The Heart Specialist

by Claire Holden Rothman

  The dean’s secretary congratulated me through the bathroom door as I dried myself. “You made it onto the first page of The Gazette today. Whoever would have thought.”

  I smiled at my reflection. I may be a little soggy but I was also the quarter-million-dollar girl. Nothing could take that away. We climbed the stairs again and I sat on the same bench outside the dean’s office on which I had sat the day before with Felicity. On the wall opposite was a life-size portrait that I had studied rather carefully over the past few weeks. “Andrew F. Holmes, 1824,” the caption read, “founder of McGill’s Faculty of Medicine.” Dr. Holmes certainly held himself erect. I straightened my own back and coughed. He would probably roll in his grave to learn why I was sitting there that day. Yesterday I had laughed with Felicity about his fierce-looking eyebrows. Today, sitting all alone, I didn’t dare smile.

  I tried to look Andrew F. Holmes in the eye. I would not be intimidated, not now, with cheques for such an enormous sum tucked away in my handbag. Damn the dean and his deadline, which had very nearly broken us. Damn that man on the tram for his curious words and insolence. All kinds of people now felt entitled to counsel me on my life, but that did not mean I had to listen. I was in the medical faculty, a place I had dreamed of all through my childhood and young adulthood. Honoré Bourret had once walked through these halls, passing under this very portrait.

  A bell sounded and the secretary, whose desk was in an alcove just outside the dean’s office, went to see what was wanted. I removed my glasses and gave them a vigorous rub, more to calm myself than because they were dirty. Seconds later the secretary reappeared. “They are ready,” she said.

  I wondered about the “they,” but did not ask because the secretary had rushed off, urging me to follow. The alcove was a cluttered space, piled high with boxes and books, and my sleeve, still wet from the storm, brushed against a vase on the desk’s edge. It wobbled precariously for a second then crashed to the floor, spilling tulips and a quantity of water.

  Someone leaned out the dean’s door but I couldn’t see because I didn’t have my glasses on. By this time I was on my hands and knees and the first thing I registered after I put my glasses back on were a pair of spats.

  “Miss White?”

  The tram man was bending over me, looking amused. Behind him three other men peered. For an instant I was somehow able to gaze down at the scene as if I were one of them and not a girl squatting on the floor in a mess of flowers. I knew I looked ludicrous with my fists full of dripping stems.

  “Oh, don’t bother with that,” said the man in spats. “You have come to supplicate, but there’s no need to do it on your knees.” The others laughed politely, and as he bent to help me up I could see his own eyes were laughing too. I definitely remembered him now, even though he had less hair, and some of it was beginning to grey. Without his hat he looked older, but I could see his facial lines more clearly now. He had come often to see us at the house. He had been one of my father’s proteges.

  Dean Laidlaw finally came to my rescue, ushering me inside then introducing me with a certain grace, considering I had just shamed myself. These were the members of the faculty admissions committee. The air in the inner office was thick with smoke, but I had no trouble recognizing spidery Dr. Hingston, whom I had met on several occasions, first at Misses Symmers and Smith’s School and later at Felicity’s home. He nodded curtly but did not smile. A short man who looked more like a boxer than a doctor said his name was Dr. Mastro. He taught physiology and was by far the youngest man there. The last hand I shook belonged to the man from the tram.

  “William Howlett,” he said smiling.

  My jaw must have dropped because he started laughing and gave me a squeeze. This was the man I had heard about at the tailor shop, the one who now owned my father’s former home.

  “We were not sure,” Dr. Howlett said, “that you would show up in such inclement weather.”

  I glared at him. Nothing, I assured him in as calm a voice as I could manage, could have kept me from McGill today. I was on the point of mentioning the tram but thought better of it. The dean was watching me carefully. With his mutton-chop sideburns and beady eyes, he looked a little like a fox, which I found disconcerting. At his invitation I took the only available chair, which happened to be in the middle of the room facing the four men.

