It was cold and solid beneath her, and it seemed to sap every ounce of strength and warmth from her. Still she pushed and thrashed, trying to sit up. Just as she straightened, her head spinning, he fitted the ether cloth over her face again. She arched against him in struggle, but he held her down until, once more, the sweet gas slackened her limbs.
It was a small mercy, or a sickening curse, that the ether now removed the edge from her panic. Her head lolled upon the stone, and she saw no figures waiting for her at the margins. Elodie was absent, and Jane was stretched out in her place.
Had it always been destined to come to this?
Augustine set his bag on Elodie’s chair, and she watched, blearily, as he withdrew the bleeding kit and its scarificator. He took hold of her arm, pulling it out over the floor.
“Stop. Augustine, stop,” she begged.
She tried to wiggle her toes. They responded only sluggishly as Augustine pushed up her sleeve. He was gentle but firm, a perfect physician as always. His fear and worry had been overtaken by his training, and he looked at peace as he pressed the scarificator into the vein that pulsed at the inside of her elbow. Its springs jumped to action and she let out a weak whimper as it sliced three perfect lines into her skin. Blood, hot and thick, dripped with a stomach-twisting patter against the stone below her.
Her blood.
She could smell it. She could feel blood beneath her, covering the plinth, covering Augustine. Elodie, stretched out where Jane was now, chest split in two.
“It would be easier if you were upright,” Augustine murmured, “but I cannot trust you to stay still without the ether, and the ether might lead you to fall.”
“Augustine, please,” she whispered. Her toes moved with slightly more force this time. “There’s a carriage—outside, if we can get the door open—we can go to the surgery—”
Augustine set the device aside and circled around to her head to place his fingers against her pulse. “No time, Jane, and the cold of the crypt is best. The surest treatment for this fever is to weaken you. You are the host, and it thrives inside of you when you are strong. That is why it takes the best of us. It takes the hearty dockworkers, the soldiers, the athletes, and it took Elodie. Jane, you are so strong. It’s no wonder that the fever chose you for its host.”
“I am not ill,” she said, staring up into his face.
He stroked a lock of her hair, pain rising in his eyes. “Men will return to work, thinking themselves entirely recovered. Then the vomiting begins, and they drop dead before noon.” He hesitated, then bowed down, placing his forehead against hers. “Please understand. Before I left for the hunting lodge, Elodie had small symptoms. She was dead within the week.”
His shame was like a physical weight, pressing down into both of them. Shame. It dripped from Augustine’s pores, coloring everything he did.
She clung to the thought. It felt important. It felt so, so important, but as the blood continued to flow from her veins, it grew harder and harder to think.
From his bag, he pulled tools she did not remember cleaning. Clamps, saws, things to break a body open. “Just in case,” he said, when he caught her staring. “I must be ready.”
Ready to take her heart in his hand, so that she could die screaming.
“No,” she said. “No, no, I am not ill. I—I—Do not hurt me, please—”
“We have caught it early, my love. I am only being thorough. Though the next step will be even less pleasant, I’m afraid,” he said. “Calomel, to purge your body.”
No. Any more, and she would succumb. She focused on the doorway. No figures lurked there, blocking her exit. She needed to get up, to flee. She had to get upstairs and put the crypt door between them.
She pressed her uninjured arm to the table and pushed with all her might, tightening her legs at the same time. Slowly, she sat up. Augustine was searching in his case, the glass of various vials clinking loudly against one another. The noise must have muffled her ragged breathing as she pressed her free hand against the oozing wounds in her arm, swung her legs over the table, and staggered to her feet.
She had nearly made it to the stairs when Augustine found the bottle of calomel and turned back toward her. He froze, staring at her, then swore and put the bottle down, rushing her. Jane screamed and threw herself up the stairs, staggering through the doorway above. She grabbed onto the heavy door and slammed it shut, leaning against it as she fumbled with the locks. Keys, keys. She had no keys. The bracket the padlock hung from was broken.