Author's Note: As I believe season 8 starts in 1902, this will take place in 1903. The main pairing in this piece is Julia/Emily, but as a tangled web is to be weaved, there is of course the obligatory William/Julia and George/Emily. I've done minimal amounts of research in to Victorian/Edwardian Toronto, but if you have any helpful hints or tips about things that are anachronistic, please let me know. Also, I don't believe that they go over Julia and Emily's schooling in great detail on the show, but the impression that I received on the show was that they went to medical school in mixed classes. However, according to my (brief) research, if they had been educated in Toronto, they would have been shoved in to the Women's Medical College, which would have segregated them from the men at the Faculty of Medicine. So that is what I am running with in this story! I hope you enjoy!
Emily Grace was a woman of knowledge. She had poured over Gray's Anatomy during medical school, memorizing the valves of the heart, the lobes of the liver, and every tendon and ligament in the human body. In her personal life, she was widely read, a skilled croquet player, and had a deep interest in metaphysics (she had always secretly enjoyed imagining how ahast her medical school peers would be if they knew). However, her foundation stone of knowledge was a simple, undeniable principle: the pure perfection of Dr. Julia Ogden.
Emily had few female friends. It wasn't that she disliked women, but merely that many seemed to be off-put by her brashness. 'Man-like' she had heard the women at university whisper in the halls as she passed. It didn't particularly bother her. She despised sitting in parlours, drinking sherry and talking endlessly about social scandals, how to best set your hair to get a wave, and how tightly to lace your corset. She found few women reached her level of sheer intellectual curiosity, even if they had been educated enough to participate in polite dinner conversation.
Julia was different. Even before she started working at the city morgue, Emily was in awe. While attending the Women's Medical College, she had heard of Dr. Ogden. She had been sitting around with a few of the men from the University of Toronto, drinking brandy and playing pool, when the topic of pathology came up. Walter, an American whom Emily had immediately disliked, had sneered and called out in his insufferable drawl "Did y'all know that the city has a woman doin' their post-mortems?" A couple of the other men snorted, while the rest cringed. They knew this was shortly to become an uncomfortable game of snooker.
"A female doctor? What's her name?" Grace had asked, her pool cue in her left hand, her right hand on her hip. Walter shrugged.
"Dr. Oben or somethin'. I forget. Apparently her daddy was a doctor, and she passed down the hallowed halls of the Women's Medical College." He gave a smirk in her direction, and Emily's blood had boiled at the pointed jab that the University of Toronto would not admit her to the Faculty of Medicine due to her gender. "Anyway, a woman choppin' up dead bodies! It is really too much for the female mind, I think. Plus, horribly immodest! Female doctors need to stick to women. Preferably, living women."
"Well I think it's amazing." Emily had snapped, tightening her grip on her pool cue. "Not only must she be an excellent doctor with a fine eye for detail, but she must also be incredibly analytical, and to work in such a male-dominated field with what I am sure are very aggressive men... she must be quite something." Walter had snorted.
"Or her daddy made a large donation to the station and they're stuck with her faintin' every time a decayin' corpse comes bye." He chortled at his own wit.
"Yes." Emily said coldly. "At the women's college, we never do dissections as our fragile, female minds can't stand actual anatomy. We simply colour-in pictures of the lungs all day, and we graduate based on the truest-to-life hues that we can muster."
Emily never quite got over the rage that overcame her when people made such comments. However, Doctor Julia Ogden was on her radar, and the more questions she asked, the more information her fellow medical students seemed to be able to provide her with. Emily hadn't considered a career in pathology up until that point, but the more she thought about it, the more romantic it seemed. She imagined days in the morgue, carefully investigating every inch of the deceased, looking for clues, astonishing the police with her keen eye and brilliant observations that cracked the cases right open. They would take her to the crime scenes, imploring her to spot something they had missed, some biological cue that their untrained mind would overlook. And perhaps, some attractive detective would notice her and her brilliant mind, and a workplace romance would blossom based on their mutual love of excitement and learning. Of course, she had been engaged to Jerome at this time, so it wasn't anything more than penny dreadful inspired fantasy. By the time she graduated, however, Jerome was out of the picture, and she had marched straight to the Toronto City Morgue and demanded to speak to the pathologist. By thiattime she had spent thousands of hours pouring over anatomy texts, police texts, crime novels and anything she could grab that was vaguely related to police work and dead bodies. She was confidant that she was a capable asset to the station, but still felt butterflies in her stomach as she waited to be granted an audience with the woman who had inspired her from afar.
