“About?”
“The rate of dysentery in workhouses across Central London.” Amelia spun away from Ellen, busying herself with straightening an already straight shelf of medicine.
“At this hour?” Ellen wondered if the dysentery conversation had taken place late last night.
Amelia shrugged, not turning as she adjusted glass bottles.
Ellen’s troubles faded to the background as she saw the tension in Amelia’s profile. “Listen.” Ellen stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m your friend. Whatever makesyou happy makes me happy.” She got a glimpse of Amelia’s secret smile, then Amelia hurried into the exam room to prepare her day.
She didn’t want to spoil her friend’s mood, so she held her tongue and instead followed to ask about the day’s patients. Many patients, they expected, would not show because of the rain. Ellen was half tempted to not make her rounds, either. But a nurse from the New Women’s Hospital had sent a note to Ellen, asking her to check on two prostitutes who’d recently given birth in neighboring brothels.
Ellen didn’t usually visit brothels because they tended to be much better at preventing conception than anyone else. Although Ellen believed a brothel wasn’t a good place for a child to grow up, in some ways, the women with compassionate madams were to be envied by other young mothers. Widows or mothers who faced abandonment had a few charitable societies to turn to, but finding employment while caring for their children was impossible. And unmarried women, often servants, had almost no choice but to send their infant to any family willing to raise the baby or to apply to the Foundling Hospital in hopes they'd raise the child instead so she could work and pay for a wetnurse.
She tried to stay as busy as possible, to keep from breaking down and sobbing.It’s just the change in my condition,Ellen told herself.Women always get more emotional and exhausted when increasing, and that’s all this is. I don’t care that Mark is planning on leaving. He’s done it before, he can do it again, and I’ll survive it. I refuse to wilt because of a man.
Before noon she'd reviewed Madame Henry’s newest notes on their latest infants, interviewed a potential wetnurse to keep nearby, and checked on three jaundiced newborns. She felt too nauseated to eat lunch, so she kept going. Ellen visited two premature babies, spending two hours with each so the mothers could rest. One was growing nicely, but Ellen privately feared the other was coming down with a respiratory infection and might not survive the next week. She sighed, wishing it weren’t true.
Nasal lavages are indicated in these circumstances, but this is difficult to do. Autopsies have shown these infants vomit milk easily, and sometimes milk catches and ferments in the nasal passages. If one is unable to disinfect these focal areas…
Ellen trailed off, letting her mind run blank from Madame Henry’s notes as she peered up inside the tiny nostrils. She was unqualified and disinclined to perform autopsies, and so far none of the doctors she’d contacted at children’s or obstetric hospitals were interested in research. The babies were weak, born too early. Case closed, according to them. Truth be told, Ellen wasn’t sure she’d find a family who would be willing to give their infant up to medical research anyway.
After finishing there, she stopped by the first brothel, practically in Covent Garden. The women were friendly and curious about her, the gentlewoman who treated the weaklings of the poor, and gave her tea and a warm brick to heat up from the cold rain. She met with the mother, an Italian woman about her age, who was clearly attached to her baby but anxious about how she could still work. Her madam wasn’t making it easy, she confided. The child was full-term, a week old, but transferring milk poorly. Ellen advised the mother to find a midwife to teach her to breastfeed. If that didn’t improve, to either pay a wetnurse or buy goat milk.
“It’s all Becky’s fault, you know,” the woman said cheerfully. “I only let the men bugger me, you’ll never get pregnant that way. Becky got sick one night and I had to cover her shift. She takes the traditionals, so I had to do what they wanted. And here we are, nine months later.”
Ellen blinked, unable to hide her surprise.
The Italian laughed. “You British are so prudish. Lots of European women bugger because it doesn’t have nine-month consequences.”
Ellen laughed off her surprise and wished the woman well.
