A White Room - A Novel of Victorian Hysteria & Underground Nursing

Chapter 1: 1

One

March 1900

St. Louis, Missouri

Florence squealed and dropped the pot onto the iron range witha loud clang.

“What’s wrong?” I looked up from chopping carrots on the breadboard.

“I burned myself.” Cringing, she held her hand palm up. “It hurts a lot.”

“Let me see.” I dunked a cloth into the cool water I had used to soak the vegetables.

Florence walked over, passing through a ray of light coming from the window. It cut through the kitchen and illuminated the dust in the air. “I thought I had enough cloth on the handle. Sin to Moses, it hurts!”

Florence and I had offered to help with supper after our father started feeling poorly that morning. It was probably just a cold, but my mother had a tendency to overreact. She’d had herself and our handmaid Kathy fluttering for the better part of the day.

I studied the puffy red streak across Florence’s palm. It had reacted quickly but wasn’t bubbling or peeling. Still, it was probably enough to burn for a few hours.                                  

She winced. “What should I do? I don’t want to bother Mother.” “No need.” I grinned mischievously. “Follow me,” I said.

We slipped out of the kitchen, skittered down the hall, and made a hard right up the central staircase. Florence hid the burn on her hand as we noisily scaled the steps, our skirts swishing and our boots clunking.

In our room, I clipped some leaves from an aloe plant I had learned how to grow in class at the university. We sat on Florence’s bed, and I broke open a fleshy clipping and applied its liquid with cotton.

She squirmed a little when I touched it. “This is extraordinary, Emeline,” she said.

I glanced up for a second and then back down. “What do you mean?”

“That you know things like this.” Although I’d say my brother, James, was my best friend, my seventeen-year-old sister, Florence, understood and admired me more.

I held down a flattered grin. “I don’t know much of anything, no more than what Mother knows. She probably has some of this in her kit.” I placed the clippings on the nightstand.

Florence lifted her brown eyes. “But she didn’t grow it.” She used her other hand to scratch her head.

“Be careful. It took me all morning to get your hair right.” Florence still needed my help to create the popular pompadour look, a style that required me to tease the hair at the crown, flip it up and back, high off the forehead, and shape the curls into an ornate bundle on top of a hidden crepe pad pinned underneath.

“Sorry.” She lowered her hand.

I heard the sound of little bare feet scampering across the wood floor. It was probably my youngest sister, Ruth.

Florence shrugged. “Anyway, I think it’s just extraordinary.” “I’ve only taken a few introductory courses. After I go to an

actual nursing school, I’ll really impress you.” “You’re not going anywhere unless you ask.”

I focused on the red skin. “I’m just waiting for the right time.”

I had returned from college at the end of the year. My parents had sent me in hopes that I’d find a husband or at least acquire enough education to engage in meaningful conversation, but instead I discovered a passion for medicine. “They want me to hurry up and get married. They won’t automatically say yes. If I had asked right away, Mother would have assumed it was a silly whim and refused. Then I didn’t want to spoil the holidays with arguments and debates, and everyone gets so tired after the holidays, and before I knew it—”