The sanatorium was a darkly silent hulk when they pulled up.
Felipe guessed it to be about four in the morning, judging by how long it usually took to travel to Pine Ridge. If he tried to fumble for his watch, he would only drop the thing.
His hands were numb, but he had gotten them there. Or at least, the horses had gotten them there.
He hadn’t looked back once. He wouldn’t, not until he was certain the doctor was in. If the doctor wasn’t in, he’d go all the way to Los Angeles without looking.
Besides ensuring that the horses kept moving forward, it was the only thing he could do.
All noise from his wife had ceased some time ago. He might have been frantic at her silence had he not been so very exhausted. As it was, he was shocked each time he saw his own hands, surprised to be reminded that he was corporeal, that his lines were not blurring into nothingness.
But if he had to get them to Los Angeles, he wasn’t sure what he would do. He would do it because he had to, but the particulars only brushed past his fingertips. He couldn’t grasp them firmly.
He pulled the team to a stop and called back to the Señora, who had fallen silent along with her daughter. “I’ll go see if I can rouse someone. They ought to have an orderly or nurse or someone on duty.” He paused halfway off the wagon seat. “Is she—?”
But she couldn’t be dead. He hadn’t once turned—that was the bargain.
Eurydice hadn’t spoken. And Felipe hadn’t looked back.
The story would turn out right this time.
She’d promised.
“She is still with us, yes.” The Señora’s voice was rough with tiredness. Or tears. He couldn’t tell which.
Felipe ran to the front door, the gravel of the drive shifting under his boots, making him feel as if he might trip over nothing. There was no movement behind the dark windows, no sign at all that their arrival had been heard. He slammed the knocker down as hard as he could—smash, smash, smash—intending to keep on striking it against the door until someone answered.
His arm began to tire, but he kept at it, uncaring if he smashed the door in.
“Enough! Enough!” came a male voice from inside. “I’m coming.”
Felipe kept smashing, his knuckles stinging. He wasn’t stopping until this door was open, even if the bones of his hand shattered. It finally swung inward to reveal a slight, spare man, with cotton-wisp hair and an angry expression.
“What do you think you’re about?” the man hissed. “Are you trying to wake the patients?”
“Where’s the doctor?” The patients could all hang, as far as Felipe was concerned. Franny needed help.
The man drew himself up to his full height, which wasn’t a far distance. “I am a doctor.”
Felipe sagged against the frame. Thank God, at least one doctor was here. But was it the right one, the specialist? The name would not come to him, no matter how hard he tried to summon it.
“Are you—can you handle… ladies’ issues?” He sounded slow, stupid, but nothing was working right now—not his tongue, nor his brain.
“Ladies’ issues?” The man looked around him to the wagon. “Do you have someone who needs a doctor?”
“My wife.” His fear transformed those words into a plea.
The doctor didn’t stand there asking questions, God bless him, but went straight to the back of the wagon. Felipe followed behind.
Finally, finally, he could look.
He’d led her back from the darkness.
“Ma’am,” the doctor called to the Señora as he approached, “are you more coherent than this man here? Can you tell me what’s happening?”
“My daughter.” The Señora gestured toward Franny’s form, still and small, wrapped in blankets. “She’s expecting, in the early days of it, and the doctor in Cabrillo suspects that the baby is not in the womb.”
Felipe never would have managed so lucid an explanation. Instead, he hung on the side of the wagon, every joint in his body rubbery with fatigue. But if she needed him, he was here. He’d always be here.
The doctor prodded at Franny, looking more assured than Blackmun had. Still, it ground at him that the doctor was probing at her. He couldn’t see much of his wife—a dark cloud that was her hair, a pale smear that was her sweet face, and a mound of blankets that was the rest of her. But she moved a little as the doctor poked her.
Felipe flinched, ready to pull himself into the wagon before he caught himself.
It was good that she was moving. She was alive. He hadn’t looked and she had been saved.
“Tubal pregnancy,” the doctor muttered to himself. “When was her last menstruation?”
Shame burned Felipe as he remembered the terrible night when he had done this to her. “She likely conceived about eight weeks ago.” He carefully avoided the Señora’s gaze like the coward he was.
“Is the pain mostly confined to one side?” the doctor asked.
“Yes,” the Señora answered. “The left.” She looked to Felipe for confirmation and he nodded.
“The pain’s in her shoulder now,” Felipe added, but didn’t repeat what Blackmun had said about death following soon after.
The doctor gave a long, aggrieved sigh as if he didn’t want to hear that. “Has there been any bleeding?”
“Yes, since two days ago.” His words were smeared with exhaustion.
“How much bleeding?”
“Enough to make her pale and faint,” her mother said, still wearing her ladylike composure.
The doctor put a hand to his chin, his mind obviously working through all he’d been told. “Distended abdomen, tender to the touch, mass on the left side, but no fever,” he muttered to himself. “I’m Dr. Young, by the way.”
Felipe didn’t care what his name was—only what he could do for Franny. “Can you help her?”
