Chapter 22
Nora waited until she heard the front door close and counted several beats, until certain Mrs. Phipps was down the steps and around the corner.
Then, safe, she swung her feet off the ottoman and got up.
Horace, reading a letter about lacewing butterflies from an Austrian entomologist, didn’t notice, but even if he did, she doubted he’d tell Mrs. Phipps that Nora wasn’t, in fact, obeying her stern command to rest.
At the doorway, Nora twisted her head, listening for sounds from the floor above, even though she knew Julia was still away at her parents’ home, and Daniel and Harry were both out on calls. She hadn’t had a chance like this for days.
“I’m making calls on Broad Street.” She smoothed her wrinkled skirts. “Care to join me?”
Horace looked up, his eyes sliding into focus on the world outside of poppy fields bursting with flying insects. “Are you supposed to?”
Nora wrinkled her nose. She’d counted on him to be oblivious. He was the only one who never fussed. “Would you rather I embroider you a flower?”
If anyone could sympathize, it was Horace. His weakened left hand had stripped away his ability to do his most delicate surgical work. Rarely did the two invalids find themselves alone.
Horace grunted. “These calls of yours. Anything good?”
Nora hid a grin. They weren’t her cases. The requests had come while Daniel and Harry were away. She usually didn’t make blind calls to strangers; it was too much of a battle to convince them to let her in. But accompanied by Horace…
“Your guess is as good as mine. But we’re sure to see something exotic and inexplicable at some point.” She’d meant it sarcastically, but he nodded and straightened in his chair.
“One can only hope.”
She rolled her eyes as he went to collect his coat. His insistence on daily walks in every weather had strengthened his recovery. While his hand still trembled, his legs stood straight and strong as ever. If he clipped along with his cane at a less brisk pace than before, at least he still clipped.
Nora adjusted her grip on her kit bag handle and tried to judge from Mrs. Phipps’s meticulous written notes which home to attend first. “A stomach ailment. Sounds severe. One child sick and one already dead in the same family.”
Horace’s chin rose sharply. “What else?”
“A young woman with failing vision.” Nora scanned the list. “Jaundice and black lung.”
“Jaundice and black lung?” Horace sniffed as if smelling something tempting.
“No. Two separate cases.”
He grunted in disappointment. “Child first.”
“That’s where I was headed.” She squinted at the notes, deciphering the address. She lowered her brow in concentration. “I feel like I’ve been to this address before.”
Nora glanced outside. The rain had halted, the clouds hovering benign and cold. “We can walk,” she determined. The fresh air would brush away the lingering strands of nausea that clung to her.
Nora recognized the place even before they arrived at the house.
It stood at the end of a row of grimy buildings, walls streaked black with coal dust. The odor of a nearby tannery drifted on a teasing breeze beyond the confines of poverty toward the nicer shops and neighborhoods.
She had been here before, but she couldn’t remember for what. It must have been years ago.
A young woman paced the front steps, wringing her hands. “My brother’s inside with my mother. We”—her voice caught as she beckoned them into a claustrophobic hallway—“need help.”
Mrs. Morse. Nora remembered the name once she stepped inside the family’s quarters—a single room with a potbellied stove and narrow beds stacked three to the ceiling, weighed down with filthy blankets.
It was more crowded than the last time she’d been here.
A table took up the entire walking space and left only room for a pile of bedding.
Nora had delivered a baby boy here before she went to Italy.
Horace didn’t wrinkle his brow; he’d started his career aboard navy ships that barely fit an extra thought, but he’d spoiled Nora with stately dissection rooms and a spotless lecture theater.
She crowded in close to a woman who had one child in her arms, another at her side, as she sat on the pile of bedding.
“Age?” Horace asked without preamble.
The woman looked up at the two strangers without expression, her forehead creased with suffering. “Five. You… Are you the doctor’s girl? The one who delivered me years ago?”
Nora fought to keep her face smooth. The family had been poor then, but not so poor as this.
“Yes. And a doctor myself, now. I remember you and your boy. He arrived quickly, as I recall. Too quickly for Dr. Croft to attend you. It was just you and me. You were one of my first deliveries.” Nora took the small bundle from her arms. “But I haven’t met this newest one yet. ”
She pulled back the blanket to reveal waxy blue skin and mottled cheeks—a dead infant.
