Chapter 10 #2
“I have a midwife,” the woman said in a broad West Country accent. “I’m just here for my rash.” She used her free hand to scratch at her enormous belly.
The knot in Ellen’s stomach eased at the word rash.
“Let’s get you on the table!” Amelia chirped. She glanced over her shoulder at Ellen. “Why don’t you take the baby back to the waiting area and we’ll let you know when we’re done.”
Numbly, Ellen nodded. She took the fat baby from the mother, twisting her face into a smile.
“Come on, darling.” She stumbled out of the exam room.
Already four people sat waiting on the benches.
Ellen went to the counter and eased the wriggling baby on the countertop.
She looked at Mrs. Daugherty, who made a peekaboo face with the baby.
“Not yet walking, is it?” she asked when the baby lurched forward into a crawling position.
“Mmm.” Ellen’s mind whirred. The familiar, stringent smells of Mrs. Daugherty’s medications from the shelves did nothing to calm her, like they usually did.
“Ellen.” The woman set a gentle hand on Ellen’s. “What’s wrong?”
Ellen opened her mouth, and her eyes filled with tears. She fought to keep her grip loose on the baby, despite her instinct to tighten her hands into fists until knuckles whitened.
“Oh.” Mrs. Daugherty looked at her. “I’m sorry. I should’ve warned you. That was insensitive of me.”
Ellen blinked back her tears and struggled to swallow her emotion back down. Breaking into sobs in the middle of the dispensary would be humiliating. “It’s fine. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.” Mrs. Daugherty adjusted her spectacles. “How about I take the little one here, and you go take a moment on the stairs back there. Amelia or I shall come get you when we need you.”
“But I’ve got such a list of babies,” Ellen protested.
Mrs. Daugherty had already taken the baby away from Ellen and was shooing her around the counter and to the curtain that separated the dispensary from the stairs leading up to Amelia’s flat.
Ellen eased down on the fourth step and focused on stilling her trembling fingers. She didn’t know how long she sat there until the curtain whipped back and Amelia’s concerned face appeared in the crack.
“She’s gone. I prescribed her some of Mrs. Daugherty’s lotion, and she’ll use it whenever she starts itching.” Amelia paused. “That was the healthiest, fattest baby I’ve seen in a long time.”
Ellen laughed, fingering the ruffled hem of her skirt. “I forgot they sometimes don’t come out scrawny.”
Amelia reached over and held Ellen’s hands. “She’s healthy. The baby is healthy. It was a bright red rash, completely harmless, if annoying.”
Ellen loosed a shuddering sigh. “I’m relieved.”
“Do you need to go home?”
She stood, smoothing out the seat of her skirt. “No. I have a full list of people to see.”
“How are the Patel twins doing?”
Ellen shrugged, grateful to be back on firm ground.
“No idea, which means they must be healthy.” Few babies two months early survived, particularly as twins and without incubators.
But they were big at birth, had an extremely supportive father and extended family, and weren’t born in the dead of winter.
Their mother’s milk had come in quickly and easily. All huge advantages.
“There’s a new baby to take a look at.” Ellen marshalled her thoughts toward the day ahead. “She was only a couple weeks early, but she’s jaundiced and not feeding well. It’s so hard to care for newborns in the winter, so I’ll probably drop by and see her. And then you know the rest of my list.”
“If you drop by the O’Malleys, can you get my crutch back, please? That man never returned it after I wrapped his ankle.” Amelia stepped back so Ellen could squeeze by her on the narrow stairs.
“Oh, that’s right. Tina O’Malley isn’t doing well, and I don’t like her toddler’s cough, but she says she doesn’t have time to drop by a children’s hospital.” Ellen mentally added that to her list. “She’ll be my last visit for the day, and then I’ll come back by here before returning home.”
“And get an escort home with that fancy footman of yours,” Amelia teased.
Ellen rolled her eyes. “It gets dark early now, and Mark is overly protective.” She paused in the stairwell, standing beside her friend.
“As long as he doesn’t limit you like your parents tried.” Amelia’s voice was serious.
“No, he’s...supportive.” Ellen didn’t understand it.
Except he does appreciate smart women, she added snidely.
And my French elocution lessons paid off enough that I can correspond in French with medical staff.
Speaking of that, she was desperately behind in her notes and reports.
Ellen usually tried to jot her observations down, both to see what worked for her and also to pass along to the Maternity Hospital in Paris for Madame Henry.
