by Sara Donati
He nodded. “Just a brief piece, very neutral in tone. In the Herald it was neutral, at least. You set off an alarm, it seems, one that every reporter in the city heard very clearly.”
“At least they haven’t accused me of murder yet. I suppose I should be thankful for that much.” It was impossible, in that moment, to keep the bitterness out of her voice.
Once again he grasped her lower arm, firmly but briefly. “Give it a few days. It will calm down.”
“Maybe it would be better if I stayed at home today.”
He raised both brows in surprise. “I hope you won’t let them stop you from doing what interests you. And I have to admit, it’s a case that disturbs me greatly. The opinion of experienced women physicians would be very welcome. Now”—he got up and offered her an arm—“let me walk you home, and I’ll tell you a story about Cap when he was four and got it into his head that my Aunt Griffin’s collection of china dogs needed a romp in the garden.”
9
THE PLAN HAD been a simple one: as she had the day off, Anna would come to Stuyvesant Square to breakfast with Sophie, and they would suit themselves until they got bored with being at leisure. As soon as Anna heard of Nicholas Lambert’s suggestion, she was ready to abandon the original plan.
“If you’re really interested, I’d like to see what Lambert is up to and what’s got him so worried about this case. Especially as he asked Jack and Oscar to come by.”
“On your free day?” Sophie tried not to sound pleased, but Anna knew her too well. She went out to hail a cab while Sophie collected her wraps.
Once they were under way, Anna wanted to know exactly how it happened that Sophie had run into Nicholas Lambert.
“I don’t know,” Sophie said. “I was walking through the park, and so was he. Most people in the neighborhood will walk there, don’t you think?”
Anna’s mouth turned down at the corner. “He must have been looking for you.”
A small sound escaped Sophie, half amusement, half doubt. “Why would you say that?”
“He’s usually at work before sunrise, as I understand it. Not wandering through Stuyvesant Square.”
“You know him so well?”
“We got to know him quite well last summer. First because he did the forensic reports for the multipara cases—” She paused. “Did you really want to hear about Lambert?”
Sophie produced a shrug. “I suppose I should.”
Anna sighed. “He and Jack get along well. They’ve been playing handball on a regular basis. I didn’t write to you about any of this. I’m sorry to have been such a bad correspondent.”
That made Sophie smile. “I think you wrote to me about every surgery you did. Not to mention many pages about Auntie and Tonino and the girls and the guardianship—”
“Let’s leave that subject for another time,” Anna said.
Sophie studied her face for a moment. “You had other things to do than write to me, Anna. I’m not making recriminations.”
The cab jerked to a halt in the middle of the street, hemmed in by handcarts, delivery wagons, carriages, and horse cars. Anna put her head out the window and asked the cabby what the problem might be.
“Ducks all over the street,” he called back. “A delivery wagon turned on its side and crates broke open. But we’re almost through, missus.”
Just then a street arab went flying past, a hissing drake held upside down by its feet in one fist swaying wildly, and a huge smile on his face.
“Christmas come early,” the cabby called back to them.
“A cabby with a sense of humor,” Sophie said. “Wonders never cease.”
* * *
• • •
GULLS WHEELED OVER Bellevue, flashes of stark white against a pewter sky. The hospital was much like a small town perched on the East River, brick buildings of different ages and sizes huddled into clumps, surrounded by neat rectangles of winter-brown grass. This was not any place she had ever liked, but Sophie had to acknowledge that it had served a purpose in her training. In the months she spent in the Bellevue wards she had learned a great deal about medicine, more about the poor, and probably most usefully, she had come to accept the truth about herself: it didn’t matter how hard she worked or how talented and accomplished a black woman might be. For some people she would never be good enough.
Somewhere in her many storage boxes were her day-books from that period, when she had been determined to make a record of every encounter with a patient. The challenge had been to filter out all personal feelings and reactions and to concentrate on the medicine alone. She had learned not to be surprised when even the poorest and sickest patients objected to being examined by a woman of mixed race.
All around the periphery of the wall, the outdoor poor had settled in for a day. There were some younger families with children, but the majority were elderly. Many of the men bore battle scars: missing limbs, empty eye sockets, scarred flesh, blank expressions.
One man extending a tin cup was no more than thirty, well fed, in a uniform of the New York militia that was far too small for him. Probably it had belonged to his father or an uncle, and now he put it to use as a way to swindle the public out of small change.
She knew Anna had spotted him because her posture stiffened. Sophie put a hand on her elbow to propel her forward.
She said, “I can read your mind. Leave him, just for this once.”
Anna made a face at her. “Fine. But on the way out—”
“On the way out I’ll wave down a patrolman while you wrestle him to the ground.”
Some things would never change: Bellevue must serve the poor, and Anna must confront those who practiced fraud at their expense.
* * *
• • •
THEY HAD JUST turned onto the walkway that led to the morgue when Anna looked up and realized two things: she knew the man who was approaching them, and it was too late to evade him. The hair at the nape of her neck stood straight up.
