Crescent City Courtship (17 page)

Losing her place was the least of Abigail’s worries now. She was more afraid of getting sidetracked by the desperate needs here in her old neighborhood. Certainly, she knew, there was immediate good she could do—even with the limited training she’d received so far. But she could best serve her friends by finishing.

Press on,
she reminded herself as she knocked on the warped, peeling outer door of the tenement where she’d spent six months with Tess.
Don’t look back.

She was just about to give up and go home when the door opened under her hand. Tess stood there for a moment, her face a blank of surprise, before she flung her arms around Abigail with a glad shriek. “You came back! Oh, I missed you!”

Abigail returned the hug, strongly, laughing. “I missed you, too. But I’ve been so busy—”

“Come in, come in.” Tess let go of her and backed up to admit Abigail into the little square entryway. The floor looked like it had recently been mopped, which was a good sign. Tess was a fanatical housekeeper when she wasn’t plagued by depression. “I was just having a Sunday afternoon splurge, making tea.” Tess bumped open the apartment door with her shoulder. “Have you had lunch?”

“Yes, do you remember the black girl we met in the Lanieres’ kitchen? The housekeeper, Winona? I came down to attend her church and had a meal with her family.” Abigail stopped just inside the door, taken off guard by an odd queasiness. It was almost as if the person she’d been when she lived here wanted to reinhabit her body. Which was nonsense.

“I remember. Sit down, sit down.” Tess moved to the cookstove in a flurry of motion, waving at two wobbly chairs, new since Abigail had left. Other than that, Tess hadn’t moved anything. Her old roommate might profess to be a rebel, but in practice, she didn’t like change. “Della Tackwood has moved in. She’s a singer at the Mermaid—she’s gone to rehearsal and won’t be back until late. You’d like her.”

Tess continued to chatter as Abigail gingerly took a seat at the three-legged table and laced her fingers together in her lap. Apparently the loss of her baby hadn’t affected Tess in the way Abigail had imagined it would. Abigail studied her friend as she poured tea into a couple of cracked mugs and stirred in a few grains of sugar. On second thought, maybe there was a brittle edge to her bright conversation.

When Tess set the mugs on the table and bounced into the other chair, Abigail laid her hand on Tess’s wrist to still
her frenetic motion. “Tess, this is me,” she said quietly. “You don’t have to pretend.”

Tess’s fingers tightened around the handle of her mug. Her eyes flashed to Abigail’s face, stricken. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“It’s been five weeks. Not a very long time for such a great loss.”

“Oh. The baby, you mean.” Tess sat back, looking away. “I didn’t want a baby, remember? No husband. No way to feed an extra mouth. It’s much better this way.”

Abigail saw the start of tears. “I’m sorry, if you don’t want to talk about it.”

“No, I—it feels good to get it out.” Tess pulled in a breath and held it a moment, clearly trying to gain control. “All right, I would’ve loved to have a baby, but I wasn’t ready for the responsibility. And I learned my mother was right about men.” She laughed. “You can’t trust them to stick around, so it’s best to avoid them.”

Abigail thought of Dr. Laniere and John Braddock and other men she’d encountered in the last five weeks. Winona’s father and brothers. There
were
good men, if one looked for them in the right place.

Then something in Tess’s acerbic comment struck her. “Tess, where is your mother? Is she still alive?”

Tess’s mouth tightened. “I don’t know. I suspect she is. But she’s got my sister and doesn’t need me.”

Abigail stared at her. “Why on earth would you say that?”

Tess shrugged. “I’ve been right here, half a day’s train ride away and they’ve never come looking for me.”

“Half a day in which direction? In Mobile?”

Tess’s eyes widened—apparently Abigail’s guess had been correct or close to the mark. “I’m not going back there.
They didn’t want me. Let’s talk about something else. Tell me what you’ve been doing. You look so beautiful…so healthy and well-fed.” With patent envy she examined Abigail’s plain but neat dress of navy blue worsted. “The rich doctor’s family must be treating you well.”

Abigail smiled. “Tess, you won’t believe it, but they’ve let me stay, and—and there’s a possibility I may be allowed to study medicine. Maybe even earn a license to practice.” She paused, then blurted, “God has been truly good to me.”

Tess looked skeptical. “I hope you’re not banking on that overmuch. You’re the one who always said people will take advantage of you if you let them. There’s got to be some catch.”

