Chapter 25
“The surgery will demand all my attention,” Daniel explained.
“A moment’s distraction could be fatal, so I need each instrument laid out in order.
Neither of us should have to think where the blunt-edged forceps are—and I’m particular with the scissors.
The bevel angle of the blade changes depending on the tissue I intend to cut, so I always want them arranged from least to greatest.”
Fred Matson, his newest dresser, nodded.
“Exactly like this.” Daniel gestured at the tray again, unsatisfied by the younger man’s unearned self-assurance.
“Dr. Gibson?”
“What is it, Jeffers?” Daniel spared a smile for his favorite senior dresser, who’d drawn and studied diagrams of the different ways Daniel arranged his trays during his first year at St. Bart’s.
“A gentleman to see you. I told him you were occupied, but he said I should give you his card. Then I saw his name and thought I’d offended him.” Guiltily, Jeffers proffered the white square in his freckled hand. Daniel recognized his father’s name and the elegant scrolled letters.
Matthew Gibson, Esq.
Damn. He glanced about, but of course there was nothing here to wet his throat and stiffen his nerves. The only liquid in sight was a cloudy urine sample he’d examined. His father shouldn’t be here—not with cholera filling the hospital.
“I left him in your office,” Jeffers said. “And there’s—”
“I’d better see him now,” Daniel said. He needed to tell his father to get as far from this place as possible. Best to leave London entirely. “Impress upon our new recruit the importance of setting up the trays properly, please.”
Jeffers nodded, but before Daniel could quit the room, Jeffers stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Dr. Gibson?”
Daniel waited with raised brows, inwardly wincing. Usually, he wasn’t this curt. Jeffers deserved better treatment, but Daniel had been brisk with everyone lately.
“You should know there’s a lady with him,” Jeffers said in an undertone. “She looks fierce.”
His mother would never set foot in a hospital. That left only… Daniel manufactured a ghost of a smile. “I know who she is. Thanks for the warning.”
“Would you like me to ask for you in a few minutes?” Jeffers mimed panic. “‘Mr. Hamilton’s stitches have ruptured, Doctor. Come at once!’”
Halfway through an automatic headshake, Daniel reconsidered. “Only if you hear things breaking.”
Though he knew who awaited him, it was still a jolt seeing his father and Aunt Wilcox ensconced in the shabby armchair and the chair behind the desk. His aunt sat imperiously in his place, riffling through a few of the papers left on the desk.
“This is a surprise,” he said before either could speak. “I’m afraid I haven’t much time to spare.” He folded his arms to keep from fidgeting. “And it’s not safe for you to be here.”
“We’ve come to see if you’ve any sense left in your head whatsoever,” his aunt scolded as she held up an envelope to read the return address. “Last week it was only in one paper, but today it’s in all of them.”
“Do you mean the cholera?” They’d lost him entirely and they hadn’t even begun.
Aunt Wilcox slammed a newspaper onto the desk and slid it toward him. “Your wife. Praise the Lord, Dr. Adams didn’t mention names, but it hardly takes a detective…”
Daniel lifted the paper, Aunt’s words blurring as he scanned the headlines.
Royal College of Physicians Warns the Public of Those Spreading Death
His eyes flew through the words, collecting dread like his fingers collected the newsprint ink.
“This is that story Harry told me about. The woman dead from a shamster midwife. That’s nothing to do with Nora,” he said as he neared the middle of the article. Aunt snatched it and pointed to the next column.
“Well, I was interested in the mention of a certain unconventional doctor with foreign credentials who refused to sign a petition seeking to disallow meddling midwives. The mysterious doctor even argues these women should be trained and used more extensively.” Aunt arched her eyebrows.
“What is this, Daniel? Are you a glutton for scandal?”
He looked to his father for help, but worry rested so heavily on his brow there was no place left for sympathy.
“I don’t know anything about this midwife case,” Daniel admitted with an expression both innocent and cautious.
“A mother and child died in a ghastly manner. But what’s just as alarming is the news that your wife seems to be positioning herself opposite the entire Royal College once again.”
Daniel schooled the muscles in his cheeks. He’d love to tell her she was wrong, but he couldn’t.
Aunt Wilcox huffed, not appreciating his silence. “What a pair you are.” She pursed her lips. “I offered her a respected position. A place she could continue her work in more acceptable ways and be a benefit to society. She turned me down, Daniel.”
Her voice rose in disbelief, and Daniel nearly shuddered, imagining what she’d say if she knew their secret—that Nora was still performing surgeries while two months along.
“There is a time for a man to put his foot down,” Aunt Wilcox said with cold finality. “I noticed you had the sense to sign the petition. Why don’t you demand she do the same?”
She’d clearly missed her calling as an army general; she dropped commands as effortlessly as handkerchiefs. “Dr. Adams has volunteered to treat our women prisoners several times. I can’t be connected to this controversy. It could affect donations to the Ladies’ Reformation Society.”
“As I said, I didn’t even hear about this case—” Daniel started.
“Now you have,” Aunt interrupted. “Tell your wife to accept my offer. It will put her on a path that will draw her away from the unpleasantness of surgery. She can work as a philanthropist instead. Still using her prodigious intellect, of course.”
“My wife has a name,” he said through closed teeth. “It’s Nora, as you well know.”
“Daniel!” His father threw off his stony quiet and rose with a scowl.
Daniel held up a hand. “Forgive me. You caught me in the middle of some important preparations. It’s hard to disengage my attention from the surgery ahead of me, and for the sake of my patient, I think it’s best not to try. My patient’s life depends on my clear head.”
