Anatomy: A Love Story(34)

“George Hazleton.” Beecham stood up and extended his hand.

Hazel shook it, bewildered.

“Yes, of course. Straine did mention— But I get ahead of myself. Miss Sinnett, please do sit. Can I offer you a cup of tea?”

Dazed, Hazel sat opposite Beecham at the table. (The nearby gentlemen scoffed at Hazel for sitting, but returned to their reading even quicker than they had the last time.)

“Fascinating,” Beecham said, staring at her face as if he could see the bones and muscles at work beneath her skin. “I can’t imagine how I didn’t recognize it immediately. Absolutely fascinating. The clothes came from—a shop somewhere? A tailor?”

“They were my brother’s.” And then before she could stop herself, she added, “He died.”

A shadow crossed Beecham’s face. “My apologies. My sincerest apologies. I had a son who—” He looked beyond Hazel for a moment, and then shook his head. “It’s no matter. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person, Miss Sinnett.”

“So, hold on a second. You—?” Hazel began, but then thought better of it. She blinked a few times. “So you’re not upset with me?”

Dr. Beecham smiled sympathetically. “No, I confess I am not upset with you. A little, well, disappointed in my own skills of observation, but … no, no. Not upset. Interested, really.”

“Interested?”

“In you. As a specimen. It’s very rare to see a woman with your interest in the natural sciences. And even rarer, I must say, to see one with your aptitude. Tell me—were you always interested in anatomy?”

And so, as a cup of tea was placed in front of her and Hazel settled into the surprisingly comfortable velvet chair, she found herself telling Dr. Beecham everything. She told him of her lonely childhood behind the gray walls of Hawthornden, hidden in her father’s office and reading books on medicine and alchemy by candlelight long after she was supposed to be in bed. She told him about her father abroad, and her distant mother, trapped in perpetual mourning, obsessed with the health of her younger brother, the new heir. From the time she was able to write her own name, she had wanted to study the body, to learn the rules that governed it, to understand how to master it: this strange vessel that contained the soul. How fragile it was, Hazel had realized when she was a child scraping her knee and seeing blood pearl up from beneath her stockings. She would spend hours tracing the thin blue-green veins beneath her skin.

Beecham listened attentively, stirring more sugar into his tea and nodding along as Hazel spoke. “And that’s how I came to your anatomy lectures,” she said in conclusion.

She had left out how she sneaked into the operating theater to watch Beecham perform surgery with that miraculous ethereum. There seemed no need to get that boy, the body snatcher, in trouble.

“I swear it was with no malice or intent to mock you. I just couldn’t think of another way. Please, if you let me continue in your classes, I will work harder than any student you have ever taught, and learn more diligently. If you could just speak to Dr. Straine, or convince him to allow me to continue my studies … I will be discreet, if you require, and I will find a way to work as a physician somehow. I don’t know how yet, but I will. Your teachings will not go to waste. I swear, I will pass the Physician’s Examination somehow, and I will be a credit to your course, I know I will be.” She was a little out of breath when she stopped. Her mouth had moved faster than her brain.

Beecham added another spoonful of sugar to his tea and took a thoughtful sip. He winced and added yet another spoonful of sugar.

To Hazel’s surprise, a small, leathery head extended from the tortoiseshell on the table.

“Oh, hello, Galen,” Beecham said. He fed the tortoise a bit of a biscuit and stroked his shell absentmindedly before returning his attention to Hazel. “You know,” he said, “I don’t share the same ideas about female physicians as our friend Dr. Straine. When you’ve lived as long as I have, my dear, you take novelty wherever you can find it, and you are nothing if not novel.”

Dr. Beecham couldn’t have been older than fifty, but Hazel understood his point. “Does that mean,” she began slowly, “that I might be able to continue in your class?”

Beecham cleared his throat and gestured for a server to bring a fresh pot of tea. “I’m afraid that if Dr. Straine is unwilling to let you attend his demonstrations, there’s nothing I can do to undermine him. I did, when he spoke to me the other day, attempt to convey to Dr. Straine the notion that an exceptional medical mind could in fact come in the female form, but alas. A stubborn old bat.”

“But surely,” Hazel said, “as the head of the course. As a fellow lecturer. Your grandfather founding the society, surely there’s something—”

“Miss Sinnett. Much as it pains me to say, it’s possible that Dr. Straine has a point. The anatomical demonstrations can be quite … gruesome. Skin flayed out and organs puffed up. Perhaps it’s best after all that your delicate female sensibility be protected.” He took a large sip of tea and sighed with satisfaction. “And the classes only get more challenging from this point on. Incredibly rigorous. And then there’s the Physician’s Examination. A grueling affair. Yes, perhaps it is best after all—”

A spark flared in Hazel’s brain, and she spoke before logic or reason could extinguish it. “What if I sit the Physician’s Examination? Even without the lectures. What if I’m allowed to sit the Physician’s Examination anyway?”