The second brothel, across the street, was not as nice and the madame clearly not as protective of her girls. Floral wallpaperpeeled at the corners of the small parlor, and several stains showed on the threadbare rug. Sharp female voices bickered somewhere on the floor above them. The mother was young, perhaps twenty, and looked like she’d given birth only a day or two before. Ellen knew something was wrong as soon as she looked at the tiny, beautiful, misshapen body wrapped in pale pink satin undergarments. She didn’t know what was wrong, but she knew by the shivering and whimpering the poor darling was in a great deal of pain. She was surprised the little boy had survived as long as he had. Ellen took a deep breath, forced her own pain in the farthest corner of her heart and locked it away, and tried to be professional. She explained slowly, gently, the child was too sick to live and was in a great deal of pain. That he would live only a day or two more, and in great agony.
Tears welled in the woman’s eyes, and she snatched up the child, stroking the bald head as she listened. Ellen quietly laid out her two choices: to gather every last second she could with the child, to horde every heartbeat and enjoy it while she could, or to find a sympathetic midwife with morphine and help her child go gently to sleep, ending the pain. “This option is illegal,” Ellen warned. “If you are caught, you could hang.” It was one of the worst choices to ever give a parent. Ellen hated herself for giving the mother a terrible choice, but she’d hate herself more for not speaking up.
“What type of mother am I if I have a way to end my child’s suffering and don’t?” The woman asked as tears streamed down her face.
Ellen dropped sugar water in the baby’s mouth to take his mind from the pain, whispered consolations to the mother, and left her with a location and a coded message to use.
She waited until she was outside to duck into an alleyway and vomit. Her stomach lurched, trying to jump out of her throat. Ellen leaned her forehead against the brick wall and gasped for breath, wiping the acidic taste away with the back of her hand.I can’t do this. Ellen had that thought at least once a year, afterparticularly bad days. But it had lessened remarkably since Mark had reentered her life. She let the rain trickle down her face, wetting her clothes, as she imagined their evenings in his study, by the fire. How he would play with a curl of her hair while reading. How she would touch the back of his neck as she walked by him for no reason at all. How he would always ask about her day and get her tea and massage her hands or feet.
She hadn’t realized what a toll this job took on her, how close she was to fizzling out, until someone had come alongside and supported her.Why did I get used to him? I was doing fine on my own! And now he barges into my life and makes me depend on him and trust him and how am I supposed to do this work now?Ellen choked back a sob, thinking of the tiny life inside the brothel. That could happen to anyone. Anyone. How could she bear it if it happened to her? And where would Mark be, Oxford? She scrubbed the tears and rain from her face and turned.
Rain had drenched her cloak, and muddy rainwater filled her shoes. Shivering in the cold, Ellen stepped through a mud puddle that splashed up her stockings.The dispensary. Just get to the dispensary and it will be dry and warm and safe.
Ellen stumbled up the Covent alleys, heading north through Seven Dials. Rain and tears blinded her vision. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to focus on anything besides the driving spikes of rain and the breaking of her heart.
Wind gusted down a passageway, causing the dilapidated buildings to creak and moan. She ducked under a crooked awning to catch her breath and eyed the sheets of rain, hugging herself. At this rate, it felt like the deluge would rival Noah’s flood. A door creaked open behind her, and a wave of obnoxiously drunk laughter spilled outside. Ellen stepped to the side to avoid whoever was coming out. Drunk, they bumped into her anyway.
The foul body odor of a professional drunkard hit her nostrils as the huge body knocked into her. Ellen curled into herself, stepping nearly out into the rain to get away.
“You.” The slurred voice sounded familiar.
Ellen didn’t look, hunching her shoulders more.If I don’t acknowledge him, maybe he’ll leave me alone.She’d told Mrs. Finley the neighborhood surrounding the dispensary wasn’t crime-ridden. She just needed to get back to it.
A rough hand grabbed her shoulder. “Look at me.”
Heart pounding, Ellen glanced up to see the bleary, angry face of Seamus O’Malley. Her stomach dropped into her wet boots. “Pardon me.” She stepped out into the rain, but his hand gripped her harder and dragged her back into him. Her wet back hit his ale-soaked front.