He watched her walk away, a small figure receding into the curtain of falling snow. My dream is to save lives, he thought, to battle heroically at countless sickbeds. Yet when a single friendless girl pleads for my help, I cannot be bothered.
The figure was almost lost now, in the swirl of white.
“Miss Connolly!” he called. “My room is a short walk from here. For tonight, if you need a place to sleep, it might serve you.”
Twenty-three
THIS WAS A MISTAKE.
Norris lay in bed, considering what he would do with his guest come morning. In one moment of reckless charity, he had taken on a responsibility he did not need. It’s only temporary, he promised himself; this arrangement could not continue. At least the girl had done her best to stay unobtrusive. She had slipped silently up the stairs behind him, alerting no one in the building to the fact that he’d smuggled in a female guest. She’d curled up like an exhausted kitten in the corner and almost immediately fallen asleep. He could not even hear her breathing. Only by looking across the room, seeing her shadowy form on the floor, did he even know she was there. He thought of the challenges in his own life—such minor ones when he considered what Rose Connolly must face every day on the streets.
But there’s nothing I can do about it. The world is unjust, and I cannot change the world.
When he rose the next day, she was still sleeping. He thought of rousing her and sending her on her way, but he didn’t have the heart. She slept as deeply as a child. By the light of day, her clothing looked even more ragged, the cloak obviously mended many times over, the hem of her skirt streaked with mud. On her finger glittered a ring set with stones of colored glass, a cheap version of the multicolored rings he saw on the hands of so many ladies, even his own mother. But this was a poor imitation, nothing but a tin ornament one would give a child. He found it oddly touching that Rose would so unabashedly wear such a trinket, as though proudly displaying her poverty right there on her finger. Poor though she was, her face was fine-boned and flawless, and her chestnut hair reflected the sun’s gleam in coppery streaks. Were she resting on a pillow of fine lace instead of rags, she would rival any beauty from Beacon Hill. But in years to come, long before the bloom had left the cheek of a Beacon Hill girl, poverty would surely dim the glow of Rose Connolly’s face.
The world is unjust. I cannot change it.
Though he could scarcely spare the money, he left a few coins beside her; it would feed her for a few days. She was still sleeping when he left the room.
Though he had never attended a service by the Reverend William Channing, he had heard of the man’s reputation. Indeed, it was impossible not to know about Channing, whose reportedly spellbinding sermons attracted an ever-growing circle of devoted followers to the Unitarian church on Federal Street. Last night, at Dr. Grenville’s reception, the Welliver sisters had loudly sung Channing’s praises. “That’s where you’ll find anyone of consequence on a Sunday morning,” Kitty Welliver had gushed. “We’ll all be there tomorrow—Mr. Kingston and Mr. Lackaway and even Mr. Holmes, though he was raised a Calvinist. You shouldn’t miss it, Mr. Marshall! His sermons are so impressive, so profound. Truly, he makes one think!”
While Norris doubted that a single profound thought ever crossed Kitty Welliver’s mind, he could not ignore her suggestion that he attend. Last night, he had glimpsed the circle in which he one day hoped to circulate, and that same circle would be seated that morning in the pews of the Federal Street church.
As soon as he stepped inside, he spotted familiar faces. Wendell and Edward sat near the front, and he started to make his way toward them, but a hand tapped his shoulder, and he suddenly found himself flanked on either side by the sisters Welliver.
“Oh, we hoped you’d come!” said Kitty. “Wouldn’t you like to sit with us?”
“Yes, do!” said Gwendolyn. “We always sit upstairs.”
So upstairs he went, forcibly marched by sheer feminine will, and found himself seated in the balcony, wedged between Kitty’s skirts on the left and Gwendolyn’s on the right. He soon discovered why the sisters preferred their isolated perch in the balcony: Here they were free to gossip straight through the Reverend Channing’s sermon, which they clearly had little intention of listening to.
“Look, there’s Elizabeth Peabody! She’s looking quite severe today,” said Kitty. “And what a horrid dress. So unflattering.”
“You’d think the Reverend Channing would be tired of her company by now,” Gwendolyn whispered back.
