow. How much blood had she lost?
“I can’t be responsible for every wayward girl who comes into my house,” Miss Jessie stated tersely. “I feed them, I clothe them, I treat them fairly. But I run a business, and the champagne and the cigars and the satins and the silks—they all cost a lot of money. This isn’t a charity.”
“And yet you keep Evie on, for charity’s sake,” Maggie replied with some heat.
It seemed terribly unfair to her. Why should Jenny be treated so callously, and the sullen maid with far more leniency?
“As far as I can tell,” she added in something of a snap, “the girl barely lifts a finger! And then complains whenever she does.”
Miss Jessie was silent, her mouth pursed up like a prune, her eyes flashing with ire, but she made no reply and, with a flash of shock, Maggie suddenly understood.
“She’s your daughter,” she blurted dumbly, and the madam’s mouth went even tighter.
“Isn’t she?” Miss Jessie didn’t answer and Maggie glanced down at Jenny’s pale face.
Jenny, who had no one, her mother having died in childbirth, and her father a tyrant and abuser she’d been fortunate to escape—for this.
“Does Evie know?” she asked quietly, and Miss Jessie gave a minute shake of her head.
“No one does,” she confessed in a voice so low Maggie strained to hear it.
“And my father?” she asked after a moment. “Why do you keep him on, when he does so little? Is that not charity?”
“He cheers the girls, and he’s harmless,” Miss Jessie replied with a shrug, her gaze skating away.
“And he reminds me of my own pa, useless layabout that he was. Your father is kind in his own way, and he’s no real trouble.
” She sighed, her gaze cast to the ceiling.
“I promise you, I’m not as heartless as I seem to you right now, Maggie.
I’ll pay for the doctor if he needs to be paid, and I won’t turn Jenny out on the street when she’s poorly.
But if she can’t earn her keep here…” She let that thought trail off ominously, just as the door opened.
“The doctor’s here,” Brendan said, as a woman stepped out from behind him, dressed neatly in a shirtwaist and dark skirt, a hooded cape of pale gray wool thrown over her shoulders. She looked to be in her mid-forties, her body trim but solid, her dark hair streaked with silver.
Maggie stared at her blankly. “Where’s the doctor?” she asked and the woman gave her a quick smile, her dark eyes glinting with surprising good humor.
“Right here,” she replied as she set down her black bag. “I am she. I am the doctor, Miss…?”
“O’Halloran,” Maggie said quickly, embarrassed by her mistake but also stunned by the revelation. She had never heard of a lady doctor before. She had not known such women existed. “I’m sorry, I?—”
“I receive that exact reaction more often than not,” the woman replied briskly.
“My name is Dr. Brown.” She glanced down at Jenny and then up at Maggie, her gaze piercing.
“It looks like this young woman has lost a great deal of blood,” she remarked quietly, “and I suspect she might be miscarrying her baby. I will need to examine her first to ascertain that accurately, of course. Did you pack these sheets about her?”
“Yes.” Maggie gulped and nodded. “I was trying to stop the bleeding?—”
“Well done. You might have saved her life.” With her unblinking gaze trained on Maggie, the doctor continued, “Are you able to assist me?”
“Assist?” Maggie stared at her blankly, her mind spinning, before she swallowed and swiftly nodded. “Yes. Yes, I can.”
“Good.” Dr. Brown glanced at Jessamine, who was standing stiffly by the bed, and then at Brendan, whose face was contorted with pity as he tried not to look at Jenny, no doubt to spare her modesty.
“The others can leave,” Dr. Brown instructed.
“Miss O’Halloran and I will carry on from here.
If you could be so good as to bring plenty of hot water and some more sheets, I would be very grateful. ”
With a terse nod, Miss Jessie left the room, followed by Brendan, who glanced fleetingly at Maggie, his expression inscrutable, before turning away. As the door clicked shut behind them, Dr. Brown smiled at Maggie, her eyes crinkling at the corners.
“Now,” she said, “shall we get to work?”