A Kiss From Mr Fitzgerald

by Natasha Lester

  ‘How are you, Mrs Cunningham?’ Evie asked.

  ‘Sore,’ was the reply.

  Even though it wasn’t permitted, Evie sat down on the bed and held Mrs Cunningham’s hand. Her face was pale and she looked confused, her eyes darting anxiously around the room, searching for something. ‘Your baby is beautiful,’ Evie said.

  ‘You’ve seen him?’

  ‘Yes. And I’ve asked the nurse to bring him down so you can see him too.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Mrs Cunningham’s eyes teared up. ‘I can’t remember anything. I remember coming to the hospital and talking to you. But nothing else. The nurses tell me I had a baby. But they also tell me …’ her voice dropped to a whisper, ‘that I’m broken.’

  ‘The baby was stuck in your pelvis. I’m so sorry.’ Evie wished she could offer more than an apology – an apology she knew wouldn’t be forthcoming from Dr Kingsley. It was how she always felt when she spoke to the women after their births: as if she should have done something – even though she wasn’t allowed to; as if she was still walking away from women who needed her.

  ‘But why can’t I remember?’

  ‘It’s the effect of the scopolamine,’ Evie explained. ‘It makes you forget what’s happened.’

  ‘Will I remember soon?’

  ‘The drug works by taking away the memory of the experience. So no, you won’t remember.’

  ‘How do I know the baby is mine?’

  Luckily Evie recalled her vow to behave impeccably. It was the only thing that stopped her from cursing Dr Kingsley, Dr Brewer and all the men in charge who thought it best to render a woman completely insensible at one of the most vulnerable times in her life. She recalled her first observation of a birth, the strange experience of seeing a woman senseless but thrashing – a side effect of the drugs she’d been given – absolutely unaware of what was being done to her, unable to give permission for anything, her body under the total control of the doctor and his whims.

  ‘Dr Kingsley is very professional,’ Evie said, forcing the words from her lips. ‘The baby is certainly yours. And even though you won’t be able to get up and move around for several weeks, I’ll make sure the baby is brought down to you as often as you like. I can also ask Dr Kingsley to speak to you. He was in the delivery room and might be able to reassure you.’

  ‘Oh no, I couldn’t talk to Dr Kingsley about it. Will you be here if I need to …’ Mrs Cunningham’s voice trailed off.

  ‘Yes. I’ll be here until half past five. Have the nurse find me any time.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Evie left the room and walked straight into Francis Sumner, the intern given the job of supervising her.

  ‘Do you ordinarily loiter outside patients’ rooms?’ Evie asked after she’d removed her face from his chest and stepped back.

  ‘I need you to check on Mrs O’Rourke.’

  ‘A whole case just for me? What have I done to deserve that?’ Evie realised she was leaning forward like a boxer about to throw the first punch. Always ready to attack, because attacks were what she’d become used to. She corrected her posture.

  ‘You wanted to do more, so I saved Mrs O’Rourke especially for you.’

  Evie should have known it was too good to be true. But she was so pleased to be given a chance that she didn’t stop to think. Instead, she took the stairs down to the ward reserved for the patients with no money.

  ‘How are you, Mrs O’Rourke?’ she asked the woman in the first bed by the door, whose scrawny body and haggard face indicated to Evie that she suffered from a relentless cycle of birthing and being pregnant and giving most of her food to her children because there wasn’t enough to go around.

  ‘Damn sight better if that doctor hadn’t cut me from here to Sunday. It’s a wonder I’ve got anything left to stitch down there – that’s the third time they’ve taken to me with a pair of scissors.’

  Evie checked the patient’s chart. ‘I need to take a look at your wound. One of the nurses thought there might be signs of infection.’

  ‘Go on then, have a look. Everything needs to be in good working order before I leave here or my husband’ll throw me and the kids out. Sometimes I reckon the only thing he comes home for is the barney-mugging.’

