Hélène sucked in her breath. The first puncture, Joseph imagined. There were footfalls and a long pause, followed by malewhispers. Joseph caught only scattered words that held little meaning for him: “colloid,” “encephaloid,” “muco-serous”—and then, unmistakably, “cancer juice.”
Sloshing in the water basin. Footfalls. Dr. Mortimer spoke distinctly again, as if instructing Dr. Michaels: “The situation of the smaller tumor…”
Another sound from Hélène, halfway between a whimper and cry. Footfalls to the table and microscope again. Murmurs, increasing in volume. The doctors conferred with animation. David looked up from his reading. A glance at the distressing illustration told Joseph it was a medical text, not a prayer book.
Finally, his father stepped around the edge of the screen. He exhaled—and smiled. His hands followed his words so Joseph’s mother would understand too: “The matter is not cancerous. Not in either growth.”
“You mean…” came Hélène’s feeble voice.
“We will remove the tumors only,” Dr. Mortimer affirmed.
Joseph released his breath and praised God for this mercy. His mother wept her thanksgiving, while May shouted hers.
Even as they celebrated, Joseph’s father returned to the other side of the screen. The worst of the surgery was yet to come. Dr. Mortimer promised: “We’ll be as quick as we can, Mrs. Conley.”
Still she cried out and sobbed. Her breaths became more and more ragged.
Liam’s voice broke through her pain: “I bet you cannot recite our sonnet anymore.”
“Of course I can!” she yelled at him.
“Prove it to me then, Ellie.”
Her rendition would never have won an oratory prize. The words were as jagged as her breaths, climbing and falling with a meter entirely separate from Shakespeare’s. The pagan verses invaded Joseph’s prayers even still, desperate and defiant:
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never…”
That was as far as she got before she fainted. Practicality replaced poetry. Joseph’s father informed them that Hélène’s pulse remained strong, but could Liam please fetch the smelling-salts, to have them at hand? Liam must have hesitated to leave Hélène’s side; after a moment, Tessa offered: “I’ll get them.” Joseph heard her flit to the table.
An instrument clattered in a basin. Dr. Mortimer assured them: “We’re nearly finished.” Yet several more minutes passed before they called Joseph, his mother, his nephew, and May around the screen again. “Everything went as planned,” the surgeon declared. “There will be a scar, but I kept it as small as I could.”
Hélène sat slumped in the easy chair, her head resting against one wing. Her right shoulder and arm were bare, and clean bandages encircled the right side of her chest. Joseph tried not to look at the bloody linen surrounding her. Their father untied her ankles and roused her with the smelling-salts.
Hélène sucked in a panicked breath. “Papa?”
“It’s over,ma poulette. It’s all over.”
Her eyes darted to each of them, as if for confirmation.
“Welcome back,” Joseph and Tessa said almost in unison, then blushed.
“You were magnificent, Ellie,” Liam told her. “As brave as any man would have been.”
“How is the pain now?” Joseph’s father asked. “Would you like a little laudanum?”
She nodded without hesitation.
Gently, Liam carried her to their bedchamber.