“No, I was wrong.” Abigail leaned forward, intent on making Tess listen. She’d always been so bullheaded, it was miraculous the two of them had stayed friends. “I’ve seen people who live their faith in Jesus—not like my father and that awful man he wanted me to marry.”

Tess’s gaze sharpened. “So that’s it! I always wondered what you were running away from. Was it some missionary?”

Abigail almost laughed the question away. Once she’d gotten out of China, she’d refused to speak of Stephen Lawton. But if she expected Tess to trust her, perhaps she should return the favor.

She nodded reluctantly. “Mr. Lawton was my father’s friend, a younger missionary from England.” She spoke slowly, awkwardly. How strange to tell the story aloud after carrying it inside her head for so long. Once begun, the words poured out quickly. “After his wife died on the field, he and my father decided it would be convenient for me to marry him. Papa was terrified I’d meet and fall in
love with a Chinese national and there were no other single white men within hundreds of miles.”

Tess stared at her, lips parted. “I have to confess, my life as a spoiled rich girl doesn’t seem so bad. How did you get away?”

This was the part that was so difficult to tell. Abigail swallowed. “There was another man who—who traded with the Chinese. Not a good man. He bought silk and tea in the bigger cities like Shanghai, but the villages like the one my family lived in were encouraged to become opium farms. My parents didn’t see the harm because it seemed like a way for them to keep from starvation. But then my—my mother tried it and she…”

“Oh, Abby.”

Wretchedly, Abigail met Tess’s eyes. “She became addicted. Eventually she just…drifted off one day and never woke up. After she died, my father pressured me harder—” Tears overtook her, flooding down her cheeks and dripping from her chin to her bodice. “Papa wanted to be able to go out farther into remote areas and didn’t want me to come, so he—he insisted Mr. Lawton would take care of me.”

Tess jumped to her feet and flung her arms around Abigail’s shaking shoulders. “The miserable villain! I told you men are no good! Especially religious men.”

Abigail pressed her wet face into Tess’s shoulder. “Tess, that’s not always true—”

“Well, I haven’t seen one. Anyway, what happened next? Obviously you’re here and not in China.”

Drawing back, Abigail wiped her face on her sleeve. “The opium trader came to the compound one day when my father had gone into the village. I’d thought and thought
about what to do. You have to understand that by that point my faith in God had almost died. I had certain morals ingrained in me—I was not going to sell my body, not to Stephen Lawton, not even to buy passage on a ship back to America—but I had no compunction about lying. I told the trader I was an heiress. That my grandfather—my mother’s father—would welcome me back to the States, if I could only find a way to get there, and that he’d reward the man who brought me.”

“Abigail!” Tess’s mouth fell open as she sat down again abruptly. “That’s ingenious. But how did you convince him to believe you?”

“I’m such a liar,” Abigail said, inwardly writhing in shame. “I don’t know how God will forgive me. But I showed him my mother’s journal. I had copied her handwriting and added enough details to make it sound like she was indeed a runaway heiress. I can be…very convincing when I try.”

Tess laughed. “I’m sure you can. You talked that stuck-up doctor into making a house call on a girl he thought of as a prostitute.” She shook her head. “So you sneaked away from the missionary compound and then what happened?”

“My protector took me to Shanghai and left me in a bordello for nearly a week while he transacted business. He was an agent for the same New Orleans company that had been transporting opium from China to the United States. He threatened to kill anyone who touched me, but Tess, you cannot comprehend the evil of the men who run those places. Even the places here in the District aren’t…” She shuddered, remembering the dead eyes of the women who lived in that house in Shanghai—drugged, abused, hopeless. “Some of the younger ones, as young as ten or eleven, were brought to the States with the opium on the
ship. I don’t know where they went once we got here—I was too intent on saving my own skin.” She paused, twisting her fingers. “I can’t let the Toad find me. He’ll find out I lied to him about the inheritance…and he knows I saw all the terrible dealings the company was into—the drugs, the prostitute trafficking. He’ll kill me.”

Tess gasped. “How did you get away?”

“When the ship docked, one of the sailors, a Creole, felt sorry for me and promised to help me. He hid me in a tea chest and delivered it to an out-of-the-way warehouse, but he just…left. I suppose he was afraid of the Toad. I got away from the docks and—”

“—and met me in front of the sail loft,” Tess finished. “You’ve had enough adventures to last a lifetime, my friend.” She shook her head. “What are the chances of this toad-man looking for you in the hospital?”

