She’d met him when she was just seventeen. Yes, she was young, but she’d been pushed by Baba’s unusual belief that education brought opportunity even for girls. Since her first day of school, she’d thrown herself into her studies and outpaced everyone around her, like Vanya. She passed all the basic levels permitting females by the time she was thirteen. After that, instead of calling Miri home to marry, Babushka encouraged her to study to become a midwife. “I know you, child. Your heart isn’t full unless you are helping others, and a midwife helps more than most understand,” Baba had said. It was a violent, bloody business, and Miri wasn’t scared by any of the gore she saw. Rather, she excelled. Soon, Baba encouraged her to sit for university entrance exams, where Miri could earn a degree as a lower-level physician. Vanya helped press her case. Miri was accepted and, again, exceeded all expectations. And while nearly a dozen Russian women had earned medical degrees in France and Switzerland and then returned home to practice, Miri was the first to achieve her rank from within her own country. And once she started, she realized how much more she could do for patients as a surgeon. She’d spent every day since searching for someone to train her—someone like Yuri.
“Have you ever met a female surgeon before?” Yuri asked when they met at her interview. They were standing in the door to his office. The space was small, crammed with a desk, two chairs, and filing cabinets, yet every book, paper, and pen seemed to have its place. His window looked out on the brick factory below, and the room smelled sharp and hot like a furnace. Men’s voices seeped through a cracked window. The foreman had them working at a furious pace.
“No, I haven’t,” she admitted.
“I’ve worked with one. In Zhytomyr, where I studied.” Did he hold Miri’s hand for too long or did she imagine that? “Please.” He bowed, asking her to come inside, gesturing toward the seat across from his desk. As she settled, Miri managed to knock over an inkwell somehow. It was large and heavy and had been perched on the edge of the desk closest to her. The black liquid splattered on her skirts and on the floor. At home, she would have hurried to stanch the mess, but there in Dr. Rozen’s office, on the most important day of her life, she froze. To her surprise, he also seemed stuck. Ink ran over the sloped floorboards and made it halfway to the window before either of them reacted.
She was certain he’d hold it against her, that he’d stalled because he was about to dismiss her. Surgeons couldn’t blunder. “I’m so sorry,” she said, twisting her fingers in her lap, waiting for him to ask her to leave. Instead, Yuri came around the desk and reached for a broom in the corner. He started sweeping and quickly had a pile of dust he used to absorb the liquid. Soon she’d learn this grit was from the brick factory. Their kilns’ soot-filled smoke infected every crevice in the hospital, no matter how hard anyone tried to scrub it away. And Yuri, who valued privacy, rarely let anyone try. “I’ll see to the rest later,” he said, returning the broom.
She’d prepared for anything but kindness like that, and her surprise at his reaction, combined with the fear that he might not accept her now, brought on anger and the tug of tears. But she couldn’t let herself cry, not there. How many times had she been told emotions were what held her sex back? “Confront what scares you,” Baba always said, and so Miri took a deep breath and asked, “Should I go?”
“Not if you want to become a surgeon.” He paused. “I know what it is to be a stranger in this hospital. I told you, I haven’t been here long.”
“Why?” She meant, Why do you want me to stay? He misunderstood.
“I left home, came here, because it was time. Isn’t that why we all leave, at some point?” He paused. “Dr. Abramov, let us begin again.” He went to his seat behind the desk. His face was neutral somehow, as if nothing had passed between them. “Tell me about your studies.” She followed his lead and fell into the material she’d prepared. She talked about her classes. He quizzed her on anatomy. She knew she was speaking too quickly, but she was nervous. And she sounded rehearsed because she was. “What do you prescribe for a patient with insomnia?”
“Nothing until I’ve examined him. Presenting symptoms can be misleading.” She regretted what she’d said as soon as it came out of her mouth. He narrowed his eyes and she hurried to fill the silence with what she knew he expected. “Chloral hydrate, opium, perhaps morphine.”
She wanted to explain, but Yuri interrupted. “Some people are born to be surgeons. I can see that in you.” How? How could he see anything in such a short period of time? And the comment, it was too personal. That made it unnerving, but also gave her courage.
“Does that mean you’re willing to take me as your student?”
“Doesn’t Russia deserve every surgeon she can muster?” He smiled. “You know the czar, his men, they don’t believe women should even be physicians. Certainly not Jewish women. It could be dangerous, if you’re ever brought in for questioning.”
“Why would I be brought in for questioning?”
“I can’t say. No one can, in Russia.”
“All I want is to help.”
“I understand. But keep in mind you’re not choosing an easy path. You and I would both have to make sacrifices. Are you prepared for that?”
Sacrifices? Miri climbed back into bed and pulled the blankets around her. Who, or what, was being sacrificed by the decision to allow Miri to operate on Sukovich in the morning?
III
Miri came down to the kitchen before dawn and found her grandmother already there, lighting the fire. Breakfast was Babushka’s one demand, the time Miri and Vanya were required to join her, together, no matter how early that meant they had to eat. As the women set to preparing the meal, Miri worked in silence, thinking about the fishmonger, picturing the surgery to come as she arranged silverware, cheese, and bread on the massive table. The wooden surface was scarred from chopping. Nothing sat straight. Babushka took one of the pots down from the wall to boil water for eggs and tea. The steam released the smell of lavender from the dried plants hanging around the room, meant to cover the lingering smell of onions.
A quiet knock on the back door announced the arrival of the baker’s son. The boy, no more than ten years old, held up an envelope. A few years earlier, the Okhrana, the czar’s secret police, had started reading the Abramovs’ mail and reporting what they found to Vanya’s superior, Kir, at the university. In response, Vanya started giving his correspondents their neighbor’s address because he thought so long as there was bread, no one cared what a baker said or did. Miri was amazed the ruse worked, continued to work after all this time, that the seal on this letter was tight. It came from America. From that professor again, the scientist who’d promised to work with Vanya on relativity and to find him, Miri, and Baba a way out of Russia. For all the lofty dreams the American had spun for Vanya, he had yet to come through. But this envelope was thicker than most—perhaps thicker than any. Had something changed? Were they equations? Miri paid the boy with a sweet, kissed his cheek, and sent him home. After she closed the door behind him, she held the envelope up to the light to see if she could read any of it, but the paper was too thick. She grinned, thinking no one had any idea what Vanya was up to with the American.