No.” Ava sat calmly at the breakfast table, her hair neatly coiffed, as if it had never been mussed at all. Only the slight shaking of her hand betrayed that anything unusual might have happened last night. Outside, the late February wind whipped against the kitchen window.
Molly lifted a piece of bacon distractedly to her lips, but the smell of its gelatinous fat was too much. She threw it back onto the plate.
“Why not?” Molly said.
“Because girls don’t become surgeons. It isn’t done.”
“I don’t care what’s done. I care what I’m going to do!”
Watching Edgar’s incompetence in the operating theater last night had erased any lingering doubt. He had not killed Kitty. The hand that had sliced away her friend’s tail was far too skilled.
A fury burned low in her belly, but there was a calm now too.
No one except she and Edgar had ever seen Kitty’s tail. Which meant that whoever had stolen it had learned about it from him. Edgar certainly seemed the type to brag about the anomaly to his friends. Whether one of the medical students in his circle could actually be the Knifeman or was simply a poor student who had leaked the information for payment to someone like the Tooth Fairy, Molly didn’t know. But if she wanted to find out, she’d need to stop standing at the doorstep of men with blades and step inside with a knife of her own.
“Those students are idiots, the lot of them,” she said, thinking of the way they’d dragged the dead mother’s body down the stairs to be used later for a lecture with as little compunction as they might remove a ruined mattress to the cellar to be cut apart for its feathers.
“LaValle bringing that girl here was dangerous.” Ava frowned. “Helping the living always is. But it’s a fine thing those boys had such an experience.” She buttered a fresh piece of toast, drizzling honey over it. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how rare it is for students so early in their training to have an actual surgical patient to attend. They’ll be much better prepared for their paying customers.”
“They killed her!” Molly slammed her mug onto the table, and a hot spurt of coffee jumped from its rim, scalding her bad hand. “My God, a simple midwife half out of her mind knew more than those boys did about birthing. More than LaValle, when it comes to that. Your great doctor was as eager to slice the girl open as the rest of them.”
Ava studied her coolly. “Do you truly think that you, a girl with as much medical training as the cook, knows more than a man who has studied medicine his entire life?”
“At least I cared. The doctor was more concerned about lecturing than he was keeping that girl alive.”
“You’re wrong.” James Chambers appeared in the doorway. He turned to Ava. “The doctor wanted me to tell you that the rest of the students have left if you’d like to have William over to clean.”
“Sit down.” Ava motioned him in. “Last night was stressful for everyone. A civilized meal in the daylight is a good way to remind ourselves of our humanity.”
James nodded. He had washed himself hastily, but Molly could still smell the metallic stink of the operating theater on him. When he looked at her, his eyes were bloodshot.
Ava buttered another piece of toast and set it in front of him.
“I came to say thank you,” he said, picking at the crust. “For helping us.”
“Helping?” Molly’s lip quivered. “She’s dead.”
“That girl never stood a chance.”
“Maybe if we hadn’t sliced her open like a fatted goose!” She stood, her napkin falling to the floor.
“Molly!” Ava said. “Apologize.”
“No need.” James’s lips curled in an admiring smile. He seemed far from angry. “I like that you think outside the obvious, Molly. And you’re right. Most of those doctors would have been too quick to use the knife. But I assure you that is not the case with Dr. LaValle.”
“He was the one who ordered it done.”
“Yes. But he’d thoroughly examined the girl and knew what was at risk. If he believed that a natural delivery would have had any chance of saving her, he would have done it. She was too far gone. You didn’t see her when she came in. She’d been bleeding for days.”
“What?”
James nodded. “Tried to give herself an abortion and was scared to tell anyone. It was far too late for such an attempt. Whatever she used for the job—probably rusty wire or a dirty blade—only gave her an infection and a fever, then caused her to bleed out. Dr. LaValle was trying to do what was kindest. There was never any chance of saving the girl. He only presented it as a quandary to his students so that they might have a chance to test their ethics. LaValle teaches that a baby’s life always take’s precedence over the mother’s. But he does care. He cares about all his patients.”
“Bollocks he does!”
Ava cocked an eyebrow. “I see you’ve picked up some language working nights.”
“If he cared about her—” Molly started.
“He would have put her out of her pain, which he did,” James said. “With the chloroform. Then he would have delivered the child the most humane way possible, which, in this case, was via an abdominal incision. What you did . . .” James’s eyes squinted. “I don’t mean to be cruel, but making her deliver naturally like that, forcing the baby around, keeping her in labor . . . she suffered far more than if the doctor had removed the child as intended.”
