Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [43]
"I've always been sturdy, till two years back," she assured him. "I can tell you exactly when the damage was done: I was sugaring caraway seeds for Christmas, on the mistress's orders, and the boy was nowhere to be found, so I had to lift the heavy kettle of syrup off the fire myself, and I felt something rip in my back. I said it to her the minute she came in, the lady I worked for I mean, but she said it was nonsense as backs can't rip."
Mr. Baker Brown was jotting something in his notebook. "Until I've examined you fully, I cannot make any firm pronouncements," he murmured, "but I can tell you now, Miss F.,"—his warm eyes suddenly rose to meet hers—"that it is generally impossible for the non-medical to penetrate into the root of their condition."
"Oh."
"The incident you describe may have revealed your disease, rather than caused it."
"I see," she said again, and blinked up at him. "I was sure that was it, the sugar syrup, I mean, sir. My brother said I didn't ought to work for a lady who'd treat me that way."
"Your brother's natural concern for you"—and here the doctor flashed her another of his smiles—"leads him to fancy that he can form an opinion on medical matters. Are you ever constipated, Miss F.?"
"Yes, at times, I suppose," she said, startled.
"Does it hurt to defecate, at those times?"
"I ... I suppose so." As Baker Brown began to press lightly on her stomach, she turned her face to the wall again.
"Any pain, now?"
"No, sir."
He touched her face, and she flinched. "Skin moist and warm," he commented under his breath, as he wrote it down, and she smiled a little, though she couldn't have said why.
Then he leaned down and Miss F. thought for a moment that he had lost his mind, that he meant to kiss her. She went stiff from head to toe. "Breath inoffensive," the doctor murmured, straightening up, "and now if you would be so good as to let me see your tongue."
She put it out, but only a little; she couldn't stick out her tongue at a gentleman. He felt the tip of it, put his index finger in her mouth and pressed down, fingered her gums all over. Her eyes swam; she blinked hard. No one had ever touched her that way before, inside her mouth. She kept her tongue very still, and memorised the smooth cool surface of the doctor's finger.
His eyes seemed to narrow a little now, as her brother's did sometimes when he spoke of gathering clues, tracking down a thief. "Do you suffer from giddiness. Miss F.?"
"Occasionally, on first getting up, in the mornings," she said.
"Headache?"
"If the day is hot. When I was a cook I did; my cap was too tight."
"Do you perspire freely?"
"Sometimes," she admitted, looking away. That was a nasty question.
"And your menstrual periods, are they irregular?"
She felt the blush flood up from her collarbones. "I don't know," she faltered. "Maybe. Sometimes."
"Do you suffer from them at more or less the same point in each month?"
"More or less."
"Is the flow excessive?"
Excessive, she repeated in her head. What was the definition of excess? "Sometimes."
"Do they last as many as four days?"
"Five or six, usually," she confessed.
Mr. Baker Brown shook his head as if that was a bad sign. Then he went to the end of the table. He put his warm hands on her ankles and pressed them apart.
She clamped her knees together.
"I beg your pardon, Miss F., and I respect your delicacy, but this is necessary for me to complete my examination."
She squeezed her eyes shut and let him part her legs. She started counting from one to a hundred, but she only got to eleven. She wondered why he was standing there peering down at her, and what he was looking for. She thought perhaps it was almost over, and then he touched her somewhere. It was not a part she had a name for, or not one that could be said aloud. She writhed a little. She told herself she need not be embarrassed; this was no ordinary man but a doctor, no ordinary doctor but the famous Mr. Baker Brown who understood women as no other man in the world did. She