Kitty nudged Norris on the arm. “You have heard the rumors, haven’t you? About Miss Peabody and the reverend? They’re close.” Kitty added, with sly emphasis, “Very close.”
Norris peered over the balcony at the femme fatale at the center of the scandal, and saw a modestly dressed woman wearing unattractive spectacles and an expression of fierce concentration.
“There’s Rachel. I didn’t know she was back from Savannah,” said Kitty.
“Where?”
“Sitting next to Charles Lackaway. You don’t suppose the two of them…”
“I can’t imagine. Don’t you think Charles looks odd today? Such a sickly expression.”
Kitty leaned forward. “He did claim he had a fever last night. Maybe he was telling the truth after all.”
Gwendolyn giggled. “Or maybe Rachel is just too much to bear.”
Norris tried to focus on the Reverend Channing’s sermon, but it was impossible with these silly girls chattering away. Last night their high spirits had seemed charming, but today it merely irritated him that they talked only about who was sitting next to whom, which girl was dull, which girl was bookish. He thought, suddenly, of Rose Connolly, dressed in rags and curled up exhausted on his floor, and imagined the cruel things these girls might say about her. Would Rose waste any breath gossiping about another’s girl’s dress or a minister’s flirtations? No, her concerns were elemental: how to fill her belly, where to shelter from the storm—the concerns of any base animal. Yet the Welliver sisters surely thought themselves far more civilized, because they had pretty dresses and the leisure to while away a Sunday morning in a church balcony.
He leaned against the railing, hoping that his look of concentration would be signal enough for Kitty and Gwendolyn to silence their chatter, but they just went on talking across his head. Where did Lydia find that hideous hat? Do you see how Dickie Lawrence keeps staring at her? Oh, she told me something quite delicious this morning! The real reason Dickie’s brother had to rush home from New York. It’s all because of a young lady… Good Lord, thought Norris, was there any scandal these girls did not know about? Any furtive glance they did not catch?
What would they say about Rose Connolly sleeping in his room?
By the time the Reverend Channing finally ended his sermon, Norris was desperate to escape the sisters, but they remained stubbornly seated, trapping him between them as the congregation began to file out.
“Oh, we can’t leave yet,” said Kitty, tugging him back down into his seat when he tried to rise. “You can see everything so much better from up here.”
“See what?” he asked in exasperation.
“Rachel has practically draped herself over Charles.”
“She’s been pursuing him since June. Remember the picnic in Weston? At his uncle’s country house? Charlie practically had to flee into the garden to escape her.”
“Why are they still sitting? You’d think Charlie would have tried to get away by now.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to escape, Gwen. Maybe she’s truly snagged him. Do you think that’s the real reason he didn’t come visit us in March? She already had him in her clutches!”
“Oh. They’re getting up now. See how she has her arm wrapped around his…” Kitty paused. “What on earth is wrong with him?”
Charles staggered from his seat into the aisle, and caught himself on the back of a bench. For a moment he swayed on his feet. Then his legs seemed to dissolve away beneath
him, and slowly he sank to the floor.
The Welliver sisters gave a simultaneous gasp and jumped up. There was chaos below as parishioners crowded around the fallen Charles.
“Let me through!” called Wendell.
Kitty gave an exaggerated sob and pressed her hand to her mouth. “I do hope it’s nothing serious.”
By the time Norris had hurried downstairs and made his way through the crowd, Wendell and Edward were already kneeling beside their friend.
“I’m fine,” Charles murmured. “Really I am.”
“You don’t look fine, Charlie,” said Wendell. “We’ve sent for your uncle.”
“There’s no need to tell him about this.”
“You’re white as a sheet. Lie still.”
Charles moaned. “Oh, God, I’ll never live this down.”
Norris suddenly focused on the bandage encasing Charles’s left hand. The fingertips that protruded from the wrapping were red and swollen. He knelt and tugged at the bandage.
Charles gave a cry and tried to pull away. “Don’t touch it!” he begged.
“Charlie,” said Norris quietly. “I have to take a look. You know I do.” Slowly, he removed the wrappings. When at last the blackened flesh beneath was revealed, he rocked back on his heels, horrified. He looked at Wendell, who said nothing, only shook his head.
