Chapter 42
Nora wrapped her favorite lap quilt tighter around her shoulders, comforted by the faint smell of soap mingled with the peppermint salve she used liberally on her patients.
“You look content,” Julia said, plying her embroidery in Horace’s chair.
“Because I’m home,” Nora said. “I don’t think I could have taken another day at Aunt Wilcox’s.”
“I thought she apologized.” Julia pulled her pink thread taut.
“She did. And demanded I be catered to hand and foot. But she wanted Horace and Daniel to check for the baby every hour, and I…” Nora swallowed.
She’d found no report of any kind of treatment for Julia’s scarred uterus, so talking about her own pregnancy was too cruel a topic for her friend. “I didn’t want to.”
Julia dipped her chin. “Do you know anything yet?” she asked quietly.
Nora shook her head, diverting her eyes to the stuffed falcon on the mantel. She disliked the way the color had seemed to drain from the feathers with the passing years.
Just this morning, she’d overheard two housemaids discussing her pregnancy in whispered asides.
Pregnancies were lost as a matter of course, but this morning she’d noticed some spotting, and she hadn’t felt any conclusive movements.
Her stomach was still restive and unsettled.
Though she’d told herself she could bear losing this child without histrionics, speaking her fears aloud was impossible.
She inhaled, the warm air assaulting her empty lungs. There wasn’t room for this grief and breath at the same time.
“Is Ruth with patients? I wanted to hear how the Fletcher family is doing.” She’d discuss any case but her own.
Julia obviously understood Nora’s need to escape the conversation. She laid down her embroidery hoop and stood, smoothing her blue dress. “I was just thinking I needed to stretch my legs,” she fibbed. “I’ll find her and send her in.”
When the door closed, Nora tilted her head back, taking in the solitude, almost the first she’d had all week. It had taken a Herculean effort to convince Daniel to leave the house to visit his patients today, and he’d insisted on going for only a few hours.
Now she was hiding in the study to escape Mrs. Phipps’s attention.
Nora hadn’t comprehended the strain Mrs. Phipps had been under, until the tiny woman knocked into a plant stand yesterday while bringing Nora a compress, sending the Amazonian mandevilla sprawling across the study floor.
The usually restrained housekeeper had struck out with her polished boot and kicked a shard of the broken pot under the desk, declaring the delicate plant blossoms an “infernal nuisance.”
After that, Nora had closed her gaping jaw and swallowed the bitter tea Mrs. Phipps kept supplying without any complaints.
Even the nights didn’t give Nora a moment to drop her tears or rehearse her worries in private. All through the sleeping hours, Daniel pressed himself close to her, his hands closed over her stomach, as if his protective hold could keep their child from slipping away into the shadowy beyond.
Nora wanted to believe his strong fingers held such power, but fables weren’t helpful now.
“Nora?” Ruth pushed open the unlatched door, the lamplight in the windowless room throwing her sensible face into relief. There was comfort in knowing Ruth had attended hundreds of mothers who had not only birthed children but also lost them. She was a specialist in meetings and partings.
“Close the door,” Nora requested, pushing her blanket away and making room on the sofa. “How are the patients? And the Fletchers?”
“We lost Donald last night.”
Nora flinched. Their youngest son, with a shock of white hair, only two years old.
“But the rest of the family is recovering well,” Ruth reassured her as she took a seat. “They were all equally ill, but we lost only one of the six. I think it’s the transfusions. We’re losing fewer when we can give enough solution in time.”
Nora nodded, trying to be pleased. “Any doctor would be pleased with that percentage.”
“And any midwife would be heartbroken,” Ruth rebutted, her tight bun pulling her lined eyes. “Your friend Mrs. Trimble is taking it the hardest. She was especially attached.”
Nora ran her eyes across the marble fireplace. Julia hadn’t told her, probably to spare her. “I know it’s been chaotic the last week, but you ran the hospital as well as any medical student,” Nora began, but Ruth sniffed.
“Don’t insult me.”
Nora huffed. “I stand corrected. Much better than medical students.”
Ruth nodded prim approval. “You don’t sound overjoyed.”
“I am,” Nora countered. It wasn’t a lie.
The women she’d trained had run a full hospital with minimal oversight for two weeks and tended the patients with skill and acumen.
It filled her with pride. Or would, if she had room to consider it.
Nora closed her eyes, a tear sneaking out without warning. “I started spotting this morning.”
Ruth didn’t move for several interminable seconds, not even a muscle in her rigid face. “I’m sorry.”
Nora’s brave chin collapsed. “Then it’s over?”
Gruff hands closed around Nora’s jaw, forcing her head up. “Spotting is the most expected thing in the world. It means nothing on its own.” Ruth’s brown irises blazed defiantly.
Nora nodded as best she could with her chin held captive.
“You know several mothers feel their children very infrequently until late pregnancy. Or if they do, the baby must be in the perfect position. Your child could be in the middle of your womb jumping like a grasshopper as we speak.” Ruth released her but lowered her face to mere inches from Nora’s.
Grasshopper. Such a cheerful creature. A perfect nickname if…
“How much longer do I wait?”
“You just survived the near impossible. Give the poor babe a day or two more of grace.”
“I’m scared,” Nora whispered. She’d admitted it to no one, but she couldn’t lie anymore.
Ruth took Nora’s hand, the touch reminiscent of Magdalena’s firm grip. “I lit a candle for you at church on Christmas Eve. If the Lord child could survive the trip to Jerusalem and be born in a byre, then your child can survive his winter journey as well.”
Nora fought the old, unbidden memories crowding her mind, of a dark room with dishes strewn across the floor, puddles of sick half-soaked into the rugs, and a terrifying mound on the floor that had once been her grandmother.
“I’m worried I gave up on miracles the day my entire family died in front of me.
” The bleak, brittle voice couldn’t be her own. Nora didn’t recognize it.
Ruth looked at her as severely as Magdalena would have. “You certainly did not. The day you performed your first surgery or attended your first birth, or last week when you saved Fenella Wilcox—”
“Her maid died,” Nora argued. Hope was too scalding to swallow, no matter how frozen her soul.
“And two of you lived.” Ruth glared at her with loving eyes. “If I told you I’d had the same result, you’d be pleased with me. Just because everything isn’t a miracle doesn’t mean one doesn’t show up occasionally.”
Nora’s head grew too heavy with fear and sorrow to keep upright. She pressed it onto Ruth’s shoulder, her eyes wet. “And if I have lost the child?”
Ruth rubbed her back hard enough to hurt the skin. “Then you’ll know the sadness that many of us have felt. I lost two.”
Nora squeezed her eyes shut, a flash of anger rising at the circumstances, at Ruth. It wasn’t that she was wrong, but that she had the nerve to be right. This suffering wasn’t new or unique.
Ruth pulled Nora’s resisting body close and rocked her.
“I didn’t take care of myself,” Nora confessed as tears dripped into her mouth, mingling with the salty words. “I didn’t take care of my own child.”
“There, there,” Ruth answered in melody, over and over. “There, there.”
After years of training, the anatomy tomes, the lectures, and debates, no one had discovered a more helpful answer than that.