Page 13 of A New World for the Irish Daughter

No doctor or nurse had had any need to come to the parlor house since Maggie had arrived.

In reply to her question, Emma Mae merely shrugged, and Elizabeth sighed again, shaking her head.

“Miss Maggie,” Elizabeth called down the stairs, “Miss Jessie ain’t going to pay for no doctor, and Jenny won’t have enough to swing it.”

“Miss Jessie won’tpay?” Maggie couldn’t hide her shock. Jessamine Conant might be a hard-nosed businesswoman, but a woman’s—a girl’s—lifewas at risk, judging from the blood that was soaking her skirts. “But Jenny might…die.”

No one responded to this.

“There’s the women’s hospital, on California Street,” Emma Mae finally offered dubiously, after a long, tense moment. “They might send someone, and they’re charity. You don’t pay unless you can. But…” She shrugged, disconsolate, almost indifferent. “They might not be willin’ to come to a place like this. Not many of those God-fearin’ folks are.”

“I’ll go.” Brendan came down the stairs, already dressed, his face set in determined lines. He glanced swiftly at Maggie and then looked away again. “I’ll bring someone back. A doctor, or at least a nurse.”

“Thank you, Brendan,” Maggie whispered. She glanced back down at Jenny, who hadn’t even stirred. The crimson stain spreading across her skirt of yellow satin was getting wider.

Just then, Miss Jessie came to the top of the stairs. She was still in her gown from the evening, lavender silk with black buttons down the front, her hair dressed elegantly. Her narrowed gaze took in the girls loitering in the hallway, and then Jenny at the bottom of the stairs. She said nothing.

“She fell, Miss Jessie,” another of the girls, Marina, small with dark eyes and masses of dark hair, volunteered in little more than a whisper. Her parents had died on the ship fromItaly, and she’d been at the parlor house almost from the moment she’d arrived in this city. She shrank behind another girl as soon as she’d spoken the words.

“I can see that, Marina.” Miss Jessie’s voice was cool and brisk, not without, Maggie hoped, a touch of pity. “We’d better bring her upstairs,” she decided.

Without further instruction, Brendan took Jenny in his arms and carried her up himself, laying her gently on her bed, before going to fetch the doctor.

“The rest of you, back to bed,” Miss Jessie commanded the girls, who were crowding outside Jenny’s room, some looking scared, others just tired. “We will open as usual at noon, and you all need your sleep.” And with that, she shut Jenny’s door in their faces, leaving her and Maggie alone in the room, with the girl supine and unconscious on the bed. “Do you have any nursing skills?” Miss Jessie asked curtly, and Maggie hesitated.

“I nursed my mother when she was ill,” she admitted, “but that was a long time ago.” And hadn’t involved much more than bathing her forehead and urging her to drink more water. “She was always quite sickly. But nothing… nothing like this.”

“She’s bleeding through her skirts,” Miss Jessie remarked dispassionately. “I suppose the silly fool got herself pregnant.”

“She didn’t getherselfpregnant,” Maggie replied sharply, before she could think better of it, and a small, sad smile touched the older woman’s lips.

“No, she didn’t,” she agreed quietly, and Maggie was gratified to hear a soft tone of sympathy in her voice. “But, as far as anyone else cares, she did. You won’t find a man in this whole city who would put his name to her bastard, which is just as well, because it looks as if she might be losing it.” She nodded toward Jenny’s skirts, the scarlet stain spreading. “And she’ll likely lose her life along with that of her babe’s, if we don’t do somethingabout it,” Miss Jessie continued. “It will take an hour at least for Brendan to fetch a doctor, and that’s if any will come.”

“All right.” Maggie straightened, stiffening her spine as she hid her trembling hands in the folds of her nightgown. “What should we do?”

Miss Jessie sighed, and for a moment, despite her beauty and her relative youth, she looked old and tired. “Staunch the bleeding, is my best guess,” she answered after a moment. “But I’m no nurse.”

While Miss Jessie watched, Maggie started to lift Jenny’s sodden skirts. Looking at the girl, so pale and lifeless, with her painted face and her curled hair, she felt a stirring of pity as well as anger. No fourteen-year-old child should have to live—and maybe die—like this. Her hands tensed on the slippery satin of Jenny’s gown, and then, taking a steadying breath, she began to unfasten the skirt from the bodice, and with Miss Jessie’s help, remove it.

Her petticoats were drenched with blood. Maggie gulped, tasting bile, before she resolutely swallowed it down. “I imagine we’ll need something to keep her from bleeding further,” she said, and she was glad her voice didn’t shake. “Are there spare sheets we could use as bandages?”

Miss Jessie’s mouth tightened and, with one curt nod, she left the room. She came back a few minutes later with several worn sheets already torn into strips. As best as she could, Maggie bundled them between Jenny’s legs, tying them securely to try to keep the blood from flowing further.

Miss Jessie watched her, her eyes narrowed, her lips pursed. “You’re angry with me,” she remarked after a moment.

Startled, Maggie glanced at her. “No?—”

“You think I’m being heartless,” Miss Jessie continued with a brisk nod. “And most likely I am. But there are a thousand girlslike Jenny up and down this city, Maggie.Iwas one of them once.”

“Butthisone,” Maggie replied after a moment, her gaze on the strips of linen as she finished securing them, “is in your house, as well as in mortal danger. The others up and down the city aren’t your responsibility.”

“And Jenny is?” There was a touch of scorn to Miss Jessie’s voice that made Maggie stiffen.

“I would have thought so,” she replied quietly as she glanced down at the girl, smoothing the damp hair away from her forehead. Her eyelids fluttered once and then closed again, her breathing alarmingly shallow. How much blood had she lost?

“I can’t be responsible for every wayward girl who comes into my house,” Miss Jessie stated tersely. “I feed them, I clothe them, I treat them fairly. But I run abusiness, and the champagne and the cigars and the satins and the silks—they all cost a lot of money. This isn’t a charity.”

“And yet you keep Evie on, for charity’s sake,” Maggie replied with some heat. It seemed terribly unfair to her. Why should Jenny be treated so callously, and the sullen maid with far more leniency? “As far as I can tell,” she added in something of a snap, “the girl barely lifts a finger! And then complains whenever she does.”