CHAPTER

19

Biding time wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. If I could have paid to leave immediately, which I could not, being in Saint Louis wouldn’t help Kindle. I wouldn’t be able to see him and though I assumed I would be welcomed back to Mary’s orphanage, there was no guarantee it would be a safe place for me to hide. Now that Kindle was caught, and the world knew I was alive, the orphanage might be watched for my arrival. When I mulled the question “stay or go?” I discovered not only was the safest decision to stay, but that I wanted to stay. The draw of practicing medicine again, even in Hankins’s twisted version, was too strong.

May arrived on a wave of thunderstorms and train upon train of people seeking their fortune through legitimate and illegitimate means. Cheyenne’s population ebbed and flowed as passengers disembarked and moved on south to Boulder and Denver, and headed north and west to the mines. Enough were intrigued by Cheyenne’s potential that the town grew inexorably northward. Streets surveyed in March were dotted with tents in April and lined with wooden buildings in May. Fifteenth and Sixteenth Streets were slowly transforming from small false-fronted wooden buildings to more majestic brick and stone. Rosemond’s portrait business was growing, and her sign business was booming, as was Dr. Hankins’s practice, though Dr. Hankins’s workload was not.

Hankins’s plan for me to aid him and apprentice lasted a week, the amount of time for him to realize I could do all the work and he could get most of the remuneration. There was little objection to me taking over Hankins’s practice: the women in town preferred a female treating them, even if it was a nurse, and the men who urgently needed Hankins’s services were rarely in a condition to object, bloody and in pain as they were from knife attacks and gunshot wounds. When I tied the final suture off, they were impressed with my work and, feeling magnanimous and light-headed with loss of blood, most like, occasionally gave me extra coin on top of the standard fee. It was in this way I was able to slowly secret a personal stash of money unbeknownst to Hankins, who took his portion off the top, and Rosemond, whom I combined my earnings with for household expenses and was slowly paying back for the clothes she’d bought me. Though she insisted payment wasn’t necessary, I didn’t want to be beholden to her in any way.

With a few discreet inquiries on my and Rosemond’s parts, we discovered Salter was contracted with the railroad, investigating crimes that happened up and down the line or on the trains themselves. Salter disappeared from town without a word to me, and Rosemond convinced me I was seeing a threat where there wasn’t one. As the days wore on and Salter didn’t return, and Harry Diamond continued to pretend I’d never threatened to shoot his cock off, I began to feel safe again, if not entirely easy.

Rosemond and I were so busy we rarely saw each other, nor did we have time to perform our respective household duties. On Amalia’s recommendation, Rosemond hired a stout, whiskery Swedish woman to come in twice a week and cook and clean for us. Ingrid spoke little English and took no interest in us other than our ability to pay her for a day’s work. She arrived, donned an apron, performed her duties, and left, with nary a word passing her lips.

One morning, a little after dawn, I walked into the kitchen and discovered Rosemond sketching on a pad of paper, a steaming cup of coffee on the table in front of her. She looked up from her sketch pad and smiled. “Hello, stranger.”

“Please tell me there’s more coffee.” I placed Cora Bayle’s carpetbag on the table.

“An entire pot.”

I poured a mug and sat across from her.

“What are you sketching?”

“Portia. She’s coming today so we can get started.”

I blew on my coffee and watched Rosemond work. Her hand was light on the pencil, her strokes long and sure. She tilted her head to and fro, pursing her lips and furrowing her brows as she worked. There were times I looked at Rosemond and didn’t recognize her from the woman I’d met on a Mississippi riverboat. Besides the obvious differences in dress—she wore men’s trousers more often than not, for climbing up and down ladders to paint signs on buildings—and the lack of paint on her face, her entire mien had softened into a sort of glow. Her eyes seemed less calculating, her smile more genuine.

“What?” Rosemond looked up from her work.

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re staring.”

“Watching you work. Too tired to talk.”

“Busy night?”

“Lavina went into labor.” I warmed my hands on my coffee mug and tried to banish the memory of the woman’s screams.

“What happened?”

I looked up at the softness in Rosemond’s voice. “Some women handle pain better than others.”

Rosemond nodded. “What did she have?”

