Felipe stayed the entire time the doctor examined her, not caring that it was improper.
Franny gasped as the doctor’s hands sank into her belly, and the stave wrapped round Felipe’s chest tightened. Each touch of the doctor’s pushed a noise from her, until Felipe felt as if his lungs were battling him in his efforts to breathe. Finally, when he was about to snap at the doctor, Blackmun straightened.
“Come out into the hall with me,” he ordered Felipe.
He set his jaw. “No. Franny’s not a child. It concerns her, so she should hear it too.” The gratitude that flashed from her gaze nearly undid him.
Blackmun’s mouth curled. “Very well.” It was obvious he thought them a pair utterly beyond his help.
Just then, Catarina burst into the bedroom, slightly out of breath and back much sooner than Felipe had expected. “Met Luke on the way,” she explained. “He’ll fetch Agnes and Lily. Raced back as quick as I could.”
The doctor’s face pinched at the sight of her, but he didn’t order her out. “Well,” he said, rather abstractedly, “if it’s what I think it is, the pregnancy is not where it should be.”
Felipe frowned, not understanding. “Where else could it be?” The doctor’s tone suggested it was nothing serious, but Felipe wasn’t fooled.
“The baby is in the tube and not the womb,” Blackmun explained.
Tube? People didn’t have tubes. Franny wasn’t a pump. “So?” What little faith he had in the doctor was rapidly eroding.
“So,” Blackmun said pointedly, “as the baby grows, it will rupture the tube.”
Rupture. That was a bad word. A painful word.
A fatal word.
Rupture. The cadence of his pulse echoed the word in his ear.
No. A rupture wasn’t fatal, he reminded himself. It was a break. And broken things could be repaired. He took a slow breath, his ribs burning as they expanded. “And then?”
The doctor’s gaze flicked away for the barest moment. “Sepsis sets in. And she dies.”
He could not have possibly heard that correctly. Felipe felt as if the doctor had kicked his feet out from under him and then stomped on his chest. His pulse took up that chant again, rupture, rupture, rupture, until it was all he could hear, until it no longer had meaning.
“Pardon?” Franny said. As if the doctor hadn’t just given her a death sentence.
“This is why I don’t like discussing these things in front of the patient,” Blackmun muttered. Then more loudly, “Blood poisoning will set in and you will die. If it is what I think it is.”
Felipe’s lungs entirely stopped working. All of him seemed to stop working.
You will die.
He couldn’t have heard that right. Any more than he could have heard the word rupture.
Except somehow his heart kept repeating that nonsense word, until he was afraid to open his mouth for fear only that would spill out.
She’d promised.
Well, this was what fate thought of promises. It came after them with those mortal shears.
“Oh.” Franny blinked, her fingers pinching at the quilt covering her. “How likely is it that you’re wrong?” Her tone said she thought it very likely.
So brave, his wife. Felipe wanted to howl in fury, then toss the doctor right out on his ass. He took his cue from Franny, clenching and unclenching his fists instead.
The doctor shrugged. “I would guess the tube has already ruptured, given the amount of pain. Fever will set in. You’ll have pain in your shoulder—that usually happens in the end stages.”
“I see.” She was so still, only her throat working as she swallowed that information down. God, he wished for anything from her besides this. Yelling, flailing, protests—anything but this quiet acceptance.
“She’s bleeding.” The words were a hiss, his throat too tight for anything like normal speech. “Could she be losing the baby?”
Please let it only be that. He sent up the unuttered prayer as he waited for the doctor’s answer. Please let it only be that, and he would never touch her again—he would wrap her in cotton and set her high on a shelf, forever.
Blackmun pondered. “Possibly. But the intensity of the pain, the fact that it is only on one side, points to something more than simply a miscarriage.”
Felipe tried to recall all the times the doctor had been wrong before. He’d told Lars Olsen his heart would stop within six months, and here it was five years later with Olsen still around.
And when Luke Crivelli had been snake-bit on the leg, Dr. Blackmun had been all ready to take it right off. Luke’d hollered loud enough to dissuade the doctor, and now he only had a slight limp.
Sometimes, Blackmun was wrong.
But when Hector Whitman had been kicked in the head by a mule, Blackmun had said the man would be dead by morning. And he was.
Sometimes, Blackmun was right.
“Is there anything to be done?” Catarina asked, her voice high and sharp as it dragged across his ears. “Some surgery?”
“No.” Flat, bald. Hopeless. Useless as the doctor himself.
Felipe felt something within him snap. His heart, most likely.
“Get out.” He hardly recognized himself. Was that him, the man who was always kind, polite, always ready to lend a hand, really throwing out a man he’d known most of his life?
It seemed it was.
He marched Dr. Blackmun to the door for the second time in as many days, uncaring how rough he was with the older man.
