# Read the first page of The Forgotten Room by Karen White

Read the opening of The Forgotten Room by Karen White free, no signup. A wartime doctor uncovers three generations of secrets in a Gilded Age mansion.

- Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/the-forgotten-room-karen-white
- Genre: Historical fiction
- Year: 2016
- ISBN: 9780451474636
- Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9780451474629&s=read-page
- Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780451474636
- Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780451474636

## The opening

The patter of rain against the blacked-out stained glass dome above where I sat numbed me like a hypnotist's gold watch. Neither the hard marble step beneath me nor the delicately carved staircase spindle pressed against my forehead was enough to override the lullaby effect of the raindrops. I tried to focus on the ornate staircase of the old mansion, to study the fine architectural details of the structure that even the conversion into a hospital couldn't mask.

I recalled the walks I took as a child down Sixty-ninth Street with my mother, walks that weren't convenient to our neighborhood but instead appeared to be a destination rather than a happenstance. We'd cross the road and pause, looking up at the seven-story stone mansion, the elongated windows staring blankly out at us, seemingly as curious as I was about why we were there.

My mother had once told me that she'd lived there briefly when the building had been a boardinghouse for respectable women. But she'd never mentioned why she felt compelled to return to the spot across the street again and again, until her death three years before. It had seemed almost serendipitous when I had accepted the position at Stornaway Hospital following medical school, almost as if my mother had planned it all along.

My gaze settled on the far wall, on a bas-relief depicting a recurring motif of Saint George slaying the dragon, which I'd noticed throughout the building since I'd begun working at the hospital nearly a year before. My eyelids fluttered closed for a moment, watching the scene against the dark backdrop of my lids, imagining I could see the saint and the dragon stepping from the wall and writhing on the tiled floor in their perpetual battle.

I forced my eyes open, if only to assure myself that the stone adversaries were still stationary. Holding on to the banister, I pulled myself to stand. I was so very, very tired. It was my second double shift in a row, and I doubted it would be my last. The city's hospitals were being flooded with the arrival of wounded soldiers from the recent invasion of the French coast. With our ranks already spread thin by doctors enlisting and heading overseas, those remaining were working hours rarely seen past medical school.

The blare of an approaching siren helped me to stand up straighter, to compose myself before any of the nurses could find me in such mental disarray. As the only female doctor on staff, it was hard enough maintaining the persona of a woman with no feelings or personal needs in front of the male doctors. It was nearly impossible in front of the nurses. If they'd asked me why I'd become a doctor, I would have told them. But they didn't ask. They seemed to be of like minds when it came to me—I was a doctor because I thought I was too good to be a nurse.

There were a few who were deferential to my status of doctor regardless of my gender, but the rest were too traditional, having worked hard to come up the ranks in nursing, to consider me to be any more than an upstart.

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