Abigail wet her lips. “Slim, I would have thought. Except for one thing. I’m almost sure it’s John Braddock’s father who owns the shipping line that brought me from China. He’s the one who makes the Toad jump.”

“Abigail! You’re sitting right in the adder’s nest!”

“I know. But I have the chance to earn a medical license! I can learn to treat the diseases and handle the injuries that affect so many helpless women and children. I’ve even thought about going back to China one day—”

“Are you crazy? After what it took to get out of there?”

“I know it sounds insane. But my life is so different now.
I’m
different. I have a gift for healing. There are so many people without hope…” She and Tess stared at one another, at an impasse, for several moments. Finally she sighed, gripped Tess’s hands. She felt almost lightheaded. “I’ve told you all my sordid stories. You’ll have to tell me yours.”

“My little story is a nursery rhyme compared to that,” Tess said drily.

Abigail smiled. “Well, one reason I came back today was to retrieve my mother’s journal. I left it in my hiding place in the bed.”

Tess spread her hands. “Help yourself. I’m sure Della hasn’t disturbed it.”

While Tess cleared away the tea things, Abigail got up and knelt on the floor at the foot of her old pallet. From the beginning she and Tess had kept their meager store of valuables tucked away here. Her and Tess’s ideas of what was valuable couldn’t have been more different.

Reaching into the straw ticking, Abigail pushed aside Tess’s little walnut box full of jewelry. Her fingers closed on the journal. Extracting it carefully, she sat back cross-legged and stroked the book’s creased leather cover. Her thumb fanned the worn gilded edges, opening the book to a page near the front. She stared at her mother’s lacy, feminine script.

It was Mama who had awakened Abigail’s interest in Chinese herbs and acupuncture by recording what she learned from the village women early in their lonely isolation. Abigail had memorized the list long ago, the words as beautiful and strange as the plants they represented. Flipping another page, she studied the diagrams her mother had sketched, ink drawings of the supine human form, arrows and lines indicating acupuncture points. Tears blurred her eyes. Mama had willingly joined her husband in spreading the gospel. In the end her obsession with science had cost her her life and forced Abigail to run.

Now perhaps both those things—faith and medicine—would save Abigail’s life.

T
wo major topics dominated conversation among faculty and students during Monday morning rounds. The medical professors were all in a tizzy over the proposed takeover of several classrooms in the east wing by the newly reestablished academic department of the University of Louisiana. The medical department claimed that, as they had invested significant personal funds in the medical school, they had a right to exclusive use of the buildings. There was to be a faculty meeting that afternoon to decide what course of action would best protect the interests of the medical school.

Normally such administrative controversies would not have been bandied about in front of the students. But the professors were distracted into indiscretion by a second issue of major debate, namely the admission of Miss Abigail Neal as a candidate for the MD degree.

After afternoon lectures, John sat in the back of the west wing auditorium, with Weichmann on one side and Girard on the other, occupying himself with his notes from Dr. Harrison’s morning lecture and demonstration on ophthalmic diseases. Admittedly, however, his concentration
was broken by the general buzz of humorous conversation which blanketed the room. The students had been summoned for a special convocation regarding Miss Neal’s application. They were, in short, to vote yea or nay.

By the time Professor Pitcock, dean of the school, banged his gavel on the lectern at the front of the room to call the meeting to order, John’s conscience was letting out a full-blown wolf howl. His fellow students were never going to vote for Abigail’s admission. A similar situation had faced Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to be admitted to Geneva Medical College in New York, but she had only prevailed because someone had convinced the students Mrs. Blackwell’s application was a joke and they all voted yea. No such prank would intervene here. John’s classmates were, to a man, adamantly opposed to a woman in their midst.

For most of his life John had been encouraged to take the morally easy way out. If you wanted something, you either turned on your charm or used whatever stratagems or influence was at your disposal. Competition, however, was something else. In John’s personal code of behavior, whatever was most difficult to obtain was the very thing he was determined to win. And the stronger his opponent, the sweeter the victory.

Therefore when Abigail Neal entered his life, with her rigid sense of justice and lockjaw determination to learn, he instantly recognized in her exactly what he needed to make him the man he ought to be. The only problem: her sex. On so many levels. She was his intellectual equal, but she was unqualified to compete as a student. She was beautiful and unbendably upright, and he wanted her as more than a classmate: he wanted her for his wife. But she was
off-limits not only because of her class—his parents would never accept a bluestocking from the District as a suitable bride for the Braddock heir—but also because she would never give up her education to become a society matron. And beyond that, she deserved a man who would stand up to his friends on her behalf.