“If it is an ectopic pregnancy, there is a surgery. I’ve never performed it, but I have read Tait’s reports on successful treatment with salpingectomies. He’s had a tremendous survival rate, even after tubal rupture.”
If Felipe felt slow before, he felt absolutely idiotic now.
Could the man help her or not? That was all Felipe cared about. “Salpin…” He didn’t even bother trying to finish that, feeling helpless. “You’re saying that there is a surgery? That you can save her?”
“If blood poisoning hasn’t set in, perhaps.” Oh God, there was still hope. “The shoulder pain is a very bad sign, you must understand. And of course, surgery itself carries inherent risks.”
The doctor’s tone was measured as he spoke of surgery and risks. As if Franny were nothing more than an abstraction to him.
“But you can do it?” No risk of surgery could be worse than losing her.
“I can try,” the doctor corrected. “She won’t be able to bear children after this. Are you certain you want me to?”
Rage soaked Felipe, a splash of kerosene to the fire of fear, anxiety, and exhaustion burning the past few days. “Christ, man, do you think I give a damn about that? She’s not a broodmare!”
“Dr. Young,” the Señora said repressively, “surely you cannot be suggesting that it is better for my daughter to die than to be unable to bear children.”
“Of course not.” All indignant pride. “I’m merely outlining the consequences.”
“Do it,” Felipe ordered him. “Whatever you need to do to save her, do it.”
He’d travel to Hell to save her—what could this doctor do that might be worse than losing her?
A man and a woman, both in their nightclothes, came out to the wagon then, featureless, dark shadows flapping through the gray light of the false dawn.
“We heard someone knocking fit to break down the door,” the woman said. Felipe tried to resolve her features into something meaningful, but his eyes were too tired. “Is something wrong?”
“Yes, we must perform a salpingectomy on this woman, immediately. Rouse Nurse Smithers and have her start preparations for a surgery.”
Surgery. They were going to cut her open to save her. Suddenly it seemed the height of barbarity, to leave her in their hands,
“But we have no surgical theater,” the nurse said.
“Clear one of the dining room tables,” Dr. Young said. “It’s a tubal pregnancy, very rare. You’re about to witness a one-in-one-hundred phenomenon. And a surgical correction—even rarer.” He gestured to the man. “Carry her in, Wilkins.”
“No.” Felipe stepped forward. He had two good arms and he’d gotten her this far. He could take her the last little bit. “I’ll carry her.”
He lifted Franny as gently as he could, but even so, she moaned. And Felipe found that no matter how numb he was, he could still ache.
She curled into his arms, eyes closed, hair lank. But her chest rose and fell and her fist curled into his shirt as she held tight to him.
“They’ll save you,” he said softly to her as he carried her to the door. “Everything will be fine.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. No matter. He knew it was true. And she would know too, once she awoke from the surgery. Entirely healed.
Two men held a stretcher at the door, and he lowered her carefully into it. They disappeared down a hallway, the doctor and the nurse following without a glance toward him.
He had been completely disregarded.
He supposed it was natural, though. What help would he be in that realm of scalpels and long foreign words? He wasn’t needed any longer. He’d done his bit by getting her here—and not looking back.
Her fate was in the hands of that doctor. Which ought to have reassured Felipe, but the way the doctor had talked about phenomena—it unsettled him.
The Señora came to stand next to him, still as austere as ever.
“I suppose we wait here,” he told her. For one brief, sweet moment, he imagined collapsing into the mattress in the wagon bed and sinking into dreams.
“Nonsense,” she said. “I will find us a place to wait, for you to finally rest and for me to pray.”
How delicious sleep sounded. But he ought to stay awake, to stand vigil for his wife.
“Come along,” the Señora called. “And don’t even think of remaining awake. You must guard your own health if you are to help Francisca in her recovery.”
Recovery. What a lovely word. Almost as beautiful as his wife.
Felipe’s sleep was heavy with dreams that tangled his limbs and mind.
Franny had somehow become his sister, yet was still his wife, but in the strange logic of it, there was nothing wrong with that.
The surgery was done, but they had taken her arm instead and she could still have children. In fact, she wouldn’t stop having them. He kept telling her to stop, but she only laughed and set another infant in his arms…
He awoke slowly, his mind half weighted with the dream, even as his reason insisted it couldn’t possibly be true. He rubbed at his mouth and nose. Exhaustion still held him—all he had to do was close his eyes and roll back to the wall, and he’d be under again.
Instead, he sat up and looked about the room. The nurse had called it the sun room. He’d collapsed into one of the lounge chairs as soon as she’d left. It wasn’t the most comfortable spot, but it had done the job.
The Señora knelt in prayer, her rosary beads sliding through her fingers as she counted off the decades. He couldn’t have slept long if she was in the same position as when he’d fallen asleep. Then he noticed the full power of the sun streaming through the windows, meaning it was at least mid-morning.
She had stamina, that was certain. He hoped the saints were appreciative of her unstinting devotions.
“Any news?” he asked. But there likely was none. The Señora would have awoken him if there were, good or bad. Chilled anticipation slid over him as he awaited her answer.