“You can send the bill later,” he growled as he slammed the door in the doctor’s bewhiskered face.
He marched back into the bedroom to find both sisters staring at him.
“Felipe,” Franny said in a bracing voice, “I am not going to die.”
He turned away from her, wanting to curl around the ache tearing through him. She had promised, but what were promises against death? She would die and he’d be alone, again, forever—
“You can avoid my gaze all you like,” she said, “but you can’t avoid my voice. That doctor is wrong. Yes, it hurts. Yes, I’m tired, and sick to my stomach. But I am nowhere near death.” Her voice was strong, ringing, but he wasn’t convinced. He refused to turn, to face her. “Don’t you think I would know if I were that ill?”
What the hell was that supposed to mean? Did she think death would stop to shake her hand before it took her? His parents hadn’t thought they were sick enough to die, hadn’t thought his sisters were sick enough to die.
And yet they all had.
If force of will could keep death at bay, they would be here. No matter how strong Franny’s will was—and it was strong, he would give her that—it could not stop death.
“Felipe. Look at me.”
The motion tore at him, like claws pulling across his flesh, but he turned to her.
She was sitting up, her legs swung over the side of the bed. Pale as a ghost, her hair matted, her arms shaking, but still trying to rise.
She better not get up.
But of course, she didn’t give a damn what he thought she should do. She stood anyway, swaying on her feet. He dashed over to catch her before she fell. He caught her just in time.
This time.
If she really was dying, he couldn’t catch her then—
He shoved that thought away, let his anger take hold. “You little idiot,” he snarled, “what are you trying to prove?”
Catarina’s face was twisted with worry. “I think Felipe is right, Franny. You should probably stay in bed.”
Franny sent her sister a fierce scowl. “I am. Not. Dying. The pain isn’t getting worse. It’s not in my shoulder. This is nothing.”
But as she said it, she sagged more heavily against him. He tightened his arms around her, took more of her weight. “You can hardly stand upright,” he said. That last bit fractured as it left his lips.
“I promised,” she said. He could almost believe what was written in her eyes, so fervent were they.
Catarina shook her head. “Fine, you’re not sick unto death. But you should still be in bed.” Her voice wobbled. “You’ve proved your point; now lie back down.”
Franny made no sign she’d heard, only held him with those copper eyes.
“I believe you,” he said finally. What other choice did he have? He loved her, so he had to believe her. Because if she were wrong and Blackmun were right… All of him shuddered hard under that thought.
He’d spent half his life watching her—how could he live the other half without her? He’d never survive. He’d go mad.
So he had to believe.
He squeezed her tightly to him, needing to feel her against him, still solid and strong and of this world. He breathed in her scent, dimmed as it was by her time in the house. He’d never before realized how much the outdoors had clung to her.
She set her head against his chest as he swept her into his arms and laid her back in the bed. “I believe you,” he repeated. “But you still need to rest.”
She smiled up at him. She really did look better than she had last night, her expression less green. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps this was all nothing more than a severe case of dyspepsia.
Please God, let that be true.
“I’m hungry,” Franny announced. “Could you bring me a plate? And then I’ll sleep some more. I ought to be right as rain when I wake up.”
He took a deep breath. He had to trust her. Should she… leave, only after would he go mad. “All right,” he said, resolved to be as tranquil as she. “Anything in particular you want?”
She shook her head.
Once he and Catarina were in the kitchen, he let loose all the insecurities tearing blackly at his gut.
“Do you think Blackmun could be right?” he asked, his voice thin with desperation. Please say no. Lie to me, if you have to.
Her brows drew together. “He said the same thing when Deborah Thornton fell ill like this.”
Frost crystallized in Felipe’s veins.
“Deborah died,” he whispered. She was in the cold, cold ground, just like his family.
“He could be wrong,” Catarina said, even as she blinked away tears.
“I hope he is.” He rubbed a hand across his face and tried again to recall all the doctor’s mistakes. But all that came to mind was poor dead Hector Whitman.
“Agnes and Lily will be here soon. I’ll ask them what they think. There might be something else we could try.”
Yes. Something else. But what else? He was no doctor. But—“There are the doctors at the sanatorium.”
Catarina pondered that. “Yes, but she’s not consumptive. Let me speak with Lily and Agnes. And you should lie down for a bit; you look terrible.”
He felt terrible, but not half as terrible as his wife felt. “When will you sleep?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m used to it by now.” Catarina looked to the baby in the corner, playing with one of Franny’s boots. “You lie down. I’ll take her a plate.”
“Thank you, I will.”
As he went to leave, his legs heavier than lead, Catarina laid a hand on his shoulder. “It will be all right. You’ll see.”
