This could have been her,he realised suddenly.If her mother had decided to leave her…
Colin shuddered at the thought of his precious wife crying inconsolably like this, left alone in a room filled with other unwanted children.
What if every one of them is as precious and special as she was?He thought as he looked around the room, but the horror of what that would imply was almost unbearable, so he shoved it from his mind with all his strength.
“I wish there was a way to give these children to families who don’t have any,” Lizzie said after a while.
“That sounds like it would be a perfect match,” he smiled at her.
They picked up and held as many babies as they could, and Colin, feeling foolish but unable to resist, touched the hand or cheek of every baby he passed by, committed to Lizzie’s philosophy of imbuing them with care and affection. More than an hour later, Miss Florence came back and informed them thatthe Coopers had finished and were waiting for them downstairs. They thanked her and said their goodbyes.
“Are you feeling all right?” Colin asked his wife when she’d stopped and leaned against the wall after they exited the newborn room.
Elizabeth shook her head.
“Body or heart?” He asked, and she put her palm on her heart.
He stepped closer and squeezed her hand. Neither of them was wearing gloves. She briefly squeezed back, and then they headed for the stairs without saying anything else.
“I apologise for abandoning you in there,” Doctor Cooper said when he saw them. “But it was for your own safety. Mrs. Cooper had smallpox as a child, and I was inoculated with the vaccine.”
“I’ve heard about that,” Colin said and turned to Elizabeth. “It is a modern variolation that has a much higher success rate.”
“Unfortunately, it is not as widely accepted as it should be,” the Doctor said. “Did you know it was mandatory in Napoleon’s army and is now in many other countries, yet here, in its birthplace, it isn’t.”
“How did you obtain this inoculation?” Lizzie asked.
“My friend, Doctor Jenner, performed the transfer. He is the inventor of this revolutionary inoculation,” Cooper said proudly.
“My cousin died from being variolated as a child,” Talbot said. “And my father thus never allowed them to do the same to me.”
“This method is much safer than ingrafting, I assure you. You should consider it,” Doctor Cooper said.
“Especially if you’re going to continue doing voluntary work in places such as this,” Mrs Cooper added.
The Talbots promised they would think about it just as they arrived in front of the Cleveland Street poorhouse.
As soon as they entered, Colin felt sick. He felt around his waistcoat pockets and managed to retrieve a perfumed handkerchief, which he held to his mouth to distract himself from the stench of illness and death.
“I warned you,” Doctor Cooper said quietly.
“I know,” Talbot replied as he wrestled with nausea. “I wasn’t complaining.”
“So there are several wings, since this is a rather large building, although it may not be obvious from the front. There is an infection ward, the infirmary, the wing for war invalids, the consumption patients, and the children’s wing.”
“Why is there a dedicated children’s wing?” Lizzie asked, confused.
“Mostly for the injured, disabled, and disfigured child labourers from textile mills or mines,” Mrs. Cooper explained, and something poked at Talbot’s memory. “Let us go there first,” she suggested, and they agreed.
“Hello Richard, hello Samuel,” Mrs Cooper greeted the two boys closest to the door warmly.
“Mrs. Cooper! Hello. What did you bring us today?” The boy who had a stump where his right hand was supposed to be asked cheerfully.
“Samuel, that’s rude!” the older boy, who had to be Richard and was missing part of his scalp, chided him.
It took all of Talbot’s mental strength not to stare at their gruesome injuries, so he looked around the room instead. What he saw were scores of emaciated and maimed children.
That boy cannot be older than eight,he thought with horror.
