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“Miss Latterly, I have had occasion to speak to you before about your attempts to practice an art for which you have no training and no mandate. I will give Mrs. Begley what is best for her, and you will obey my instructions. Is that understood?”
Hester swallowed hard. “Is that your instruction, Dr. Pomeroy, that I give Mrs. Begley some loxa quinine to ease her fever?”
“No it is not!” he snapped. “That is for tropical fevers, not for the normal recovery from an operation. It would do no good. We will have none of that foreign rubbish here!”
Part of Hester’s mind still struggled with the decision, but her tongue was already embarked on the course her conscience would inevitably choose.
“I have seen it given with success by a French surgeon, sir, for fever following amputation, and it is recorded as far back as the Napoleonic campaigns before Waterloo.”
His face darkened with angry color. “I do not take my instructions from the French, Miss Latterly! They are a dirty and ignorant race who only a short time ago were bent on conquering these islands and subjecting them, along with the rest of Europe! And I would remind you, since you seem apt to forget it, that you take your instructions from me—and from me alone!” He turned to leave the unfortunate woman, and Hester stepped almost in front of him.
“She is delirious, Doctor! We cannot leave her! Please permit me to try a little quinine; it cannot harm and it may help
. I will give only a teaspoonful at a time, every two or three hours, and if it does not ease her I will desist.”
“And where do you propose I obtain such a medication, were I disposed to do as you say?”
She took a deep breath and only just avoided betraying herself.
“From the fever hospital, sir. We could send a hansom over. I will go myself, if you wish.”
His face was bright pink.
“Miss Latterly! I thought I had already made myself clear on the subject—nurses keep patients clean and cool from excessive temperature, they administer ice at the doctor’s directions and drinks as have been prescribed.” His voice was rising and getting louder, and he stood on the balls of his feet, rocking a little. “They fetch and carry and pass bandages and instruments as required. They keep the ward clean and tidy; they stoke fires and serve food. They empty and dispose of waste and attend to the bodily requirements of patients.”
He thrust his hands into his pockets and rocked on his feet a little more rapidly. “They keep order and lift the spirits. That is all! Do you understand me, Miss Latterly? They are unskilled in medicine, except of the most rudimentary sort. They do not in any circumstances whatever exercise their own judgment!”
“But if you are not present!” she protested.
“Then you wait!” His voice was getting increasingly shrill.
She could not swallow her anger. “But patients may die! Or at best become sufficiently worse that they cannot easily be saved!”
“Then you will send for me urgently! But you will do nothing beyond your remit, and when I come I will decide what is best to do. That is all.”
“But if I know what to do—”
“You do not know!” His hands flew out of his pockets into the air. “For God’s sake, woman, you are not medically trained! You know nothing but bits of gossip and practical experience you have picked up from foreigners in some campaign hospital in the Crimea! You are not a physician and never will be!”
“All medicine is only a matter of learning and observation!” Her voice was rising considerably now, and even the farther patients were beginning to take notice. “There are no rules except that if it works it is good, and if it does not then try something else.” She was exasperated almost beyond endurance with his stubborn stupidity. “If we never experiment we will never discover anything better than we have now, and people will go on dying when perhaps we could have cured them!”
“And far more probably killed them with our ignorance!” he retaliated with finality. “You have no right to conduct experiments. You are an unskilled and willful woman, and if there is one more word of insubordination out of you, you will be dismissed. Do you understand me?”
She hesitated a moment, meeting his eyes. There was no uncertainty in them, no slightest flexibility in his determination. If she kept silent now there was just the possibility he might come back later, when she was off duty, and give Mrs. Begley the quinine.
“Yes, I understand.” She forced the words out, her hands clenched in the folds of her apron and skirt at her sides.
But once again he could not leave well enough alone even after he had seemingly won.
“Quinine does not work for postoperative fever infections, Miss Latterly,” he went on with mounting condescension. “It is for tropical fevers. And even then it is not always successful. You will dose the patient with ice and wash her regularly in cool water.”
Hester breathed in and out very slowly. His complacency was insufferable.
“Do you hear me?” he demanded.
Before she could reply this time, one of the patients on the far side of the ward sat up, his face twisted in concentration.
“She gave something to that child at the end when he had a fever after his operation,” he said clearly. “He was in a bad way, like to go into delirium. And after she did it four or five times he recovered. He’s cool as you like now. She knows what she’s doing—she’s right.”