“We need to get you home, Charlie,” said Norris. “Your uncle will know what to do.”
“It’s been a few days since he nicked himself at the anatomy demonstration,” said Wendell. “He knew his hand was getting worse. Why the blazes didn’t he tell anyone? His uncle at least.”
“And admit how clumsy and incompetent he is?” said Edward.
“He never even wanted to study medicine. Poor Charlie’d be perfectly happy spending his life right here, writing his little poems.” Wendell stood at Dr. Grenville’s parlor window, gazing out as a carriage and four rolled past. Only last night, this house had rung with laughter and music; now it was eerily silent except for the creak of footsteps upstairs, and the crackle of the fire in the parlor hearth. “He has no aptitude for medicine and we all know it. You’d think his uncle would accept it.”
It was certainly obvious to everyone else, thought Norris. There’d been no student so unskilled with a knife, no one so ill prepared to tackle the grim realities of their chosen profession. The anatomy lab had been just a taste of what a physician faced. There would be far worse ordeals to come: the stench of typhus, the shrieks from the surgeon’s table. Dissecting a corpse was nothing; the dead don’t complain. The real horror was in living flesh.
They heard a knock at the front door. Mrs. Furbush, the housekeeper, scurried down the hall to greet the new visitor.
“Oh, Dr. Sewall! Thank heavens you’ve arrived! Mrs. Lackaway is frantic, and Dr. Grenville has already bled him twice, but it has not touched the fever, and he is anxious for your opinion.”
“I’m not sure that my skills are yet needed.”
“You may change your mind when you see his hand.”
Norris glimpsed Dr. Sewall as he walked past the parlor doorway, carrying his instrument bag, and heard him climb the stairs to the second floor. Mrs. Furbush was about to follow him upstairs when Wendell called out to her.
“How is Charles?”
Mrs. Furbush looked at them through the doorway, and her only answer was a sad shake of the head.
Edward murmured, “This is starting to look quite bad.”
From upstairs came the sound of men’s voices, and Mrs. Lackaway’s sobbing. We should leave, Norris thought. We’re intruding on this family’s grief. But his two companions made no move to depart, even as the afternoon wore on and the parlor maid brought them another pot of tea, another tray of cakes.
Wendell touched none of it. He sank into an armchair and stared with fierce concentration into the fire. “She had childbed fever,” he said suddenly.
“What?” said Edward.
Wendell looked up. “The cadaver he dissected that day, when he cut himself. It was a woman, and Dr. Sewall said she died of childbed fever.”
“So?”
“You saw his hand.”
Edward shook his head. “A most gruesome case of erysipelas.”
“That was gangrene, Eddie. Now he’s febrile and his blood is poisoned, by something he must have acquired with one small nick of the knife. Is it only by chance, do you think, that the woman, too, died of a fulminating fever?”
Edward shrugged. “Many women die of it. There’ve been more this month than ever.”
“And most of them were attended by Dr. Crouch,” said Wendell quietly. Once again, he stared into the fire.
They heard heavy footsteps descend the stairs and Dr. Sewall appeared, his hulking frame taking up the entire doorway. He looked over the three young men gathered in the parlor, then said, “You, Mr. Marshall! And Mr. Holmes, too. Both of you come upstairs.”
“Sir?” said Norris.
“I need you to hold down the patient.”
“What about me?” said Edward.
“Do you really think you’re ready for this, Mr. Kingston?”
“I—I believe so, sir.”
“Then come along. We can certainly make use of you.”
The three young men followed Sewall up the stairs, and with every step Norris’s dread mounted, for he could guess what was about to happen. Sewall led them along the upstairs hallway, and Norris caught a fleeting glimpse of family portraits on the wall, a long gallery of distinguished men and handsome women. They stepped into Charles’s room.
The sun was setting, and the last wintry light of afternoon glowed in the window. Around the bed, five lamps were burning. At their center lay a ghostly pale Charles, his left hand concealed beneath a drape. In a corner, his mother sat rigid with her hands balled tightly in her lap, her eyes aglow with panic. Dr. Grenville stood at his nephew’s bedside, his head drooped in weary resignation. A row of surgical instruments gleamed on a table: knives and a saw and silk sutures and a tourniquet.
