“It was so fast.” For a moment, Sarah’s lips parted, but weariness washed over her, and she closed her mouth.
“Are you certain it’s cholera?” Nora prodded gently. It was progressing speedily enough, but there were other quick illnesses.
“Without a doubt,” Sarah stated. “Adams confirmed it. He stayed for hours last night.”
“What about the blood?” Nora demanded, stroking a finger across a stain on Sarah’s sleeve. “If the effluvium is bloody, that’s most likely not cholera.”
Sarah looked over her crumpled dress.
“That’s not effluvia. That’s from helping Dr. Adams. He told me to hold the basin.”
“He bled her?” Cold crawled the length of Nora’s limbs. For a moment, she couldn’t speak. Horace had tried bleeding cholera patients initially, seventeen years ago in the epidemic that had killed her family, but soon abandoned it, telling her his patients were so painfully thirsty he simply didn’t have the heart to keep on with it. Bleeding might help other things, but it increased thirst. “Show me,” Nora said, already in motion again.
Sarah led her into a dim room lit with a low, fidgety fire in the grate. An ornate bed cradled a sleeping lady.
Daniel’s aunt was a commanding woman. When Nora last saw her, she’d been perfectly turned out in jet beads and taffetasilk, as straight as a bayonet and fierce as a general. The body before her was shrunken, with hollow eyes and skin the color of a winter sky. Even her hair seemed a different color, dull and drained.
“She screamed most of the morning yesterday,” Sarah said. “The cramps in her legs… The bloodletting eased that, at least.”
Nora thinned her lips. “How long ago was it? And how much?”
“Yesterday at seven,” Sarah said. “When it didn’t halt the evacuations of her bowels—”
Or stop the shite, according to Horace, who disliked euphemisms. Lately, even Mrs. Phipps was too tired to reprove him.
Focus, Nora told herself.
“Dr. Adams came back this morning and gave me opium to keep her comfortable, but he said barring a miracle, she would pass today.” Sarah’s lips trembled and she pressed a handkerchief to her mouth.
“And you’re alone,” Nora stated with a tongue almost too heavy to lift. Daniel’s mother was not built for such a crisis.
Sarah’s lips wobbled, threatening to break her fragile resolve.
Nora looked again at the bed and the wasted woman in it, taking inventory of the signs of imminent death and the paltry offerings available on the nightstand: blue pills, calomel, a glass of water that probably contained some grains of opium.
“I’m here now,” she muttered, doubtful that would improve the outlook.
She’d brought nothing with her. No medicines. No stethoscope. She’d come for a social call, planning only to say herpiece and hopefully patch together some kind of truce for Daniel’s sake.
“What about Aunt’s maid? What’s her name?”
“Agnes Pritchard. She’s in the room next door. She’s been with Fenella for fifty years. I was just with her. She’s still able to walk, but—”
“Give her tea. As much as she’ll take,” Nora commanded. She would check on Agnes next. “And summon a messenger boy.” On a frozen day like this, they’d be scarce. Sarah might not find one in the square, but if she walked to the next street or watched for one from the drawing room window… “We must send for Daniel. And supplies.”
“Dr. Adams said to give them both beef tea,” Sarah said on a fresh sob. “But she can’t even swallow.”
At least he’d been right about that.Probably copying Horace’s methods.“Let’s try this,” Nora said, pulling out a clean handkerchief and dipping it in the cup. The liquid had cooled, but at this point, the temperature hardly mattered. Ignoring the amber drips running down her hand, Nora pushed the soaked cambric between Aunt Wilcox’s withered lips. They closed, slowly, feebly, barely managing that most basic action: an infant’s instinct to suck.
“Where does Dr. Adams live?” Nora asked. If he was close by, perhaps she could send Sarah to borrow a rubber drinking tube and a syringe. If she waited for Daniel and her instruments to arrive from Great Queen Street, it might be too late.
“Hampstead Row?” Sarah worried her fingers together. “I’m not certain. Perhaps Havers?”
Nora shook her head. No help there, then. And she didn’treally need him, just his tools. “Never mind. We need to work now.”
Sarah looked at her blankly.
“Are there any doctors who live nearby?”
