Chapter 13
Nora held her breath as Daniel pried at the crate with a crowbar, the thin wood splintering in protest as the nails held stubbornly.
“Careful,” she urged.
Daniel pressed the crate against the wall to give himself extra leverage, steadying it with his foot as he wrestled the hardest nail.
“Maybe try another nail first,” she suggested.
“It won’t matter,” Horace said. “The lid won’t open until that nail is out. Think of it as a displaced shoulder. Firm, steady pressure until it overcomes the lip of the glenoid and snaps into place.”
Now Nora was picturing a patient screaming as she wrenched his arm back into its socket, which didn’t calm her nerves at all.
There was fragile, finely fired pottery inside this box, sent all the way from Italy at great expense.
She’d spent money the household couldn’t afford to order these obstetric models, turning the faint black ink of their ledger back to red.
Even Harry had joined them in the surgical theater for the delicate dissection of the shipping box. He leaned against the granite operating table with an amused grin. “Do you need a strong man to help?”
“I’ll ask Horace, if it comes to it,” Daniel muttered, heaving upward as the nail gave way with a screech. He set the splintered lid on the floor, well away from them.
Horace rubbed his hands together the same way he did before touching a feverish patient to avoid chilling them with cold fingers. “Let the men lift it,” he said as Nora reached into the open crate, terrified she’d find only shards wrapped in cotton and paper.
“I can help,” she argued, but Daniel and Harry were already grappling with the oddly shaped bundles.
“Wait.” Nora grimaced at the stone table.
“Don’t move it yet.” She rushed to the dispensary and snatched several wool blankets and hurried back, fearful they would proceed without her.
The three men watched as she arranged the blankets on the polished slab to cushion the newly arrived treasures. “Go on.”
She held her breath as Daniel lifted a large bundle and, with Harry’s help, hobbled it to the table. “It’s bigger than I imagined.”
With the care of a woman who’d dissected beetles and houseflies beneath microscopes, Nora unwrapped the fragile prize, peeling away the packing paper one layer at a time. How did anything this fragile survive an ocean voyage with careless sailors and bumpy cart rides through washed-out roads?
A mountain of discarded packing gathered at her feet—up to her knees—before she finally unearthed something with the sheen of white ceramic. Nora held her breath.
Intact.
“Quite the contraption,” Daniel said, steadying the strange apparatus on the table—a hollow, headless, limbless torso with a giant, curving glass uterus resting on the tops of the truncated legs.
The maker had even created dimples of fat in the thighs.
She’d expected terra cotta, burnished, like the color of the Bologna hills, but the clay was fired to an immaculate white.
“Bellissima,” she whispered.
“Not quite the Venus de Milo,” Harry said.
Nora gave him an incredulous look. “It’s not—” She stopped. This was art, just another kind.
Horace lifted the glass dome and stuck his great head into the empty belly, assessing the accuracy of the size.
“Horace, she’s not meant to be worn like a hat,” Harry pointed out.
“There’s a hole at the bottom, dilated to ten centimeters,” Horace said approvingly, voice echoing inside the model.
“Let me see,” Harry said, nudging Horace’s shoulder. Daniel steadied the apparatus, making sure their movement didn’t upset the precious sculpture.
“Both of you, step back,” Nora ordered. “We need to lay it down on its back. It’s designed to sit upright or be laid down for lectures.
” She oversaw the careful shift in position as they placed the model on her wool blankets.
The sculptor had done his job with care, ensuring the piece was sturdy enough to withstand lectures and demonstrations, and yet gracefully crafted.
“If only births were this easy,” Harry said, staring at the yawning hole between the sculpted hips. “So clean and silent.”
“Poor Harry.” Nora gave him a scathing look. “Are the women too loud for your delicate ears?”
“Sometimes, yes,” he grumbled. “I’d rather cut a man’s hand off than listen to a woman suffer like that. I haven’t the spine for it.”
Nora laughed as Daniel began working to open the second crate. “Are you saying it’s best left to women—like the midwives?” she asked with a wicked grin.
Daniel paused and looked at her, face alert. She’d meant only to continue the banter.
“Good Lord, yes. Please let the women do it,” Harry said, tugging at his collar. “You won’t find me signing that blasted petition. The less births I attend, the better for all of us.” He stepped away from the model and began riffling through the rest of the crate.
Horace grunted. “Let’s see the rest.” In the past, he’d have grabbed the wrapped packages himself, but he still didn’t trust his weaker left arm. They arranged the smaller wrapped goods on the table and each began unwrapping. It was better than Christmas Eve.
“It’s a boy,” Harry announced, holding up a delicately sculpted five-month-old fetus, displayed in situ, in an appropriately sized womb. “He’s got some growing to do yet.”
Nora’s ceramic child was a girl. Full term, the eyes pressed and swollen with meticulous wrinkles in the skin, presenting headfirst—but she’d ordered models with various breech presentations as well.
“Mine’s only three months along,” Daniel said, holding a tiny baby in one hand. “Not even big enough for the mother to feel yet.”
Nora squirmed inwardly. She hadn’t confided Horace’s and Mrs. Phipps’s suspicions to him. Her courses hadn’t come, so each passing day suggested they were right. But she’d been irregular before…
She shook her head. No point in saying anything until certain.
“Take a look at this one,” Horace said.
