A sudden, fearful death (10 page)

I will have to swallow my
fear." Again for a moment her eyes overflowed and there was a choking in
her voice. Then with a superlative effort she mastered herself. "Thank
you, Mr. Monk. You have discharged your duty honorably. I thank you for it. You
may present your account, and I shall see that it is met. If you will be so
kind as to show yourself out. I do not wish to appear before the servants
looking in a state of distress."

"Of course." He stood up.
"I am truly sorry. I wish there had been any other answer I could have
given you." He did not wait for a reply which could only be meaningless.
"Good-bye, Mrs. Penrose."

He went out into the hazy sun of
Hastings Street feeling physically numb, and so crowded with emotion he was
barely aware of the passersby, the clatter, the heat, or the people who stared
at him as he strode on.

Chapter 3

Callandra Daviot had been deeply
moved by the story that Monk had brought her regarding Julia Penrose and her
sister, but she was helpless to do anything about it, and she was not a woman
to spend time and emotion uselessly. There was too much else to do, and at the
forefront of her mind was her work in the hospital of which she had spoken when
Monk had called only a few short weeks before.

She was a member of the Board of
Governors, which generally meant a fairly passive role of giving advice which
doctors and treasurers would listen to more or less civilly, and then ignore,
and of lecturing nurses on general morality and sobriety, a task she loathed
and considered pointless.

There were so many better things to
do, beginning with the reforms proposed by Florence Nightingale, which Hester
had so fiercely advocated. Light and air in hospital wards were considered
quite unnecessary here at home in England, if not downright harmful. The
medical establishment was desperately conservative, jealous of its knowledge
and privilege, loathing change. There was no place for women except as drudges,
or on rare occasions administrators, such as hospital matron, or charitable
workers such as herself and other ladies of society who played at the edges,
watching other people's morality and using their connections to obtain
donations of money.

She set out from home instructing
her coachman to take her to the Gray's Inn Road with a sense of urgency which
had only partly to do with her plans for reform. She would not have told Monk
the truth of it—she did not even admit to herself how profoundly she looked
forward to seeing Dr. Kristian Beck again, but whenever she thought of the hospital
it was his face that came to her mind, his voice in her ears.

She brought her attention back
sharply to the mundane matters in hand. Today she would see the matron, Mrs.
Flaherty, a small tense woman who took offense extremely easily and forgave and
forgot nothing. She managed her wards efficiently, terrorized the nurses into a
remarkable degree of diligence and sobriety, and had a patience with the sick
which seemed almost limitless. But she was rigid in her beliefs, her devotion
to the surgeons and physicians who ruled the hospital, and her absolute refusal
to listen to newfangled ideas and all those who advocated them. Even the name
of Florence Nightingale held no magic for her.

Callandra alighted and instructed
the coachman when to return for her, then climbed the steps and went in through
the wide front doors to the stone-flagged foyer. A middle-aged woman trudged
across with a pail of dirty water in one hand and a mop in the other. Her face
was pale and her wispy hair screwed into a knot at the back of her head. She
banged the pail with her knee and slopped the water over onto the floor without
stopping. She ignored Callandra as if she were invisible.

A student surgeon appeared, scarlet
arterial blood spatters on his collarless shirt and old trousers, mute evidence
of his attendance in the operating theater. He nodded at Callandra and passed
by.

There was a smell of coal dust, the
heat of bodies in fevers and sickness, stale dressings, and of drains and
undisposed sewage. She should go and see the matron about nurses' moral
discipline. It was her turn to lecture them again. Then she should see the
treasurer about funds and the disposition of certain monies to hand, the review
of charity cases. She would do these things first, then she would be free to go
and see Krislian Beck.

She found the matron in one of the
wards filled with surgical patients, both those awaiting operations and those
recovering. Several had developed fevers during the night or become worse,
their infections already well advanced. One man was comatose and close to
death. Although the recent discovery of anesthesia had made all sorts of
procedures possible, many who survived operations died afterwards of infection.
Those who survived were a minority. There was no way known to prevent
septicemia or gangrene, and little that would treat even the symptoms, let
alone provide a cure.

Mrs. Flaherty came out of the small
room where the medicines and clean bandages were kept; her thin face was pale,
her white hair screwed back so tightly it pulled the skin around her eyes.
There were two spots of angry color on her cheeks.

"Good morning, your
ladyship," she said brusquely. "There is nothing you can do here
today, and I do not want to hear anything more about Miss Nightingale and fresh
air. We've got poor souls dying of fevers, and outside air will kill the rest
if we listen to you." She consulted the watch hanging from a pin on her
thin shoulder, then she looked back at Callandra. "I'd be obliged, ma'am,
if next time you talk to the nurses about morals and behavior, you would
particularly mention honesty. We've had more thefts from patients. Just small
things, of course, they haven't got much or they'd not be here. Although I
don't know what good you think it will do, I'm sure."

She came out into the ward, a long
room with a high ceiling, lined on both sides with narrow beds, each blanketed
in gray and with someone either sitting or lying in it. Some were pale-faced,
others feverish, some restless, tossing from side to side, some lying
motionless, breathing shallowly, gasping for air. The room was hot and smelled
stale and close.

A young woman in a soiled overall
walked down the length of the floor between the beds carrying an uncovered pail
of slops. The odor of it, strong and sour, assailed Callandra's nostrils as she
passed.

"I'm sorry," Callandra
replied, snatching her attention back to the matron's request. "Lecturing
them isn't the answer. We need to get a different kind of woman into the
trade, and then treat them accordingly."

Mrs. Flaherty's face creased with
irritation. She had heard these arguments before and they were fanciful and
completely impractical.

