Chapter 44 #2
Nora bit her lip. She’d spotted Mrs. Phipps in the audience today, frowning anxiously as Horace chirped enthusiastically about malformed valves and weakened ventricles and enlarged organs. The cadaver had the same condition he did—angina.
“Why don’t we send him off for a season to get it out of his system?” Harry suggested. “We could spare him for a few months. Maybe the worst would have passed by then. You could even go with him, Mrs. Phipps, to ensure we get him back in one piece.”
Laughter broke the tension.
“And trust you children to run this house?” Mrs. Phipps’s raised eyebrows made them all laugh harder. “Julia is the only trustworthy one among the lot of you.”
“And Mrs. Trimble will be preoccupied.” A deep voice boomed from the doorway. They all jerked around to see Horace, his arms filled with a blanketed bundle. “Mrs. Phipps is right. You could no more spare us than the tides can spare the moon.”
“We thought you were still working,” Harry said, sitting up. “What are you doing with the baby?”
“Do you think it takes me hours to prepare for a lecture?” he huffed. “I’ve been examining this one in her cot. I took a good listen at her chest,” Horace announced. “It’s worse than we thought.”
Julia’s hands twisted. She’d been the most devoted attendant since Aunt Wilcox brought the child in last week, even placing the girl’s cot in her own room at night, emerging in the mornings with bleary eyes and nervous questions.
But despite her care, there was undeniable fluid in the newborn’s lungs, and Daniel had warned them not to get too attached.
“What’s wrong with her?” Julia gripped her embroidery hoop like a life rope.
Horace gave her a level stare, fathomless, bracing. “She’s orphaned.”
Julia stammered, “I—I know that, but what did you find—”
“The lungs are quite clear now. The poultices and warm wraps have worked.”
Harry sat up, exclaiming with surprise, but Horace waved him back.
“It’s her heart.”
Nora held her breath, her hurrah cut in half. She’d missed something. She hadn’t heard any murmurs or irregular beats. “Her heart?” she asked, tamping down nausea. They’d spent the whole afternoon discussing why nothing could fix a defective heart.
“It’s broken,” Horace continued. “She’s lost her mother. There’s nothing more dangerous for a child than losing the will to live.” Horace stepped forward with the too-small bundle in his arms. “She’s past the pneumonia, but she’s not strong enough to be taken to a foundling home.”
“Then we’ll keep her longer,” Harry offered. “Mrs. Nugent gives her plenty of milk every day, and we have the goat’s milk—”
“Play nursemaid?” Horace lifted the corner of his lip in disapproval. “With your schedule? You don’t know how much trouble a newborn makes.”
“It’s not playing,” Julia shot back, her voice scolding. Her eyes glistened defiantly in the lamplight. “And she’s no more trouble than burn patients or amputees or cholera or diphtheria—”
“And then what?” Horace demanded, cutting her off.
“Then?” Harry asked, perplexed.
“Would you throw her back like a fish once you get her well?” Horace asked. “Mrs. Phipps was horrified when I proposed that with our last orphan.”
Nora narrowed her eyes.
Horace approached Harry and held out the child, folding back the mint-green blanket to reveal her sleeping face. “She shouldn’t be our patient.”
“Please don’t send her away,” Julia pleaded. “Not until—”
Horace held up his hand, stopping her. “It seems a simple calculation for anyone with half a brain. A child with no parents. Parents with no child. She shouldn’t be a patient. She should be your daughter.”
Harry’s already pale face grew starkly white against his orange beard.
Horace pushed the child closer. “True, she’s not a very lovely specimen, but she’s the only one we have to choose from currently.”
Julia yelped, “What do you mean? She’s beautiful.”
Nora—who knew Horace better—couldn’t hold back a wince. He was such a clumsy meddler.
“A daughter?” Harry whispered as Horace transferred the sleeping baby to his arms. It took a moment to tuck her into place, and Harry looked at Nora for confirmation he was holding the little patient correctly.
