The Heart Specialist Read Online Free PDF Page A

when Grandmother brought out the book. So it was possible to be a romantic and also to steep oneself in science.
    The moon was gleaming like a coin in the frame of my window. How could anyone sleep with such brightness in the sky? Ten years ago, almost to the day, my father had disappeared, leaving my mother, me and a second unborn child who turned out to be Laure. For me, January was, and always would be, the ache of absence. The ache had faded slightly but it still made pastimes like dreaming of suitors and wedding bells misplaced. That was my very last thought before I fell into a deep and visionless sleep.

3
    When I woke up the next morning, the bedroom was already light. I had been curled on my side of the bed and rolled over onto something hard — my sister’s doll. Three of them were crammed into the space separating Laure’s side of the mattress from mine. They were from England and my sister loved them passionately. Their heads were carved out of wax and their bodies out of wood. Every night she tucked the sheets tight around them and kissed their translucent cheeks, now greying with age, and every morning the dolls were scattered. I awoke with a wooden hand or foot poking me in the back.
    These pokes and pains were forgotten on that particular morning because of other quite novel sensations. Each time I moved my head I felt nauseated. Pain in my belly was forcing me to fold my knees hard to my front. I was actually holding my breath it was so pronounced. My back was turned to Laure and I was looking out the window. Grandmother was already down in the kitchen fussing with the woodpile and pans.
    It felt as though someone were prodding around inside me with large, clumsy fingers. The squirrel came immediately into my mind. I had dreamed about it, I realized. On Staint Agnes’s Eve a dead squirrel had been my vision.
    Laure gave me a kick. “Will you stop?”
    I realized I was rocking and sat up, but it only made the pain worse.
    Laure sat up too. “You groaned the whole night, Agnes. Are you sick then after cutting up that animal? Did it make you sick?”
    I shook my head and even this small movement made me dizzy.
    “What’s wrong?” Laure’s face was scared.
    “Nothing.” I was trying to remember what I had eaten the previous night, thinking it might be poisoning. I had been sick once before after eating pork, but the sickness had come right after my meal and I had retched violently and repeatedly until the poison was gone. All I had eaten last night was Grandmother’s freshly baked bread — safe food to which I was accustomed.
    Laure’s face was the colour of chalk. “I’ll get Grandmother.”
    I shook my head even though it almost toppled me. “I just need to do my business.” I stood up, wobbling a little, then crouched beside the bed.
    I dragged out the chamber pot and pulled it to a spot beside the dresser, out of my sister’s sight. I felt like a river as I voided, gushing wildly and noisily. When I hoisted my nightie and peered down though I got the shock of my life. The contents were red.
    Maybe Laure was right. Maybe I was cursed. Or maybe I had fallen ill. Blood was often a precursor to death. It had certainly been so with mother, although she had bled from the mouth, coughing up clots, staining the pillowcases. Laure and I slept on those pillowcases with their faint rusty halos that no scrubbing would ever remove. Pulmonary tuberculosis was the scourge of women in the White family. All three of Grandmother’s daughters had died of it. But White women tended to be willowy and wan, nothing like me. And besides, my blood was coming from the wrong end.
    I carried the pot to the window and tossed the contents into the yard. Cold air pushed into the room and Laure squealed. Throwing things from windows was not allowed at the Priory, especially when the things were the contents of a chamber pot. I knew the rules. Every morning I had to carry our chamber pot to the outhouse for emptying. Then