Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
Idon’t bother knocking when I get to Hazel’s front door. I always make my way here on Sunday mornings, luxuriating in the serene walk from my cabin to Hazel’s to top off any remedies I know she uses regularly, and today is no different.
I push open the door and walk through the small kitchen of her home before I reach her exam room.
The sound of a baby crying nearly bursts my eardrums as I open the door to a woman lying on the bed in the middle of the room.
Her forehead is glistening with sweat, and she looks exhausted beyond comprehension, her eyes shut against the light flowing in through the open window.
But the thing that draws my eye is the bed linens soaked with blood that is pooling from between her legs.
“Gods,” I mutter.
A young woman I’ve never seen before is pacing the room, holding the newborn baby in her arms, all wrapped up in cloth and screaming.
Hazel must feel my presence because she turns around from where she’s seated at the end of the bed. “Oh, thank the gods you’re here.”
Her voice spurs me into action as I drop my basket on the floor and rip off my cloak. “How can I help?”
“Get me more linens from the cart.” She points to a wooden cart in the corner of the room filled with medical supplies. “I need to stop the bleeding.”
I wheel the entire cart over, leaving it right next to Hazel. She picks up a chunk of the cut cloth, pressing it between the woman’s legs, but it soaks through within seconds.
I’ve never seen blood move so fast.
I watch Hazel as she frantically applies more and more cloth. I can feel her panic consuming the room. It’s suffocating.
But behind that, my mind sparks with an idea. “I might have something that can help.”
She turns to look at me. “Tell me.”
“On my way here, I found ergot.”
“Okay,” she says, getting even more cloth.
“I’ve read that it can be used to help with this kind of thing. It causes the muscles to contract, and it could stop the bleeding.”
“Well, what in the gods are we doing still talking about it, then?”
“It can be dangerous,” I say. “I don’t know how well that theory has been tested.”
Her desperate gaze meets mine. “If we don’t do something, she’s going to die in any case. We have to try.”
I give a quick nod before running out to the kitchen and putting Hazel’s kettle on the stove. Nerves course through me as I swiftly steep the ergot in the boiling water.
I don’t know what I am doing. I’ve never used this before.
I found it only today by chance, passing by the fields on my way here.
I had never even seen the fungus before.
But after reading about it in one of the healers’ journals I got from the library, I picked it up anyhow to study it.
I suppose today is the day we find out, one way or another.
I strain the tea and walk it into the room where the woman on the bed is groaning, and Hazel’s hands are steeped in blood.
The tea spills over the edge of the cup as I walk into the room, my hands anything but steady.
“I need her to sit up,” I say.
“Elara.” Hazel beckons the young woman to help me.
She lays the now quiet baby down in the cot in the corner of the room, and rushes over. Her silky hair the colour of moonlight falls over her shoulder as she props up pillows behind the woman’s back, sitting her further upright.
“What is her name?” I ask.
“Lark.”
“Okay, Lark,” I say to the woman. “I’m going to need you to swallow this down, okay?” Lark groans weakly, her eyes staying firmly shut. “It’s going to help, I promise.” I can feel Hazel’s gaze on me as I say the words, knowing they are nothing more than hope.
I tip the cup to Lark’s lips, but the majority of the liquid spills down her chin.
“Lark, honey,” Hazel says. “Open your mouth.”
“How is she still bleeding?” Elara mutters under her breath, and the look in her eyes is borderline terrified. I don’t have time to figure out who she is, let alone reassure her. Not when I'm barely certain myself how this might end.
I carefully use one hand to pull on Lark’s chin, holding her mouth open as I pour the tea down her throat. She coughs at first, but when I pour another sip into her mouth, she swallows.
A sigh of relief comes from everyone in the room. “Yes, that’s good, Lark,” I say. “Just a bit more.”
Lark finishes the tea with strenuous gulps, and Elara takes one pillow away, allowing her to lie down once more.
“Do you have more linens somewhere?” I ask over my shoulder as I place the teacup on the wooden sideboard beside the door.
“My bed sheets,” Hazel says. “They’re in the cupboard down the hall.”
“Go, Elara,” I say. “Rip them into pieces we can use, okay? From what I can assume, the tea won’t kick in straight away, and she will keep bleeding for now.”
Elara nods and darts out the door, leaving Hazel and I in haunting silence.