  My gaze kept intersecting with Howlett’s, partly because he was staring at me. It was making me even more nervous than I was already. What if he recognized me and made the connection with my father? In my dealings with him today he had shown himself to be someone who did not rein in his impulses. He might blurt out my identity right here, right in front of these medical men.

  “I will start,” said the dean, “by commending you.”

  I straightened in my chair. There was no time to think anything more about Howlett or even about the tulips and my bumbling entrance. I pushed it all aside, smiling, trying to concentrate on the honour the dean was about to bestow on me. On the desk were the morning newspapers, which he held up, inquiring if I had seen them. He said that I had accomplished a remarkable feat for which everyone on the admissions committee and in the entire faculty held me in esteem.

  While the dean was saying all of this, Howlett studied me. It was unnerving. The other men were worse. Dr. Mastro had relit his cigar and was smoking. At one point he blew a ring in the air that hung suspended above him for several seconds before wobbling across the room in my direction. Dr. Hingston gazed out the window.

  The dean kept talking, praising the grades I had earned throughout my undergraduate years and the initiative I had shown being the first woman to edit The Fortnightly. I was a credit to the university. He was not looking at me either. The words were laudatory but his eyes would not meet mine. They roved around as if searching for something more interesting. “And now you have set your sights on medicine,” he said. His orange whiskers had faded to white in some places and I half expected him to lick them.

  “The way you have rallied people in this city is remarkable,” he went on. “Collecting such a sum of money with such constrained delays is without precedent.”

  “I have the cheque,” I said, opening my handbag.

  But the dean held up his hand, stopping me. “I know about that,” he said. “Lord Strathcona telegraphed, warning me you would be bringing it. The gesture is appreciated, Miss White, believe me. The university could use the money. But money is not the only issue here.”

  I had found the envelope in my purse and was now clutching it to me like a shield.

  “Experiments in mixed education have been,” the dean continued, “mixed, to say the least. In Toronto, as you probably know, they have led to violence.”

  Dr. Hingston turned back from the window for the first time. “It is completely unthinkable.”

  The dean touched his arm. “Now Gerard,” he said. “I’d like to finish here, if I may.” He winked conspiratorially, as if he were about to deliver the punchline of a joke, but what came next from his mouth was not the least bit funny. “I cannot, in all conscience, subject McGill to upheaval because of the desires of a single young lady, no matter how clever or talented she happens to be.”

  I looked down and saw for the first time that my gloves were dirty. A dark smudge stretched from the tip of my left index finger down to the middle of my palm. The smudge grew suddenly, blurring and widening, and it struck me that I was crying. The whole room was now blurry, as if someone had lifted off the roof and let the rain in. Don’t do this, I told myself sternly. I tried to breathe, which was difficult because my chest was tight and full. I could not let the men see.

  “It’s not just me,” I said. “I am not just one young lady.” To this day I don’t know where I found the breath to speak.

  My words were like a glove thrown in Dr. Hingston’s face. “We are aware of that,” he said, his voice and hands trembling with rage. “Your example has been infectious, Miss White. We know that all too well. But don’t inclu
de Felicity among your lot. Don’t you even dream of it.”

  The dean had to intervene again, and he had a good deal more trouble this time with his colleague. To my surprise William Howlett jumped in to defend me. “Miss White has done nothing wrong, Gerard. Friendship is a virtue. You have read your Aristotle.”

  “Friendship is one thing,” said Dr. Hingston. “What this young woman has done to my daughter is quite another. She has bewitched her! And as for Aristotle, he never intended the Ethics to apply to girls. Where will this lead, Miss White? Have you thought it through? It’s not just a few years of study, you know. You will have to practise afterward. Have you even considered the life you will have to lead?”

  “That’s the main objection,” said the man called Howlett. He turned to me, his face quite serious. “What do you know of a doctor’s life, Miss White? I dare say you cannot even picture it.”

