The Heart Specialist (13 page)

I missed speaking German, I thought, slowing my pace so the whistling man was soon far ahead. And I missed the company of men. Most of all I missed the work, the sense of having something to which my mind could turn each day other than my own petty concerns and self.

At Sherbrooke Street the whistler turned west. I could barely hear him anymore. He had been whistling a simplified version of “Eine kleine Nachtmusik,” which Laure played for us Christmases in St. Andrews East. It had been a while since Laure had touched a piano. She was not doing well. During the three years of my absence her letters had been cheery enough. They had been short, but Laure had always preferred music over words. It was not until I returned that my younger sister’s state was revealed.

Right after her marriage to Huntley she had become pregnant, which had pleased everyone initially. But in her sixth month she had lost the baby. I knew what a miscarriage that late in gestation meant. It was a birth — the same pain, the same breathing and pushing, but at the end of all the labour and sweat, death instead of life. Laure told me I would have had a niece. She had seen the baby, a perfect creature, pretty as a doll, except for the grey skin.

Since then Laure had been in a steady decline. There were still good times occasionally. These were the days on which Laure must have written me, but Huntley had since confessed to entire weeks when his wife would not stir from their bed. And other weeks when she grew so agitated that he barely knew her. He began spending evenings at his club. Some nights, I learned, he slept there.

Grandmother said I shouldn’t worry. Marriage could be tricky, especially in the initial years. Grandmother was sure that Laure and Huntley would find their way. I was not so optimistic. I was anxious about my sister, who was delicate as our mother had been. I also worried about Grandmother, living alone out at the Priory. The house was badly in need of repair.

No sooner had my ship docked in Montreal than did I call on Laure. She was too sick for company that day, and again the next. It was a week before I could see her.

I vowed to restore the Priory, which had been shamefully neglected, but scraping together the necessary funds turned out to be a daunting challenge — more difficult than raising the money McGill had required. Since I had hung out my shingle exactly three patients had come to my Mansfield Street office. The first was the woman who cleaned my office building, with whom I had bartered services. The second was faithful Felicity Hingston. And the third was Laure, who needed a cure of the soul, not the body.

I cut across Sherbrooke Street, dodging a streetcar, and reached the front gates of McGill. Huntley Stewart had been right about streetcars. They were now electric, although this did not make them any less dangerous than the former horse-drawn ones. With cars now taking to the roads, as well as electric trams, the horses were more skittish. Crossing Sherbrooke Street had never been so difficult.

The campus was like a small paradise in the middle of this vehicular traffic. What twists my life had taken since I had last walked through these grounds. I was a doctor now, no thanks to anyone in this place. The faculty of medicine at McGill continued to bar its lectures to women. It was a mean, small-minded institution, and yet I loved it against all reason. When I walked through its front gates my father’s face came into my mind and I felt the pull of longing.

On the field in front of the Arts Building a group of men were tossing a football. I had not learned the rules of this game. It seemed to me the men lunged at each other with extreme violence and then suddenly, inexplicably, stopped. They took their play so seriously. One moment they seemed ready to kill, the next they were hugging men they had minutes before flattened in the mud.

My shoes made a shushing noise in the leaves. Up ahead a man was raking, but the leaves were falling so fast it seemed hardly to make a difference. I felt old. The students must be what age? Sixteen? Seventeen? Children with their hopes and dreams intact and untarnished before them.

I had achieved my dream, but what had it brought? Wealth? I glanced at my dress, worn too many days now without washing, and at the patched cloak bunched under my arm. Renown? I’d been a celebrity in my student days, but since then I might as well have died. Happiness? My eyes pricked with tears. The day I received my degree I thought my life would be completely altered. I had entered the forbidden land of my father. Nothing would ever be the same. But in truth nothing happened. I remained plain old Agnes White, no richer or more famous or happier than before.

Across the way a girl who looked vaguely like Laure put down her book and peered at me. The girl turned away abruptly and I realized I had been staring. Was I becoming eccentric, making the young uncomfortable with my hungry, yearning eyes? Grey shoots were beginning to show at my temples. Was it Jane Austen who had written that a woman was washed up at twenty-seven? Which book was it —
Emma? Persuasion
? Miss Skerry would know.

