“Shouldn’t you be with Mr. Yew?” she asked, to push aside her dark thoughts.
“He left when I informed him we would need to operate,” Augustine said.
The words refused to process, and Jane lifted her gaze to his, brow creased. “Left?”
“Yes. He left. He didn’t say if he’d return.”
“She needs him,” she said. “She needs somebody.” One anchor, in all the world—was that so much to ask?
Augustine’s expression turned helpless. He looked down at his feet, as if unsure how to answer.
“She will have me,” Jane declared, and found Abigail’s hand beneath the blankets. She took it in hers, twining their fingers together.
“It will take several days—maybe weeks—for her to recover,” he said.
“So be it. I have nowhere else to go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ABIGAIL YEW SURVIVED the first three hours.
When Mr. Lowell returned, he made up warm broth with the leftover fish heads from the previous night’s dinner. Jane fed it to the insensate woman drop by drop, focusing only on the spout of the bowl, on Abigail’s pale lips, on the flutter of her throat as Jane coaxed her to swallow. Augustine entered the room every half hour to take the woman’s pulse, but he said nothing to her each time, and Jane was thankful for his silence.
Sitting with Abigail’s body felt something like a ritual, Jane’s stronger breathing timed to Abigail’s own as if their parallelism could keep the woman alive. It was tempting to think of Dr. Nizamiev’s lectures, to know that Abigail would recover and truly believe that meant she would, but Jane held fast against it.
There was nothing good that could come of it. Better to focus on realities only, no matter how terrible.
Patients came and went. Augustine met them in the kitchen and left her and Abigail to rest. She heard his unsteady gait in the hall. She heard his groan once his patients left and his door closed. The day wore on, and her charge rallied even as her husband began to fail. His hands trembled as he helped her change Abigail’s bandages, as he checked the incision sites and declared them well, as he took her pulse and conceded that it had not faded any further.
She left Abigail’s side only to change the hastily rigged bedpan and to relieve herself; she met Augustine by chance in the hallway on her way back from the latter. They regarded each other in silence.
He looked ill. He looked more than ill.
“Go back to Lindridge Hall tonight,” Jane said.
Augustine grimaced. “Mrs. Yew—”
“I have accepted responsibility for her,” Jane said. “You need rest. There will be more patients tomorrow.” What would happen if he retched in the operating theater? If he collapsed in the compounding room? He was no good to anybody like this. Larrenton needed its surgeon.
Augustine looked as if he were about to argue.
“Are you afraid, then?” Jane asked.
He frowned. “Afraid?”
“Of the spirits. Of seeing Elodie.”
By the way he paled, he hadn’t imagined the possibility yet. Or, perhaps, a fever was come upon him.
“No,” he said. “But leaving you alone seems…” He trailed off, uncertain, hand fisted at his side. He didn’t meet her eyes.
“Our arrangement,” she said, “is that I will sleep here, and you there. Right?”
Augustine nodded, and Jane left him to gather his things for his journey.
He departed without saying farewell, and Jane was glad of it. Mr. Lowell brought her dinner and more broth for Abigail, then shut up the surgery for the night. Jane drew the curtains on the office windows and made herself a bed of cushions stolen from other rooms. She ate slowly, then read aloud. The empty surgery folded its arms around them, Abigail’s steadied breathing soothing and even.
She was alone, and it was good. It was safe, and simple, and real. She slept deeply despite herself, and when she awoke with the dawn, Abigail still lived.
Jane bathed and dressed once Mr. Lowell arrived to open up the surgery, and she was settled once more on the arm of the chair that supported Abigail’s head when Augustine arrived from Lindridge Hall. She looked up as he entered the office, and he searched her face a moment before coming to the makeshift bedside.
She watched him as he took Abigail’s pulse, checked her bandages, her incisions, the pallor below her fingernails, searching for signs that he was healthier today, as well. His color seemed better. Below them, Abigail stirred, murmuring in her sleep, whimpering with the first signs of pain she had given in a day.