He wanted Abigail to have the chance to study and earn a license to practice medicine. But he was not at all sure he was capable of setting sail in a one-man boat bound to crash on the rocks of humiliation.

So while Dr. Pitcock opened the meeting with prayer and presented the agenda, John found himself literally sweating with conflicting desires. Thank goodness Abigail herself was not in attendance. He wouldn’t be forced to watch her face as the male students ripped her character to shreds, laughing at her as a roaring good joke.

Weichmann nudged him. “Braddock, you all right?”

John opened his eyes, realizing he’d had them squeezed shut in prayer. “Yes, I’m—good night, it’s hot in here.” He yanked out his handkerchief and wiped his face.

“You look awful. Clem have one of her dinner parties yesterday?”

John seized the excuse. “You should have seen the gravy.” He shuddered. “You think this vote on Miss Neal’s application is on the up-and-up?”

Weichmann shook his curly head. “Dunno. Pitcock’s not much for practical jokes, though Dr. Laniere might—” He straightened, elbowing John again. “Heads up. Prof’s up to speak.”

John realized Pitcock had taken a seat in the row of professors behind the lectern, clearing the way for Professor Laniere to step forward.

With his calm smile Prof surveyed the student body scattered around the amphitheater like ants on a hill. “Gentlemen,” he began, “I trust you’ve all had a successful day in rounds and lectures. As Dr. Pitcock mentioned, the faculty has decided to broach the groundbreaking issue of allowing a female to enter the hallowed halls of medical education by bringing it to you, the student body, for a vote. We all recognize that the value of your own diplomas hinges directly and indirectly upon the standards to which the entire college is held. In previous years it has been deemed wise to restrict medical licenses in the State of Louisiana to those who are able to meet a rigid course of scientific requirements. Because those requirements are of a necessarily graphic and sometimes violent nature, the courses and practice of medicine have been assumed to be inappropriate for the gentle female constitution.”

The rattling and whispering of the students had ceased the moment Prof took the dais. When he paused to scan the first two rows of students, face by face, John could have heard a pin drop in the silence. Someone coughed and received a scalding look from every pair of eyes in the room.

“But having lived with a particularly strong-minded woman myself for some fifteen years—” Prof smiled faintly when several people snickered—“I find myself perhaps more open to the idea of women in medical practice than others. Then, when I met Miss Neal and witnessed her intellectual capabilities, coupled with a gift for mercy and an unusually strong stomach for the harsher realities of the healing arts, I began to suspect we have found the first appropriate test case for admitting a woman to our college.”

John’s stomach had been sinking as the professor talked. He looked around at his fellow students and found on their
faces a variety of expressions from outright contempt to amusement to rage. These young men might respect their favorite professor, but they were not going to allow a woman into their medical school.

He stood up. “Professor, I’d like to speak to the subject before we vote.”

Prof stared at him, eyebrows aloft. “Braddock, I don’t remember asking for comments. This is a very straightforward yes or no.”

“I know, sir.” John could feel a hundred twenty or so pairs of eyes scorching his face, but he kept his own gaze on the professor.
Dear Lord, help me, please.
“But there are some things my classmates don’t know about Miss Neal—things
you
might not have thought of, in defense of her application.” He took a deep breath. “I’ll admit that at first I was resentful that you’d invited her to attend rounds with us who’d properly undergone the application process, paid tuition, met the qualifications. Maybe this was because, as you said, I’d yet to meet a female with the analytical turn of mind necessary for absorbing and processing scientific information.”

An audible rustle of tension passed through the student body, all of whom were craning their necks to see the fool willing to admit the possibility of equality of intellect between the sexes. Several started to mumble to one another, an undertone that gradually became a muted roar.

Professor Laniere lifted his hand to call the meeting back to order, but John wasn’t about to lose this chance to finish what he’d started.

“Gentlemen!” he shouted, and the roar reluctantly faded. “I beg your indulgence for just a few more moments. This may be the most significant decision you will be privi
leged to make in your lifetime. Because I fear that if we make the wrong choice now, we may not only forfeit our right to make medical history—we may become as a body the laughingstock of future generations.”

A startled silence fell as he paused. Prof gave him a faint smile. “Go ahead, Braddock. But keep it short.”

