The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (Montague Siblings #2)(15)
He glances over my shoulder at Monty, who raises his hand and says, “Brother,” as though that’s the most important matter to set straight here.
I resist throwing something over my head and hoping it catches him in the nose, and instead remain focused on the chairman. “I can assure you, sir, I would not become hysterical.”
“You seem hysterical now.”
“I’m not,” I say, annoyed that my voice pitches on the second word. “I’m speaking passionately.”
“Not to mention the concessions that would have to be made so the male students would not be distracted by the presence of a woman,” one of the other men adds, and the rest of the board nods in support of what an excellent, nonsense point he has made.
It takes every ounce of strength in me not to roll my eyes. “Well then, you might consider covering up table legs lest the mere reminder of the existence of the female form send your students into an erotic frenzy.”
“Madam—” the chairman begins, and I can feel Higgins right over my shoulder again, but I press on, using my argument as a plow this time.
“Women make up more than half the population of this city, this country, and the world. Their intelligence and ideas are an untapped resource, particularly in a field that claims such a commitment to progress. There is no proof women are unequipped to study medicine—quite the contrary, women have been practicing medicine for hundreds of years and have only been excluded in recent history as surgery became regulated by institutions run by men. Institutions that are now so bogged down in bureaucracy that they have ceased to serve even their most basic functions for those in need.” I hadn’t planned to say that, but the stink of the hospital wards is still in the back of my throat. The chairman’s eyebrows have risen so high they’re about to disappear under his wig, but I press on. “You make money off the poor and the sick. You charge them to take up space in your hospital wards. You make them work to earn their keep so less salaried staff is required. You charge absurd amounts for treatments you know don’t work so that you can fund research you refuse to share with those who need it.”
It is perhaps not the wisest thing to insult the institution in which I’m standing, but I’ve so much rage bottled up inside me about so many things, and it’s all pouring from me in a spurt, like shaken champagne violently uncorked.
“In addition,” I say, “there are elements of feminine health that male physicians are not equipped to address and have made no attempt to understand or improve treatments for. Would you deny your mothers and sisters and daughters the most effective medical care?”
“There are no treatments women are denied because of their sex,” the chairman interrupts. “We treat female patients here, the same as we treat men.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a lack of any research to provide relief from the debilitating pain that regularly restricts the most basic tasks of daily life for women.”
“I don’t know what you’re referencing, madam,” the chairman says, his voice raised over mine.
“I’m talking about menstruation, sir!” I shout in return.
It’s like I set the hall on fire, manifested a venomous snake from thin air, also set that snake on fire, and then threw it at the board. The men all erupt into protestations and a fair number of horrified gasps. I swear one of them actually swoons at the mention of womanly bleeding. Higgins snatches his hand back from my shoulder.
The chairman has gone bright red. He slams a book against the desk, trying to cram a lid over the Pandora’s box I have flung open. “Miss Montague, we’ll hear no more protestations from you. Based on your insubstantial and, frankly, hysterical case made before us today, I could not in good conscience allow you to enroll as a student here. You can see yourself out, or I’ll have Higgins escort you.”
I want to stay—I want to keep fighting them. I want to be allowed to finish the points upon my list. I want to tell them how I stole medical treaties from the bookshop in Chester because the seller wouldn’t let me buy them, how I cut the pages out so carefully and reconstructed them into the binding of Eliza Haywood’s amatory fiction to hide what I was actually reading after my mother found a copy of Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals in my bedroom and thrown it in the fire without a word to me. How sometimes the only reason I feel like I belong to myself and not the world is because I understand the way blood moves through my body.
I also want to cry, or shout that I hope all their genitals sprout wings and fly away, or perhaps travel back in time to the start of the meeting and go about this whole thing differently. I want to shut up the small, nasty voice in my head whispering that maybe they’re right and maybe I am unsuited for this and maybe I am hysterical, because even though I don’t think I am, it’s hard to be raised in a world where you’re taught to always believe what men say without doubting yourself at every step.
Before Higgins can at last get a good grip on my arm, I push past him, not waiting for Monty or looking backward at the governors or the Great Hall. I’ve never wanted to be away from somewhere so badly in all my life.
Outside, the winter air is a welcome slap across my burning face. I plow through the hospital courtyard, past the line at the dispensary and the nurses emptying sludgy buckets into the gutter, until I’m through the gates and out on the street. The cold has pried the tears from my eyes, though it’s easier to blame them on the winter than humiliation. I stop on the pavement so suddenly that I force a sedan to redirect its course. A dog on the lead of a vagrant growls at me.