“Now this is a surprise.” He came to a full stop, standing in the middle of the walk so that they had no choice but to do the same. “Both Drs. Savard at once.”
“Dr. Graham,” she said, her voice coming a little rough.
Beside her Sophie had gone watchful and still, all her attention on Neill Graham. He was five years their junior, a recent graduate of the Bellevue Medical School, and someone Jack and Oscar considered a likely collaborator in the multipara homicides of the year before.
Her own experience with him had been routine, but looking at Graham now Anna saw that he had changed. Or more exactly, his manner had changed. The last time she dealt with him directly he had been a student asking to observe one of her surgeries, eager to the point of obsequiousness. That was gone, replaced by a fine sheen of self-satisfaction.
“I’m at Woman’s Hospital now,” he told them, rocking back on his heels. “In surgery, but you probably guessed that. It’s where I belong.”
Anna had to give him credit: he projected himself as successful and confident, and he dressed the part, too. He wore a beautifully tailored suit of English worsted in a delicate pin-head check, a shirt with a rolled collar that peeked out from a wine-colored vest. And he had been barbered to perfection. Beneath the brim of his Panama hat his blond hair gleamed with oil. All that was missing to make him an example of the truly fashionable male was a beard.
He was saying, “Cantwell has taken me on as one of his junior residents—he only accepts one man a year, you probably didn’t realize. Have you ever been in one of the operating halls at Woman’s?”
Of course he must know that female physicians were never invited to consult at Woman’s Hospital; if he did not, he was woefully unobservant, and if he did—far more likely—he was taunting them. But this was weak stuff; she and Sophie dealt with far worse and more direct insults in the course of their careers.
>
Then it occurred to her then that Graham didn’t realize that he had insulted them. He was forging ahead, focused on Sophie alone, and seemed to have forgotten Anna entirely.
“It just comes to me, I’m operating on a case you would find very instructive. A Russian girl with a tubal pregnancy, and Dr. Cantwell is allowing me to perform the procedure tomorrow morning at seven. I could get you into the theater, I know I could because just the other day Hank Oglethorpe arranged for his brother to observe him take out an appendix. Wouldn’t an ectopic pregnancy be something you’d like to see? The procedure was just perfected last year—”
He broke off with what was meant to be a self-deprecating grin, Anna was sure. “Never mind,” he said. “I don’t need to bore you with the technical details. It’s enough to say this is a rare chance, and I think one you shouldn’t pass up.”
Anna wondered if he was simply misinterpreting the look on Sophie’s face. Did he think he was seeing surprise, when in fact the scorn and annoyance should have been plain?
Anna said, “Do I understand that the fallopian tube has already ruptured?”
“That can’t be known for sure until the abdomen is opened,” he answered Anna without turning toward her, all condescension. “But otherwise the symptoms are present.”
“If that’s the case,” Anna said, forcing her tone into something almost normal, “why the delay? Waiting until tomorrow is a significant risk.”
Now he did turn toward her. “Dr. Cantwell had his own patients to see.”
“Ah,” Anna said with a tight smile. “Then the tubal ligation is a charity patient.”
At Woman’s Hospital a charity patient could wait until it was convenient for a surgeon to see to her, if only to let his younger colleagues practice their skills. At the New Amsterdam all patients were poor, and when they had to wait it was because there were too few doctors to see them.
The corner of Graham’s mouth jerked. “Are you wondering if we’ve stolen a patient away from you?”
Anna resisted the urge to tell him what she thought of this theory. Sophie was also struggling, her face stiff with anger. She cleared her throat. “We really must be going.”
“Wait,” said Neill Graham. “Will you come tomorrow morning? Dr. Cantwell will certainly lecture while I operate. Well worth your time.”
And with that his fate was sealed. Anna almost felt sorry for him.
“Let me see if I understand you,” Sophie said, her tone very calm but her eyes flashing fire. “You think you are offering me something of value, an opportunity to learn about something I couldn’t already know.”
The first fleeting look of doubt crossed his face. Before he could answer she held up a palm to cut him off.
“Why would you think I had never seen such an operation before? Are you under the impression that female physicians are limited to wiping fevered brows and bandaging scraped knees?”
Uneasily he glanced at Anna and then again at Sophie, who was already answering her own question.
“No, that can’t be it. You saw my cousin operate last year,” Sophie went on. “I was sitting in the courtroom when you talked about that experience. You were full of praise for her skills as a surgeon.”
“I don’t—”
Sophie held up her palm again. “So you know her to be highly skilled, is that why you are offering only me this opportunity to watch you operate? You assume I need it, when she doesn’t? Because my skin isn’t white, I must either have less education, or be less skilled?”
Now he had gone pale, but Sophie took no pity.
