Chapter 20 #2
By noon, Lizzie’s fever peaked. The baby lay limp, eyes glassy, skin stretched tight across her cheeks. Rose’s mind began to fracture, reality pulsing in and out. She heard herself singing, the same lullaby over and over, though she could not recall starting.
She wondered, somewhere deep beneath the exhaustion, if this was the price of her own confession. If, by saying she loved Felix, she had doomed the only real thing that still tethered him to her.
Around four in the afternoon, the baby’s temperature seemed ever higher.
Rose, mad with worry, undressed herself to the chemise and held Lizzie skin-to-skin, the way she’d been taught by the oldest nun at the convent.
She rocked, whispered, prayed, even though her faith was as thin as the muslin sheet between her and the world.
Felix appeared at intervals, always offering help, always being rebuffed. But he never left.
Rose realized, sometime around sunset, that he had not eaten, had not even left the nursery except to fetch more cloths or to stoke the fire.
At dusk, the fever broke for a few minutes. Lizzie sucked greedily at the bottle Rose offered, and for a moment, the world seemed right. But then the baby coughed, retched, and the heat returned, worse than before.
The physician came again. This time, his expression was grave. He listened to Lizzie’s chest for a long time, then sighed.
“It’s in the lungs now. There’s nothing more we can do.”
Rose wanted to scream, to throw him out, but Felix stood first and did it for her: politely and with a finality that asked for no argument.
When the door closed, Rose felt for the first time the certainty that she could not endure another night. Felix stood by the window; arms crossed. Finally, she saw him as he truly was: not a villain or a ghost, but a man lost at sea, grasping for anything that might float.
She wished she could comfort him, but she was hollowed out.
The hours bled together.
Once or twice, she thought she slept, but always the fever pulled her back, sharp and hungry. She lost track of time. The baby’s breathing grew shallow, then ragged, then faded so quietly that Rose was sure, for a moment, that Lizzie was gone.
She pressed her ear to the child’s chest, desperate, and heard the faintest flutter. She looked up, and Felix stood above her, hands clenched.
“She’s still fighting,” he said.
Rose nodded, but she could not speak.
Somewhere outside, a clock struck two.
The only thing left was hope, and Rose did not know if she had any left.
By evening, Rose was dizzy from fatigue. Her eyes stung, her limbs ached, but she dared not put Lizzie down. She held the baby in the crook of her elbow, running a fingertip along the delicate blue vein at the child’s temple, watching for the smallest flicker of response.
Once again, Felix tried to intervene. He approached quietly, reverently, and put a hand on Rose’s shoulder.
“You need to rest,” he said, and for a moment the old arrogance was gone, replaced by something so fragile she could barely look at him.
“I cannot,” she answered.
He reached for the baby, and Rose, too tired to argue, let him take her.
Lizzie lasted a single minute before wailing with such force that Rose was certain the child would shatter from it.
Felix tried everything: pacing, bouncing, a clumsy attempt at the song he’d heard Rose sing.
Nothing worked. The baby only calmed down when she was returned to her mother.
Rose clutched Lizzie so tightly she worried about hurting her, but the child nestled against her, exhausted but silent. Rose buried her nose in the crown of Lizzie’s hair, breathing in the sour-sweet scent of fever and soap.
Felix sat on the edge of the nursery bed. For the first time, Rose saw the depth of his defeat. He looked as if he’d been hollowed out, every clever thought and retort stripped away.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and the words were so small they nearly vanished.
Rose did not reply. She could not bear to waste even a single breath on anything but Lizzie.
That night, the baby’s breathing grew labored. Rose propped Lizzie upright against her shoulder, using her own body as a wedge against the darkness. She willed herself not to sleep, not to miss a single moment.
At some point near dawn, Rose’s own body betrayed her.
Her eyelids drooped. She dreamed, briefly, that she was back at the convent, walking the cloisters with a crying child in her arms, only to find that every door was locked, every face turned away.
She woke with a start, the panic clutching her throat, only to find Lizzie limp and frighteningly quiet against her.
For a long moment, Rose was certain the child had stopped breathing. She pressed her ear to Lizzie’s chest and listened for an eternity. Then, a tiny, watery gasp was exhaled by the child.
Rose sobbed, unable to contain it. She wrapped both arms around Lizzie and rocked, back and forth, the motion desperate and wild. She begged—out loud, for the first time—for the child to stay. She promised everything she had, everything she would ever have, if only Lizzie would keep fighting.