He held up a red silk womb, sewn with a placenta that unbuttoned, per Nora’s instructions, as well as a long, ropelike umbilical cord. He whistled low. “How much did this all cost me?”
Nora shook her head. “Don’t ask. Less than your conservatory.”
Daniel continued his inspection of the sculpted child he’d unwrapped, its head obscenely big compared to the tadpole-like legs. “Are you going to sign the petition, Horace?”
Horace looked up from the quilted placenta. “Not a chance. It’s too broad. Yes, there are some women calling themselves midwives who should be hung for the damage they do, but you can say the same for several medical students. Some doctors, too.”
“It’s a farce,” Nora stated. “Adams is just using it to get back at me for writing up Mrs. Roland’s case.
For being right when he was wrong.” Now that he’d so obviously targeted her with his petition, if she spread stories about his mistakes, other doctors might think she was making it up out of sheer pettiness.
“Did Adams talk to you?” Daniel studied her too intensely.
Nora bit her lip. “I went to check on Mrs. Roland. Adams was there. Said I couldn’t see her unless I signed his petition. I didn’t like his tone.”
“Did he threaten you?” Daniel demanded with a worried frown. “He’s gathered over a hundred signatures now.”
So many? “Well, he’s not getting mine.”
“Did you read the entire petition?” Daniel pressed on. “It said only that we need safe standards.”
Nora’s nose wrinkled. “But it’s using those standards to push midwives out of practice.”
Daniel sighed. “You’ve only been practicing a few months. It doesn’t seem the time to incite the entire college of doctors against you.”
“You know I’ve been practicing far longer than that. I’m not worried,” Nora said, but this wasn’t strictly true. Adams’s animosity did concern her, just not enough to back down. What worried her more was Daniel’s troubled expression.
“There’s a letter with this one.” Harry cleared his throat theatrically and held up a folded paper and a model of a six-month fetus, its head nearly proportional but its body too small to survive an early birth.
Recognizing Harry’s cue, Nora dropped the discussion and lifted the letter instead, the envelope made of heavy, expensive stationery. “Magdalena,” she said without needing to look at the name. She opened it quickly, eyes greedy for the Italian words she hadn’t seen in so long.
Her smile broadened as she skimmed past the news of the Grand Hospital of Life and Death, where she’d worked with her mentor and the nuns. She’d savor it later, when the three men weren’t watching her every expression. She turned to the second page, dropping her eyes to the last paragraph.
“She says she personally inspected every model and made corrections before they fired them in the kiln. She says the fat baby looks just like her Humberto.” Nora smiled, knowing the jokes meant nothing to the others.
Humberto had been born two weeks late and, according to Magdalena, had quite overstayed his welcome.
“You must tell her we approve,” Horace said, tracing his finger along one of the smaller fetuses. “I’ve never seen a model like it.”
Nora’s eyes misted and she stopped scanning the lines, slowing to read each exquisite word in Magdalena’s unhurried script.
“She’s telling me to disregard whatever the”—she stopped to find an equivalent word in English—“fussy doctors say. She says I must forge on because mine is not an occupation, but a calling.” Nora swallowed, holding back the tears. She didn’t translate the next part.
Rimani al tuo posto.
Stand at your post.
It was Magdalena’s call to courage and fortitude, as convincing as any order ever given to a soldier by a general.
Daniel broke the quiet, jarring her from her thoughts. “These models are incredible. But I still think it might be easier for you to attract students if you signed the petition.”
“I think—” She broke off, troubled by the deep furrow between his eyebrows.
Maybe it was better not to answer. If they had been alone, she would have reached out and touched his sleeve, showing she was only opposed to Adams, not him.
“I don’t think a single person in this household considers ease when making decisions.
” Harry sighed. “Look at this ludicrous lady, shipped all the way from Italy. We’ll need to name her.
Best do it now before Mrs. Phipps overrides you.
” Bestowing names on random creatures, living and stuffed, fell typically to her.
“I like Mara,” Nora blurted out. Daniel gave her a baffled frown, and she shrugged. It seemed to fit.
Horace was now probing the vaginal opening, measuring it with his fingers and nodding appreciatively. “It would be nice to make a cloth one to have a bit of stretch. Do you think we could find a seamstress—”
“A London seamstress? To re-create a vulva? No, Horace, I truly doubt we could.” Nora let his daydream shatter into shards as he sulked in disappointment.
“But we’ll make some cloth dolls with softer heads to demonstrate births and allow the mi—our students,” she corrected hastily, “to practice turning babies, placing forceps, and delivering different presentations.”
Horace’s eyes lit up, and he and Harry began rattling off ideas about jointed limbs and how to make the dolls slippery. Nora caught remnants that included cod liver oil and vulcanized rubber.
Daniel was quiet, busy sweeping up splinters from the crate.
“Are you worried about Dr. Adams?” she asked quietly, trying to catch his eye.
“He works at St. Bart’s. I have to deal with him.”
“You know I can’t sign it. It’s completely against my principles.
I’m right in the middle of trying to train the midwives.
I could never lend my support to anything that bars women from birthing rooms.” Until the college decided to admit women (a possibility that seemed more impossible every passing week), working as a midwife was the only option if a woman wanted to practice any field related to medicine.
Nora couldn’t rest until she made others see the absurdity of the arrangement.
Daniel nodded, refusing to look at her, and untied his apron. “Of course not.”