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“Nurse, nurse!” The patient in bed twelve waved a stick-insect arm. “Och, sorry, Miss Penrose, I couldn’t see who it was in the gloom.”
Grace Penrose, the first female medical student in the country, was often mistaken for a nurse, regardless of the ambient light. At the end of a dull May day, with clouds as grey as the row of metal bedframes stretching down the women’s ward, the patient would be hard pressed to distinguish her from the ghosts of patients past.
She glanced at her notes: Mrs Mackle, paracentesis to remove fluid from the abdomen. “Anything the matter, Mrs Mackle, aside from the dismal lighting in here?”
“I’ve no mind to that. After all, ‘money’s that tight, ye can have the gaslights on, or ye can have yer treatment, but ye cannae have the both’.”
Mrs Mackle’s pitch-perfect impersonation of Matron would have made Grace laugh out loud, if it hadn’t been for Matron’s disturbing habit of appearing at inconvenient moments. Grace glanced around before risking a smile. “At least our fine hospital spares no expense on the quality of the cuisine.”
Her patient let out a derisive snort as she flicked a glance at the congealing sludge on the enamel plate beside her. “Oh, aye, straight from the kitchens of the Grand Hotel, that is. Smells even worse than the air in here, and that’s saying something.”
“The rain has certainly made the swampy ground outside smell worse than usual,” Grace agreed.
The medical staff had been told not to mention any other source of odour, including the mould in the cracks in the walls, the rot slowly eating away the floorboards, the stench of carbolic, and the vile smell emanating from the hospital kitchens and laundries. All blown in courtesy of the draughts that plagued this decrepit ward. In short, the hospital would have disgraced even a provincial town. For Dunedin, the most distinguished city in New Zealand, it was intolerable. Their city might be a dot on a distant corner of the globe compared to the great cities of the world, but its citizens had their pride.
Grace palpated the patient’s abdomen. “Swelling’s all but gone, I’m pleased to see. How are you feeling, Mrs Mackle?”
“A stone lighter and keen as mustard to get back to my own home.”
“I’ll get Doctor Beechworth to discharge you as soon as possible.” Grace moved on to the next patient. As a third-year medical student, she ought to have been working under close supervision, but the hospital was short-staffed due to an influenza outbreak. Grace had volunteered to stay on to cover the ward while the overworked nurse had a dinner break. Grace’s own stomach had passed the rumbling stage several hours ago, leaving her innards shrunken into a tight mass inside her thin frame.
Mrs Mackle nodded towards the woman in the next bed and lowered her voice. “Mrs Jamieson ain’t right, Miss Penrose. Groaning and tossing all day she was, but now she ain’t moving.”
Grace leaned over the patient in bed thirteen. Mrs Jamieson might have been made of wax for all the signs of life she showed. Sightless eyes, sallow skin, and the sickly odour of infection dreaded by doctors the world over. Only the drops of sweat on her brow and the erratic pulse in her neck declared her to be alive. Grace lifted the bedclothes, revealing a stained bandage that ought to be white.
Two days ago, Grace had sat in the gallery of the operating theatre and watched Doctor Beechworth perform an exemplary abdominal surgery on Mrs Jamieson. Such a rapid post-operative deterioration did not bode well. She covered the patient and hurried off to find the attending doctor.
Doctor Beechworth, the hospital’s specialist in gynaecology, was leaving the consulting room at his customary pace, carrying a pile of documents. He moved with such dignity and grace, his speed was deceptive. Many an unwary medical student had been left floundering in his wake, as he swooped around the ward on rounds.
The doctor glanced around at the sound of Grace’s hurried footsteps. His raised eyebrow pulled up the bristles of his moustache on one side, under a prominent nose. “Problem, Miss Penrose? I’m due in an important meeting.” Beechworth glanced down the corridor, before adding. “Last chance to overturn Ormsby’s duplicity. I really don’t want to miss the meeting.”
Grace didn’t want him to miss the meeting either. Doctor Ormsby had convinced the Dunedin Hospital Trustees to change the plans for the proposed new hospital extension at the last minute. The hospital desperately needed a women’s ward up to the medical standards of 1892, to replace the disgraceful current facilities. Ormsby, a surgeon, had fed the trustees with promises of the financial benefits of another new operating theatre and surgical consulting rooms.
With the hospital finances in tatters after a prolonged economic depression, the trustees had been swayed by his honeyed words. After all, they argued, would anyone of importance really care if the women’s ward was left to moulder for a few more years? All respectable women had their medical needs seen to at home anyway. The embarrassing problem of the maternity ward – a dilapidated wooden structure accessed down a flight of dangerous steps – had already been neatly solved by transferring maternity patients to the Benevolent Institution across the other side of town.
