Chapter 3 #2
Horace waved his hand, brushing off her question as he did all boring inquiries. “She’s not dangerous in any way. I haven’t seen her for a couple of days.”
Nora’s mouth dropped open, and Mrs. Phipps made a strangled sound.
“Lord save us, Horace,” Daniel scolded. “You might be a genius, but you’re no true naturalist. You must care about the specimens you work with. She’ll die at this rate.” Forgetting breakfast, he tucked the cotton-wrapped wombat under one arm and retreated for the door.
“Where are you going?” Nora asked. “You’ve got to get ready for hospital rounds.
” Daniel seldom worked at the hospital and clinic in the basement of 43 Great Queen Street, but he’d agreed to look in this morning.
Most days he was too busy assuming the care of Horace’s private patients, making house calls, and supervising a ward at St. Bartholomew’s teaching hospital.
Horace lectured at Bart’s as well, but Harry had too many enemies there. Working in London, amid so many competing egos and theories, wasn’t easy for anyone.
“I’m taking my first patient right now,” Daniel said. “She and I are going to the kitchen to forage for suitable nutrition. Then I’m putting her in one of the cages outside. It’s warm enough for a tropical animal. She’ll be more comfortable there than in our room.”
Nora approved of removing the wombat, but said, “I must prepare for my obstetric lecture, and I can’t cover rounds here. I invited a guest to attend.”
“We’ve got a bone spur removal at noon.” Horace sniffed huffily into his tea, probably smarting over Daniel’s gibe at his failings as a naturalist. “What guest?”
“Harry can tackle the bone spur,” Daniel said, shifting his struggling burden. “And yes, what guest?”
Harry wasn’t at breakfast. Most likely on a call. He’d love this, though, so Nora faithfully committed the details to memory to share later.
“Harry bloody well cannot!” Horace snorted. “He’ll take the whole heel off.”
“Horace,” Nora said in the level warning tone normally reserved for their carriage mare when she pinned back her ears.
“Harry was out half the night with your patients,” Julia told them, and the unusual sternness in her voice turned Horace’s belligerent face contrite. “And he left early this morning to rebandage the Thompkins girl. If you speak of my husband, I expect your tone to drip with gratitude.”
Nora’s smile quirked on one side as she waited for Horace’s reaction. Horace conveniently forgot his truce with Harry at least once a day.
Harry Trimble—Daniel’s best friend since they had met as students at the Sorbonne—had joined their household along with his wife, Julia, the previous year.
Horace never liked reminders of how close they’d been to losing this place following his stroke, or how much he owed to Harry’s timely financial investment.
Without Harry’s money, they’d never have been able to stave off the banks.
The past was a crooked, thorny road when it came to Harry.
Presuming on their friendship, Daniel had lied and named Harry as his assistant in a hernia surgery that Nora had performed.
He’d done it to protect her. If anyone had discovered Nora had cut into a living man, she’d have been at the mercy of the courts.
Under normal circumstances, Harry would have happily, perhaps theatrically, taken credit.
Tragically, he’d been performing a different illegal surgery the same night—an abortion on a seventeen-year-old girl named Julia who had attempted to kill herself when she discovered she was pregnant.
Harry could only protect one woman, and he chose the woman who would later become his wife.
Harry had been forced to reveal Nora to the medical community, driving her to Bologna and nearly costing Horace his career—a debt difficult to pay off in money alone.
But he had managed it by taking over much of the work Horace could no longer do—long days of patient calls and surgeries, in addition to seeing a large caseload of district patients.
Humbling himself—something he never did for anyone other than Julia—Horace ducked his head. “Quite right. I’m sorry, Julia.”
Nora and Daniel exchanged a silent laugh.
“What guest did you invite, Nora?” Horace asked, pushing the focus away from his own surrender.
“Mrs. Franklin.”
“The midwife?” Julia’s head snapped up. “To a medical lecture? With the physicians and surgeons?”
“Yes.”
Perplexed frowns and silence all around.
“And what’s wrong with that?” Nora demanded.
“Nothing,” Daniel offered. “But will she be able to make sense of the terminology? Midwifery is not scientific—”
“Precisely,” Nora shot back. “Think of what she accomplishes with experience and intuition alone. And think of what she could do if trained. She wants to learn to use short forceps.”
Horace’s teacup landed with a clatter. “You put those tongs into the wrong hands, and you’ll have a headless baby.”
“You always say Mrs. Franklin is more skilled than most doctors,” Nora argued.
“She is,” Horace agreed. “And I’d take her over nearly any student at Bart’s. But you said yourself she works by good sense and long experience, not science.”
“Maybe it’s time we combine them.” Nora exhaled, disappointed in their responses.
“It’s an interesting idea. You can tell us about the results at supper,” Daniel conceded, without relinquishing the wombat. “But we need to sort out a meal for this creature.”
Nora frowned skeptically. “You don’t have time to play with the wombat.” There were nine women, three children, and one elderly man waiting in the two wards on the other side of the house.
Daniel’s eyes widened. “Play? I’m saving a life.”
“And your human patients?” Nora tilted her head.
“I don’t think you can pass off rounds here to Harry when he gets back,” Julia said. “He’s been out all night.”
“I’ll do both,” Daniel promised. The delay would almost certainly make him late to St. Bart’s, but there he did have the luxury of a team of student apprentices—dressers—who’d manage things in his absence. “There aren’t that many to tend today.”
Since Nora’s return from Italy, the patient wards here had never been full—not like the crowded wards in London’s teaching hospitals. But she wasn’t permitted there.
That didn’t mean she could manage everything on her own, though.
“Daniel, my patients—”
“They’ll have to wait while I attend to an important foreign ambassador.”
The bag gave a low grunt. “It will be fine,” he promised, grinning so widely that the knot eased in her chest.
It will be fine, she repeated to herself as he hurried away to the kitchen. Mrs. Phipps rose and followed him with rapid steps. “Don’t you put Cook out. If we lose her, we’ll starve.”
Unable to resist, Julia followed, sounding her own warning. “And don’t put it on the butcher block, Daniel. We’re rolling out pie crusts today.”
“I’m the one who found she likes roots!” Horace shouted after them.
“Yes, you’re brilliant,” Nora placated, taking a seat at the almost empty table with a sigh. “But I’m glad you never tried to be a locksmith. Could you keep your wards under better watch? For their sake and ours.”
“Keep my wards locked up,” Horace grumbled, his whiskers quivering. “That’s what they said about you, you impertinent little—”
Nora burst into laughter, almost dropping her bread. “It is, isn’t it?”
Horace’s eyes flashed blue lightning. “I kept you alive, didn’t I?”
Sobering at once, Nora laid light fingers on his wrist. “You certainly did.” Before he grew embarrassed, she added, “But no more animals rummaging through my wardrobe, or I’ll send you my dress bill.”
He shrugged and turned back to his plate, dismissing her threat.
Horace paid little attention to money, and lately that had almost undone them all.
Thank God for Harry and Julia, Nora thought.
They were solvent again—house, hospital, practice, and clinic—but only just. So everyone worked, and Daniel kept a close watch on accounts.
Her obstetrics lectures brought in some much-needed money.
Another reason she had to do well today.
But first she needed to put a measure of fear into Horace. That wombat in her room was the outside of enough. “I recommend a little more caution with the creatures, Horace. You never know what I’ll put in your room as revenge.”
Horace looked up and grinned. “You know, I believe you would.”
Nora’s lips quirked. Serve him right if she did.