Her hand was warm, clasped tightly there, and meant to be comforting. But he wasn’t a child, to be fobbed off by the kind of assurances a mother would speak over a skinned knee. His own mother had been in the ground for over a decade.
He was terrified his wife would soon join her.
Franny’d told her husband she wasn’t dying, but after all these hours with such pain—pain such as she’d never known, pain that never ceased for even a moment—she wasn’t as certain as she’d been this morning.
How did one know one was dying? Franny had never almost died before, so she didn’t know how it was done.
But she did know she’d achieved anything she’d ever set herself to. It followed that she ought to be able to survive this, if she wanted it enough.
Didn’t it?
Her lunch sat on the table next to her. She hadn’t been able to eat a single bite. The pain made her too nauseous. Sometimes it seemed that the pain was the only thing that existed.
She could occasionally hear Catarina and other female voices in the kitchen, no doubt conferring about the problem of Franny. She hadn’t seen Felipe. Her sister had said he was sleeping.
Franny wished that she could sleep. She would close her eyes for a short period, but when she opened them again, she never felt rested. She felt as if she’d been wrestling demons in her sleep, their claws pinching at her brain as their teeth sank deep into her belly.
But perhaps this episode was the worst of it. Perhaps that tearing pain in her belly wasn’t something coming apart within her. And if it was—well, Joaquin had been shot in the stomach and he had lived.
There was no pain in her shoulder. Something to take comfort from, in all the rest of her suffering.
Catarina came in with a mug in her hands. “Awake now?” Her voice was falsely cheery, at odds with the lines of strain around her mouth.
“Where’s Felipe?” Her sister meant well, but only Felipe’s touch eased the pain.
“Still asleep.” Catarina sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, watching Franny closely. “Are you feeling better?”
Franny tried to shift positions, achy from being in the same place for so long, but the pain caught her tight, clamping her jaw shut against it and trapping the breath in her lungs. If only this pain would release her, if only for a moment. Just a moment, to find some rest and relief.
Trixie, lying next to her on the bed, whined and crept closer against her side.
Catarina gave Trixie a sharp look. “Are you certain she’s not bothering you?”
“No,” Franny said, straining to fill her lungs. “She helps.”
“But not enough.”
Franny was too tired to pretend. The pain was winning. “It’s getting worse.” She fell back into the same place she’d been for the past few hours, unable to fight her own body any longer. “The pain isn’t in my shoulder, but it’s getting worse.”
If only she could set the pain aside for a bit—then she could fight again. She had to fight this. Because the longer it went on, the more convinced she was Blackmun was right.
She didn’t want to die. Didn’t want to travel into that darkness, leaving Felipe here alone on the other side.
“Isn’t there anything to be done?” she asked her sister. “Blackmun can’t be right. There must be something.”
If only she’d listened more closely whenever her friends spoke of these matters—but she’d thought this would never happen to her.
Catarina’s hands clenched on the mug. “We were discussing it, Agnes, Lily, and me. Perhaps Blackmun is wrong. Perhaps you simply need your courses to come on.” She pressed the mug into Franny’s hands, the ceramic warm under her palms and Catarina’s hands tight over hers.
Franny tried to push it away. “This doesn’t help with the pain.”
Catarina pushed it back. “It’s not for the pain. It’s to bring on your courses.”
She didn’t understand. “But I’m already bleeding. And if there’s already a baby…” Catarina could not be suggesting what Franny thought she was. Could she? “Catarina?”
Her sister looked away to the window, her jaw tight as her eyes closed for a brief second. “I know what I’m doing,” she said in a harsh whisper. When she turned back, she pressed the mug hard into Franny’s hands and pulled it to her mouth. “Just drink it.”
This was something Blackmun would never approve of.
But it might save her.
Franny so wanted to live. To stay here, with her husband. And her family.
She put the mug to her lips and took a swallow. It tasted of something stronger, more pungent than mint. It was almost unbearably sharp as it coated her tongue, but she dutifully drank it all down, her stomach giving a sullen little roll. As her sister took the mug back, their gazes met.
“Whatever happens,” Catarina said, “I take it all on myself. The sin isn’t yours.”
And that, even more than the pain still racking her, made Franny want to weep. “Catarina.” It was all she could choke out.
“I’m not going to let my baby sister die. And if this doesn’t work, we’ll think of something else.” In that moment, with the fire blazing in her brown eyes, her sister looked as if she could vanquish armies. “Get some rest.” She leaned across and pressed a kiss on Franny’s forehead.
“Yes.” For the first time in her life, Franny was grateful for Catarina’s managing nature. Catarina would manage her right out of this, if she could.
And she’d manage Felipe too. Since Franny was too tired to just now.
She’d sleep, the medicine would do its work, and when she awoke, she’d tell him she’d be fine…