“Do you think we would come here in the thick of a cholera epidemic for trifles?” Aunt Wilcox asked, her eyes sparking dangerously.
“You must get a handle on your wife. I championed you, proud you wanted to pursue a scientific career and marry a woman with intellectual pursuits. But there are limits. Don’t make a fool of me, Daniel. ”
He sighed, the weight of the conversation too heavy for his loaded shoulders.
“Surgery is not a mere hobby or intellectual pursuit. She’s not bird-watching or collecting seashells, Aunt.
And I have spoken to her about the petition.
I’m sure she doesn’t even know about this criminal midwife.
I didn’t. And she’s not alone in abstaining; Dr. Croft refuses to sign as well.
Disagreements are mother’s milk to scientists.
” Daniel spread his hands, hoping to cover his nervousness with an appealing smile.
His father swallowed. Aunt Wilcox stared at him for an agonizingly long moment, then pushed from her chair. “You might choose to ignore me, but I’ll keep saying this until one of you listens. Working as a surgeon is dangerous—”
“And your charitable work isn’t?” Daniel challenged, talking over her reflexive sputtering. “You inspect disease-ridden prisons, after all. Do your dresses always stay clean?”
“My work is never unseemly,” she warned in a hiss.
“You house convicted criminals,” Daniel countered.
“I give unfortunate girls another chance by offering employment and sponsoring a house of reform.” Aunt’s face heated to an ominous red.
“You and Nora are both working for good ends,” he insisted more gently. “Surely you’ve had detractors in your time, Aunt. Detractors you’ve proved wrong. Nora must have a chance to do the same.”
His aunt leaned forward, pressing her thin hands to the desk. “I have no husband. No children. If I die in the course of my work, there is no one—no, don’t contradict me—who will really suffer. What will happen when children come, Daniel? Will their claims on you and Nora matter as little as mine?”
A curtain dropped over his eyes. He couldn’t afford to give any sign, not when he was troubled by the same questions.
“Consider your future family. Are they to have two parents constantly in danger? I monitor the Soho death rolls, so I know how many doctors die treating patients in this hospital.”
Daniel’s father raised his eyes from the floor. “Death rolls in Soho?”
Aunt lowered her lids smugly. “I subscribe to the same journals he does. I know every doctor that succumbs to consumption or pneumonia or infection, and now—cholera.”
Of course she does.
“I suggest you begin making more intentional decisions about your family—not just because those decisions reflect on ours,” she snapped.
“I’m fit as an ox and I’ve never seen Nora sick a day,” Daniel said flatly.
“Don’t be dismissive,” his father warned. “Your aunt has always been good to us. You, in particular.”
Daniel kept in a sigh. True. She’d never denied him a favor, however extravagant—anatomy tomes with beautiful color plates, visits to London to attend botanical lectures.
She’d bought his first set of surgical instruments and paid for his room in Paris when he attended the Sorbonne.
Since Harry had stayed with him for free, he, too, owed a great debt to Aunt Wilcox.
So he modulated his voice to something gentler. “I’m grateful you care about Nora. Surgery is a fraction of her work. Her days are filled with caring for the sick and injured. You of all people cannot possibly condemn that.”
“I condemn nothing. I simply have sense, Daniel.”
Daniel let out the sigh this time and looked into her milky-blue irises.
Naturally, her gaze didn’t waver. He couldn’t remember when it ever had.
“She will never give up medicine. Whether you wish it, or I.” He dropped his eyes at the sudden falling sensation in his stomach.
“I’m sure the news of this poor woman dying from an untrained midwife will move her.
But I suspect it will move her to act in a different direction than Dr. Adams.”
“She goes against the grain, and I can’t have anyone saying I support anything unseemly.”
Daniel half smiled. “No one would ever accuse you of being improper, Aunt.”
“Don’t laugh!” Aunt Wilcox clenched her teeth and her cheeks shook. “My causes are not trivial and cannot be endangered! We help women who have no one. Without our aid, they are victimized, oppressed, neglected. Many die, and so do their children.”
He was as much taken aback by her emotion as by the truth in her words.
He’d given little thought to her work—or how much it mattered.
But her work wasn’t Nora’s, and the more he pushed his wife, the more she’d resist. She and his aunt would never see eye to eye.
They were simply too different—Nora an adopted orphan of working-class origins; his aunt, a committed philanthropist but resolutely genteel.
Her loyalty to Daniel had put her at a disadvantage in many ways his family couldn’t comprehend.
They would never understand that she could have stayed in Italy, been a university professor, and worked in a large public hospital instead of struggling to establish a small one of her own here in London.
She’d been made love to, pursued, and pressed to stay by Salvio Perra, one of her professors, and a man of wealth and influence.
Daniel’s nostrils flared.
But Nora had chosen England, and him, for love, so Daniel wouldn’t—couldn’t—whittle away at her. They might be at odds at the moment, but when he thought of that other man propositioning her…
“I am quite aware of all I owe you,” Daniel said quietly. “But my first allegiance must be to my wife. She cannot abandon her life’s work to be your secretary.”
“Daniel…” The rebuke in his father’s voice stung.
“I’m sorry. I can’t discuss this any longer. My patient is waiting, and this surgery is a serious one.” The air crackled, ready to break. “And please, it would ease my mind if you left London. You may say no one needs you, Aunt, but I cannot agree.”
Aunt Wilcox searched him as if studying a stranger, threads of pain knotting her temples. She’d looked at him many ways over the years—most of them stern and daunting—but never with such disappointment.