If he’d startled her, she gave no indication. She knelt, motionless, until she’d reached the end of her decade.
“Not yet,” she said. The beads began their slide through her fingers once again.
He put his head in his hands, his elbows braced hard against his knees. He ran his fingers through his hair and pulled. His scalp ached at the pressure, so he tugged harder.
It had been too long—something was wrong. How long did a surgery take anyway?
Was she already dead and they simply hadn’t told them yet?
The clock on the wall counted out the seconds in the rudest kind of insolence. Uncaring that his beloved was in danger—that he himself died with each tick mark—time marched on, relentless, implacable.
If she came out of this—no, when—when she came out of this, he was locking her in the house. He didn’t care if she protested.
And he’d never touch her again.
His lust, his sinfulness in taking her before marriage was responsible for this catastrophe.
He hadn’t listened to his own good sense, and now they were both being crushed—her worst of all. God, what a stupid, unworthy ass he was.
“Such things as this give one time for reflection.”
He raised his head at the Señora’s words. She was only half turned toward him and he wasn’t certain if she was addressing him…or herself.
“Though I knew it was wrong,” she said, “that it would only hurt her in the end, I let her run at her father’s heels.” She rubbed at the beads, looking down at them as if they held to answer to something. “My daughters think me hard, cold. They never understood what I wanted for them.”
Felipe held his breath, mesmerized by what she was saying. Never before had the Señora been so candid with him. With anyone, perhaps.
“I was forged in great suffering. I wished for my daughters to never know such things as I had. When Catarina and Isabel married I was frightened for them, although my fears never came to pass. But when Francisca chose you—” She looked up at him and her features were so much like Franny’s, his heart stopped. “When she chose you, I didn’t fear for her. I feared for you.”
He dropped his own gaze, his throat tightening. Perhaps the Señora understood his grief better than he’d ever known.
But her daughter was dying because of him.
Her fear should have been for Franny.
Her hand settled on his forearm, the only time he could ever remember the Señora touching him. But he could not look up.
“How could we ever take the place of your family, who loved you so?” she asked. “We could not. I thought that perhaps time would heal you, but it did not. Your grief made you hollow, brittle. I worried that Francisca would be too ungentle with you.”
She was wrong—Franny had been exactly what he needed.
Franny had cracked him wide open, revealing the soft, raw bits. If his wife didn’t survive, he was certain to die of exposure without that shell.
He raised his head, uncaring that tears were running down his cheeks.
“Why tell me all of this now?” he asked.
She drew her hand back. “I am cold and hard; life has fashioned me thus. If she should die, you will not see me grieve. But I want you to know I will grieve. I will grieve”—her voice caught for a moment—“I will grieve most deeply.”
She turned away then, going to the window, her beads moving through her fingers once more and her lips shaping her prayers. He looked to the floor between his feet, wanting to give her some privacy after her confessions.
They sat in silence for another hour, every second dropped from the clock an agonized eternity.
There was nothing to do but wait.
Finally the door opened to admit the nurse from last night. Dark circles ringed her eyes and she was slumped from exhaustion, but a little smile played at the corner of her mouth.
A lightness seized hold of his limbs, his head, his heart.
She’d promised.
The news must be good if the nurse was smiling. It must be. “She’s awake.” The nurse’s smile widened. “The doctor will—” The door opened again behind her. “Oh, here he is now.”
The doctor drooped like a week-old bouquet, but Felipe had never been so happy to see someone.
He’d be even happier when he got to see his wife.
“The surgery was a success.” The doctor’s voice was raspy with exhaustion, but at the same time exultant. “The tube had ruptured, but we were able to remove it. As I warned, your wife will no longer be able to bear children.”
Felipe said a silent prayer of thanks for that.
She’d never be in danger from this again.
Not that he would risk it.
“Thanks be to God,” the Señora said, her fingers tightening on her rosary beads.
“It should make a very interesting case study,” the doctor went on.
“When can we see her?” Felipe asked. He didn’t care for the doctor’s tone when he said case study. Franny wasn’t staying here to become some project of his. “When can I take her home?” Home. Where he could keep her safe.
“Oh, not for sometime I should think. She’s not out of danger yet. There remains the risk of further hemorrhage or infection.”
Not out of danger yet. He tried to think past those words, but his mind seized on them and wouldn’t go on.
Wouldn’t accept the hope that the doctor had offered earlier.
“Thank you for all your help,” the Señora said, her words heavy. “Both of you. It is in God’s hands now, although you placed my daughter there. I understand we may not take her home, but can we at least see her?”
“Oh, yes, I don’t see the harm in that. She’s under the influence of the anesthetic, mind you.”
“No matter,” the Señora said. “We would be pleased to see her.”
Felipe had been pleased at the thought, before. Now he was only numbed by it.
She was still in danger.
Felipe had been ready to fall to his knees to thank God, Jesus, the saints, any holy thing he could think of for his wife’s deliverance. And then the doctor had said those words.
Not out of danger yet.
With a leaden heart, he went to see his wife.