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 butred 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 otherthan 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, theether 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.