  Evie smiled; one thing hospital work was good for was extending her vocabulary. She put on her gloves and asked Mrs O’Rourke to roll onto her side and slide down her knickers. Then she inspected the episiotomy and bit down hard on the insides of her cheeks – God, they were raw. The smell from Mrs O’Rourke’s wound was worse than the back alleys of the Bowery on a fetid summer’s day, and Evie cursed Dr Kingsley for thinking that his job ended once the baby appeared. For thinking that the only thing to do in every birth was to cut the woman up like a Sunday roast so the forceps would fit inside. The wall of the vagina was so badly damaged that faecal matter was leaking in. Evie remembered a nurse telling her, many months ago, that two-thirds of the patients in the gynaecology clinic were there because of obstetric trauma. Evie had been astounded. Thousands of women were so damaged from having a baby, but nobody thought anything needed to be done about it.

  ‘You need an antiseptic wash,’ Evie said. ‘I’ll have one of the nurses organise it immediately.’

  ‘Ain’t no one washing my jelly-box ’cept me,’ replied Mrs O’Rourke.

  Evie pulled up the sheet. ‘Mrs O’Rourke, if you don’t let one of the nurses help, then there’ll be no barney-mugging ever again.’

  ‘Miss Lockhart.’

  Evie recognised Dr Brewer’s voice. Kingsley had wasted no time in telling tales. ‘I suppose you want a word with me,’ she said.

  ‘When you’re finished.’ He strode away.

  Evie spoke to Mrs O’Rourke. ‘I’ll send the nurse in now?’

  ‘Reckon you’d better.’

  Evie pulled off her rubber gloves, gave them to a nurse for sterilising, released her jaw, briefed another nurse and readied herself for presentation to Dr Brewer. On the way to his office, she passed Francis Sumner. ‘I can see why you saved Mrs O’Rourke for me.’

  He smirked. ‘You said you had an intimate knowledge of the vagina. It’s clearly a case that needs a certain level of expertise.’

  Instead of ranting, Evie laughed. She’d probably got what she deserved. And if you could overlook his toadying to Dr Kingsley, Francis was actually quite handsome. Besides, it felt good to laugh, to share a moment of possible friendship.

  Francis smiled. ‘I knew there was a sense of humour lurking beneath the frown.’

  Evie was still laughing as she walked away.

  ‘Miss Lockhart. Take a seat,’ said Dr Brewer when she knocked at his door.

  Evie did as she was told, eyes facing the back wall of the office, which was covered with rows of framed certificates celebrating Dr Brewer’s qualifications and expertise. Beneath them was a bookcase filled with leather-bound editions of medical textbooks. And on the desk, a cigar case, opened, but not offered to her. She sat without speaking, determined to be as meek as a bride on her wedding night. Anything so she could keep her obstetrics clerkship and not be transferred elsewhere.

  ‘Rather than shouting profanities across the ward for everyone to hear, why don’t you show Dr Kingsley that you’re the good doctor you think you are,’ Dr Brewer said, standing behind his desk and looking down at her from on high.

  Evie looked down at her lap. ‘It’s difficult to do that when he lets the other students assist but not me.’

  ‘You help on the wards. I saw you talking to one of the patients just then. Take what Dr Kingsley gives you and do it well. And smile a little more, like the nurses do. You’re prettier than most of them, after all.’

  Evie cringed. He wanted her around for decoration, nothing more. But if it saved her clerkship … Evie forced herself to smile. She was expert by now at doing what she needed to. ‘I’d love to be able to assist with a birth.’ She couldn’t stop herself from adding, ‘Like the male students do.’

 
‘Day-to-day patient management is up to Dr Kingsley, not the hospital director.’ Dr Brewer picked up a cut-crystal paperweight heart from his desk and began to transfer it from hand to hand, like a juggler warming up. ‘I told you from the outset that I didn’t know if this would work. But I allowed you to do the clerkship. Please don’t make the mistake of proving me wrong.’

  ‘I’ll do everything I can to make it work.’

  ‘Dr Kingsley isn’t the only person in New York who can’t comprehend the idea of a female obstetrician. I sometimes wonder if you’re the only person who can.’ Dr Brewer put the heart down on a pile of papers unruffled by their conversation and flipped the lid of the cigar case closed.