“A girl. Stillborn. Deformed.” My throat thickened and I couldn’t continue. For all of Lavina’s apparent disinterest in the baby, she’d looked down her body at me with expectation and hope when the baby delivered. Monique’s exclamation of disgust at the sight of the baby’s slanted eyes and deformed lip deflated Lavina and she lay back, turned her head away. I knew immediately the baby was dead but tried to spur it to cry anyway.

Rosemond touched my hand and I opened my eyes, tears trickling from their corners. Rosemond didn’t say anything, only kept her warm hand over mine, ice-cold despite holding the hot tin mug. I felt monstrous, crying for the loss of the train passage to Saint Louis more than the death of an unwanted baby.

“Have you ever been pregnant?” I asked her, desperate to reject her undeserved compassion in the cruelest way possible.

Rosemond’s hand stiffened on mine. She sat back and took her pencil back up. “Of course. Few whores haven’t. I’ve never taken a pregnancy to term, if that’s what you’re asking. Have you? Been pregnant?” She said it mocking, sure she knew the answer.

“Yes.” I enjoyed her surprise for a beat and continued. “The doctor in Jacksboro took care of it. I was unconscious, high on laudanum and wanting to sleep forever, to forget what I’d been through.” I closed my eyes and felt myself floating above the feather bed, warm, safe, and senseless of everything, wishing it could have lasted forever. “He didn’t know it could have been Kindle’s.”

“But it could have been an Indian’s?”

“One of seven, yes.” Rosemond grimaced but didn’t drop her eyes from mine. I liked her for that. “It was as horrible as you can imagine. I don’t know if my cramps are from their abuse, or from scar tissue in my uterus from the procedure.”

“You didn’t have them before?”

“Never.” I drank the rest of my cold coffee, rose, and poured more. Out the kitchen window, the town was waking. A thin layer of fog skimmed along the ground. “I’m fairly certain I won’t be able to get pregnant. If I didn’t while Kindle and I were in Saint Louis, there isn’t much hope.”

“I’m sure with time you can.”

I leaned against the worktable. “My husband is dead, remember?”

Rosemond opened her mouth as if to speak but closed it. I waited, wondering if she would tell me the truth about Kindle, hoping she would. Instead, she dropped her eyes and continued sketching. “Did the delivery take all night?”

I sighed. Since Hankins’s revelation about Kindle I’d discovered two things, one surprising, the other gratifying: stoking hatred took great emotional, almost physical, effort, and it wasn’t in my nature. I knew I should hate Rosemond for what she’d done, and antipathy flared within me at the most unexpected times. But there were long stretches when I forgot about her duplicity, her manipulation, and felt something close to affection for her. I would never trust her, but I couldn’t hate her outright. The realization filled me with hope that my morality hadn’t been completely lost after everything I’d been through.

“No. A supply train leaves this morning for Sweetwater, and every miner and teamster was determined to make the most of their last night in town. Three fights, two brawls, a bullet-grazed ear, and a dead whore.”

Rosemond glanced up, her eyes landing on the carpetbag.

“Why do you carry that thing?”

“There’s room for the medicines you gave me. Plus, it helps me remember.”

“Remember what?”

“My guilt.”

Rosemond’s hand stopped, but she didn’t take her eyes from her sketch pad. The corners of her mouth tightened and her eyes bored into the sketch as if searching for answers or inspiration or strength. I thought she would speak, mention Dunk to put me in my place, but her face cleared of all guilt and uneasiness and she resumed sketching without a word.

Rosemond’s solution to addressing her past actions was to pretend they never happened, that her life began when she got off the train in Cheyenne. When anyone asked her about her history—our history—she was vague, and turned the conversation to them. People knew more of me than of Rosemond, which was ironic considering I was the one who needed my past to remain secret; Rosemond merely wanted hers hidden. Considering her severance of her past, I assumed she would take a hard stance against the evils of prostitution. Much to my surprise, Rosemond had taken up visiting Calico Row with me and Portia whenever she could. To Stella and her girls, and Monique and hers, Rosemond was a lady. They gave no hint of suspicion of Rosemond’s previous life. Though we didn’t talk about it, I could tell the first time we went that the possibility had been on Rosemond’s mind. It wasn’t until we’d finished our visits that Rosemond’s expression cleared. She’d been giddy with relief, intertwining her arms with mine and Portia’s and offering to buy us a slice of pie at the Rollins House Hotel.

