Chapter 41 #2
“Broth,” Daniel announced, returning with a tray, his mother close behind.
“Thank the Lord,” Sarah said as she looked between Nora and Aunt Wilcox.
Her mother-in-law had never before looked relieved or happy to see her. Nor had she ever imagined Aunt allied with her cause. Nora wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t still delirious.
“I’ll help Fenella, and you feed Nora,” Daniel’s mother ordered him, her usual authority restored with her clean clothes and combed hair. “I’ve found a plain cook willing to start tomorrow,” she informed Aunt. “And your father is bringing Joan now that the danger is past.”
“No party,” Aunt murmured as Sarah laid out her tray and handed her a fine napkin. “No one from high society will set foot in here for weeks after hearing the foul disease was in this home. How did it get here, Daniel? In Mayfair?”
The rumble of a cleared throat halted them all as they turned toward the doorway. Horace crossed his arms imperiously, his shabby coat straining against his wide shoulders.
“If any of us knew that, we’d be wealthy beyond mention and wiser than Solomon.” He stared at Nora with fathomless eyes. “I’ve never once been sick with cholera, even though I’ve been exposed to thousands of patients. And Nora’s been ill to the brink of death twice now.”
She didn’t miss the tightness in his voice or the exhaustion in his face and limbs.
“I didn’t know I was ill when I decided to come,” she defended herself meekly.
Daniel nodded. “It comes on fast. But you’re still with us, and that’s what matters.”
Horace’s thick white eyebrows shot upward. “Didn’t know? Truly? No headaches? No change in appetite? You didn’t think to anticipate the weather? Did you even check my barometer?”
Nora never checked Horace’s barometer, no matter how many times he admonished her.
“I had other things on my mind—Aunt Wilcox and the patients and—”
“And her pregnancy.” Daniel’s mother set down a china bowl of broth and stepped closer, the shadows of the half-open curtains obscuring her face.
They hadn’t yet mentioned it. Nora tried to swallow, but her dry, burning throat barely allowed it. “Yes,” she admitted.
Sarah wrung her hands. “I don’t know what has gotten into young women these days. Climbing mountains. Trekking through tropics. And you, nursing patients almost to death while carrying my grandchild.” She frowned in confusion but not anger.
“You nearly helped yourself to the grave.” Horace grunted as he took a heavy seat on Nora’s bed, half landing on her leg.
He didn’t ask permission before he pulled at her lip, checking her gum color.
“Still too pale. Why didn’t you get me when she woke?
” he chided as he pinched with his fingers, making it impossible to reply.
“Because you’re an old, tired man.” Mrs. Phipps scowled.
Nora released a breath of laughter. Too many people had crowded into the nursery; her head ached from their movements and voices.
“Confusion?” Horace asked. “Disorientation?”
Nora closed her eyes. “A bit.”
“To be expected,” he mumbled.
In the darkness of her closed eyes, Daniel spoke up. “It’s time to take them both back to private rooms. Aunt can’t rest with us checking on Nora endlessly, and neither is in danger any longer.”
“Anything’s better than this arrangement,” Aunt grumbled. “This room smells damp, and I hardly fit in this tiny bed. Tell Agnes—” The careless sentence broke, and she fell silent, pressing her lips together. After a long moment, she tried again. “I’ll need someone to arrange my things.”
Daniel found words first. “Mother can help you. Would you like to walk or have me carry you?”
Aunt grimaced. “Don’t be foolish, Daniel. I’ll take my cane. Get my wrap.”
***
Fifteen minutes later, Nora was situated in a room with a thick Marseilles quilt stitched with such an intricate pattern of fruits and flourishes that looking at it made her dizzy.
“Your color’s looking better every minute,” Daniel said, sitting gently beside her. “I truly thought I might lose you.”
“Like Miss Pritchard.” Nora let her head delve deeper into the down pillow, as if she could find a spot where the memory didn’t stab so painfully. The cotton pillowcase smelled of lavender sachets. “Your aunt is heartbroken.”
“Not as heartbroken as I’d be if we’d lost you.” Daniel rested his forehead against hers and she closed her eyes, his closeness better than medicine.