Grace, of course, cared a great deal, as did Beechworth. So did all the women who had raised a huge sum of money to fund the new women’s ward. But right now, a woman’s life was at risk and everything else was of secondary importance.
“Should I get someone else, Doctor Beechworth? It’s Mrs Jamieson, bed thirteen. Signs of post-operative infection. Waxy countenance, erratic pulse, semi-conscious.”
Doctor Beechworth was off before Grace had finished her sentence. She trotted after him. Aside from her desire to save the patient, she took every opportunity to learn from the experts, especially those who were willing to overlook the inescapable handicap of her gender.
By the time they had drained and cleaned the infected wound, and waited for the patient’s vital signs to stabilise, every muscle in Grace’s body was sagging.
Beechworth looked equally weary. He drew out his pocket watch. “No chance of me making the meeting now. I hope my wife, Ivy, and the rest of the women’s group have been given the opportunity to make their views known in my absence.”
“My great-aunt is at the meeting too, Doctor Beechworth,” Grace replied. “I can assure you that she will not be silenced. I only hope she hasn’t had to resort to desperate measures to get her way. I’ve seen enough bloodshed for one day.”
Grace was living with her great-aunt while she trained to be a doctor. To her friends and allies, Anne Macmillan was a woman of modern ideas and robust character. Her detractors used rather less complimentary adjectives. If Anne’s fury at Ormsby and the trustees was anything to go by (and it usually was), the meeting would have been fiery. Especially so in combination with Mrs Ivy Beechworth, another formidable force on the side of women’s rights.
From the apprehension writ large on the doctor’s face, he was well aware of it. “May I offer to take you home, Miss Penrose? Once the meeting has finished, we can all go together.” Beechworth set off down the corridor to the meeting room without waiting for her reply.
Grace brushed back wayward strands of her dark hair as she hurried after him, thankful for the lack of mirrors on the ward. Working long hours was to be expected as a medical student. Returning home in the dead of night was the worst of it, especially for a young woman. More often than not, Grace curled up in a chair in the consulting room or collapsed on a vacant bed, rather than risk the short journey home, even in a hansom cab.
Doctor Beechworth pushed the door to the meeting room open a crack. The Chairman of the Hospital Trustees, Mr Horncastle, was speaking in an officious drone. With his top hat beside him, his monocle framing iron grey eyes above a neatly-trimmed beard, and his cravat so perfectly tied it could only be the work of a superior valet, Alfred Horncastle was clearly a man of substance.
Grace failed to understand how his success at selling imported furniture and homewares (“Turn your home into a castle with Horncastle’s quality goods!”) qualified him to make crucial decisions about Dunedin hospital. But Horncastle was no worse than any of the other merchants and attorneys who made up the trustees. At present, not a single medical man sat with them, a situation she found both incomprehensible and dangerous.
Horncastle droned to a close. “... therefore it is agreed that Doctor Ormsby will commission the architect to prepare a variation to the original plan, with the final decision to be made after Doctor Beechworth has had his chance to speak on the matter. Ah, there you are Beechworth. Late again.”
“My sincere apologies,” Doctor Beechworth said, with a distinct lack of sincerity. “A woman almost died tonight from an entirely unnecessary post-operative infection, caused by the abominably insanitary conditions in the women’s ward. If the next death is a woman of means, the hospital might well be sued for gross negligence.”
Horncastle blanched, but continued as if he hadn’t heard. “I therefore declare this meeting adjourned until next Thursday.”
Even as Horncastle banged the gavel, the meeting attendees were pushing back their chairs and jostling to escape. The women were allowed out first, as dictated by good manners. Strange that these men could be so gracious about polite trivialities, thought Grace, when their decisions consigned women to early graves. She hurried to catch up with her great-aunt and Ivy Beechworth, who had surged past in a wave of grim-faced ladies.
Doctor Ormsby caught up with their group in the foyer, a smirk hovering above his swaying jowls. “Sorry to hear you’ve had another post-operative infection, Beechworth. Operating by bicycle lamp again, eh? You ought to get into private practice like me. Never a single infection under my watch.”
Doctor Beechworth ignored the jibe. He was rightly proud of his successful treatment of a haemorrhage by the light of the wardsman’s acetylene bicycle lamp, after the gaslights failed. “The patient suffered a secondary infection as a result of the appalling conditions in the women’s ward, Ormsby, not as a result of my surgical skills. If the Hospital Trustees proceed with your proposal for an additional operating theatre instead of the planned women’s ward, I will hold you personally responsible for the unnecessary deaths of women for years to come.”