“I would love a piece of pie, but Hankins is expecting me. Bring one home for me?”

“I will. I guess it’s you and me, Portia.”

I thought Portia would refuse but she smiled and said, “I suppose it is.”

Whatever tension had been between the two of them from Portia’s initial refusal to sit for a portrait had dissipated. More than once, I’d found Portia keeping Rosemond company while she painted, or sitting with her at the kitchen table over coffee.

“I assumed you had already started Portia’s portrait, with the amount of time she’s spent here.”

“She isn’t here as often as you think.”

“Only during the irregular times I come and go.”

She shrugged a shoulder. “She’s here to see you, to talk about the education of our fallen women. How is that going, by the way?”

“Portia has taken on most of it. Hankins is keeping me too busy. Clara has been sneaking away from Stella and going to the Brights for reading lessons.”

Rosemond stopped sketching. “Has she?”

“I think Clara has even been off the dope for a few weeks. She may be their first true success story. From the conversations I’ve had with Portia, she is encouraged by Clara’s enthusiasm.”

“Which one is Clara?”

“She’s a small, dark-haired woman. Twenty, if she’s a day.” I chuckled. “She propositioned me on my first trip to Calico Row. She’s a big one for teasing.”

Rosemond closed her sketchbook with a thump. “I doubt she was teasing.”

“What? No.” I paused. “They do that?”

Rosemond stood and looked at me pityingly. “A whore will do anything if you pay her enough.”

A knock at the back and front doors at almost the same time interrupted us.

“Ingrid.”

“Portia.”

“I’ll let Ingrid in, then I’m going to catch some shut-eye before Hankins and I go see Lily.” I stood and clutched at the dull pain in my stomach.

“Is it your time again?”

“Yes.”

She placed a hand on my back. “What can I do for you?”

It was a simple question, one to be expected between people living together and familiar with the ebb and flow of life together, a question between friends. Moments such as these had been happening more frequently over the past few weeks as Rosemond and I got to know each other and settled into a daily routine. Whether from her history as an older sister, or as a madam for a house full of prostitutes, Rosemond had a protective streak in her. The part of me that saw everything Rosemond did as a grand manipulation wondered what her angle was. That she had a long-term plan I had no doubt, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure what it was. She seemed genuinely concerned for me and actively cultivated our uneasy friendship.

“Keep the laudanum out of sight,” I said.

She sighed and smiled. “I’m so glad to hear you say that. I’ve seen what it can do to women who use it habitually. I don’t want to watch you waste away. I’ve gotten used to you being around.” She squeezed my shoulder in acknowledgment, and went to let Portia in.

It didn’t take me long working with Dr. Hankins to suspect that my original plan for settling in the West and being a physician had been a good one. He was a decent doctor with a pleasing bedside manner. When he was sober enough to listen to his patients’ complaints, his diagnoses were usually correct, and his treatment plans were almost always precisely what I would prescribe. But he liked his drink too well, and with Cheyenne’s growth having the same effect on Hankins’s practice, he decided to focus his attention on the important men of Cheyenne—the politicians and businessmen and their families—and leave the rest for me. Which was why it was somewhat surprising that he asked me to accompany him to his appointment with Lily Diamond, the wife of one of the richest men in town.

The Diamonds lived in a two-story stone house on Ferguson Street with a large cupola and a curved porch. Workers were planting tree saplings in the narrow yard fenced in from the wooden sidewalk with an iron fence. The front door was opened by a Negro maid in a dove-gray uniform. Without a word of greeting to the woman, Dr. Hankins gave her his hat and headed up the stairs. I smiled and said hello to the maid and followed through the dark-paneled entry hall and up the stairs, the thick carpet runner muting my steps. Hankins went to the second door on the left, gave a cursory knock, and let himself in.