“Let me clear something up for you. I am a fully trained and qualified physician, properly registered. My cousin and I attended medical school together. She went on to become a surgeon; I concentrated on gynecology and the diseases of women and children, but I am very able to operate when called upon. And I would never, ever let a patient with a ruptured ectopic pregnancy wait for surgery until I had gathered together enough people to admire my technical skills. Three hours could be too long a wait. She might be dead by the time you show up tomorrow in the operating room, and your audience will go away thinking you promise what you can’t deliver.”
“Now wait a minute.” His voice came rough, higher color rushing back into his cheeks.
“Yes?” Sophie said. “Something I got wrong? Please clarify for me exactly what you meant by inviting me to watch a procedure that I saw performed last winter at the New Amsterdam. By my cousin.”
His whole face creased in a frown as he glanced at Anna. “You? You performed this operation? When was that?”
“Last February,” Anna said. “And again in October and just last month.”
“Dr. Tait was the first to perform that operation,” Graham shot back at her. “In England.”
“No,” Anna said calmly. “Dr. Tait was the first to publish about the operation he performed. But I wasn’t the first, either. Is that what’s bothering you, that a woman might have been first?”
He crossed his arms. “I’m not in the least bothered. Really, I must apologize for intruding. I’ll wish you good day.”
When he was out of earshot Anna took Sophie’s elbow. They walked in silence while Sophie struggled to control her temper.
“Can’t remember the last time I saw you let loose like that,” Anna said finally.
“I shouldn’t have done it.”
“But I’m so glad you did. Should we talk about what just happened?”
“No,” Sophie said. “I refuse to spend even five seconds more thinking about Neill Graham.”
* * *
• • •
THEY MADE THEIR way to the rear-most building, perched on the riverbank. In the courtyard two orderlies were loading a coffin of raw wood into a hearse, fitting it in among others like a final puzzle piece. A little farther on, a driver was sorting through the back of an ambulance, tossing bloody dressings out over his shoulder and conversing loudly with a stable boy who scowled so fiercely that Sophie sensed a brawl in the offing.
Because Bellevue was obliged by law to accept any and all patients, when all was said and done most of the poor found their way to this morgue. Accordingly the place was busy all the time, and not just with the care of the recently deceased or post-mortem exams. Male medical students began their training in practical anatomy in this building, standing around a marble slab. There was no room for women students; she and Anna had studied anatomy in a basement room at the Woman’s Medical School, sharing one corpse among six students.
Over the entrance a faded sign was still legible: Bellevue Dead House. She paused to read the inscription on the door.
I will deliver these people
from the power of the grave;
I will redeem them from death.
Where, O death, are your plagues?
Where, O grave, is your destruction?
Anna looked at her, and Sophie realized that she had drawn in a sharp breath.
“I’m fine, really,” she told her cousin. “Sometimes I’m just taken unawares. I somehow forget he’s gone.” Then she pushed the door open and they went to find Nicholas Lambert.
* * *
• • •
ANNA HAD BEEN telling Sophie the truth, earlier: she did like Dr. Lambert, and more than that, she respected him and thought highly of him as a physician and a forensic specialist. But Lambert had asked about Sophie while she was in Europe and in a way Anna had interpreted as a more than collegial interest though he knew she was married. Now she made the decision to keep her opinions about the man to herself; her cousin must have the opportunity to draw her own conclusions.
While they waited Anna studied his office, cramped and overwhelmed by books and journals, patient files, and piles of paper, as were almost all doctors’ offices she had ever seen, including her own. More unusual was the variety of in
struments lined up on a long table, some of them antique: probes, forceps, surgical hooks and scalpels, scissors, clamps, trocars and cannulae, saws of every size and shape, tweezers, scoops, a sharpening stone, beakers, measuring glasses and tubes, a chisel and mallet. A few items she didn’t recognize, and reminded herself to ask, later, about their names and purposes.
What this display said about Lambert was that he took pride in his instruments and was scrupulous about their maintenance—not a nick to be seen on any blade, every knife and scalpel professionally sharpened, and the strong odor of carbolic as a testimony to his commitment to Listerian principles of hygiene.
On one wall was a life-size anatomical drawing of the blood vessels and nerves, the work of an anatomist with an artistic gift. Anna would have liked one just like it to use in her classes, and reminded herself to ask Lambert where he had found it. Then she came to a row of framed diplomas from Amsterdam, Paris, and Padua. Jack had been at Padua for two years, but Lambert was some fifteen years older, and it was very unlikely that they would have crossed paths.
“Anna.”
Sophie had picked out a very old book from a shelf and was turning the pages carefully. “Look, a copy of Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica. I’ve never come across one before. Vesalius was Belgian, wasn’t he?”
“Debatable,” Lambert said, coming in from the next room. “He was from Brussels. I believe that in his lifetime Brussels was claimed by the Netherlands.”
Anna left them to their very polite discussion of European history and moved on to examine the microscopes—three of them, the most expensive to be had—arranged on a worktable, bracketed with boxes of neatly labeled slides.
“Shall we go?”
Lambert was looking at her, a half smile on his face. She amused him, somehow. For the moment, she decided, she would not take exception.
