Without the supplies and medicines in her bag, and withAunt unable to swallow, this was all she could do—get liquid into Aunt Wilcox to ease her thirst and thin her blood, and hope she didn’t provoke a deadly transfusion reaction.
After picking up a step stool, Nora emptied the cupboards until she found what she needed—a tin of salt and a carton of bicarbonate of soda. Pocketing both, she scooped some water into a kettle and legged it back upstairs, not trusting Aunt Wilcox’s thready pulse enough to leave her more than a few minutes. As soon as Daniel arrived… Nora’s brow knit. Why wasn’t Sarah back?
She’ll be here soon, Nora told herself, and turned up the lamp. She added pinches of salt and bicarbonate to the hot kettle, tasting it, hoping she’d find a good ratio—something close to the subtle saltiness of blood but not injurious to the body—like when shipwrecked sailors tried to slake their thirst with seawater. Prying the window open several inches, she left the mixture to cool in the arctic air, then threw a harried glance at her patient.
If she sat beside her, dripping broth into her mouth and watched her die, no one would blame her. But if she proceeded with this madness, the results would be her fault.
“Stay with me a bit longer,” Nora urged, and turned to rifle through the desk. Her fingers shook in protest.
Eight pens. Some would split, but cut and trimmed, Nora figured she could assemble a tube of at least twenty inches. With the pulse so suppressed, the hydrostatic pressure should be enough to force her makeshift mixture into Aunt Wilcox’s veins. Though how she would manage, with only her own two hands… She glanced at the window but saw only snow,swirling through the square and collecting on the sill of the open window.
“I’m sorry, Horace,” she told the almost empty room; Aunt Wilcox barely counted as another life in this state. “I can’t treat this quietly.”
She inspected the pens, choosing the strongest, and sharpened it to a fine point. Then she trimmed off the remaining feather, leaving a pointed tube about five inches long. The second quill split, but her third attempt yielded another tube, which she slid into the blunt end of the first. The next quill was too narrow, so she cast it aside, and the fourth split.
“You can slice open a trachea and tie off arteries,” Nora reminded herself as she shivered in the current of frozen air from the window. “Pull yourself together.” She wasn’t clumsy. Maybe the pens were too dry. She could have soaked them first.
No time! Just do it, she scolded, and tried again with the last quill, this time successfully.
Tube ready, she inspected the penknife, testing the point with her thumb. Despairingly dull, but it would have to do.
The mixture was lukewarm now. She slammed the window shut and set the kettle on the bedside table, pulling close beside Aunt Wilcox, her hip pressed to the bed. She had a knife, a makeshift tube made of joined feather shafts, and warm water that, to her tongue, seemed about as salty as blood. Aunt had been using a spouted cup. Nora blessed Adams, assuming he’d left it with Sarah to help coax liquid into Aunt. She poured out the cold dregs of beef tea, rinsed the cup, and filled it with the warm mixture before snatching the shallow dish, still stained, that had been used to collect Aunt Wilcox’s blood.
Nora picked up a wizened arm, the skin disconcertingly cool to the touch, and propped it across the shallow basin. Her feeble hopes sank as she compared the shrunken vessels to the width of the first doctored pen. Cursing under her breath, she returned to the desk, snatched up the narrow quill she’d discarded, and whittled it to a fine point.
“Please work,” she whispered. And though she had to squint, bite her tongue, and curse, she managed to fold a minuscule pleat into the wider pen, forcing it into the narrower one.
“Don’t you dare break,” she ordered, then realized the command applied to herself just as well as her makeshift assembly. She surveyed the table. Everything ready, but she tasted the mixture one more time. She was guessing with the solution’s concentration, but this would have to do.
Taking a breath, she positioned the penknife with her right hand and angled her quill tube with the left until her fingers stopped trembling. “All right.” Swiftly, she punctured the median cubital vein where it crossed the hollow of Aunt Wilcox’s elbow, then slid in the tube, letting blood seep into it. It oozed slowly, thick and dark.
When the blood reached the end of the tube, Nora pinched it shut, angling it upward gently, her right hand keeping the point secure in the vein. Quickly now. Blood would seep through the joints of the tube if she didn’t hurry. Freeing her right hand, praying the tube would stay in the vein and keeping her left impossibly still, she reached for the spouted cup.
Not daring to breathe, she released the pinched end and began slowly easing the mixture into the tube. The majority of it spilled down the sides, flowing into the basin and acrossthe bedspread, but enough entered the tube to force the blood inside back. Into the vein, though? Nora watched the basin. Pink swirled into the liquid, and her heart stopped until the color faded.
The blood had slid back into Aunt Wilcox’s body, chased by the solution, which was now trickling into her. If the point had dislodged, the liquid in the basin would be bloodred.
It’s working.
Arms burning from the strain of holding Aunt Wilcox’s arm completely still while grappling with the spouted cup, she manipulated the liquid into the misshapen tube. Torrance had administered a quart of mixture at a time, but Nora still didn’t trust the unorthodox procedure. She didn’t know what she feared most—the solution missing the vein, or flooding inside it. Also, it seemed she’d overestimated her strength. Her shoulders seized, trembling from the strain of keeping both arms aloft. All of it intensified her headache until it throbbed in the back of her skull.
But she didn’t dare pour any faster, fearing what might happen when the solution reached Aunt’s heart. She had no way to know how many spoonfuls she had pushed into her blood. This wasn’t like the controlled press of a syringe. A tremble started in Nora’s back. She couldn’t hold this position much longer.
Pour out another cup’s worth, Nora told herself, biting the inside of her cheek.
A quarter…half… If she had to guess, she’d postulate she’d delivered three ounces into the vein.
She made it to three-quarters, then dropped the cup,pulled the tube from the vein, and pressed a handkerchief to the wound with burning, aching hands. Heart pounding, she sagged to her knees, leaning against the side of the bed. She just had to keep pressure on the wound, keep every drop of hard-fought fluid inside. Clumsy with exhaustion, she tied the arm loosely with the handkerchief. With luck, Aunt Wilcox would stay alive until she had a real syringe, another batch of mixture, and Daniel to help her. With two more hands and proper equipment…
Nora tried to push to her feet, then realized what she’d ignored while pouring the infusion and binding the wound—black clouds blurring the edge of her vision and ringing ears growing louder every second.
Smelling salts. There were some in a silver holder on Aunt Wilcox’s table. Nora fumbled as sparks burst through the darkness veiling her eyes. Seconds ago her arms had burned with pain, but now she couldn’t feel them. Breathing in rapid pants, Nora heard something fall to the floor and realized there was no help for it; she was on her way down, too, and nothing could stop her from slumping in a heap.
You choose the absolute worst times to faint, she berated herself.
Chapter 36
Nora came to herself slowly, dazedly, untangling herself from a maze of colors—scratchy reds, blues, and oranges that smelled of camphor. A carpet. That made no sense.