I was twenty-nine and I had two diplomas in black frames hanging on my dingy office wall to show. I started walking again. The girl now had her nose in her book. How I wished I were still in the safety of school, reading books and scribbling assignments for teachers. I was halfway across the cobblestones, absorbed in these self-pitying thoughts, when a driver shouted, his horse and buggy narrowly avoiding me. The horse’s eyes bulged with terror. Flecks of froth dotted his metal bit. He was so close I could smell his breath.

“Watch where you’re stepping,” the driver yelled as I scrambled out of his way. “Almost cost you your life.” He slapped the horse’s flank and the carriage rolled on.

I was about to slink back to Sherbrooke Street to take refuge in the faceless crowds and my hole of an office when I heard my name.

In the distance a man in a grey suit raised his hand and waved. He had no hat on and the wind was blowing his hair up. It was Dr. Samuel Clarke I realized with a start, the man who had instructed me in general medicine at Bishop’s. He stepped down onto the path and took my arm. “Dr. White!” he exclaimed. “Where on earth have you been hiding? Walk with me if you have a minute.”

I was so surprised I fell into stride. I remembered this charm, how valued I had felt in his presence. This was classic Dr. Clarke, as if he were begging for my company when really it was just the opposite. I had heard months back that he was McGill’s current dean of medicine.

“Are you working nearby?” His eyes actually seemed interested. Dr. Clarke was the only one of my medical professors who had shown interest in me in my student days. As the only woman in the class I had stood out like a sore thumb. The other professors had viewed me mostly as an insult and a threat.

I told him briefly about my residencies in Zurich and Vienna and gave him a card with my Mansfield Street address.

He made a comment about the need for women physicians, how they allowed mothers and children to feel more at ease. Others had said it before, but from Dr. Clarke it sounded sincere. I did not admit how few mothers had knocked at my door since I’d hung out my shingle.

“You should come by the Vic,” Dr. Clarke said, pointing to the stone building on the southern slope of Mount Royal. The Royal Victoria Hospital had been constructed during my absence in Europe. It reminded me of a castle, couched in golden leaves that shimmered in the autumn sun.

Dr. Clarke turned to consider me. I suddenly saw myself through his eyes: the dull dress I wore every day as if I were a nun, the patched cloak, my scuff-marked shoes. I would buy blacking this afternoon on the way back to the office. How could I have let myself go like this?

Dr. Clarke continued to observe me. At Bishop’s I had belonged to a band of students he’d watched over. We included Joseph, a coloured man from Jamaica, and several Jews. He brought me in as the only woman in the class. Dr. Clarke made a point of learning all our names and organized schedules so the Jewish students could leave early on Friday nights for their Sabbath. Once we graduated he helped secure positions for some of us. Rumour had it Clarke himself was a Jew. He was a member of the Presbyterian Church and he’d married an Anglican. His sons’ names were Christopher and Luke. Yet the rumours persisted.

“I’m afraid I have to leave you,” he said as we reached the entrance to the medical building.

I nodded. Who could blame him? Why would McGill’s dean of medicine waste his time with the likes of me?

“We must get together.”

I nodded a second time, grateful for his civility, but no longer really listening.

“What about tomorrow? Is nine too early?” His intense brown eyes were studying mine.

I was so surprised I didn’t immediately reply. Dr. Clarke was serious. He was not merely being polite.

“Nine then?” he repeated and left me nodding on the path.

NOW I WAS SITTING IN
exactly the same spot in exactly the same chair I had occupied eight years back when Dean Laidlaw had called me in. His secretary, of the jiggly upper arms and effusive welcomes, had continued in her position and was now Dean Clarke’s amanuensis. Strange to think that while I had taken a degree at Bishop’s and travelled halfway around the world this woman had continued to fulfill the same role behind the same desk. How many young men had passed through McGill’s doors since I had had last sat here? How many women? On the wall opposite Andrew F. Holmes continued to gaze down with fierce mockery.