  “Even men don’t undertake it on a whim,” said the dean, as if whim were my motive. “We have to deal with matters to which women ought not to be exposed. I am afraid,” he said, lowering his voice as if this might soften the blow, “that even with the quarter million we cannot admit you. Our committee convened earlier this morning and the decision is unanimous.” He handed me an envelope with my name typed neatly on the front. “To everything there is a season, Miss White. And I’m afraid your season has not yet arrived.”

  I stood up, not trusting myself to speak. It was all I could do to get my body out of the chair and out of Laidlaw’s office, away from the intrusive eyes of these men whom I now understood had never intended to admit me, no matter what feats I performed. Dr. Howlett jumped up as soon as I rose and offered me his arm, but I did not take it. I could not stand any reminder of my gender. In the alcove the secretary looked up, but I walked right past her without speaking. One word and the floodgates would open.

  The hallway outside the office was bright and empty except for Andrew F. Holmes, hanging smugly on his wall. I stopped for a second to collect myself, clutching my handbag with the cheques that I had once been innocent enough to believe would open the doors to this faculty.

  William Howlett caught up to me. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  I could not look at him. He had voted against me. Nothing he said now could change that fact.

  He began discussing the issue in the soothing, rational voice he probably used with his patients, and my tears finally came, spilling out all the grief and anger I had been trying so hard to keep inside. My handkerchief was soon useless.

  “I do know the life,” I said, when I could finally speak. “I do know it.” I sounded like a child, but I was past caring. “My father was a doctor,” I told him. “You used to know him. You probably even knew me.”

  William Howlett’s eyes narrowed.

  “White isn’t my name,” I said all in a rush. “Not the real one, the one that I was born with. I’m Agnès Bourret. My father was Honoré.”

  William Howlett went quiet for a moment. Then he began to laugh. “You’re right,” he said. “I do know you. Indeed. How remarkable. You were the little girl.” He cleared his throat, raising a fist to his lips. “You look like him,” he said, scrutinizing me. “I see it now. Of course.”

  We talked a little longer. He told me my father had been a good man, upright and sound. He spoke of the murder. Not in so many words, but telling me indirectly that my father was innocent. I could have fallen to my knees all over again.

  He accompanied me to the main doors, and this time I did accept his arm. Outside the rain had stopped, but a wind was blowing, drying the leaves and tossing them into the air above the courtyard. We stood together in silence while I wrapped myself in my shawl.

  “It is best you keep your ties to Dr. Bourret to yourself,” he said as we were about to part. “Certainly within these walls.”

  I nodded. “My father’s history is a complex one,” I said, “even though I believe, as you do, that he’s innocent.”

  “Keep it under your hat,” he said to me, winking, “or your bonnet, or whatever.”

  “You will too?”

  He smiled, nodding, and drew an imaginary cross over his heart. Cross my heart and hope to die if ever I should tell a lie. Laure and I used to swear this when we were small. It was childish but it comforted me. I smiled too, as if we had sealed a promise.

  He swung the heavy front door open and it was only then that I realized how windy it was. The minute I stepped outside my shawl billowed like a sail. Dr. Howlett shouted something after me, perhaps another warning or perhaps simply a goodbye; the wind that day was too strong for me to tell. His parting words, like almost everything else about the man, would remain a mystery to me for years to come.

  8

  JUNE 1890

  I do not remember much about how I made it home the day of the meeting with Laidlaw except that it was by foot. Grandmother said that every item of clothing I was wearing was soaked through. My boots and petticoat were mud splattered. I had lost my umbrella and somehow my shawl, but had managed to hold onto the purse containing the money and the dean’s letter of refusal.

