8. Chapter 6 #4
“Mein Gott,” Dr. Murnau said, sucking in a breath.
She looked up at the doctor, frowning. “What’s the matter? She looks better than she has in days.” Or ever.
“She’s dead, Miss Blythe.”
Caroline looked dumbly between the doctor and Nelly, not grasping what he said.
Death didn’t look this good. She had seen a dead body, her Granda’s at his wake.
His features were there, but what made him him was missing.
She wouldn’t have recognized him if she had passed him on the street. Nelly didn’t look like that.
“She can’t be. The dead don’t look like that.”
The doctor picked up her wrist, holding it for a few moments before setting down her hand and opening his medical bag.
“I know this is quite shocking, but unfortunately this young woman has passed. She has no pulse.”
Nelly’s chest hadn’t moved the entire time they were in the room. Neither had her eyes fluttered or anything else that would suggest she was as alive as she looked. She ran the back of her fingers over Nelly’s cheek, finding her face cold despite the flush on her cheeks.
“How is this possible?”
“That is what we need to find out.”
The doctor pulled out his stethoscope, placing the buds in his ears and the metal bell on Nelly’s chest.
“What do you hear?” She hoped he was wrong. That Nelly’s pulse was faint, but not gone.
“Nothing. Would you like to hear for yourself?”
Caroline nodded, and he handed her the instrument.
It pinched her ears, and she couldn’t understand how he could wear it for more than a few moments.
She heard nothing. When she picked it up and tried her own chest, she heard the steady beat of her heart, but also the sound of her lungs as she took a breath. It was uncanny, but fascinating.
“She’s dead,” Caroline whispered as she handed the doctor his stethoscope.
“I am sorry, Miss Blythe. It never gets any easier. I’m sure she was a good and virtuous woman. May her soul be at peace.”
Caroline nodded; his words were prettier than she could achieve at the moment. “Do you think it was plague?”
“I’m not sure. Sometimes plague appears like this, but you said there was no cough?”
Caroline shook her head. “She wheezed a little, but there was no cough.”
The doctor frowned as he continued his examination.
The quilt was pulled up to her chin, and he slowly peeled it back, dropping the edge of the blanket just over the swells of her breasts.
Her shift was ringed yellow around the collar from sweat.
The doctor tugged aside the collar to expose her collarbone.
Caroline nearly called out to stop him, but it wasn’t as if Nelly’s modesty was their biggest concern.
Besides, she knew exactly what he was looking for.
Just beneath her collarbone were two puncture wounds. They were in the same place as her father’s, but these looked different. They weren’t scabbed over; these wounds were fully healed. The scars were raised, but matched the color of the surrounding skin.
“I need to return to the hospital. I’ll send the undertaker to you when I get back to town.”
“Do you know what this is? Or even how we can treat it?”
Murnau removed his glasses and cleaned the lenses with his handkerchief. “I have some theories, but I would like to reference a few books before I say anything.”
Annoyance bubbled up inside her, and it made her want to snap at the doctor. It was so easy for the doctor to be cryptic when it wasn’t his friends or family at risk. When they weren’t standing over the dead body of someone he used to laugh with.
“That’s it? You have no better treatment or cure? I brought you here to help us, but you don’t have any answers.”
The doctor sighed. “I wish I had more comfort for you. Right now I only have my suspicions, and I can only pray it isn’t what I fear most.”
“Plague?” Caroline could think of nothing worse.
“No, plague is treatable. What I fear is beyond thought or comprehension. It is not something accepted in this side of the world, though I grew up with the cautionary tales.” Dr. Murnau scrubbed his face with his hand.
He wasn’t terribly old; he looked to be at least a few years younger than her father, but at that moment he looked unimaginably old.
As if even the thought of this burden aged him.
“I’m not sure if it will help your father or not, but send him away.
Away from this house, this village. Get him as far from here as you can while there’s still daylight, and you may be able to help him. ”
Questions were on the tip of Caroline’s tongue, but she saved them as the doctor looked so serious that she could not doubt a single word he said. She would get her parents out of there, but she would stay behind with Valeria. To make sure nothing got worse.
“How can I be of assistance?”
“You won’t leave with your parents?” He asked with a raised brow.
“No, this is my home too.”
Whether it be plague or the doctor’s greatest fear, she would help him vanquish it.
“Then I welcome you into the fight of whatever evil has befallen our village.”