adequate nutrition nor shelter. Many would not live to see another summer.
At the clinic, in the afternoon, the parade of human suffering continued. I saw many children and infants with runny noses, coughs and fevers. If they were lucky, it was only a head cold or the first croup of the season. The weather had also aggravated the rheumatism of the elderly.
One woman about my age (just past thirty) had the most beautiful chestnut hair. She also had a dreadful black eye and a split lip. “It hurts when I breathe,” she said. I had her disrobe to the waist so I could examine her. Her skin was very pale, truly almost white, her frame slender. The outline of the humerus showed through her skin, and the shape of each curving rib was clearly defined. Her fingers were long and thin, the bones prominent—an artist’s hands—but red and rough from toil. She was frail and beautiful; somehow she reminded me of a painting of Saint Sebastian stuck full of arrows. From her sagging breasts and slightly swayed back, I could tell that she had borne children, and the proof—a small pale girl with the same chestnut hair—waited beyond the screen.
On her left side was a fist-sized bruise, its bluish-purple contrasting with her fair skin. I drew in my breath. Behind me Violet muttered, “Dear God.” The woman’s face grew even paler.
I tried to probe gently, but soon tears streaked her cheeks. However, she made no sound. Half naked, she seemed so weak and vulnerable that it was hard to understand how any man could have hurt her so.
“I’m afraid you have some broken ribs, my dear.” I taped them up carefully and told her to come back to see me in two weeks time.
While she finished dressing, I turned to Violet. She had gone to the window, and now stood with her back to me, staring out at the street below. The pale nape of her neck showed under the long black hair that had been carefully wound about and pinned up.
“How are you?”
She said nothing.
“Violet?” I put my hand on her arm and felt, briefly, her muscles trembling violently, but then she slipped away and turned to face me. Her brown eyes had an odd glint—fear or rage, I could not tell which. She held her head very stiffly, but high and proud. She had the longest, most slender neck of any woman I knew. Her nose was also long and thin—aquiline—the nose of an aristocrat.
“I am perfectly well, Michelle.”
“You do not appear perfectly well.”
Her eyes shifted toward the woman with the chestnut hair who was just leaving. “I suppose you see many such cases.”
“Far too many.”
She drew in her breath and clenched her fists; I could see her will asserting itself and bringing her under its control. “I wish I could send Collins to visit the drunken brute.”
“That would do little good. You would only provide me with yet another patient, and the waiting room is already overflowing. Besides, such women are often fiercely protective of their husbands. She may even love him.”
“Love? You dare to speak of love, when...” She drew herself up even straighter and now the rage made her eyes shine. “Oh, if I were only...” She seized her lower lip between her teeth. “Forgive me, Michelle. You have work to do.”
I smiled. “You have done quite well. This is, after all, your second full day out with me. Most of my friends cannot even last through a single morning.”
That was at about three o’clock, and I saw the last patient around half past five. Unfortunately, it was the type of case which never fails to upset me. The woman was barely twenty, her baby just six months old. The infant seemed half dead, his eyes glazed over, his limbs long and spindly; he resembled some plant raised in darkness, the long stems a desperate attempt to grow its way out of the dark and into the light.
“How many drops have you been giving this child?” My voice shook and I tried to regain my composure.
The girl’s eyes regarded me warily. “Drops?”
“Drops. What is it—laudanum?”
“I wouldn’t give ’im no laud’num or whatever. It’s only cordial.”
I sat back wearily on my desk. I did not believe in corsets, stays, bustles, and voluminous clothing, so it was fairly easy for me to do so. My head had begun to ache, and I kneaded my forehead briefly with my palm. “Godfrey’s Cordial, I suppose?”
The girl still regarded me warily, and with reason—a sudden urge came over me to slap her. She nodded reluctantly.
“I don’t suppose you know what an opiate is? No, of course not. Godfrey’s is only a weaker version of laudanum. If you keep doing this to your child... You might as well poison him outright and be done with it.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she put her fist over her mouth. “Poison ’im?”
My anger drained away, leaving me both tired and sad. “I don’t mean to be cruel, but Godfrey’s is very bad for babies.”
“I ’ave to get my sewin’ work finished, and ’e just won’t keep quiet otherwise.”
I handed her a handkerchief. “Blow your nose, dear, and don’t cry. It will do no one any good.” She complied loudly. “Have you no relative or friend who could help care for the child during the day?”
She shook her head. “No one, ma’am.”
I sighed, then clenched my teeth. Violet seized my arm. “You look so weary.” She took her purse and turned sternly to the girl. “You must work, I suppose, so that you and your child can live?”
The girl nodded again. “Yes, ma’am.”
“If you did not have to work, would you promise not to give the baby Godfrey’s Cordial?”
She thrust her jaw forward. “But I ’ave to work.”
Violet took a gold sovereign from her purse. “Not necessarily. This should get you by for a while, and if the baby is better I will give you another, then another.” The girl stared in amazement at the coin. “Will you promise me?”
The girl again put her fist over her mouth, then nodded.
“Take it, then.”
The girl clenched her fist about the coin, then clamped her hand over her chest. She stared at Violet in disbelief as if an angel had suddenly appeared before her.
“Bring him here in a month, and if he is better, you will have another coin. The doctor will see to it.”
The girl nodded wildly. “Yes, ma’am.” She put the coin in her tiny purse, then took the baby, who had hardly moved.
“Wait,” I said. “You must stop the Godfrey’s only gradually.”
I gave her instructions on how to taper off the dose and had her repeat them. She stammered them out, then curtsied first to me, then Violet. “Thank you, ma’am. Bless you for savin’ me and my babe.”
Violet would not seem to look at her. “Remember your promise.”
“Oh, I will, ma’am—I swear.” She turned, slid aside the cloth curtain of the screen, and departed.
I sat down on my desk once more. “I too thank you, Violet. I have often thought... If only I could hand out fistfuls of money, more of my patients would live. I don’t know what to do with such cases. They make me so...
Violet stared longingly at the chair. “Perhaps I shall, but only for a moment. My corset is so tightly laced I fear I cannot both breath and sit simultaneously.”
“I warned you to wear your stays loose.”
“But then I would need a new wardrobe because none of my dresses would fit. Alas, Dame Fashion is a stern mistress. We of the gentler sex must keep ourselves ever beautiful, must we not?”
She said it so gravely, that I gave her an incredulous stare. She began to laugh in earnest. “The look you gave me! Oh, now I shall never be able to sit.”
I also began to laugh. Our laughter had a certain frayed, lunatic edge to it. We had passed a very long day together.
The curtain opened, and a hesitant face appeared. Blonde curls showed under the volunteer nurse’s cap, as well as rosy cheeks and blue eyes. The face radiated youth, health and eagerness, a combination all my poor