Charles gave a whimper. “Mother, please,” he whispered. “Don’t let them.”
Eliza turned desperate eyes to her brother. “Is there no other way, Aldous? Tomorrow he might be better! If we could wait—”
“If he had shown us his hand earlier,” said Grenville, “I might have been able to arrest the process. A bleeding, at the outset, might have drained the poison. But it’s far too late now.”
“He said it was just a small cut. Nothing of significance.”
“I have seen the smallest cuts fester and turn to gangrene,” said Dr. Sewall. “When that happens, there is no other choice.”
“Mother, please.” Charles turned his panicked gaze to his classmates. “Wendell, Norris—don’t let them do this. Don’t let them!”
Norris could offer no such promises; he knew what had to be done. He stared at the knife and bone saw laid out on the table and thought: Dear God, I don’t want to watch this. But he stood firm, for he knew his assistance was vital.
“If you cut it off, Uncle,” said Charles, “I’ll never be a surgeon!”
“I want you to take another draught of morphine,” said Grenville, lifting his nephew’s head. “Go on, drink it.”
“I’ll never be what you wanted!”
“Drink it, Charles. All of it.”
Charles settled back on the pillow and gave a soft sob. “That’s all I ever wanted,” he moaned. “That you be proud of me.”
“I am proud of you, boy.”
“How much have you given him?” asked Sewall.
“Four draughts now. I don’t dare give him more.”
“Then let’s do it, Aldous.”
“Mother?” pleaded Charles.
Eliza rose and tugged desperately at her brother’s arm. “Could you not wait another day? Please, just another day!”
“Mrs. Lackaway,” said Dr. Sewall, “another day will be too late.” He lifted the drape that covered the patient’s left arm, revealin
g Charles’s grotesquely swollen hand. It was taut as a balloon, and the skin was greenish black. Even from where Norris stood, he could smell the rotting flesh.
“This has gone beyond simple erysipelas, madam,” said Sewall. “This is wet gangrene. The tissue has necrosed, and in just the short time I have been here, it has swollen even larger, filling with poisonous gases. Already there is red streaking here, up the arm, toward the elbow, an indication that the poison is spreading. By tomorrow, it may well be up to the shoulder. And then nothing, not even amputation, will reverse it.”
Eliza stood with her hand pressed to her mouth, her stricken gaze on Charles. “Then there is nothing else to be done? No other way?”
“I have attended too many cases like this. Men whose limbs were crushed in accidents or pierced by bullets. I’ve learned that once wet gangrene sets in, there is only a finite time in which to act. Too many times I’ve delayed, always to my regret. I’ve learned that it’s better to amputate sooner than later.” He paused, his voice softer, gentler. “The loss of a hand is not the loss of a soul. With luck, you will still have your son, madam.”
“He is my only child,” Eliza whispered through her tears. “I cannot lose him, or I swear I shall die.”
“Neither of you will die.”
“Do you promise it?”
“Fate is always in God’s hands, madam. But I will do my best.” He paused and glanced at Grenville. “Perhaps it would be best if Mrs. Lackaway stepped out of the room.”
Grenville nodded. “Go, Eliza. Please.”
She lingered for a moment, staring hungrily at her son, whose eyelids were drifting shut in a narcotic daze. “Let nothing go wrong, Aldous,” she said to her brother. “If we lose him, there will be no one to comfort us in our old age. No one to take his place.” Stifling a sob, she left the room.
Sewall turned to the three medical students. “Mr. Marshall, I suggest you remove your topcoat. There will be blood. Mr. Holmes, you will hold down the right arm. Mr. Kingston, the feet. Mr. Marshall and Dr. Grenville will take the left arm. Even four draughts of morphine will not be enough to mask this pain, and he will fight us. Complete immobilization of the patient is vital to my success. The only merciful way to do this is quickly, with no hesitation and no wasted effort. Do you understand, gentlemen?”