She had to admit, she hadn't expected Julia to be so incredibly beautiful and charming. She had imagined a woman, toughened by working in such a coarse environment, who dressed dowdily and would frown at Emily over her spectacles until Emily convinced this amazing woman of her worth. What she was met with, however, was a tall, lithe and impeccably dressed doctor whose smile was gracious and warming even to a stranger. Emily's heart caught in her throat, and for a moment she was thrown off balance. Her mind was blank, and she couldn't remember exactly why she had wanted to see the famous Dr. Ogden.
"Hello." Julia had offered Emily her hand, and Emily took a deep breath and awkwardly extended hers, gripping Julia's a bit too hard, her arm jerking wildly. "I am Dr. Ogden, the pathologist at this station house."
"Hello Dr. Ogden." Emily parroted, taking a deep breath. "I-I'm Emily. Emily Grace." She took another breath. "Dr. Emily Grace."
"Oh how wonderful!" Julia's smile lit up even more, and Emily was sure she had made a horrible decision. How could she think that she could impress or even render herself useful to such a woman? "I so rarely get the company of other doctors here, especially female ones. This is quite delightful. How can I help you, Dr. Grace?"
"I... I just graduated from the Women's Medical College, and although it might seem a little odd, I thought that I might be suited to the kind of work you do here. With pathology, and aiding the police. I really enjoyed dissection, and I don't think that I'd like seeing living patients every day... I liked research too, and I really think this is kind of like doing research every day. I mean, I like living people, but in my last year I worked in the Dispensary, and I just got so tired of seeing these poor women coming in with so many problems I couldn't solve. They didn't want to be pregnant again, but their husbands kept forcing themselves on the poor creatures, or they keep getting venereal disease from their prostitution, or they can't quit the bottle, and I just think that working in the solitude of the cadaver lab was more peaceful than trying to cure the demons of these creatures with heroin and drugs that do not truly address what they seek." Emily realized she was rambling, and felt embarrassed that she had bared a tiny part of her soul to such a composed lady. However, Dr. Ogden smiled knowingly.
"I know how you feel, Dr. Grace. Although I have to say, I have never had someone come and ask to work with me. Most men don't want to learn from a woman, and most women are interested in working with the living. Why don't you come down and visit the morgue with me, and we can talk more. It smells strongly of formaldehyde, unfortunately, but I do have some tea."
Emily had sat for a few hours with Julia, bright eyed as they relayed tales from medical school and Julia told Emily about her daily routine. She had gotten up and surveyed Dr. Ogden's materials, asked questions about equipment she hadn't seen before, and even gotten a peak at the body Julia had carefully concealed under her white cloths. The morgue was cool, dry, smelt horrific and did not let in a trace of light. Doctor Emily Grace felt like she had found her calling.
After their meeting, Julia had approached the newly input Chief Constable Giles and made a case for the hiring of Grace. Initially, he had grumbled about there not being enough in the budget for another doctor, but Dr. Ogden pointed out that, other than her sojourn to Buffalo, she had not left Toronto or gone on vacation for the last 4 years, and she couldn't guarantee that she would be around forever, and that if Dr. Grace didn't work out, they weren't bound to keep her. Giles had relented to an interview, and seemed to be impressed with her straight-forward manner. Or perhaps he was simply brow-beaten by Julia's gentle insistence. Either way, Doctor Grace became Practicing Doctor Grace. Emily's salary was, of course, a lot less than a doctor as experienced as Julia, but money had never been an object for her family, and she was happy spending her days in the cool morgue. It wasn't as personally satisfying as when she had hunched over bodies with Julia, learning from her practiced hands and calm demeanour, but the competency that she had gained was a different type of reward.
Emily's reverie was broken as a polite knock came at the door. She quickly wiped her hands on her apron, and invited the knocker in.
"Dr. Grace." Henry Higgins nodded, and behind him she could hear the unsteady steps of a few other constables. "We have a body for you."
"Is it a homicide?" Higgins nodded again.
"Yes. He has been stabbed through the heart, multiple times. He is very bloody, and he feels like a bag of marbles." Emily winced and went to retrieve her gurney.
"Gentlemen, on this table please."