Felix came and knelt beside the chair. He put his arms around both of them, and for a minute they formed a single, shuddering knot, suspended between hope and terror.
Neither spoke. There were no words left.
The siege continued, but now it was less a battle than a last stand. Rose let herself fall, piece by piece, into the hollow space where only the baby’s survival mattered.
Rose noted that Felix was also showing signs of surrender. He made no more attempts at control, no more displays of stoic command. He existed to serve Lizzie and Rose, to fetch what was needed, to keep the fire alive and the room warm.
They became, in that long, suffocating night, not husband and wife, but two desperate souls orbiting the same flickering point of light.
The hours crawled by. Sometimes Lizzie opened her eyes, cloudy and unfocused, and Rose would cry again, all the old pride gone.
When the sun finally rose, Rose could not tell if it was the next day or the next life.
But Lizzie was still breathing.
So, Rose held on and hoped.
Night again.
Rose found herself at the window, Lizzie limp in her arms, the moon’s blurred reflection overlaying the ghost of their two faces against the glass.
It should have been quiet, but in the hush every sound was amplified: the scrape of branches on stone, the faint ticking of the nursery clock, the whistling of Lizzie’s breath as it sawed in and out, more ragged with every hour.
For a while, Rose tried to pretend it was only sleep. The baby’s eyelids fluttered, her fists clenched and unclenched, and her head rolled against Rose’s shoulder. But the lull of it was all wrong; the rhythm, instead of reassuring, hinted at something broken beneath.
When the breathing changed—when the pause between inhale and exhale grew longer, and longer, and then finally stalled—Rose’s calm evaporated.
She panicked, clutching the child so fiercely she worried she might do damage.
She pressed her ear to Lizzie’s mouth, then to her chest, and at last heard the desperate flutter she had been waiting for.
But it was faint, less a heartbeat than a question mark.
“Lizzie, darling,” she whispered, but her own voice sounded strange, as if someone else were speaking from a distance.
There was no reply. The baby was utterly still. The color in her cheeks was now a sickly red, her hair plastered to her scalp.
“Lizzie,” Rose repeated, louder this time, and her arms began to shake.
Felix burst into the room, drawn by the sound. He stopped, saw the tableau—Rose, wild-eyed and clinging, Lizzie a doll in her lap—and seemed to shrink, all his certainty deserting him. For a moment, he hovered at the threshold, then crossed the floor and knelt beside them.
“Is she—?” He could not finish.
“I don’t know,” Rose choked out. “She’s… not breathing right.”
Felix reached for the child, but Rose held on. “Please,” she said, and the word was sharp as a slap. He dropped his hand and sat on the rug, helpless.
Rose began to rock, small, tight movements that scraped her spine against the solid wood of the chair. She bent her head so that her mouth was against Lizzie’s ear, and she whispered, “Please stay. Please, darling girl, just one more breath. You can do it. I know you can.”
She prayed in hymns, in scraps of poetry, anything that might fill the abyss opening under her. She promised everything, anything: that she would be better, that she would give up anger, that she would never again question whether she deserved to be a mother.
She pleaded, over and over, her voice fraying at the edges.
Felix moved closer but did not touch.
Rose kept whispering, no longer sure if the words were for Lizzie or herself.
She told the baby about the garden, about the songbirds she would teach her to name, about all the books they would read together.
She confessed, at last, that she was afraid, that she had been afraid from the start, and that nothing mattered but this tiny, stubborn piece of life.
The clock chimed. Rose did not hear it.
Lizzie made a small sound—a whimper or just the last gasp of air. Then nothing for a long, terrible stretch.
Rose began to sob; her entire body wracked with it. The tears ran hot and wild down her face, soaking Lizzie’s hair. She rocked harder, desperate for any sign.
And then—impossibly—Lizzie coughed. It was weak, but it was real. Another breath followed, then another, and with each one the child reclaimed a little more space in the world.
Rose held her, not daring to move, for fear that the spell would break.
She looked up at Felix, who had begun to cry as well, silent and stunned.
They sat like that, the three of them, until the sky outside the window lightened from black to blue, until the city’s bells began to ring, and until Lizzie’s breathing settled into a slow, steady rhythm that felt like a promise.
Only then did Rose allow herself to believe they might be safe.
She pressed her cheek to Lizzie’s head and whispered, “I will never leave you. Never.”
And in the quiet of the nursery, she felt the words take root, fierce and unbreakable.