“I can’t promise she’ll survive,” Horace remarked offhandedly. “She’s as scrawny as—”
“Survive?” Julia finally leaped to her feet as if jerked from a dream. She tucked the blanket under the infant’s chin with shaking hands. “She’ll live to be older and stronger than you,” she declared with eyes as fierce as Horace’s before she softened her tone. “Don’t tease.”
A smile so small only Nora caught it flicked across Horace’s face, quickly replaced by a sober frown sent to Harry. “I wasn’t teasing. Truly, she’s weak. You have to prepare yourself—”
Julia’s hand went up inches from Horace’s mouth, blocking the words. She looked only at the fragile girl. “She’s perfect.”
They were all on their feet now, crowding forward.
Harry at last caught his wife’s eye, his own face stunned and blank. “What do we…” he asked Julia with strangled words. “What if she—”
Julia’s expression was more tortured than triumphant.
As she struggled for words, Horace laid a heavy arm on Nora’s shoulders, his skillful fingers firm and sure.
She looked into his aged face, expecting to find more tired lines, but something animated his sharp eyes in a way she hadn’t seen since his stroke. Nora closed her grateful hand over his.
“You’re sure it would be legal? That no one will come for her?” Julia asked through trembling lips.
“My solicitor will take care of it,” Horace offered. “I’m quite sure this child has no rich grand-uncle waiting to claim her. She was left to die in a prison.”
“And I could keep her? Always?” Julia’s eyes raked over each of them, begging them to confirm for certain. Mrs. Phipps’s wet eyes were answer enough.
“The thought of taking in an orphan had crossed my mind.” Harry’s husky whisper nearly undid Nora. “In theory. But we still hoped—”
“She still doesn’t have a name,” Julia whimpered. “I wonder if her mother called her anything before she—”
“Holly?” Mrs. Phipps offered.
They all turned to her.
“She was born Christmas week.”
“I’ve never heard it used as a name,” Nora admitted, thinking of the glossy leaves and crimson berries. “But I like it.”
“Holly?” Harry tried the word on his tongue as he waited for Julia.
“Holly,” Julia whispered. “It’s lovely.” Her head dipped, her small nose grazing the baby’s.
Horace slid his hand from Nora’s and paced to the zebra, resting his arm on Enzo’s striped rump.
“But don’t let emotion cloud your judgment.
You can’t be overly hasty. She’s just an urchin, perhaps endowed with questionable morals.
Are you certain you want her?” he asked, a strange tilt to his mouth.
Every eye turned to the old man in varying degrees of outrage.
He drummed his fingers against the stubbly hide.
“I’ll be the first to warn you—orphans bring more than their fair share of trouble and expense,” he said as Holly stirred and mewed in Harry’s arms. “Nora nearly bankrupted the entire household with this little hospital of hers. Now midwives and students are always underfoot, on top of the clinic—”
Daniel scoffed and circled Nora’s waist, the strength of his arm sending a cascade of warmth down her spine.
“Horace, I think your other little acquisitions cost far more than bandages and quinine, if you’re worried about ledgers,” he rebutted, pointing to the zebra and a fossil of some ancient bird beside a pickled Honduran bat floating in a jar of alcohol. “I suggest you stop buying specimens.”
Mrs. Phipps huffed in agreement.
“I do,” Julia choked, one tear hanging on her cheek as she ignored their exchange. “I want her very much. Holly Trimble.”
At the sound of his surname attached to the baby, Harry blinked several times. “Holly Trimble,” he repeated.
Julia pressed the soft head into her neck, holding the fragile baby against her chest. “Can we? Harry?”
Nora half wanted to flee the room and leave them alone in the staggering moment, but she was too selfish. Her stomach quivered with suspense as Harry swallowed several times, his face shifting through emotions too quickly for Nora to anticipate his next words.
“You heard Horace. It sounds as if orphaned girls can be ruinous.” He tried to complete the joke, but his voice caught and ended in tears, which he wiped away as they all waited.
“A daughter,” Julia breathed.
Harry could only nod as he closed his arms around his wife, the child buried between them.
Horace cleared his throat. “I wasn’t finished.” He paused, his limitless eyes locked on Nora. “Despite the risks—” His voice snagged. “Speaking purely as a scientist, I must recommend the experiment. The results, thus far, are promising.”