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Her desire was to improve the quality of nursing from the manual labor it usually was to a skilled and respected profession. Since Florence Nightingale’s fame had spread after the Crimean War, the public in general regarded her as a heroine. She was second in popularity only to the Queen. But the popular vision of her was a sentimental image of a young woman wandering around a hospital with a lamp in her hand, mopping fevered brows and whispering words of comfort, rather than the reality Hester knew. She had nursed with Florence Nightingale and had experienced the despair, the unnecessary deaths brought on by disease and incompetence rather than the injuries of battle. She also knew Miss Nightingale’s true heroism, the strength of her will to fight for better conditions, for the use of common sense in sanitation and efficiency in administration. Above all, she fought to make nursing an acceptable profession which would attract decent women and treat them with respect. Old-fashioned ideas must be got rid of, up-to-date methods must be used, and skills rewarded.
Now that Hester was no longer solely responsible for her own support, she could devote some of her time to this end. She had made it plain to Monk from the outset that she would never agree to sit at home and sew a fine seam and gossip with other women who had too little to do. He had offered no disagreement, knowing it was a condition of acceptance.
They had h
ad certain differences, and would no doubt have more. She smiled now in the sun as she thought of them. It was not easy for either of them to make all the changes necessary to adapt to married life. Deeply as she loved him, sharing a bedroom—let alone a bed—with another person was a loss of privacy she found not as easy to overcome as she had imagined. She was not especially modest—nursing life had made that impossible—but she still reveled in the independence of having the window open or closed as she wished, of putting the light out when she chose, and of having as many or as few blankets over her as she liked. In the Crimea she had worked until she was exhausted. Then she had lain on her cot hunched up, shaking with cold, muscles too knotted up to sleep, and had to arise in the morning when she was still almost drunken with tiredness.
But to have the warmth, the gentleness, of someone beside her who she knew without question loved her, was greater than all the tiny inconveniences. They were only pinpricks. She knew Monk felt them, too. She had seen flashes of temper in his face, quickly smothered when he realized he was thinking only of himself. He was used to both privacy and independence as much as she was.
But Monk had less to forfeit than Hester. They were living in his rooms in Fitzroy Street. It made excellent sense, of course. She had only sufficient lodgings to house her belongings and to sleep in between the private nursing cases she had taken after being dismissed from hospital service for insubordination. He was developing a good practice as an agent of enquiry for private cases after his own dismissal from the police force—also for insubordination!
For him to have moved would have been unwise. People knew where to find him. The house was well situated, and the landlady had been delighted to allow them an extra room to make into a kitchen, and to give up having to cook and clean for Monk, a duty she had done only from necessity before, realizing he would probably starve if she didn’t. She was very pleased to have both the additional rent and more time to devote to her increasingly demanding husband—and whatever other pursuits she enjoyed beyond Fitzroy Street.
So Hester was, with some difficulty, learning to become domestic and trying to do it with a modicum of grace.
Her real passion was still to reform nursing, as it had been ever since she had come home from the Crimea. Lady Callandra Daviot shared her feelings, which was why Hester was standing in the North London Hospital now waiting for Callandra to come and recount the success or failure of their latest attempt.
She heard the door opening and swung around. Callandra came in, her hair sticking out in tufts as if she had run her fingers through it, her face set tight and hard with anger. There was no need to ask if she had succeeded.
Callandra had dignity, courage and good humor, but not even her dearest friend would have said she was graceful. In spite of the best efforts of her maid, her clothes looked as if she paid no regard to them, merely picking up what first came to her hand when she opened the wardrobe door. Today it was a green skirt and a blue blouse. It was warm enough inside the hospital for her not to wear whatever jacket she had chosen.
"The man is a complete idiot!" she said furiously. "How can anyone see to diagnose what ails a person for any of a hundred diseases and still be blind as a bat to the facts before his face?"
"I don’t know," Hester admitted. "But it happens frequently."
The door was still wide open behind Callandra. She turned on her heel and marched out again, leaving Hester to follow after her.
"How many hours are there in a day?" Callandra demanded over her shoulder.
"Twenty-four," Hester replied as they reached the end of the passage and went through the now-empty operating theater with its table in the center, benches for equipment, and the railed-off gallery on three sides for pupils and other interested parties to observe.
"Exactly," Callandra agreed. "And how much of that time can a surgeon be expected to care for his patient personally? One hour if the patient is important—less if he is not. Who cares for him the rest of the time?" She opened the farther door into the wide passageway that ran the length of the entire ground floor.
"The resident medicine officer—" Hester began.
"Apothecary!" Callandra said dismissively, waving her hand in the air.
Hester closed the door behind them. "They prefer to call them resident medicine officers now," she remarked. "And the nurses. I know your point. If we do not train nurses, and pay them properly, everyone else’s efforts are largely wasted. The most brilliant of surgeons is still dependent upon the care we give his patients after he has treated them."
"I know that." Callandra hesitated, deciding whether to go right, towards the casualty room, or left, past the postmortem room to the eye department and the secretary’s office and the boardroom. "You know that." She decided to go left. "Dr. Beck knows that." She spoke his name quite formally, as if they had not been friends for years—and not cared for each other far more than either dared say. "But Mr. Ordway is very well satisfied with things as they are! If it were up to him we’d still be wearing fig leaves and eating our food raw."
"Figs, presumably," Hester said dryly. "Or apples?"
Callandra shot her a sharp look. "Figs," she retorted with absolute certainty. "He’d never have had the courage to take the apple!"
"Then we would not be wearing the fig leaves, either, heaven preserve us," Hester pointed out, hiding her smile.
"Marriage has made you decidedly immodest!" Callandra snapped, but there was satisfaction in her voice. She had long wished Hester’s happiness, and had once or twice alluded to fears that her friend might become too wasp-tongued to allow herself the chance.
They reached the end of the corridor and Callandra turned right, towards the boardroom. She hesitated in her step so slightly that had Hester not felt the trepidation herself, she might not have noticed it at all.
Callandra knocked on the door.
"Come in!" the voice inside commanded.
Callandra pushed it open and went inside, Hester on her heels.
The man sitting at the large table was of stocky build, his hair receding from a broad brow, his features strong and stubborn. His was not a handsome face, but it had a certain distinction. He was extremely well dressed in a suit of pinstriped cloth which must have been very warm on this midsummer day. His white collar was high and stiff. A gold watch chain was draped across his broad chest.