There was an oppressiveness, a heaviness, to the room, which seemed to be at odds with the sweet woman I’d come to know during my weeks in town. The walls were paneled in dark wood, like the entry hall and stairs. Heavy brocade curtains covered the windows. The velvet curtains hanging from the canopy bed, the heavy carpet on the floor, and the cloth-covered walls absorbed almost all sound. Lily sat in the middle of the bed with her knees drawn up. She wore a nightdress and a lace cap tied with a large bow beneath her chin. Her eyes were bloodshot, as if she hadn’t slept in days.

“Hello, Lily,” Dr. Hankins said.

“Oh, Dr. Hankins, I’m so glad you’ve come.”

“Of course I’ve come.” Hankins set his bag on the bedside table and sat on the edge of the bed. He patted Lily’s knee. “And I’ve brought Mrs. Graham along as well.”

Lily smiled wanly at me.

“Good to see you, Lily,” I said.

“How are you feeling?” Hankins said.

“Terrible, same as always. Shortness of breath, headache, and my stomach is constantly bloated.”

I watched Hankins carefully. He nodded and smiled but his eyes were unfocused, as if his mind were on something else. “And is there pain in your stomach?”

“No. But it’s bigger than it was last time.”

Hankins’s smile turned condescending. “Cutting back on the sweets will take care of it.”

Lily looked abashed. “You’re probably right.”

“Of course I’m right.” He patted her knee and stood. As if it were a cue, Lily lay down flat on the bed and pulled her knees up. She clutched her hands across her chest and stared at the canopy above her bed. “Lily.”

The woman turned her head in question.

“Mrs. Graham is going to do your treatment today.”

“What?” Lily said, astonishment clear in her voice and expression. “But she isn’t a … doctor.”

“She might as well be,” Hankins said.

“Has she done this before?”

Hankins turned to me. “I’m not sure. Have you treated hysteria before?”

“Is that your diagnosis?” I asked.

“Yes. Lily has suffered from it ever since they moved to Cheyenne. A not uncommon complaint for women in the West. It’s a hard life and some are fitted for it better than others.”

I glanced at Lily and saw the shame on her face at the rebuke.

Hankins continued. “She’s responded well to treatment, much to her husband’s relief. We must continue it, but with the number of patients I have lately …”

“May I speak to you for a moment, Doctor?” I asked.

He nodded and walked to the door.

I smiled at Lily. “Relax. I’ll be right back.”

I met Hankins at the door and crossed my arms over my chest. “You didn’t examine her.”

“I don’t need to. I’ve been seeing her for nearly two years. It’s a clear case of hysteria, and the success of the genital massage treatments has proven my diagnosis every two weeks since.”

I stared up at Hankins in wonderment, though as he stared back at me with complete innocent ignorance, I didn’t know why I was surprised. Almost from the moment I graduated medical school, I fought against hysteria as a diagnosis, not because I didn’t think a few women truly suffered from emotional complaints, but because it was routinely asserted as the cause of every woman’s medical complaint.

“What about her abdominal complaint?”

“It is all tied to the hysteria. When Lily gets upset, she eats sweets. She’s gained forty pounds since they moved to Cheyenne.”

“In my dealings with her, she has always struck me as very levelheaded.”

“In private she is not. Harry speaks of her emotional volatility often.” His tone turned placating. “Listen, Helen. I brought you here because I want you to take over her care completely.”

“Why?”

“Frankly, her treatment makes my rheumatism flare up. When we first started, it took five minutes, maybe ten. As time’s worn on, it’s become an hour-long ordeal. My right hand is useless for hours.”

I bowed my head and covered my mouth, trying not to laugh. I cleared my throat, arranged my expression into a serious one, and said, “I can imagine.”

He patted me on the shoulder. “Wonderful. Because you are helping me out so much, you may keep the fee for yourself. Five dollars. Women pay a premium for genital massage.”

“Yes, I know.”

It had been a significant part of my New York practice, mostly because my patients wished to continue the treatment begun by my male predecessors. They paid dearly for it, and I was only too eager to take their money to fill my barren bank account.