"All very nice, your
ladyship," she said tartly. "But we have got to deal with what we
have, and we have laziness, drunkenness, thieving, and complete
irresponsibility. If you want to help, you'll do something about that, not talk
about situations that will never be."

Callandra opened her mouth to
argue, but her attention was distracted by a woman halfway down the ward
starting to choke, and the patient next to her calling out for help.

A pale, obese woman appeared with
an empty slop pail and lumbered over to the gasping patient, who began to
vomit.

"That's the digitalis
leaves," Mrs. Flaherty said matter-of-factly. "The poor creature is
dropsical. Passed no urine for days, but this will help. She's been in here
before and recovered." She turned away and looked back toward her table,
where she had been writing notes on medications and responses. The heavy keys
hanging in her belt jangled against each other. "Now if you will excuse
me," she went on, her back to Callandra, "I've got a great deal to
do, and I'm sure you have." Her voice on the last remark was tight with
sarcasm.

"Yes," Callandra said
equally tartly. "Yes I have. I am afraid you will have to ask someone else
to lecture the nurses, Mrs. Flaherty; perhaps Lady Ross Gilbert would do that.
She seems very capable."

"She is," Mrs. Flaherty
said meaningfully, then sat down at her table and picked up her pen. It was
dismissal.

Callandra left the ward, walking
along a dim corridor past a woman with a bucket and scrubbing brush, and another
woman seeming no more than a heap of laundry piled up against the wall, insensible
with alcohol.

At the end of the corridor she
encountered a group of three young student doctors talking together eagerly,
heads close, hands gesticulating.

"It's this big," one
red-haired youth said, holding up his clenched fist. "Sir Herbert is going
to cut it out. Thank God I live when I do. Just think how hopeless that would
have been twelve years ago before anesthetic. Now with ether or nitrous oxide,
nothing is impossible."

"Greatest thing since Harvey
and the circulation of blood," another agreed enthusiastically. "My
grandfather was a naval surgeon in Nelson's fleet Had to do everything with a
bottle of rum and a leather gag, and two men to hold you down. My God, isn't
modern medicine wonderful. Damn, I've got blood all over my trousers." He
pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket, dabbed at himself without effect,
except to stain the handkerchief scarlet.

"Don't know why you're wasting
your time," the third young man said, regarding his efforts with a smile.
"You're assisting, aren't you? You'll only get covered again. Shouldn't
have worn a good suit. I never do. That'll teach you to be vain just because
it's Sir Herbert."

They jostled each other in mock
battle, passing Callandra with a brief word of acknowledgment, and went on
across the foyer toward the operating theater.

A moment later Sir Herbert Stanhope
himself came out of one of the large oak doorways. He saw Callandra and
hesitated, as if searching his mind to recollect her name. He was a large man,
not especially tall but portly and of imposing manner. His face was ordinary
enough at a glance: narrow eyes, sharp nose, high brow, and receding sandy
hair. It was only with closer attention one was acutely aware of the power of
his intellect and the emotional intensity of his concentration.

"Good morning, Lady
Callandra," he said with sudden satisfaction.

"Good morning, Sir
Herbert," she replied, smiling very slightly. "I'm glad I've managed
to see you before you begin operating."

"I'm somewhat in a
hurry," he said with a flicker of irritation. "My staff will be
waiting for me in the theater, and I daresay my patient will be coming any
moment."

"I have an observation which
may be able to reduce infection to some extent," she continued,
regardless of his haste.

"Indeed," he said
skeptically, a tiny wrinkle of temper between his brows. "And what idea is
that, pray?"

"I was in the ward a moment
ago and observed, not for the first time, a nurse carrying a pail of slops the
length of the room without a lid."

"Slops are inevitable,
ma'am," he said impatiently. "People pass waste, and frequently it
is disagreeable when they are ill. They also vomit. It is in the nature, both
of disease and of cure."

Callandra kept her patience with
difficulty. She was not a short-tempered woman, but being patronized she found
exceedingly hard to bear.

"I am aware of that, Sir
Herbert. But by the very nature that it is waste expelled by the body, the
fumes are noxious and cannot be good to inhale again. Would it not be a simple
thing to have the nurses use covers for the pails?"

There was a burst of raucous
laughter somewhere around the corner of the corridor. Sir Herbert's mouth
tightened with distaste.

"Have you ever tried to teach
nurses to observe rules, ma'am?" He said it with a faint touch of humor,
but there was no pleasure in it. "As was observed in the
Times
last
year—I cannot quote precisely, but it was to the effect that nurses are
lectured by committees, preached at by chaplains, scowled on by treasurers and
stewards, scolded by matrons, bullied by dressers, grumbled at and abused by patients,
insulted if old, treated with flippancy if middle-aged and agreeable-natured,
seduced if young." He raised his thin eyebrows. "Is it any wonder
they are such as they are? What manner of woman would one expect to take such
employment?"

"I read the same piece,"
she agreed, moving to keep level with him as he began to walk toward the
distant operating theater. "You omitted to mention that they are also
sworn at by surgeons. It said that too." She ignored the momentary
flicker of temper in his eyes. 'That is perhaps the best of all the arguments
for employing a better class of woman, and treating them as professionals
rather than the roughest of servants."

"My dear Lady Callandra, it is
all very well to talk as if there were hundreds of wellborn and intelligent
young women of good moral character queuing up to perform the service, but
since the glamour of war is past that is very far from being the case." He
shook his head sharply. "Surely a moment's investigation would show you
that? Idealistic daydreams are all very pleasant, but I have to deal in reality.
I can only work with what there is, and the truth is that the women you see
keep the fire stoked, the slops emptied, the bandages rolled, and most of them,
when sober, are kind enough to the sick."