The door creaked quietly on its brass hinges, and they both turned to find Horace hovering. “I want to listen to the child.” He stepped over the Turkish rug slowly, his blue eyes clouded with worry.
Nora reached for her stomach. “Horace, it’s too small,” she started, but he’d brought his best stethoscope.
She’d forgotten she was talking to a man who’d once pressed his head so close to a termite mound to hear their movements that he’d gotten one in his ear.
If anyone could hear her little one, it was him.
“Have you felt anything?” he asked as he approached.
Nora shook her head, aware of the worried set to Daniel’s brow.
“I can’t remember the last time I felt it.
But I can’t remember much of anything.” The blur between reality and imagination grew fuzzier by the moment—like a dream receding just after waking.
Horace gave Daniel such a fleeting and guilty look that Nora raised her chin in alarm.
“What?” She tried to read their averted glances. Her muddled head cleared just enough to sense deception. “Why can’t I remember anything properly for two days?”
Mrs. Phipps stood mute in the dark corner of the room, her stillness testament to emotions too large for movement or speech.
Nora’s heart quickened. Had she been entirely comatose? If so, it was all much worse than she’d imagined. Her hope for the baby faded with each second of silence.
Daniel squeezed her fingers in his warm grip. “You were having such severe cramps I couldn’t keep up. Not even with the syringes of Latta’s. Do you remember the first night I was here?”
Every memory came more as a sensation, a burning in her intestines, a sound of wailing. She remembered nothing but red and black bursts of pain and Daniel’s voice hovering somewhere outside time. “Nightmares,” she murmured.
Daniel nodded in somber agreement. “You didn’t sleep at all that night.
You improved immediately after the transfusions, but you’d sink again after an hour or two.
Toward dawn, you had a fit and—” His lip gave an almost imperceptible shake, and he cut off.
He took a breath as if building strength to conclude the story.
“It was Horace’s idea. He got here in the morning and decided what we needed to do. ”
“What?” Nora squinted, trying to read Horace’s cloaked expression.
“Give you ether,” Daniel finished.
“I’ve been anesthetized?” The strange quality to her memories, the lost days, made sense now. “For how long?”
Horace quirked his lips and looked away. Probably hoping she’d give up if he ignored her.
“Horace,” she demanded.
“We kept you on a light dose on and off for the past twenty-seven hours.”
“Good Lord,” she whispered.
A small sob escaped Mrs. Phipps, and she turned to the wall.
“Intermittently,” Horace defended. “Whenever you grew too fitful, we gave another small dose.”
“You could have stopped my heart.”
The strain of the last two nights revealed itself in the red lines of Daniel’s eyes and the new wrinkles etched across his temples.
“It nearly stopped mine.” Unshed tears glossed his lashes.
“But your cholera wasn’t responding to anything other than the Latta’s, and we’d worried we’d watered down your blood too much already—”
“It worked,” Horace pointed out, pink spots appearing on his cheeks. “Your intestines were entirely stripped. But whenever you slept, the evacuations slowed. It gave your body time to recover. You were losing the war, Nora.”
No wonder her head ached. Twenty-seven hours of ether. She might never have a clear thought again. “How often did you have to administer it?”
“Every two to three hours,” Horace answered. “But for one stretch, every thirty minutes.”
They’d all been through hell, then.
Nora caressed her stomach. “So the baby most likely…”
Daniel took her hand, gripping tight.
“There’s been no bleeding at all,” Horace reassured her. “That’s the best sign. But I’d like to listen.”
Daniel grasped her hand, tight enough to pinch her emerald wedding ring against her weak fingers, the stony promise on her flesh more consoling than uncomfortable.
She nodded permission, and Horace undid several buttons on Nora’s shift to place the stethoscope on her bare skin.
Her belly bulged even more visibly since losing so much weight the last two days.
She closed her eyes, seeking inwardly for the minute sensations of movement as Horace repositioned the stethoscope.
“Your heart is still too fast, Nora. Ninety beats per minute when you’ve done nothing but sleep. ”
She inhaled through her nose, as still and quiet as possible. “I’m just worried.”
