Page 42 of The Summer Country

“It’s for anyone who can’t afford a doctor’s fee.”

“Redlegs, you mean. Like my grandfather.”

Dr. Braithwaite looked at her sideways. “I doubt anyone would call him that now.”

Mrs. Davenant had. Emily remembered Mr. Davenant’s embarrassment. “I take it the term is not complimentary?”

“No,” said Dr. Braithwaite.

When her grandfather had told her he was poor, she had imagined a familiar poverty, the slums of Bristol. It had never occurred to her that this poverty might be viewed as an ancestral stain, less a matter of wealth than of birth.

Dr. Braithwaite seemed disinclined to elaborate, so Emily took a breath and focused her mind on the matter at hand. “How many doctors are in residence?”

“Six. Five junior surgeons and one senior surgeon. I,” he said, “am one of the junior staff.”

He was also, as far as she could tell, the only one of color, but he hadn’t commented on that. “Are you resident?”

“The hospital provides lodgings.” He had not, Emily realized, answered the question. She wondered if he lived with his uncle and was ashamed of it. To be in luxury while seeing such poverty every day. Unlike his patients, Dr. Braithwaite had all his own teeth, and very nice ones they were. He gestured at the beds as they passed. “Scurvy, dysentery, exhaustion, malnutrition. As you can see, we treat a wide variety of complaints.”

“What of infectious diseases?”

“Not permitted,” said Dr. Braithwaite succinctly. “Only the curable sick are admitted.”

Emily stopped short in a swish of petticoats, nearly tripping her companion. “But surely you can’t mean that! Mightn’t those patients be cured if they had proper care? To leave them to die—”

“Do you think I like it? Don’t speak to me; speak to the Board of Governors. It was their determination.” At the horrified expression on her face, he softened. “They’re not entirely wrong. If we admitted one person with yellow fever, it would cut through the whole within days. Most of these people are already weak from disease and malnutrition. Admitting a fever case would be to sign their death warrants.”

“But think of all the others exposed!” Her mother, the red flush on her chest, white fuzz on her tongue. Just feeling a bit tired, she had said. “If there were a ward devoted specially to infectious diseases—”

“Built with whose money?” Dr. Braithwaite asked bluntly. “The hospital operates at a deficit as it is. We’ve been forced to go hat in hand to the council for a grant of four thousand dollars a year.”

“With a little economy . . .”

“I’m not paid for my work. None of the doctors are. What are we meant to skimp on? The patients’ meals? Most of them come here primarily to be fed. They’re poor and starving. On our implements? This may seem provincial to you, Miss Dawson, but I’ve performed at least a dozen major surgeries since I began at the hospital. I refuse to compromise the care of those in my charge.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that you should,” said Emily.

“No, merely that we should be attempting a dozen other things besides.” Dr. Braithwaite gestured down the row of beds. “You won’t see many women here, or children. Half the children born in Barbados die before the age of ten. Their parents don’t even bother to bring them to us; they know it’s hopeless.”

“But that’s—” Emily clamped her lips shut at a look from Dr. Braithwaite.

“Can you tell me truly that it’s better in Bristol?” Remembering the families her father had served, the children dying of cold, of hunger, of diseases a stronger constitution might have weathered, Emily could only remain silent. “We need a children’s ward. We need a ward for infectious diseases. We need twice the number of beds merely for the curable sick. We haven’t the funds or the staff. I’m at the hospital only three days a week. The rest of my time is devoted to private practice.”

“And charity work?” she said, remembering the discussion at Beckles. “Perhaps your uncle . . .”

“Who do you think paid for this building?” Dr. Braithwaite pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing. “I beg your pardon. I had no call to bite your head off.”

“You needn’t apologize to me. It’s very hard seeing people die when one feels that one might have done . . . something.” Dipping a cloth into tepid water, mopping a brow, wishing she knew what to do, praying and praying until the words lost all meaning. She’d promised herself, after her mother died, that she would study, that she would learn, that next time she would outwit death. But all she’d learned was that even the most learned were powerless before the diseases that cut through Bristol’s poorer quarters. She looked up at Dr. Braithwaite, her eyes meeting his. “With cuts and burns, one knows what to do. But with fevers . . .”

“Someday,” said Dr. Braithwaite fervently. “Someday. We already have inoculations for smallpox. Snow and Budd are making great progress on the causes of cholera. . . .”

“Yes, I know,” said Emily. “Dr. Budd speaks very eloquently on the topic.”

The expression on Dr. Braithwaite’s face made the whole visit, the smell and the sweat, entirely worthwhile. “You know Dr. Budd?”

“I had the privilege of working with him at the Royal Infirmary.” Admittedly, working with him meant sponging patients’ brows while Dr. Budd spoke to his colleagues, entirely unaware of her presence.

“His piece on the mode of propagation of cholera and its prevention . . . If he’s correct, we have the chance of not curing the disease but eradicating it.”