  Fortunately, Grandmother was home when I arrived at the flat. She and Laure had just returned from Mrs. Stewart’s house, a visit that had been more successful than either of them had dared dream. Laure was now officially engaged. Huntley Stewart had descended on one knee in the middle of his mother’s parlour. The couple would wait until Laure turned eighteen to marry, but in the meantime she would wear a diamond on her left ring finger. It was actually several diamonds — one as big as a peanut in the centre and several smaller ones embedded in white gold surrounding it. It was an heirloom, Mrs. Stewart explained when Huntley produced it.

  Back at the flat, celebration over the ring ended abruptly when I stumbled through the door. Grandmother stripped me and marched me straight to bed. And bed was where I remained until I boarded the train to St. Andrews East a week later. Life had shrunk to the size of my mattress and the one I was lying on in the Priory’s guest room was narrower than the one on which I had been sleeping in Montreal.

  “Breathe,” said the doctor, exhaling as if I no longer understood English. I was sitting up and he had slipped the stethoscope underneath my nightshirt, placing the cold disc below my left clavicle. His breath smelled of mints, but there was a sadder scent of fermentation underlying this. Dr. Osborne was a drinker. This early in the morning his hands tended to shake.

  “It’s been how long now?” he asked. “A month?”

  “Six weeks,” said Grandmother, standing just inside the bedroom doorway, watching us.

  “You should have called earlier.”

  Grandmother said nothing. She had been plying me with remedies of her own for quite some time — valerian root to help me sleep, spoonfuls of cognac to spark my appetite — but nothing had worked. My eyes were ringed with blue and my weight had dropped over a stone. My hair, unwashed for days, smelled like an animal’s pelt.

  “Cases like this can descend precipitously. But Agnes is a clever girl,” he said, withdrawing the stethoscope’s head with a vague, hostile smile. “We know that from the newspapers. She’s going to listen to reason and stop exhausting her poor grandmother with all this fuss and nonsense.”

  Archie Osborne sat down heavily on the mattress. He had known us for years and known my grandfather too in his time, which gave him a certain right to familiarity. Seventeen years ago he had assisted at Laure’s birth. He had also tended to our mother in her last hours of life. He was respected by the townspeople, even though they were aware of his weaknesses. He was old-fashioned; he used mustard plasters for chest colds, leeches for disorders of the blood and brandy for just about everything else.

  “These’ll cure what ails you,” he said, pulling a bottle of pills from his pocket and uncorking it. He shook two into his palm and held them out with the glass of water from my bedside. “Come now, Agnes. Drink up.”

  I slumped onto the mattress, the mixture of mint and moral ri
ghteousness making me feel truly sick.

  The doctor addressed me again, this time speaking to my shoulder blades. When I did not move he got angry. “Listen to me, Agnes. Your grandmother is no longer young. You’ve got to pull yourself together.”

  I pulled the sheet high instead and burrowed beneath it, my unwashed smell a relief after Archie Osborne’s odour. I did not want to admit it, but he was right about Grandmother. She was over eighty. The last thing she needed was a granddaughter collapsing. I lay heavily, feeling the mattress moulding to my hip and trembling each time I inhaled. I had been strong for too damn long. That was the problem. I had borne so many blows, losing my step sometimes from the impact but always picking myself up afterward and continuing as if nothing had happened. Strength was a lie. I saw it now so clearly. I was so broken I couldn’t imagine lifting myself ever again out of this pit of goose down.

  An hour later, after Dr. Osborne had gone and Grandmother had retreated to finish her chores with Laure, I lay in my bed contemplating the small brown bottle on my table. Liver pills, a brand purchased from any itinerant salesman. They were probably just sugar and water with a salutary pinch of caffeine or other stimulant to perk up the sick and the weary. Next to useless.

  It was a muggy June day. A Tuesday, I realized, because Grandmother and Laure were in the yard, twisting sheets and pinning them on the line to dry. Tuesday was our day for washing. I watched through my window as the two women tugged the sheets taut and wound them, spilling water until hardly any drips scattered. No words were spoken. They were engrossed, unaware of anything outside the task at hand.