Ormsby wiped his brow with a monogrammed handkerchief. His rotund figure was not made for any pace beyond sauntering. “Come now, Beechworth, no need to be a sore loser.” He turned to Grace and took her hand in his gloved fingers. “You must be Miss Beechworth. I am enchanted to meet you at last. I insist you join your parents in attending my soirée on Saturday evening. No elegant gathering is complete without a pretty girl. My eldest son, Richard, is particularly desirous of making your acquaintance.”
His last sentence was spoken with exaggerated emphasis, leaving Grace in no doubt that Richard Ormsby was an eligible young man in want of a suitable wife. Grace hadn’t the energy to respond without appearing rude, so she said nothing. Her great-aunt and Ivy Beechworth were too busy stifling unseemly laughter to come to her aid.
Doctor Beechworth was left to respond. “How kind of you to invite this charming young lady, Doctor Ormsby. I’m sure she will be delighted to attend with us.”
Grace glared at Beechworth, silently beseeching him to rescue her from the perils of the Ormsby soirée.
Beechworth ignored her unspoken plea. “However, I must inform you that the young lady is not our daughter. Indeed, I am surprised you have failed to recognise her, as she is acquainted with your younger son, Henry, a fellow medical student. May I present Miss Grace Penrose.”
Ormsby’s eyes widened for an instant, before narrowing to fleshy slits. He hoisted a thin smile over sour lips. “Miss Penrose. You will be welcome, of course. Indeed, Mr Horncastle is eager to extend a welcome to the ladies, to acknowledge the ‘changing face of medicine’.” The words, emphatically in quotes, assured his listeners that his arm had been twisted. “I have already invited the new Matron and the head nurse. A lady medical student will round out the party nicely.” Ormsby bowed his head briefly and hurried away to his carriage.
Mrs Beechworth took her husband’s arm, exchanging an intimate smile with him that spoke of mutual devotion. “That was very wicked of you, Frederick darling. You must know that Ormsby was a fierce opponent of admitting a woman to medical school. And his vile son, Henry, has abused Grace abominably from the first day she stepped foot inside the lecture theatre.”
“A woman having the gall to answer all the questions that stumped the male students,” Anne added, with a cackle. “Shockingly unladylike behaviour, Grace dear, showing up the men like that. But, Frederick, I have to agree with Ivy. What on earth were you thinking? Edgar Ormsby would sooner welcome a leper to his soirée than an aspiring female doctor.”
Doctor Beechworth waved away their admonitions. “All the more reason for Ormsby to meet Miss Penrose properly, so that he realises the error of his ways. Besides, I have a feeling that Ormsby’s determination to derail the women’s ward might waver under the persuasive powers of Miss Penrose’s intellect and charm.”
“If Grace doesn’t strangle him first,” Anne retorted. “One minute in Ormsby’s company would be enough for me to contemplate skewering him with a hat pin. I give thanks that I am too old and too outspoken to warrant an invitation to his tiresome soirée.”
Mrs Beechworth had to retrieve a handkerchief from her reticule to cover her mirth. “Rat poison might be the more appropriate method to silence a scheming rat, don’t you think, Anne? Either that, or throwing him in a boiling vat of whale blubber. Ormsby might actually be of some use to the world if his blubber was turned into oil to keep the hospital lights running.”
An unexpected voice from close behind them cut through the merriment. “Good evening, Doctor Beechworth, ladies,” Mr Horncastle said. “I look forward to seeing you again at the soirée.”
Doctor Beechworth watched Horncastle’s progress down the street, until he was out of earshot. “Ivy, dearest, your rapier wit will get you into trouble one of these days. Might I beg of you to be on your best behaviour at the soirée? Charm and logic is needed to sway the Hospital Trustees to our viewpoint. Ormsby and Horncastle wield a great deal of influence.”
“Do come, Grace,” Mrs Beechworth pleaded. “After all our exertions to raise funds for the new women’s ward, I couldn’t bear to have it denied to us at the whim of a pair of pompous idiots.”
The last thing Grace wanted to do was to attend a social gathering of superior people who disapproved of her, especially as the soirée was a thin excuse for Ormsby to entice the trustees with fine wine and talk of wealth. On the other hand, Doctor and Mrs Beechworth deserved her support. She found herself agreeing to attend, even as her intuition flashed a warning that it was a very, very bad idea.