Now, I knew different. My time with Kindle opened my eyes to the true nature of the hysterical paroxysm: sought after and reached clinically, it could be achieved between a man and woman who understood how to give and receive pleasure. How many cases of hysteria would disappear if this were more widely understood? Instead, women were expected to be willing vessels for a man’s seed, to view sexual relations as a means to an end: procreation. I smiled at the thought of the uproar it would cause in the medical establishment, and the world in general, if it were ever implied a man should do more than penetrate his wife and spill his seed, but also give his wife pleasure. I knew well enough it wouldn’t be only men who would be outraged. To the women who received the hysteria treatment it was medical, not sexual. The idea that they could or should enjoy sex would be appalling.

If they only knew what they were missing.

“I thank you for the patient. Will she allow me to treat her?”

“I’ll settle that right now.” Hankins walked to Lily and spoke to her in a low tone. She seemed to want to argue but not have the courage. Hankins patted her shoulder, picked up his bag, and came to me. “She is fine. Where are you going after this?”

“Home, I should think. After last night.”

“Oh, no. That man Drummond is back in town selling his medicines.”

“He’s a huckster.”

“Well, of course he is. But his customers have legitimate physical complaints. You will hover around, listen to their complaints, see who buys, and give them a card offering your services when, or if, the snake oil doesn’t work.”

“I most certainly will not. I have not sunk so low that I will chase after sick people and foist my services upon them.”

“You have no say in it, Miss Bennett. Unless you want a visit from the sheriff.”

I clenched my jaw to keep from telling Dr. Roger Hankins precisely where he could shove his threat. “I don’t have a card,” I said through clenched teeth.

“I took the liberty of ordering some for you. They’re at the newspaper office. They cost five dollars. You can pay with Lily’s fee today.”

“I suppose if I need you I’ll find you at the bar in the Rollins House Hotel?”

“Most like.” He closed the door with a snap.

I inhaled four or five times to regain my equilibrium and turned to face my patient.

I set my bag on the bedside table next to a framed picture of two soldiers.

“Going somewhere?”

I followed Lily’s gaze to the table and Cora Bayle’s carpetbag.

I pulled out my stethoscope. “Not today.” I helped Lily sit up.

“What are you doing?”

“Examining you.”

“But Dr. Hankins’s treatment …?”

“We’ll get to that. First, I want to see if you’re as healthy as I think you are.” I helped Lily sit up and listened to her lungs. “Swing your legs around here,” I said, motioning for her to sit on the edge of the bed. I placed the stethoscope on her heart. “Strong and steady.” I smiled at Lily, who looked relieved. “Have you been having heart pain? Or palpitations?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“You looked surprised.”

“Oh, well. It’s just I’m so nervous all the time.”

“Hmm.” I untied her lace cap, put it aside, and felt her lymph nodes. “Tell me about your weight gain.”

Lily blushed. “I’m sure it’s because of the sweets, like Dr. Hankins said.”

“I’m not.”

Lily’s eyes widened as if from shock at being listened to.

“How old are you, Lily?”

“Forty-seven.”

I lifted the lamp from the table and shined it in one eye, then the other. “Do you still have your menses?”

“No.”

“When did it stop?”

“A couple of years ago.”

“When you moved to Cheyenne?”

“Around that time, yes.”

I nodded. “Lie down for me.”

I pulled her nightdress up to reveal a soft, thick stomach covered in stretch marks. “Are those your sons?” I nodded toward the framed photograph.

“Yes.” She gazed at the photo. The sadness and longing in Lily’s eyes, as well as the full mourning she always wore, told me their fate.

“Which battle?”

“Troy was lost at the First Manassas. Benjamin at Sharpsburg.”

Tears leaked from her eyes. I kept my focus on listening to her stomach with my stethoscope to give her time to compose herself. I draped the stethoscope around my neck, pressed on her stomach, and knew immediately her weight gain wasn’t from sweets.

“When did you start gaining weight?”

Lily inhaled. “Oh, November, maybe. Yes, I think that’s when I noticed it first.”

“What did you notice?”

“Well, honestly, I thought I was pregnant. It felt like a little bottom, you know? But it had been over a year since my last menses.”

“Did you mention it to Dr. Hankins?”

“Not until last month. I haven’t been eating much, no appetite to speak of.”

I pressed around on her stomach and closed my eyes, envisioning her organs. The mass wasn’t hard, but squishy like a balloon of water. It seemed to be settled on the left side of her abdomen, below her ovary. I opened my eyes and pulled her nightdress down. “How are your breasts?”