Molly crumpled into her chair as if someone had taken away her legs. “That’s not true,” she whispered.
James winced. “I’m sorry.”
“Then why did you help me?” She flung the words at him. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because Dr. LaValle doesn’t let things happen on that operating table unless there’s a purpose. If he allowed you to question him and try to help the girl, it was so that the other students could learn.” James leaned closer. “You’re quick on your feet, and you care, Molly. Those are rare gifts.”
She felt sick. The small bite of bacon she’d managed was threatening to come back up, and she clapped a hand over her mouth.
“I heard what you said to your aunt,” James said. Despite his disheveled black hair and blood-spattered shirt, his manner was perfectly poised. He might have stepped into any of the city’s finer dinner clubs without remark. “It isn’t up to me, but it’s my opinion”—he held her gaze in a way that made her feel he was taking her seriously for the first time—“that if you wanted to study with us, we’d be lucky. The doctor’s no fool. A smart student is worth a thousand paying ones. Training females as doctors is very rare, but it has been done. There’s momentum—albeit small—to let women train separately in small colleges so that male doctors will no longer have to assist with childbirth. A half dozen students attend a fledgling women’s medical college started by the Quakers, though I must admit they aren’t taken very seriously by many in the profession. And I haven’t heard of any who got clinical training.”
“What about a woman learning alongside the men?” Molly asked. “Being taught more than just how to birth babies.” She swallowed hard. “Training to be an anatomist.”
James gave her an appraising stare. “It would be an unprecedented opportunity, but it seems to me you are a woman without precedent.”
He folded his napkin neatly and rose, plate untouched. “It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for the breakfast.” With a little bow toward Ava, then Molly, he left.
Ava pushed her own plate away. They sat in silence for several seconds.
“This is what you really want?” she asked softly. “To be a surgeon?”
“Yes,” Molly said.
And with that word, something woke inside her. Something wild and hungry and aching to be fed. She had not allowed herself to feel anything like it before.
At the orphanage, the nuns had told her the truth of this world for women. She would always belong to somebody: a man, a church, an idea. She might as well be a slice of bread, cut from the old loaf on the table in its dull cast-iron pan. There was nothing more special about her, nothing destined for anything higher than the fate of wheat ground in the mill, pressed into flour, and served up as sustenance for lips that would always need more.
But last night, she had forgotten all of that. Being in the operating theater had thrilled her in a way nothing else ever had. The human body was an invitation to learn what could never fully be known. An endless book she longed to read. And for once in her life, Molly Green wanted to be allowed to want.
“What about your work for me?” Ava asked.
“I’ll still do it. Every night but Sunday, just as I do now with Tom.” The thought of Tom sent heat rushing across her face, but there was no time for that now.
“It might be useful to me for you to know more about Dr. LaValle’s needs.” Ava frowned, considering.
“And I’d know more about the bodies too,” Molly said, eagerly catching hold of her aunt’s wavering and tugging at it like a dog with a bone. “Sometimes, we leave ones behind that aren’t up to your current standards, but if I knew how they died, I’d know if they might still be worth collecting.”
Ava cocked her head, her face lighting with the idea. “Now, there’s a thought . . . specific cause of death upon request. We’d charge extra, of course.”
“So you’ll talk to Dr. LaValle?”
Ava reached over the table and grabbed Molly’s hand. The grip was vise-tight. “As I’ve said before, everything has a cost. Even this. You must be ready to pay it.”
Molly swallowed. “What is it?”
“Dr. LaValle has a special engagement coming up. A lecture of sorts. It will demand a certain kind of body that is proving particularly difficult to procure. You get that for me, and I’ll allow you to study.” She shook her head. “It won’t be easy.”
“I’ll do it.” Molly didn’t hesitate. She’d handled the doctor’s monkeys. She could handle whatever new hell he threw at her. “I’ll do whatever I need to be allowed in his classroom.”
If what James had said was true, this could be her one chance to ever become a surgeon.
“So we have a deal?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Ava stood. “There’s no class tomorrow, but if Dr. LaValle agrees, you may start on Tuesday when they resume.”
Molly’s whole body flushed with exhilaration, the hungry want unfurling itself to stretch like a great beast in her belly.
Stuffing the last of the bacon into her mouth, she hurried to the library, wishing that it weren’t Sunday. She couldn’t wait to see Tom and the look on his face when she told him her plans for a new life.