Gowned boys walked by, chatting and laughing on their way to class. I did not recognize a soul. How awful it would be to encounter William Howlett or any of the members of the admissions committee who had refused me and the terrific sum of money raised for my cause. A bell clanged, the hallway emptied and became so quiet I could hear the ticking of a clock up in what appeared to be a reception room nearby. I was squinting at it when Dr. Clarke came out and found me. He opened his arms as if to hug me, then thought better of it and swung them behind his back. “Welcome, Dr. White.”

In his office the windows were open wide, letting in the sound of pigeons cooing in the eaves. Dean Clarke had rearranged the furniture, pulling his desk to one side and allowing visitors a glimpse of trees — poplars planted in a row on the lawn outside, reaching into the morning light.

“I’ve ordered tea,” he said.

How different this was from the time before, when the room was filled with Dr. Mastro’s smoke and Dr. Hingston’s hostility. The secretary, whose name I learned was Mrs. Burke, carried in a tea service. As I drank from a steaming cup Dr. Clarke caught me up on faculty news. Of the committee that had rejected my admission only one person remained. Dr. Mastro was now chairman of the physiology department. Dr. Howlett, whom he’d replaced, was in the United States, apparently amassing a fortune and garnering fame. Dean Laidlaw had retired and Dr. Hingston was dead. This last fact I had known. Laure had mailed the obituary to Vienna and I had written an awkward note to Felicity, who was still living at home with her mother.

Dr. Clarke was behaving as if I were a colleague, as if I warranted attention. It was pleasant but it was also unnerving. I had changed my dress for a clean one, but it was not flattering by any stretch of the imagination. My shoes were blacked, but I didn’t deserve the care of a dean.

He was a good-looking man with the smooth cheeks of a boy and thick hair that was only now, late in his fifties, turning grey. “Disarming” was the adjective that leapt to mind. “Gentleman” was the noun. In that moment, however, he was making me nervous. In all of our conversation he had not met my eye. He glanced at the ceiling then out the window. “I have a proposition.”

I put my cup down. For a crazy moment I was sure he was going to lean forward and suggest something indecent.

“For several months now,” he said after an uncomfortable pause, “we’ve been searching for someone.”

The breath I had just taken caught and I coughed. I thought I must have misunderstood him. McGill University still did not admit female students into medicine. Surely Dr. Clarke could not be offering me employment. The sun chose that moment to climb over the tops of the poplars and I pushed my chair back into the shadows.

“It’s the medical museum,” he said. “We need someone to take it in hand.” He shook his head regretfully. “It’s not the most enthralling work, I know, and the money …” He trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished.

“You are offering me this?”

“I am sorry, Dr. White.”

It was all I could do not to burst out laughing. Dr. Clarke was apologizing as he was offering me employment at McGill, with pay. He was unlocking the doors to the institution for me. I had to restrain myself from reaching out to hug him.

“I’ll do it,” I said. I had to say it twice and then a third time, more slowly, before he understood.

THE ROOM WAS LIKE
a tomb it was so dark; it was full of dust. Dr. Clarke covered his mouth with a handkerchief. There was no overhead light. “I’m sorry, Agnes,” he said again after he’d opened the doors. They had not yet extended the electricity up here and he had to light a gas lamp, which lent everything a yellow glow. Faculty offices were below us, the lecture theatres were below that. Few people ventured up here. Chairs and broken desks sat abandoned in the hallway.

“Mastro was supposed to have it cleaned,” Dr. Clarke muttered into his handkerchief. “He’s the curator.”

The name startled me. “Dr. Mastro?”

Dr. Clarke nodded. “It comes with the chair in physiology.” He drew his finger along the surface of the main work table and held up its blackened tip for me to see. “Mastro’s wife is in a sanatarium down at Saranac Lake. She has consumption. He has more to attend to than the medical museum.”

My eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark. I made out high ceilings, walls lined with shelves. Once there had been order here. Someone had cared. I could now see why it was so dark. I walked to the far end of the room and tugged on a cord. A blind rolled up in a whirring rush, revealing a large, grimy window.

“
Fiat lux
!” said the dean. I could see him better now, grinning like a smooth-cheeked boy.