“Yes, sir. I only want to say that if we fail to give Abigail Neal the chance she deserves—indeed that she has earned—we’ll be missing out on association with one of the finest medical talents to come along in our lifetime. Most of you have not known her as I have—” He endured a general snicker in icy silence, then continued with all the dignity he could muster. “I have watched her teach principles of good health to the underprivileged, with a clarity and simplicity only available to the truly learned. She routinely displays creative insight as to cause and effect and the ability to apply what she knows in diagnosis and treatment. Assuredly she has much to learn about the makeup and function of the human body, but I have observed an almost palpable craving to replace ignorance with wisdom. Such a tenacious and truly teachable nature, whether it be male or female, can only be an example and inspiration to the rest of us.”

He looked down at Girard, whose embarrassed posture had begun to straighten as John barreled on. Weichmann gave him a soft “Hear, hear, old man.”

Encouraged, he boldly looked around at the rest of his visibly confused and intrigued fellow students. “So I, for one, will be voting to allow—no, to
invite
—Miss Neal to become one of us. And I encourage you all to consider the fact that, because women will inevitably make their way into professional realms, we would be well-advised to choose
to make the transition as smooth and painless as possible for all. Thank you, Professor. I return the floor to you.”

John sat down amidst crashing silence, withdrew his handkerchief and mopped his face. In obedience he’d done all he could do. The results were up to God Almighty.

Abigail had stayed away from the medical college grounds all day, knowing that her fate would be decided late that afternoon. She had arrived at the fork in the road: Either she would be permitted to stay as a full-time student, officially allowed to matriculate with the men, or she would never go back.

It was an odd feeling, this abandonment to whatever might happen. For most of her life she had either run from threats or scrapped for what she felt she deserved. Not by chance, she knew, had her morning devotions included the beautiful reminder from Isaiah: “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

Wait, wait,
she reminded herself again as she helped change bed linens in the “unrespectable” women’s ward. “The least of these” was what these women were, at least according to the people who funded the hospital. Not the nurses. They served each one, providing food and bandages and a listening ear to prostitutes and bar maids, exactly as they did in the other women’s ward.

Abigail tried to follow their example, patiently ministering when she was so tired she could have fallen asleep on her feet. She had stayed awake until the wee hours, rereading her mother’s journal. Parts of it made more sense now that she had a rudimentary knowledge of chemistry and
bodily makeup. Mama had possessed an amazing knack for absorbing and analyzing the properties of plants and herbs. Abigail was longing to ask questions of short-tempered Dr. Girard to confirm or refute some of her guesswork.

But she knew she’d never be allowed to do so, should the students in that amphitheater vote to exclude her.

“Please, Father,” she whispered as she struggled to change the sheets of a heavily pregnant woman with a gash on her forehead from falling down a set of stairs. The woman was not cooperating. “Please let them say yes.”

“What’s that, dearie?” asked Nurse Wilhelmina, who was expertly slipping a bedpan beneath a woman ill with syphilis.

Abigail dodged her patient’s attempts to whack her on the arm. “Nothing, ma’am. I’m just praying as I go.”

“A lovely habit to practice.” She placidly went on with her task. But at a commotion in the hallway she looked up frowning. “Those boys don’t know how to approach a ward quietly.”

“Abigail!” John Braddock skidded into view, panting, cheeks ruddy from the cold. His overcoat hung open, his stock was askew and his hat had apparently fallen off somewhere along the way. The longish wavy hair fell into his wide, sparkling eyes. “Drop that right now and come with me!”

“For goodness sake.” She stood between the huge exposed belly of her patient and the door. “Can’t you wait just a minute or two?”

“Abigail, this is important.”

Abigail shook her head. “Wait for me in the hallway. I’ll be with you in a moment.” She turned to finish her task—and the woman’s fist hit her in the side of the head.

Sighing, John hurried over to help her. “Here now, settle down.” On the opposite side of the bed from Abigail, he
reached over the patient and grabbed the loosened sheet, neatly lifting her toward him. Trussed in the sheet, she couldn’t wave her arms. “Abigail, spread the clean sheet on that side. Then we’ll swap sides.”

To Abigail’s astonishment, the woman relaxed at the sound of John’s deep, calm voice. Perhaps having a doctor perform such a menial task had stunned her into submission. Whatever the case, the bed was clean, fresh and unwrinkled, the patient tucked in asleep, in half the time it would have take Abigail to do it alone.

She looked up at John as he whisked her out to the hallway. “Thank you—”

“You’re welcome.” He snatched her up in a hug and whirled her around and around. “You’re in! It was close, but they voted yes!”