Page 120 of All In Her Hands
“Taught each other,” Ruth corrected. She turned stern eyes to Nora. “But don’t think your niceties will get you in this room.”
Nora lifted her hands in surrender. “I only came to peek.” She hadn’t crossed the forbidden threshold, but a glance at theonly unoccupied cot was enough. They’d lost another patient this morning. The cot wouldn’t stay empty long; the steady flow of sick women and children streamed so quickly that Nora didn’t even recognize all the patients anymore.
She now kept herself to the clinic rooms, treating injuries and noninfectious complaints, as well as attending births. Thankfully, at six and a half months, her belly hadn’t expanded to the impossible proportions of some of her patients, and she could still maneuver easily. “I’ll be in the clinic if you need me.” She watched the other midwives as they buzzed through the ward, skillfully dosing and feeding patients.
They won’t. They know what they are doing.
The hopeful scent of early-March air and Julia’s blooms followed her down the hallway, where she found Daniel in the dispensary grinding salt crystals to a fine powder.
“Horace says powdered dissolves faster in an emergency. If someone needs Latta’s,” he answered before she could ask.
Nora gave an approving nod. “Reasonable.”
“Well, it’s good he still has a little reason left. He asked me this morning how large a cage a caracal would need.”
“A what?”
“Some African cat with tufted ears, according to him.”
“Heaven help us,” Nora groaned as she sidled close to see his progress. The salt shimmered like snow in the stone bowl. Almost the consistency of flour. “He told me someone’s sending him the skeleton of a rhinoceros. At least the front half.”
Daniel paused and shook his head before he resumed grinding. He mumbled something incredulous about Horace and the “back half” that made Nora laugh even though she caught onlya snip.
Rooting through the open cabinet, she found a small bottle of powdered opium and the sugar canister. She was almost out of throat lozenges, which was the only thing that calmed Meg’s coughing fits. Nora doled out the meager amounts onto her miniature brass scales, humming as she measured the grains, her shoulder brushing Daniel’s.
His left arm wandered as he worked, looping absently around her waist and resting on her swollen stomach. He stroked her belly without realizing—a mindless habit.
Deep in her middle, the little stranger groped for a more desirable spot, the movement no longer the light spring of a grasshopper, but the hardy thump of a baby hare.
Surely Daniel felt it.
Nora smiled as his lips lifted almost imperceptibly.
But still, there was work to finish. The churning pestle kept rhythm against the mortar, tapping out a clear and steady heartbeat that sounded to Nora like her favorite promise—tomorrows after tomorrows after tomorrows.
