He charged forward, dropping to the floor beside her, shedding capes and tossing aside the preposterous fur hat that made him look like a hussar. Or a Russian. “What’s happened? What are you saying?”
“Miss Pritchard needs something to drink,” she told him. “And I have cholera.”
Daniel gripped the lantern and held it close to her face, the glare piercing her aching head.
“Your color is dreadful.” His eyes strayed to the detritus scattered across the floor: matches, broken quills, the overturned basin and spilled bicarbonate. “What’s all this?” he asked, lifting her to a sitting position.
“I gave Aunt a transfusion of Latta’s solution.” She stopped and closed her eyes, surprised by the violent nausea. “She’s still alive. I can’t get to Miss Pritchard.”
His hands moved, testing the temperature of her forehead and finding the pulse at her neck. He moved closer, staring into her eyes.
“You’re making me nervous,” Nora said.
He scoffed a humorless laugh. “I’mscaringyou?” His arms tightened, and he gathered her up. “How long have you been ill?”
She leaned into his straining chest, sorry for the burden of her weight as he grimaced. She had no idea whether it was past midnight. “What day is it?”
He only huffed in answer. “Never mind. We need to get you in clean clothes and feed you some broth.” He bore her along the black hallway. All she wanted to do was sink back into unconsciousness, where the blackness numbed the agony of the cramps. As he lowered her into chilly sheets, she rolled to her side, cradling her spasming body.
Daniel whispered some prayer or plea she couldn’t understand. She pushed one hand forward on the sheets to find him, but he was gone.
Chapter 40
He should have brought Horace. It would have taken longer to get here, but now he had three patients—four, when he counted his own child—sinking fast and a kitchen two stories away. He needed to focus like never before. As Daniel raced through the frozen house, every heavy exhalation was an entreaty for his wife. He’d never seen the kitchen or basement rooms, and he navigated them crudely, opening doors to storerooms and offices, before he found the pantry.
He cursed when he reached the stove, cool to the touch, the fire long spent. Boiling a pan of water would take far too long. He lit the coals anyway with trembling hands and raided the wine cellar. He could start with that. He loaded a basket with bottles, coal, towels, and linen, and ran back upstairs. Halfway through the front hall, he struck an ornate side table in the darkness and sent it sprawling and splintering. He’d never cared less for any object. He ignored the sharp throb in his shin and continued his blind sprint.
His heart demanded he return at once to Nora, but intellect ordered him to tend the older women first. Nora had been able to speak coherently, which meant she wasn’t in the final stages. Yet.
Dropping his armful onto the bedroom carpet, he hurried to Aunt Wilcox’s side.Ashen skin, sunken cheeks.Danielthumbed up her eyelids to check her pupils. They responded sluggishly to the light.
“Aunt, it’s Daniel. I’m here.” He pulled his tube from his bag and fitted it into her mouth, replacing the wet handkerchief. After a brief tussle with a corkscrew, he opened the wine and attached a funnel to the tube, his toes pressing impatiently against the soles of his shoes. Everything with cholera took painstaking time.
He inhaled as he forced his hands to mete out a trickle of wine. His aunt managed to swallow, a bitter pucker to her lips.
Must be a bad vintage.
He waited until he was certain she’d had at least four ounces and the wine began to dribble out the corner of her mouth before he removed the tube. He took up the lantern and followed its wavering glow into the hallway, his glance ricocheting between Nora’s doorway and Pritchard’s. But reason had fallen through the anxious chasm in his brain. He needed to see Nora. He promised himself only a reassuring glance, but the skin of her cheeks was dry, crepe-like, as gray as the wings of a dead moth. He coaxed several ounces of wine into her mouth and raised his voice until she finally fluttered her eyelids open, pain and exhaustion in the vacant recesses.
“You can go back to sleep. I’ll keep giving you liquids,” he promised.
Her eyes closed instantly, but her mouth cracked open. “Latta’s,” she whispered.
He kissed her forehead with frantic force. “Yes, Latta’s,” he agreed, though he had no idea who Latta was. He only knew she needed to rest and not worry.
***
Now for Miss Pritchard, the woman who’d always been his aunt’s shadow. Silent, brooding, forever peering at Daniel with disapproval whenever he didn’t give his aunt due deference—which, at this crucial moment, he worried had been far too often. He creaked open her door to find an all-encompassing blackness. The lamp had burned out. A cloying stillness clung to the heavy air. Daniel raised his own lamp, throwing shadows across the monstrous bedstead. Not a rustle or whimper like those he’d grown accustomed to hearing from so many suffering patients.
“Miss Pritchard?” he asked slowly, inching forward. It took two more steps before he could discern her small shape in the twisted covers.
He moved the lamp toward her head and closed his eyes. No need to take her pulse. Her dried flesh was frozen in a mask of death, gray and pitiful. Miss Pritchard’s prim mouth now gaped open as if begging for a last drop of water, her once-stern cheeks collapsed and creased in surrender.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. He could never tell Aunt or Nora that Miss Pritchard had suffered silently and alone. Neither would forgive herself, even though they’d each been battling the same demon disease. Daniel gently closed her mouth, the leathery skin strange to the touch—just like all the cholera cadavers he’d handled. He didn’t need this jarring evidence to know Nora, his child, and his aunt teetered at the precipice.
He shook his head and latched the heavy door behind him.
Only three patients now.
