Page 1 of Blueprints, Battlelines and Ballrooms
Chapter One
17January1877
Some said the cold helped.
Some said only heat.
Some claimed cod liver oil miraculous.
Some said to avoid temperamental foods.Others said only eat food with spice, food without spice, food that stayed heavy in the stomach, or food with no weight at all.
Don’t move too much.
Don’t stop moving.
But on days like today—when her shoulder ached, her back stayed stuck, and with red raging pain coursing through her—Florence was sure the only thing that would release her from her pain was death.
‘How long has she been bedridden?’
Florence pushed her awareness through the languid, laudanum-induced fog.That was a new voice.A voice she had never heard before.Which meant little here in London where every voice, except for her parents’ familiar tones, was new.A male voice.Stern, with hard edges.
The side of the bed dipped.The back of a hand brushed her forehead.Cool.Efficient.
A doctor.
Another wretched doctor.
‘Mrs Murray?Where is the pain at its worst?’
Florence hesitated, then forced her eyes open.A small part of her flinched with the fear that any inconsequential movement might cause more pain.The room, still grey with early morning, glistened, then settled.Everything was warm, too warm for this country, where the cold had become her fast companion since that first day they had stepped off the boat and into a snow-speckled city.Heavy coal smoke infused the air in her next breath.The stove pulsed molten orange in the corner.A stove lit in a bedroom was not a good sign.Only the very rich or the deathly ill warranted the expense of a fire lit in their bedrooms.And they were certainly not the former.
‘Mrs Murray?Can I turn you?’
Florence shook her head.‘I’ve seen too many doctors.They never help.’
He chuckled.‘Trust must be earned with you.That is not a bad thing.Doctoring is a noble profession, but not every practitioner is of noble intention.Speak with me, then.Tell me about the pain.’
Florence let her lids droop without closing them so she could study him through an imperious line.Once, she would have lain here demurely and tried to be a pleasant patient, but that Florence had lived a long time and too many remedies ago.What type of man had her parents brought in now?Somewhere between her and her parents in age, a little grey in his hair, a clean black suit… He rested weathered hands on his knees and folded his fingers into his palm.A wedding band glinted in the light.Was an English doctor better than an Australian one?He smelt better.That was a place to begin.
‘You wash your coat,’ she said.
He huffed, but did not smile.‘I was a young assistant in Crimea.I do not hold to old traditions, and I certainly do not believe the blood and pus of past patients stuck to my coat is a help to future ones.’
A watch chain stretched across his waistcoat.She waited for him to consult the timepiece hidden in his pocket, but he didn’t.He just waited.
Telling him a story wouldn’t do any harm.
Maybe.
‘I was thrown from a horse and landed badly.Some years ago.When I was not a girl but not grown either.’Florence rolled onto her side, away from him and the room, so that she faced the wall.A rustle of skirts, and her mother’s small, familiar hands loosened her chemise and exposed her back.‘I’ve never been right since.The pain is almost constant.’
‘You could have broken your neck.Would that have been better?’the doctor asked.
‘Some days, I think so.’She spat her words at the wall.‘Because then I would not have had to suffer at the hands of your profession.’
Perhaps she spoke with more venom than he deserved.After all, he lived here, three months of rolling sea and skies away from the place where a countryside bone setter had wrestled her body into some semblance of a normal shape.If they had stayed put, maybe she would have healed.But her father had loaded her into a sulky to return to the city.There, she had been sliced and poked by doctors who had made their diagnosis over why she wouldn’t heal, then put her back together with wire and splints.
‘She broke her shoulder, her knee, and her leg when she fell.’Her father.‘We were some miles from the city, and a local man did his best.By the time we returned to town, she had started to heal wrong, and an infection had set in.The city doctors tried to fix her—’