“I’m sorry?”

I lifted her left arm and pressed around her lymph nodes. “Do they look normal? Are there any hard areas? Do they hurt?” I put her arm down and moved to the other side of the bed.

“No. Is everything all right?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Dr. Hankins has never examined me like this.”

“Has he not?” I lifted her right arm.

“I’ve never had a nurse be so thorough.”

I smiled and put her arm back down by her side. “Does your stomach hurt?”

“No.”

“Have you had any abdominal pain since you started gaining weight?”

“No.”

“Backache? Trouble with urination or defecating?”

“My back aches, some. But no trouble with the other.” She looked away.

I walked to the end of the bed.

“Is it time?” The hopefulness and anticipation in her voice embarrassed me.

“Not yet. I need to examine you first.”

Lily scooted down to the end of the bed, bent her knees, and opened her legs. Though she was covered modestly by a sheet, I could not help but be reminded of the same resigned motions from Lavina a few weeks earlier. I walked to the dresser and washed my hands in the basin. When I returned, I reached beneath the sheet and internally examined Lily, while pressing down on her stomach with my other hand, confirming my suspicion of a large ovarian tumor. I removed my hand and returned to the dresser to wash my hands.

“What about my treatment?”

I sat on the edge of the bed and was silent for a moment, trying to decide what to tell her, or if I should tell her at all. On the one hand, Dr. Hankins had handed her treatment over to me. She was my patient and I should tell her my suspicions. On the other hand, to her and everyone in town I was a nurse, a midwife. A nurse might be able to diagnose a tumor, but it would draw suspicions. If I suggested operating, my ruse would be up. The safest course would be to tell Dr. Hankins my suspicions and convince him to operate, though I wasn’t sure he had the skills to perform it. I knew he didn’t follow Lister’s guidelines, so putting Lily Diamond into Hankins’s unsanitary hands would be risking her life. She wasn’t in pain and the tumor wasn’t hard—both good signs. Her lymph nodes felt normal as well. There was no indication from an external examination that the tumor was cancerous, which meant I had time to consider the options before making a decision.

But that was only half of my problem.

“Please, Helen. I beg you,” Lily said. Her eyes were red with threatening tears. “This is the only thing that gives me relief.”

“Temporarily.”

“Yes, but I receive the treatment regularly.”

“And pay dearly for it.”

“Harry doesn’t mind the expense if it keeps our house peaceful.”

I placed my hand over Lily’s. Poor woman. Grieving for two lost sons, uprooted from her home and moved to a rough frontier town with few women to befriend, her legitimate physical complaints dismissed by her doctor, and married to a man who frequented whores. Was it any wonder she was emotionally distraught? How could I possibly refuse to give her the one thing that helped her?

“Of course I’ll do the treatment.”

She sighed. “Oh, thank you.”

“But I’m going to teach you how to bring yourself to crisis so you don’t have to … pay.” My mouth twitched when I realized that the treatments male doctors were giving and receiving money for were akin to the services and charges of a soiled dove.

Lily gasped. “I can’t do that!”

“Why not?”

“I can’t touch myself down there.”

“It’s a medical treatment I’m prescribing, like prescribing laudanum for pains.”

“But if people found out!”

“Who will tell them? I surely won’t. Will you?”

“Good heavens, Helen. What a question.”

“Then no one need know.”

Lily fidgeted with the edge of the sheet covering her. I waited, suspecting there was more she wanted to say. The silence finally did its work. “But it goes against Christ’s teachings.”

“This isn’t a sexual act,” I lied. “This is a medical procedure.”

“It can’t be done without a doctor.”

“Yes, it can.”

“Why isn’t it?”

“Because women, and their husbands, pay handsomely for it.” I leaned forward and whispered, “And doctors are greedy.”

“I don’t know.”

I sighed. “How about this: I’ll explain to you what I’m doing. If, before our next appointment, you feel a spell coming on, you can try the treatment yourself. If it doesn’t work, we’ll have the upcoming appointment on schedule.”

Lily smiled and said, “That will be fine,” with such relief I knew she had no intention of trying to help herself to crisis. I stood and turned away, steeling myself to do a task I had no urge to perform.