Amelia’s eyebrows raised. “A supportive man? My, that must be the eighth wonder of the world.”
Ellen wanted to say more, to ask her friend for her thoughts on the argument from last night, but an antsy patient hollered something semi-profane.
Amelia rolled her eyes and stepped back into the waiting room, nearly backing into Mrs. Daugherty while she was at it. “I hear you. Just because you’re the loudest doesn’t mean you’ll be first on my list.”
Ellen bit her lips to hide a smile, gathering her things, and stepped back into the brisk winter morning.
Her day sped by. Most of her appointments were spent looking at premature and newborn babies and judging how bad their jaundice was by the yellowness of their skin and eyes.
Then she stopped by three babies who'd been born over a month early and had problems breathing.
Two battled a winter infection, and the third was still having cyanotic spells.
During the spell, give insufflation and skin stimulation. Warm baths, frictions of alcohol are sufficient. Eventually the child will regain color. In some cases we have found it advantageous to give a teaspoon or two of warm rum before feeding.
She handed out fresh rubber teats for bottles, hot water bottles to keep the babies warm, and told any of the mothers with questions concerning breastfeeding to see a midwife.
Finally, near the end of her day, she found herself at the juncture of seven streets, for which Seven Dials was named.
It was not a pretty place. Ellen had never been to the infamous slums of London’s East End, but Seven Dials and St. Giles were bad enough.
Ramshackle wooden buildings, half rotten from the weather and time, precariously lined the streets.
Manure and trash littered the edges of the chipped cobblestone streets.
Half the people on the street were drunk, the other half exhausted from working poor-paying jobs with bad hours.
Match sellers, newsboys, and flower girls all slunk home from a long day’s work in Covent Garden, shivering in their threadbare clothes.
Gray laundry flapped in the stiff wind between the narrow buildings.
Ellen hurried to the O’Malley home, a one-room flat on the first story of a building that should’ve been condemned.
The house had once been spacious and airy—about a hundred and fifty years ago.
Since then the interior had been divided into tenement rooms and divided again, let and sublet as the area, designed to be an upscale merchant neighborhood in the 1690s, descended into slums. She skipped the broken, rotting step halfway up the exterior staircase and sidestepped two mating rats in the corridor before coming to their door.
Knocking, Ellen held her breath as she waited.
The reek of stale urine mixed with spilled beer was just as unpleasant as the first day she’d smelled it years ago.
The door cracked, and red, tangled hair and a snotty nose poked out. “Who’re you?”
Ellen smiled down at the child. “I’m a friend of your mother. Is she here? Can I come inside?”
The door creaked open, and Ellen stepped into the cramped quarters.
Dirty dishes filled the wash bucket in the corner, and the stove didn’t appear to be lit at all.
A pile of dirty nappies waiting to be washed moldered near the cracked window, and breadcrumbs littered the rickety table.
The one bed in the corner of the room was piled high with wrinkled blankets and several children, all of whom stared at her.
Tina O’Malley, a red-headed Irish lass who’d sought her fortune with her husband across the sea and in London, sat at a stool with a crying baby at her feet.
In one hand was a moldy potato, in the other was a knife with a broken handle.
She glanced up at Ellen and smiled. Self-consciously, she looked around the room and stood, wiping her hands on the bottom of her ragged skirt.
“Didn’t expect to see you today.” Her Irish lilt had flattened over years of London smog and poverty.
She half-tripped over the skinny baby on the floor as she went to greet Ellen.
Ellen didn’t like what she saw. Tina’s belly was already straining against her dress, but it wasn’t because she was so large or far along in the pregnancy.
It was because she was rail-thin elsewhere.
Her face was so pale her freckles stood out even in winter, with no sun to brighten them.
Tina’s eyes sunk in her skull, and purple bags shadowed them.
“Sean, put the kettle on. We have company.”
A boy, her oldest, scooted out of bed and traipsed to the stove.
“Oh, please don’t bother,” Ellen hurried to say. “I just stopped by to say hello.”
Tina frowned. “I can offer you tea. My mam would roll in her grave if she thought I’d not spare a visitor a cuppa.”
“Please.” Ellen still struggled with this balance even after years of practice. How not to offend someone but also not take up all their meager resources. “Really, I just dropped by to pick up the crutch for Doctor Hart.”
Tina scowled at her, but coming from a woman with bird-like limbs, it was hard to take it seriously. “Fine.”