“I don’t know how much longer she can bleed before there is nothing left,” Hazel says, and I try to hide my surprise at her helpless admission. The gods only know how long she’s been sitting here at the end of this bed.
“Go,” I say when a tear slides down her cheek. “Go wash up and then fetch me some of the willow bark I dropped off last week. It will help with her fever.” Hazel just looks at me as another tear slides away. “I’ll be fine here,” I assure her.
Elara comes back through the doorway with Hazel’s torn-up bedding in her arms.
I beckon her over and take some of the linens from her arms before meeting Hazel where she sits at the end of the bed.
“Go,” I say once more, moving her bloody hands away from the woman and replacing the soaked linens with fresh ones that I hold in place. “We will be fine.” I look to Elara, and she nods in agreement.
“Okay,” Hazel mutters, her gaze stuck on her blood-soaked hands. “Okay, just for a moment.” She stands almost mindlessly, slowly making her way out of the exam room on unsteady feet.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. But when I taste the metallic tang of blood on my tongue, I blow the breath back out.
“What did you give her?” Elara’s voice seems to echo through the room, like the sound of a twig snapping in a silent forest.
“Ergot,” I say, adding another shred of linen. “It’s a type of fungus that grows on rye, and sometimes wheat. I read about it in an old healer's journal. The idea that it could help in this case is nothing more than a theory. It can actually be fatal—it causes some type of poisoning.”
It seems to be my thing these days—working with plants that can either help you or kill you.
Elara just nods. “I’ve never seen childbirth before,” she says after a moment, her voice no more than a whisper.
“It’s a scary thing,” I say. Having been a witness to multiple births in this line of work, I remember how scary it was the first time I ever watched a life being brought into the world.
“But it doesn’t always look like this.” Her eyes meet mine.
“Sometimes it is worse, but many times it is better, and the mother can hold her baby close right away.”
She nods once more, and I can barely tell if she’s absorbing anything I’m saying or if it’s merely noise.
“Do you know Lark?” I ask.
Her eyes are glazed over as she looks at the woman, pale on the bed. But then she shakes her head, her watery gaze meeting mine. “No, I uh—” She sniffles and wipes at her cheeks. “I’m shadowing Hazel—-I guess I’m her apprentice of sorts. I want to be a healer.”
I blow out a breath. She’s been plunged headfirst into the thick of things today.
“You should hold her,” I say, nodding towards the cot in the corner of the room. “A baby should feel love from its first moments. Show her what that feels like.”
A tear drops from her bright blue eyes, but she wipes it away before it can so much as hit her cheek. She nods once more, but this time it’s more decisive as she walks over to the cot. She reaches her hand into it with admiration filling her gaze.
She smiles as she looks down at the baby, and it’s as if warmth floods the room, that little piece of something good shining over us all.
When I bring my gaze back to Lark, I notice that the top linen is barely stained. In fact, the edges are dry.
“It worked,” I murmur under my breath. Even as I say it, I'm not certain it is true. I lift the linens, examining the site of the bleed. The blood is still moving, but ever so slowly. I press fresh linens to the wound.
“Elara, check her pulse for me.”
Elara moves like the wind, appearing at Lark’s side and pressing two fingers to the side of her neck before holding a finger under her nose.
“She’s breathing, slowly.” I feel sick to my stomach with relief. “Her pulse is weak, but it’s there.”
“It worked,” I say once more, but this time I say it with more conviction.
“It what?” Hazel’s voice breaks into the room.
I turn around to see her in a change of clothes, her hair smoother as if she ran a hand over it, and her clean hands holding a jar of willow bark.
“It worked. At least I think it did.” She walks into the room, places the jar on her cart, and lifts the linens to inspect the wound.
“The bleeding has slowed immensely. If she chews on that willow bark when she’s awake, it’ll calm her fever, and I can make a ginger and hawthorn tea before I leave.
That should help strengthen her pulse and get her heart at a steady beat again. ”
Hazel just stands up and wraps her arms tight around me, a sob slipping from her lungs. “Thank you. I am not certain she would be alive right now if you weren’t here.”
I hug her back, pressing my arms firmly around her.
“You would have found a way.” She wipes her tears as she pulls away.
“Besides, you’ve got a good helper in this one,” I say, looking to Elara.
She has a warm energy about her, and she cares.
That might be the most important thing a healer can possess.