Chapter 23
Nora had imagined their household conference conducted around the dining table, not inside the lecture theater meant to house sixty occupants.
Horace had insisted on clearing the air from every common room, beginning with the largest. Smoke from burning pastilles wound thin, white ribbons in the cool evening shadows.
The room, designed to pick up a single voice and carry it to a boisterous audience, made their low, anxious mutters echo in the nearly empty chamber.
Daniel and Harry had found cholera patients, too.
“I feel like the pope hiding from the Black Death in his room of fire.” Harry snorted, edging the nearest ceramic burner with his shoe to watch the smoke waver.
“We’re not hiding. We need to clean the air,” Horace answered dully.
Daniel and Harry’s case might have spared Nora an argument or a scold, but that didn’t afford her any relief. Finding two affected families on different streets on the same day meant the incidence of the disease was higher and more widely spread than they’d thought.
They’d been watching for an epidemic, but it had already come, sneaking up behind them, out of sight until now.
“At least it smells nice,” she offered lamely.
“Probably all it does,” Horace said wearily. “I don’t believe cholera has anything to do with odors.”
“Then why bother?” Harry asked.
“It’s something,” Horace snapped. “It hurts no one, so if there’s a chance it helps—”
“We’ll use everything we can,” Mrs. Phipps said coolly.
When Nora and Horace returned, she’d already been in the middle of purifying Harry and Daniel, gathering up discarded clothing with tongs, putting it straight into water to boil with soap.
There’d been one awkward moment when she threatened to take Harry’s trousers herself if he didn’t hurry.
She’d ordered baths for everyone in turn, insisting on thorough scrubbings, hair and all.
And now they sat, hair still dripping, bundled in blankets for warmth in the chilly room. The black currant and willow incense almost overcame the pungent tang of lye.
“I still think the wisest thing to do is leave,” Mrs. Phipps insisted. “I warned you weeks ago, but only Julia did the sensible thing.”
Harry stared at his fists. “Perhaps. But if the disease spreads, I have no way of knowing what’s happening in Chelsea. If Julia gets sick, I won’t be there.”
Daniel leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “And it’s not safe for Nora or the baby.” He looked at her. “Just think of the poor child you found today.”
Mrs. Phipps nodded emphatically.
But Nora would rather not recall the pathetic, discolored corpse.
“That child was already born. Perhaps my immunity passes to the womb.” She fervently wished that was true.
“So there’s a chance Horace and I are the safest, wherever we are.
I’ve had cholera. He’s treated it. Perhaps you and Harry should leave. ”
Harry laughed, a sharp, cheerless burst. “Since when do doctors run from sickness? That’s like the fire brigades leaving town when there’s a fire.”
“Fire brigades have water. We’ve nothing to put out this blaze.” Horace dropped his blankets from his shoulders and wiped the back of his neck.
“Are you saying there’s nothing we can do?” Daniel demanded.
“Hardly,” he snapped back. “I’m only preparing you. We don’t have the tools we need.”
“But you’re better at treating these patients than anyone else.” Harry leaned toward Horace, elbows on knees.
“Precisely,” Nora agreed. “So we stay?” She steepled her fingers tightly to steady her nerves.
“We stay.” Horace gestured to the men. “You and Alice are free to go. This isn’t pox. We don’t know for certain you’re immune. And we certainly can’t assume the child is.”
“Harry just said doctors don’t leave. I’m a doctor.”
“And a mother-to-be,” Mrs. Phipps added.
She wanted to shout that Daniel was a father-to-be, but her throat tightened. He could risk himself without harming his child. She couldn’t.
“We will follow the same protocol as in ’32,” Horace said, sidestepping the argument and pointing his face toward the high windows glowering with the last light of day. “Brewed and fermented liquids in copious amounts. No bleeding. They’re losing too much volume already.”
“Dr. Stanley says losing so much bile makes a surplus of blood that throws the humors into imbalance,” Harry started. “If we don’t bleed them—”
“Stanley lost more than half his patients in the last epidemic.” Horace removed his spectacles and wiped a film of steam from the nearest burner from his lenses.
“And you?” Harry asked.