“Oh.” Dismay tinted the shocked word as Nora stifled an instinctive recoil, unable to set down the tragic bundle.
“He was fine yesterday,” Mrs. Morse said brokenly.
Nora tried not to let her eyes film with moisture. The mother’s sunken face spasmed with grief before turning back to the child in the bed.
Horace had the living boy’s wrist in his hand, measuring the pulse. “No fever. Weak pulse. Sunken eyes. Has he been vomiting?”
“A few times,” the mother replied in an empty tone, more like the echo of a living voice.
Horace pulled back the blankets, and Nora saw at once the bedding was soaked as if doused with a bucket of water.
“I try to clean, but it keeps coming out,” the mother said.
Nora leaned closer, unwilling to believe her eyes. White grains scattered across the sodden sheets. “Rice water stool,” she murmured woodenly, her thoughts congealing into an opaque paste. “Cholera.”
Horace narrowed his eyes. “What have you been giving him?”
“Milk with oats. Water.”
Nora shook her head reflexively, reviewing what she’d nearly memorized over the years—tersely written case notes Horace had published in the Provincial Medical & Surgical Journal.
Other than the dim shadows of her memory, it was the only account of her family’s demise.
“We need brewed liquids. Fermented ones. Tea, weak wine. Put the kettle on,” she commanded the sister.
Horace and Mrs. Phipps had plied her with these, day and night, when she was eight years old, and she’d survived. It might work for this child.
For this family, she corrected herself, surveying mother and daughter again. Both were chalky pale.
“Are you feeling unwell also?” Nora drew closer to study the color of the woman’s eyes and skin. The mother shrugged, and would have denied it if not for Nora’s delving gaze.
“A bit.” The words were mouthed, barely spoken.
“Nora.” Horace took a firm grip of her arm. “We must go. We’ll send—”
“We can help.” She swallowed. Then she shook him off.
“We’ll make sure the kettle is full. We’ll fetch tea and coal,” Horace said, lifting the dead infant from the bed gently. “And we’ll send for the undertaker. You can’t stay here,” he whispered.
Nora ignored the command despite her thudding pulse. “Where is your husband, Mrs. Morse?”
“At work. He’s a tub man. He does the roping.” An unpleasant job, but a well-paying one, shoveling out cesspits. The rope man on the team hoisted out the tubs and unloaded them into carts to be driven out of the city.
“Is he ill?” Nora asked.
“He was sick first, but he’s doing better. He went back to work two days ago.”
“You should stay inside until you’re entirely well,” Horace said with a wrinkled nose and a glimpse at the small window.
He always preferred sick patients to convalesce outside, but in this crowded street, that would only expose the neighbors.
“We’ll come and check on you at least once a day, but we’ll speak to you through the window.
” He fumbled his handkerchief from his pocket and tied it over his mouth and nose.
“Nora,” he said, ordering her to imitate him.
She complied but didn’t let his frown push her out the door.
The sick boy’s black hair clung to his forehead, plastered in place by sweat and suffering.
“I brought this boy into this world. I want to make sure he stays here,” she said stubbornly, voice muffled by the handkerchief.
She’d tied it hastily, squashing her nose.
The sister let out a small sob. “His name is Elias.”
Nora spared her a long look. She looked twelve but could have been as old as sixteen. The undernourished ones always looked younger.
She’d had two dying brothers as well, once. “I’m staying,” she whispered loud enough for Horace to catch.
If Elias couldn’t swallow, they’d need a spouted cup or a tea-soaked cloth for him to suck. But with others sickening, they might not think of such things or have the strength to carry on tending to the boy, hour after hour.
Horace’s chest swelled as he straightened his shoulders, leaning forward on his stick. “Think, Nora.” He dropped his voice even lower. “You should at least talk to your husband.”
Nora raised her eyebrows. They couldn’t argue here, but once she followed him out into the street, it would be that much harder to gather enough resolve and fight her way back in.
The kettle shrieked, saving her from replying. “Where’s the tea chest? We want it brewed as strong as we can make it.”
Wordlessly, the older daughter gestured to the cupboard. Nora bustled to gather up pot, tea chest, and strainer, trying to forget the unsettling gray hue of the girl’s wraithlike arms. Her color will be better once she’s downed a cupful, Nora told herself.