“It was racing so fast we worried it would stop. Usually, the ether suppresses the heart too much, but for you it was barely enough,” Daniel revealed, the horrors she’d slept through creeping into detail.
“When I first arrived, you spoke coherently. And for a bit after the first infusion. But a few hours later, I thought you wouldn’t make it. ”
“No more talking,” Horace ordered, shaking the stethoscope at them.
As he pressed his ear to the hollow instrument, his expression slipped far away, beyond the walls of the room and the glistening icicles dressing the window, beyond the reach of cholera or even the grave.
Nora knew that look like she knew her own face in the mirror.
He was searching for sound, for movement, for discovery, for life.
“Anything?” Daniel finally whispered.
Horace came back to them, landing his troubled blue eyes on Nora’s. “Not yet. But that doesn’t mean—”
“I know.” She knew precisely everything it meant and didn’t mean. In this strange region of waiting, her child was neither dead nor alive, neither lost nor found. Nothing, until they knew for certain.
“But you survived.” Horace lowered his brow, as if to rebuke her trembling lip.
She nodded bravely, pretending a courage she didn’t feel.
“Did I do the right thing? Using the solution?”
Horace put the stethoscope in his pocket, the wooden instrument projecting absurdly from his coat. “It didn’t kill you. That’s one thing. I’d never have dared pour anything into your veins.”
“But is it viable?” Professional curiosity nudged against the threatening grief.
“Seems to be,” he conceded. “But advisable?” He frowned.
“Questionable, I think. Can’t build a protocol from only two patients.
” His face softened, his uneven whiskers climbing down his aging jaw.
“But it appears to have given you just enough time. The maid was the only one who didn’t get the infusion, and she’s quite dead. ”
Nora ignored his insensitive assessment. “And the ether?” she asked. “Would you repeat that?”
Daniel stood and turned away, as if the memories and her eager questions were too much to bear.
“Desperate measures, my dear,” Horace concluded, also observing Daniel’s strained patience. “It’s time for you to eat and sleep a real sleep. Not a drugged one.”
“But, Horace,” she insisted, “our experiments worked.” His with the ether, and hers with the transfusion. “You saved me again.”
He frowned at her the way he used to when she was being precocious as a child.
He sighed and rubbed his resigned eyes. “Considering you prescribed the Latta’s, this time, child, you largely saved yourself.
” He cleared his throat. “You are no longer in danger, so I’m taking the carriage home to help the midwives overnight. But I’ll be back in the morning.”
The world froze like a painting as Horace paused in the middle of the room, a thoughtful shadow of a smile in his eyes, each line of his face suddenly as familiar as if she were the one who had sketched them into place.
She saw for the first time the shapeless state of his old jacket, hardly more than a dishrag with lapels and pockets. And she saw the man within it—his clenched hands hiding brilliant fingers that knew life and death by mere touch. Grief and gratitude burned through her frozen limbs.
“I love you,” Nora whispered.
Horace’s face quirked, his eyes tightening at the corners before he nodded gently.
A tear dropped like a hot cinder on her cheek as Horace lumbered away quietly.
Daniel wiped her tear away, blinking back his own. “If we have lost our child—”
“We don’t know for certain. So let’s not speak of it yet,” Nora finished. The necessary words and thoughts were too heavy for hefting.
Don’t think of it now.
Daniel put his head down on the thick blanket covering her stomach. This was the closest he’d ever come to their baby. She’d known the child from the inside, but he only from a distance.
“But I didn’t lose you.” He sighed, the words filled with something too much for words, like holding a mountain in his hand. Impossible.
“I thought I’d be immune.” She murmured her awkward apology and touched his uneasy brow. “It was horrible for you, wasn’t it?”
Daniel hated the question. She could tell by his silence. And that was how she knew…
“It was far too close, Nora. Are we fools to do this?” He turned toward her with a plea in his eyes. “Do we carry on? How can I let you go back into such danger?”
Nora pictured Magdalena and knew what her mentor would say. If only she could be as convincing. She dipped into a deep well at the center of herself, drawing up a bucket of unshakable certainty.
“Whatever comes, we keep our post. We didn’t choose this work because we were curious or restless. We are called to this.” Nora ran her thumb over his warm hand. “We stay.”