“Lost four in ten.” Horace sighed. “But when you treat one thousand patients over the course of a year, that’s a hundred lives saved.” His eyes flicked to Nora.
“Fair enough,” Harry conceded with a dull smile in her direction. “No bleeding. Only approved liquids. And food?”
“Only warm beef broth until the evacuations stop completely,” Horace instructed. “Be prepared for patients to lose significant weight within days. But we cannot replace it until the disease stops attacking their intestines.”
“Enemas?” Harry pressed on. “Powders? Purges?”
Horace scoffed. “They’re purged already. In the name of all that’s holy, don’t take anything else out of their bodies. Feel free to try headache powders, salts, plasters. Whatever gives them a bit of comfort. But don’t expect results.”
Nora scanned the hollow room, half-convinced she’d conjured all this in a dream. “How do we treat them if we don’t get close to them?”
Beside her, Daniel shifted and let out a breath of frustration at the word we.
Horace rolled the paper in his lap and brought it down on his leg to emphasize his points.
“Wear a scented handkerchief around your nose on every call. You are not to touch soiled linens or clothing at the risk of bringing it home on your own clothing. We will follow the same protocol here for liquids, but until someone is ill, we can eat simple fare—”
“Until?” Mrs. Phipps squeaked.
“Nora,” Daniel whispered beside her, the word heavy with supplication and warning.
She turned and watched a chilly drop of water wander from his hair, down his ear. “I’ll be cautious. But I am staying.”
Mrs. Phipps groaned.
“I’m not being difficult or stubborn. I’m a doctor, too. This is what I must do.”
“Horace,” Daniel pleaded, “can you—”
“No. He can’t.” Nora gripped his fingers, though he didn’t respond in kind. “Do you think it would be some relief to me, Daniel, if my family perished again and I survived? Once is more than enough.”
The sweet-scented room rang with silence, eyes darting to her and away again.
“You all forget that I remember having cholera. I watched the life drain from every person I loved and then lay in a room with their dead bodies. I understand the patients’ suffering in ways no one else can. If anyone should avoid the patients, it’s Horace, who’s still recovering—”
Horace snapped his paper until it creased, his face serious and somber.
“You remember one room of the epidemic. One poor family that happened to be yours. I treated a dying city. God forbid it rages like that again, but need I remind you I’ve survived more cholera than you, without ever contracting it? I stand the best chance here.”
Her parted lips froze. “I just want to help,” she finished feebly.
“I know,” he said with a rare touch of sympathy. “I wanted to help them all, too.” His words hung unfinished, balanced precariously over their heads.
She swallowed, the colors of his age-marked face and silver beard the only things she saw now. “But?”
“I failed far worse than you can imagine. You survived, but you don’t know the stories of the hundreds I lost. You were the only lucky one who came back from being that far gone.
” Ghosts—the ones who had expired—traipsed across his face with heavy, silent steps, her parents and brothers and grandmother gliding among them. “The only one,” he repeated.
She dropped her eyes, holding back shadowy memories of her brother, Peter. Later. “We’ll do better this time,” she insisted. “We know more.”
Horace chewed the bottom corner of his lip and shifted on the hard bench. “Do we?”
“I agree that it’s dangerous for all of us,” Harry said, staring stolidly at the empty seats across the theater. “But we are all willing to face the risk. That’s why it’s only fair that whatever we decide, we all agree.”
Nora shifted, impatient at the thought of days of debate, because so far, the only clear thing was that none of them could propose a plan to please everyone. “Deliberation—waiting—is also a decision. I’m not sure it’s the best.”
Daniel rubbed his forehead. “Haste never helps anyone.”
“Cholera will be hasty even if we aren’t. If we don’t treat them, it will spread faster,” Nora argued.
Horace scowled. “It will spread no matter what we do. That is entirely beyond us.”
“I’m not leaving.” Nora’s voice faltered as she recalled her desert-dry mouth, a vise of pain tightening around her forehead.
She licked her lips. “We have to stay together. In case.” If any of them took sick—and there was far too great a chance they might—who would tend them?
She certainly didn’t trust any other doctor to treat the people she loved best.
Shoulders tight, she braced for their arguments, but none of them had anything to counter that.