  It would be so easy to rage, to scream, to cry, but that was what everybody expected her to do. Exhibit the uncontrolled emotions of the weaker sex. ‘Fine. I’ll be the best medical student at bathing pus-ridden episiotomies, at holding the hand of the woman dying of puerperal fever, and at learning everything I can from watching rather than doing. That should satisfy everyone, for the time being.’

  ‘It should.’ Dr Brewer smiled at Evie like one of the patrons from the Follies, reminding her he’d done her a favour and she’d be expected to pay for it sooner or later. Evie made a note never to walk down the stairway late at night with only Dr Brewer for company.

  ‘I won’t tolerate any more complaints about you from Dr Kingsley,’ he added, dismissing her.

  Evie stood up. The paperweight caught the light, winking at her. She imagined taking it in her hand and pitching it at the certificates lining the walls, shards of glass from the frames tinkling to the floor, the thick crystal heart falling like a stone, unbroken, before rolling away to hide in a dusty corner. She touched her hand to her chest and felt her own heart tuck itself away in sympathy, concealing the little that was left of her feelings.

  After she left Dr Brewer’s office, Evie stopped at the bathroom. By the time she got there her breath was a series of gasps, like a woman in the final stages of birth, panic and hysteria a few breaths away. The events of the morning – the argument with Dr Kingsley, the butchered genitals she’d seen, and Dr Brewer’s warning – were catching up with her. She washed her hands three times, then took a cigarette out of her pocket, stuffed it into her mouth and inhaled deeply. As the smoke rushed into her lungs she felt her breathing level out. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.

  In Evie’s first year at college, Dr Kingsley had stood before the group of eager students and said, ‘You’re privileged to be assisting in a fundamental change in society: you’ll preside over the first generation of women to be brought to bed in a hospital and serviced by a specialist obstetrician.’ It should have been exciting, and it was, until Evie came to realise exactly what being brought to bed in a hospital meant.

  All of the births, even the successful ones, had one thing in common: not excitement but fear. The doctors loved to make their patients fearful; they stoked the fear, because it accentuated their mighty power to extract life. And they extracted life in the way prescribed by Dr Joseph DeLee, author of the rules of obstetric practice that Evie was made to memorise like a child in Sunday school. Dr DeLee had decreed that birth was a pathological process that damaged women. Thus doctors should always intervene, with sedation, forceps and episiotomies, which apparently saved women from the evils of labour. But it seemed to Evie that those tools left women desecrated.

  ‘If labour is so evil,’ Evie had asked in her first lecture, ‘then why have women been made to give birth in that way?’

  Dr Kingsley’s answer was, ‘God made men into doctors. He foresaw what assistance would be required.’

  One didn’t have to be a literature graduate to hear the subtext in that.

  Dr Kingsley had then quoted Dr DeLee’s opinions, which he obviously shared, on the deleterious effects of labour. ‘“So frequent are these bad effects, that I have often wondered whether Nature did not deliberately intend women to be used up in the process of reproduction, in a manner analogous to that of the salmon, which dies after spawning.”’

  At that moment, Evie realised what she was up against in her quest to become an obstetrician. It wasn’t just a question of her breaking into an occupation that few other women had dared to enter, it was a matter of changing the way everyone working in that occupation thought: that a birthing woman was like a salmon who should go ahead and die once the business was over. As Rose had. It strengthened Evie’s determination to rein herself in, to never say what she thought. All she had to do was get through college. Then she could help women bring their babies into the world with joy rather than fear.

  It had been the same when Evie began her first obstetrics clerkship in the operating room at the Sloane Hospital for Women, which had rows of seats at one end so the students could sit back and watch the show. A pretty nurse who couldn’t resist one of the flirting medical students let on that the woman on the table was not only poor, but also fifteen, pregnant and unmarried. Oh, what a joke that had been to the men gathered in the room. How funny that this stupid girl had allowed a man to have his way with her. Evie clamped her lips shut and watched the girl’s drugged and convulsing body, ignoring the jests about how the girl should have closed the bank before the cheque was cashed. She realised again how lucky she’d been. When Charles had held her arms and refused to let her go, when he’d forced his tongue inside her mouth and left the precise imprint of his hand in a bruise on her thigh, she’d been in a sitting room with people nearby and he’d had to stop before … whatever it was he’d intended. This girl was from the wrong end of town, but that didn’t mean she was stupid. Maybe a man had pinned her down and refused to let her go too. But nobody had stopped him.

