Chapter 9
“If you could be so good as to hold the lamp a little closer,” Dr. Brown murmured.
Maggie’s breath hitched as she angled the lamp closer to Jenny’s supine body.
The doctor had lifted her skirt, leaving the poor girl completely bare from the waist down, and then she’d palpated her pale stomach before doing an internal examination that had Maggie looking away.
Now, however, she could not look away, for Dr. Brown was about to operate.
“She was indeed pregnant,” she told Maggie in a low voice, her face touched with pity. “And sadly she’s in the process of losing the child, as I feared. We will do what we can to complete the process, and in doing so, I hope save her life. What is her name?”
“Jenny,” Maggie whispered.
Jenny let out a moan, her eyes fluttering open as she briefly struggled to sit up and yet was barely able to lift her head.
Dr. Brown pressed her lips together. “It will be easier if she remains asleep during this procedure,” she stated quietly. “Both for her and for us. I’m going to give her anesthesia—do you know what that is?”
Mutely, fascinated, Maggie shook her head.
“It’s a drug, a sort of medicine, that will keep her in an unconscious state while I do what must be done.
It has transformed countless surgeries, and saved thousands of lives.
” Her mouth tightened once more. “There are some who resist it, mainly men who pride themselves on performing a surgery in thirty seconds or less—and leave the patient to bleed out on the operating table.” Dr. Brown’s eyes flashed and she gave Maggie a quick, conciliatory smile.
“There is much to be done in terms of medical progress, and there will always be those who fight against advancement. Nevertheless, we persevere.”
She had taken a brown bottle and a clean, folded handkerchief out of her bag as she’d spoken, and now she fashioned the handkerchief into a cone shape, twisting the bottom and holding the wider end over Jenny’s mouth and nose.
She nodded toward Maggie. “I will need you to hold the cone steady, Miss O’Halloran, while I administer the chloroform. ”
Maggie felt as if she barely knew what she was doing or even thinking, as she took the handkerchief cone from the doctor and held it over Jenny’s face.
Despite her inner terror, she felt a steadiness come over her, a settledness that seeped right into her bones, and her hand did not tremble in the least as Dr. Brown administered the anesthesia, a few drops dribbling through the cotton.
Within seconds, Jenny’s body relaxed and her breathing evened out completely. It felt like a miracle.
“And now we begin,” Dr. Brown told Maggie. “You may remove the handkerchief.”
Maggie stepped back, the handkerchief clenched in her hand, as the doctor took several instruments from her medical bag.
“If you could position the oil lamp closer to Jenny’s legs,” she instructed Maggie, “I will begin the procedure.”
“What… what are you doing?” Maggie whispered.
“I am finishing what her fall down the stairs began,” Dr. Brown replied.
“Alas, the child cannot be saved.” She glanced down at Jenny, her lined face contorted with pity.
“Poor baby,” she murmured, and Maggie did not know whether she was talking about the child Jenny had lost—or Jenny herself.
“Leave the lamp there,” she told her with a nod, “and then I must ask you to keep Jenny’s knees open so I can see what I am doing. ”
Drawing a swift, steadying breath, Maggie positioned the lamp to cast a warm pool of light on Jenny’s pale, exposed thighs and then, placing her hands on the girl’s knees, she spread them further apart, holding them there so Dr. Brown could do her work.
“Well done,” the doctor said quietly.
Just then, Jessamine came in with a basin of hot water and a bundle of sheets. She glanced once at Jenny and then looked away quickly, before putting the items on top of the dressing table and leaving without a word.
“I know this is difficult,” Dr. Brown said in a low voice. “After we have evacuated the fetal matter, we will clean her up and make sure the bleeding has stopped. It shouldn’t take very long.”
Maggie watched as Dr. Brown finished the necessary yet gruesome work, her own hands steady on Jenny’s knees, although she had to swallow hard several times as she watched what Dr. Brown was doing.
Within a few minutes, it was over, with nothing to show for Jenny’s poor baby but a basin of bloody rags.
Dr. Brown used the sheet strips Miss Jessie had brought to pack everything in tightly, and Maggie cleaned Jenny off with the fresh pitcher of water, and then fetched her a fresh nightgown, changing her as tenderly as she could.
As she tucked the blanket up over her, Jenny’s eyelids fluttered once and then she fell back asleep.
“You did very well,” Dr. Brown remarked quietly as she washed her hands in the basin and dried them on a spare sheet. “Very well. Most women become squeamish, or priggish. I don’t know which is worse.” She eyed her consideringly. “You were neither.”
“Th-thank you,” Maggie said, flushing from the unexpected praise.
Dr. Brown smiled. “You are not, I presume, an… employee of this establishment?”
It took Maggie a few seconds to realize what the doctor meant.
“No, no!” she exclaimed hurriedly. “I’m a seamstress.
I repair the girls’ dresses and things.” She felt herself blushing, and for the first time in two months, she felt guilty for what she did.
She might not be one of Miss Jessie’s girls, but in her own small way she assisted in allowing poor girls like Jenny to get into situations like this.
“A worthy endeavor,” Dr. Brown murmured, smiling in understanding. “And no shame in it. I’ll return in three days to check on the patient. If the bleeding continues, she spikes a fever, seems delirious, or develops any kind of rash, please send me for me at once.”
