William Monk 14 - The Shifting Tide

be. And there’s the other side of it too. We don’t mind thinking about leprosy, because we don’t believe there’s any chance of our catching it. With the other things we might, in spite of everything we try to do to prevent it.”
    “Syphilis?” Margaret questioned.
    “Especially that,” Hester answered. “Street women are seen as the ones who pass it on. Husbands use them, wives get the disease.” She looked down. “You can’t blame them for anger—and fear.”
    “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Margaret admitted. “No, perhaps I wouldn’t be so willing either, when you think of that. Perhaps my judgment was a little quick.”
    Margaret stayed and worked hard all afternoon. She was there to help when an injured woman was brought in, several bones broken in her fingers, but her most serious distress was fever and a hacking cough. She looked worn until her strength and will were exhausted, and when they helped her upstairs and into a bed, she lay silent and white-faced, oblivious of all they could do to help her.
    Margaret left shortly after eight in the evening, intending to purchase more of the most important supplies, such as quinine—which was expensive and not easy to find—and such simple things as bandages and good surgical silk and gut.
    Hester snatched some sleep for four hours, and woke with a start when it was just after midnight. Claudine Burroughs was standing next to the bed, her long face filled with anxiety and distaste. She looked annoyed.
    “What is it?” Hester sat up slowly, struggling to reach full consciousness. Her head ached and her eyes felt hot and gritty. She would have paid almost any price to slide back into sleep again. The room around her wavered. The cold air chilled her skin. “What’s happened?” she asked.
    “The new woman who came in,” Claudine said, framing her words carefully, “I think she has a . . . a disease of . . . a moral nature.” Her nostrils flared as though she could smell its odor in the room.
    Hester had a terse answer on her tongue, then she remembered how much she needed Claudine’s help, unskilled as it was. She complained, she disapproved, but through it she kept working, almost as if she found some perverse comfort in it. A thought flickered through Hester’s mind as to what her life at home must be like that she came seeking some kind of happiness or purpose for herself here. But she had no time to pursue it.
    “What are her symptoms?” she asked, swinging her feet over onto the floor.
    “I don’t know much about such things,” Claudine defended herself. “But she has scars like the pox on her shoulders and arms, and other things I’d prefer not to mention.” She stood very stiffly, balanced as if to retreat. Her face was oddly crumpled. “I think the poor thing is like to die,” she added, a harsh and sudden pity in her voice, and then gone again, as though she was ashamed of it.
    For the first time, Hester wondered if Claudine had ever seen death before, and if she was afraid of it. She had not thought to consider that possibility until now. She stood up slowly. She was stiff from lying too heavily asleep in one position.
    “I’ll come and see what I can do,” she said in answer to the summons. “There may not be much.”
    “I’ll help,” Claudine offered. “You . . . you look tired.”
    Hester accepted, asking her to fetch a bowl of water and a cloth.
    Claudine was right; the woman looked very ill indeed. She drifted in and out of consciousness, her skin was hot and dry and her breathing rattled, her pulse was weak. Now and again she moved her eyes and tried to speak, but no distinguishable words came.
    Hester waited with her, leaving Mercy Louvain to tend to Ruth Clark and try to keep her fever down. Claudine came and went, each time more anxious.
    “Can’t you do anything for her?” she asked, whispering in deference to the possibility that the sick woman might hear her.
    “No. Just be here so she is not alone,” Hester replied. She had a light hold on the woman’s hand, just enough to exert a slight pressure in acknowledgment of her presence.
    “So many of them . . .” Claudine did not like to say
die like this
, but it was in her pale face, the tightness of her lips. She smoothed her apron over her stomach, her hands, red-knuckled, were stiff.
    “Yes,” Hester said simply. “It’s a hazard of the job, but it’s less certain than starvation.”
    “The job!” Claudine all but choked on