  Chance and circumstance were the only things that separated Evie and the girl on the bed. Which was why Evie had to say nothing. Because if she shouted at them all to shut the hell up, she’d be asked to leave the room and she’d never become a doctor who could help and defend these girls whose position she might have been in, but for the grace of God.

  So she concentrated on watching Dr Kingsley, storing every detail of each procedure in her mind. It was how she learned everything. Memorise each step. Write down the steps later, with diagrams. Revise the drawings, revise her notes, imagine herself carrying out the procedure. In her mind she was always perfect. She had no idea whether she would be in reality.

  That was why Evie was at the college or the hospital from seven in the morning until six at night, why she danced at Ziegfeld’s from eight in the evening until almost midnight. It was why she never went out, why she did nothing but watch and learn and study and make just enough money to keep watching and learning and studying. It was for all those women whose faces filled Evie’s dreams, women who’d had the misfortune to bolster the statistics: becoming a mother was the second highest killer of women, after tuberculosis. In her dreams, Evie was finally allowed to give each mother more than her heart; she gave them the skill of her hands.

  Evie flicked the butt of her Lucky Strike into the toilet bowl and pulled a much-refolded piece of paper out of her pocket. She reread the words, even though she knew them by heart.

  Evie, I’m returning to New York soon. I don’t know exactly when, but I hope to be able to let you know in my next letter. I’m looking forward to seeing you – I haven’t met another woman since I’ve been in London who has the courage you have, nor the same agility at climbing apple trees.

  Love,

  Thomas

  Evie smiled when she reached the last line, and then smiled a little more at the penultimate word: Love. She put the letter back in her pocket, resolving to write back to Thomas that very night. She’d been putting it off, because, now that he was returning, there was the matter of her evening employment as a showgirl to confess to. And the unorthodox way she spent her days, which he knew about of course; but knowing about it and seeing the effect it had upon people, especially the kind of people who were clients of the Whitman bank, was another thing altoget
her.

  Evie had told his mother about her other life as a Ziegfeld Girl. Mrs Whitman had asked her what she was doing for money, and she never lied to Mrs Whitman. In response, Mrs Whitman had said, ‘I trust you to do whatever you need to do.’ Evie had tried to believe that that was absolution, but of course it wasn’t. There was no excuse for never once mentioning it in her letters to Thomas.

  Checking herself in the mirror, she patted down the blonde curl on the right-hand side of her head that always tried to cancan its way from her ear to her eye. Cutting her hair had been her way of celebrating her first paycheque from the Follies. Losing the heavy lengths had caused waves to form, curls even in some places, so she always looked a little bit jaunty, as if she was too busy to bother with the tedious ritual of combing. She put her hand in her pocket, pulled out a bobby pin and fastened back the sweep of hair falling across her brow.

  She touched her fingers to the skin below her eyes and stretched it a little, smoothing away the finest of lines, a consequence of the hours she worked. If she held her hands there and puffed out her hollowed cheeks, she almost looked like the old Evelyn Lockhart, the one who’d marched down Fifth Avenue with a suitcase in hand and a feeling that she’d look Manhattan in the eye and it would be the one to blink first.

  ‘Catch!’ Evie rolled the ball across the grass of Central Park to the little girl opposite. Mary squatted, scooped the ball into her hands and threw it as high as she could, but forgot to catch it, so it came down with a gentle bounce on top of her golden hair. A normal child would have laughed spontaneously, but this child looked first across at Evie, who nodded. Then Mary began to laugh, unfettered, the sound rushing out like trapped air from a popped balloon.

  Evie laughed too, casting Dr Kingsley out of her mind and into the yet-to-be-endured tomorrow. ‘Shall we do it again?’