She didn’t respond. Instead, her body loosened in his arms, and another chill swept through him.
“In here.” Kate met him in the doorway, then gestured to the hall that led to the kitchen. “Is it her lungs? Does she have a broken rib?”
“I don’t know. She was conscious in the carriage, though she couldn’t seem to talk. But now...” He glanced at her white face resting limply against his shoulder, and a fresh wave of terror coursed through him.
“Set her down gently. Don’t move her shoulders if you can help it.” Nathan held the kitchen door open, his sleeves rolled up and his hands stained with the dark orange liquid that he and Kate used to disinfect things.
Yuri set her down on the scarred wood as gently as he could manage. She didn’t make a single sound, but that only made everything seem worse. “She was in a lot of pain before she went unconscious.”
Yuri stepped away from the table, and Nathan slid a pair of scissors straight down her nightgown from collar to hem.
Yuri looked away. As a doctor, Nathan might have to examine an exposed woman, but he wasn’t about to look. But the gasps from both Nathan and Kate had his eyes flickering back toward Rosalind for the briefest of seconds.
Just long enough to see that her chest and abdomen were covered in black and blue bruises, and that there was one place near the bottom of her left side where her ribs bulged and then caved inward.
He ran to the waste bin and retched.
“I’m going to kill him,” Bryony said. “I’m going to take one of Mikhail’s guns and march straight up there and?—”
“No, you’re not,” Jonas said. “This is grounds enough for me to arrest him. No killing necessary.”
Yuri wiped his mouth and then straightened, turning to find that every one of his family members had poured into the room, including Jonas.
When had he gotten back from the jail?
Never mind. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that there was a lawman here to record things, and he could also testify in court later, if needed.
His brothers were all like him, trying to find something to look at that wasn’t Rosalind’s black-and-blue body, but the serious looks on their faces told him that they’d glanced at her for long enough to understand what had happened.
Jonas, on the other hand, had stepped even closer to the table and was vigorously writing notes on the pad he always kept tucked into his breast pocket.
Yuri turned to Kate, but she wasn’t flying into action or calling for a long list of medical tools. She’d covered the bottom half of Rosalind’s body with a blanket, but now she was standing next to the table with one hand resting on her stomach and a tear streaking down her cheek.
“Don’t tell me you can’t help. You have to do something, please. You have to try!” Yuri lunged forward, about to grip Kate by the shoulders. Why wasn’t she moving?
Sacha hooked an arm around his waist before he reached her, pulling him backward. “She’s doing everything she knows to do, but she’s not God. She can’t heal everyone.”
Tears scalded his eyes. “I should have forced Rosalind to leave sooner. I shouldn’t have let her wait for a full week. I should have...”
“Stop talking,” Nathan snapped. He was moving at least, even if he was pressing on her misshapen ribs in a way that surely would have caused her pain had she been conscious.
His ministrations weren’t helping, though. Each breath Rosalind drew seemed weaker and weaker.
“Do you know what a needle thoracostomy is, Kate?” Nathan glanced at his wife.
Kate shook her head, then wiped another tear away from her cheek. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“I need the large-bore trocar and cannula from my medical bag.”
“The what?” Kate moved to the medical bag and pulled out a scalpel.
“No. The long needle and— I’ll get it.” He rushed to the bag sitting on the hutch, then started rummaging around, not remotely bothered by the fact he’d just bumped his pregnant wife out of the way. “We know from autopsies that if a rib or multiple ribs get broken, they can puncture the lungs. There’s evidence that the lungs can seal themselves if the puncture isn’t too large. But if air leaks into the pleural cavity, it creates pressure that prevents the lung from expanding.”
“And you think that’s what’s happening to Rosalind?” Kate ran her eyes down Rosalind’s form.
“It’s my best guess. See how the right side of her chest is rising and falling, but the left side is barely moving?” Nathan stepped away from his bag with a chillingly long needle and a small metal tube in his hand. He sterilized them both with carbolic acid, then inserted the needle into the tube. “It’s dangerous. I can’t promise it will work, and the risk of infection is great, but?—”
“Try it,” Yuri croaked. “She’ll die if you don’t, won’t she? She’s dying right now.”