Maggie nodded, and Dr. Brown paused, resting her hand briefly on Maggie’s shoulder.
“Thank you for your assistance. You did very well,” she said again. “I mean it.”
“Thank you,” Maggie whispered. Now that it was all over, she felt her legs start to tremble. Dr. Brown smiled and squeezed her shoulder one last time before leaving the room.
Outside, the dawn light was spreading across the bay like syrup, liquid and golden, and a few birds trilled their morning song.
Maggie checked once more on Jenny; she was still sleeping deeply, her forehead cool, her expression peaceful. A sigh shuddered through her, and she turned away, for her own bed. She’d get an hour or two of sleep, she decided, and then check on Jenny again before she began the day’s mending.
Upstairs, Brendan came out of his room as Maggie headed toward her own. He was still dressed from getting the doctor, his shirt creased, hair rumpled, his eyes bloodshot. Maggie doubted he’d slept at all.
“She’s all right?” he asked in a low voice.
“Yes.” Maggie released a long, low breath. “She lost the baby. Which was, I think, what she wanted.” She squeezed her eyes shut as a sudden hopelessness overwhelmed her.
“Oh, Maggie.” Brendan’s voice was low and tender, and she felt tears starting in her eyes. She was exhausted and emotional, and Jenny’s pathetic plight had struck her deeply. It all felt too desperate and hopeless for words.
“I’m sorry…” she began, pressing her fingertips to her eyes, and then, to her surprise, she felt Brendan’s arms close around her, and with a shuddering sob, she pressed her cheek against his shoulder, so very grateful for his comfort.
“I feel so guilty,” she whispered wretchedly.
“I knew she was afraid she might be pregnant, and I told her to wait and see. I should have helped her, Brendan.” She clenched her eyes shut even more tightly, as hot tears seeped out anyway.
“What could you have done?” Brendan asked quietly, his hand stroking her hair. “There was nothing, Maggie.”
“I could have been there for her,” Maggie whispered, the words squeezed out through her too-tight throat.
“Given her options. Ideas. To have her resort to this, and when she’s only fourteen…
” She shook her head. “I feel complicit, somehow. Mending their clothes, smiling and nodding along when Da plays his harmonica and they lift up their skirts to dance… and meanwhile they’re trapped in this wretched, evil world, where men use them mercilessly and if something goes wrong, they have no options at all, and I’m…
allowing it. I’m part of it.” She drew a hitched breath.
“Jenny was terrified that Jessamine would throw her out if she knew she was pregnant.”
“Jessamine?” Brendan sounded surprised. “She wouldn’t do something like that, would she?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.” Maggie had thought she’d been coming to know Jessamine, and had trusted in her kindness, her goodness, but now she wondered. Earlier, the girls had almost seemed afraid of her.
Sniffing back the last of her tears, she stepped out of Brendan’s embrace and wiped her eyes.
As grateful as she’d been for his comfort, she was conscious that right before Jenny had fallen, it had been a different situation indeed between them.
Brendan had sent her away, and maybe he’d been right to.
She did not want to confuse things any more than they already were, in her own mind as well as between them.
Although, perhaps, she reflected, the matter was already firmly settled in Brendan’s own mind. It had seemed so, before Jenny’s accident.
“It’s late,” she said quietly, “you should get some sleep.”
“More like it’s early,” Brendan replied with a small quirk of his lips, as he glanced toward the window over the landing, sunlight streaming through its dusty panes. “But never mind me, you should sleep, Maggie. You’ve had a long night.”
For a second, Maggie thought he would embrace her again, or maybe press his hand against her cheek, the way she had against his.
She craved his touch, and with a lurch of hope, she thought she saw his hand twitch, as if he were about to raise it, and everything in her stilled.
Then the moment passed, and with a shake of his head, he turned back to his own bedroom.
Maggie stood there for a moment, swaying with exhaustion, her mind a numb blank, before wearily she turned and went to her own room.
Evie didn’t even stir as Maggie crept into the room.
She was still in her nightgown, and she saw it had rust-colored smears of Jenny’s blood down the front.
She didn’t have another to change into, so she simply crawled into bed as she was, drawing the covers over and squeezing her eyes tightly shut.
Memories tumbled through her mind in an unholy kaleidoscope of images—Jenny’s bloody skirts, the other girls’ anxious faces.
Dr. Brown bent over her body, intent on her gruesome task.
Jessamine, barely looking at Jenny as she came into the room with the hot water and sheets, her expression stony. A basin of bloody rags.
A choked cry escaped her, and Maggie pressed her fist to her lips.
She didn’t even know who or what she was crying for—for Jenny, for her dead baby, for the other girls, and so many more like them, trapped in an utterly hopeless situation that was gilded with gaiety and pleasure, like the flaking gold paint on a cheap bauble.
She ached for herself, too, for the unforeseen vagaries of her own life, and the seemingly capricious hand of Providence that had kept her from such a fate as these girls had, if only just. She was grateful she’d been spared, but she was so very heartsick, as well, wishing there was some way to make a difference to the relentless tide of cruelty and suffering she saw in the world.
She must have fallen asleep, for what seemed like mere moments later, Evie was shaking her awake, and the room was stifling with the heat of mid-morning.
“Wake up, you slugabed,” the girl said in her sullen way. “You’d better come quick as you can. Miss Jessie’s askin’ for you.”