“Is it too dangerous to move her to my room?”
“Your room?”
“So that she can be comfortable.”
Augustine shook his head. “The stairs are too narrow. We will take her to the recovery room.”
The recovery room was a bare thing, built for practicality, not comfort. “She deserves better.”
His jaw tightened, but he said, “I will see what can be done in my office, then.”
“Good. Go.”
He stared at her a moment longer, then left.
The woman’s skin was white, not from lack of sun but lack of blood. When Jane touched the top of her belly, she could feel her pulse, thin and fluttering. The door to the operating room opened, and Mr. Lowell stepped inside, his own skin tinged green; he must have been too horrified to be of any help. “We should get her warm,” she said to him. “Can you go up to my room? There’s a heavy housecoat in the wardrobe.”
“She’s likely to bleed again,” Mr. Lowell cautioned.
“I don’t mind,” Jane said.
He looked down at the patient, then nodded. Halfway to the door, he paused and turned to her. “Her name is Abigail Yew. I’m glad you’re back, ma’am.”
And then she was alone with the patient.
Abigail Yew.
She’d gone to school with her, Jane realized with a guilty start. Now that the chaos had slowed, Jane took the time to look at Abigail’s face. Her curling russet hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat, her lips slack and chapped from the ether. They hadn’t been close; Jane hadn’t been close to any of her schoolmates. But they had shared a schoolhouse for several years, and Jane had even attended her wedding just over a year before. True, her invitation had been only a formality, but she knew this girl, and it hadn’t even registered.
No wonder the Cunninghams had left so quickly; they had ample evidence to suggest she wouldn’t have cared to see them off, so wrapped up in her own self, so abstracted from the town.
Jane pulled Abigail’s chemise down, then smoothed the hair from her brow. Abigail moaned, eyes twitching beneath their lids. Her flesh was growing cold, and Jane clasped one of Abigail’s hands in her own, hoping that some measure of warmth would pass between them.
The door creaked as Mr. Lowell returned. She motioned for him to hand over the housecoat and together they maneuvered the girl into the quilted cloth. They tried to keep the coat out of the blood, but there was too much on the table, too much in the room.
“Let’s get her to the office,” Jane said, and Mr. Lowell lifted Abigail into his arms as if she were made of cobwebs. Jane stripped off her bloody apron, then followed them across the hall and into the office. Augustine had made a bed out of two armchairs and the upholstered footstool, and it proved to be just long enough to settle Abigail into, like a nest.
Augustine appeared a moment later with a blanket. Jane helped him tuck it around her still body.
The careful blankness of his face told her everything she needed to know; he thought Abigail looked worse. He thought she was fading.
He was already anticipating this new spirit, come to haunt him.
“Mr. Lowell, once you’ve cleaned the theater, take a walk to clear your head,” Augustine said. “Maybe get yourself a drink.”
“Sad, nasty business,” Mr. Lowell muttered, then disappeared back into the hall.
Jane settled onto the arm of the chair that held Abigail’s head and stroked her brow. Augustine hovered nearby, watching the both of them. He’d shed his apron and scrubbed his hands and face mostly clean, but his sleeves were still wet, and he stank of butchery.
She existed half in the present and half in the day Mr. Renton had died. She had sat in the chair that now cradled Abigail Yew’s head, and she had overheard talk of superstitions in the hallway. But now she knew what they meant. Chalk and salt, and why Augustine had summoned Dr. Nizamiev when he saw the impossible twisting of Mr. Renton’s flesh.
“Was this magic, Augustine?” Her voice came out thin, afraid. “Was there chalk upon her dress?”
“Jane—”
“This was unnatural.” She looked up at him. “Like Mr. Aethridge. Like Mr. Renton. So like Mr. Renton. Another malformation, another thing growing out of place.”
He considered. “I don’t think so. Mr. Yew gave no indication, and such things as this are known. The word is ectopic.”
The thought settled ill upon her, that horrors could come as much from vagaries of the body as from magic. It hardly seemed fair.