A Sudden, Fearful Death

Hester found returning to hospital duty after private nursing a severe strain on her temper. She had grown accustomed to being her own mistress since her dismissal roughly a year ago. The restrictions of English medical practice were almost beyond bearing after the urgency and freedom of the Crimea, where there had frequently been so few army surgeons that nurses such as herself had had to take matters into their own hands, and there had been little complaint. Back at home again it seemed that every pettifogging little rule was invoked, more to safeguard dignity than to ease pain or preserve life, and that reputation was more precious than discovery.

She had known Prudence Barrymore and she felt a sharply personal sense of both anger and loss at her death. She was determined to give Monk any assistance she could in learning who had killed her. Therefore she would govern her temper, however difficult that might prove; refrain from expressing her opinions, no matter how severely tempted; and not at any time exercise her own medical judgment.

So far she had succeeded, but Mrs. Flaherty tried her sorely. The woman was set in her ways. She refused to listen to anyone's instructions about opening windows, even on the warmest, mildest days. Twice she had told the nurses to put a cloth over buckets of slops as they were carrying them out, but when they had forgotten on all subsequent occasions she had said nothing further. Hester, as a disciple of Florence Nightingale, was passionately keen on fresh air to cleanse the atmosphere and carry away harmful effluvia and unpleasant odor. Mrs. Flaherty was terrified of chills and preferred to rely on fumigation. It was with the greatest of difficulty that Hester kept her own counsel.

Instinctively she liked Kristian Beck. There seemed to be both compassion and imagination in his face. His modesty and dry humor appealed to her and she felt he was greatly skilled at his profession. Sir Herbert Stanhope she liked less, but was obliged to concede he was a brilliant surgeon. He performed operations lesser men might not have dared, and he was not so careful of his reputation as to fear novelty or innovation. She admired him and felt she should have liked him better than she did. She thought she detected in him a dislike of nurses who had been in the Crimea. Perhaps she was reaping a legacy of Prudence Barrymore's abrasiveness and ambition.

The first death to occur after her arrival was that of a thin little woman, whom she judged to be about fifty and who had a growth in the breast. In spite of all that Sir Herbert could do, she died on the operating table.

It was late in the evening. They had been working all day and they had tried everything they knew to save her. It had all been futile. She had slipped away even as they struggled. Sir Herbert stood with his bloodstained hands in the air. Behind him were the bare walls of the theater, to the left the table with instruments and swabs and bandages, to the right the cylinders of anesthetic gases. A nurse stood by with a mop, brushing the hair out of her eyes with one hand.

There was no one in the gallery, only two students assisting.

Sir Herbert looked up, his face pale, skin drawn tight across his cheekbones.

"She's gone," he said flatly. "Poor creature. No strength left."

"Had she been ill long?" one of the two student doctors asked.

"Long?" Sir Herbert said with an abrupt jerky laugh. "Depends how you think of it. She's had fourteen children, and God knows how many miscarriages. Her body was exhausted."

"She must have stopped bearing some time ago," the younger one said with a squint down at her scrawny body. It was already looking bloodless, as if death had been hours since. "She must be at least fifty."

"Thirty-seven," Sir Herbert replied with a rasp to his voice as though he were angry and held this young man to blame, his ignorance causing the situation, not resulting from it.

The young man drew breath as if to speak, then looked more closely at Sir Herbert's tired face and changed his mind.

"All right, Miss Latterly," Sir Herbert said to Hester. "Inform the mortuary and have her taken there. I'll tell the husband."

Without thinking Hester spoke. "I'll tell him, if you wish, sir?"

He looked at her more closely, surprise wiping away the weariness for a moment.

"That's very good of you, but it is my job. I am used to it. God knows how many women I've seen die either in childbirth or after bearing one after another until they were exhausted, and prey to the first fever that came along."

"Why do they do it?" the young doctor asked, his confusion getting the better of his tact. "Surely they can see what it will do to them? Eight or ten children should be enough for anyone."