THAT MORNING, FANNY WAS STRANGELY QUIET AT BREAKFAST. DESPITE Henrietta’s entreaties, she refused to take even a spoonful of porridge.
‘I’m not hungry, Mama,’ she declared.
By mid-morning Fanny was burning hot and running a fever. Henrietta tried not to give in to the mounting sense of alarm she felt as she tried to cool her daughter with a flannel cloth soaked in water.
‘Sally, you must mind the others while I stay with Fanny,’ she told her maid.
Children always get fevers, she tried to reassure herself as she wished that Dan was at home rather than being away at the workhouse or seeing one of his patients.
During the course of the day Fanny slept fitfully and Henrietta was up and down attending to her.
‘Mama, my head hurts,’ she cried quietly.
As she helped her back into bed, she noticed a reddish rash developing on her child’s stomach, which she had itched.
About half an hour later, Sally called to her. Young Daniel was now sick too.
‘He has vomited his lunch, ma’am, and says he has a bad headache.’
‘Young man, you are going back to bed too,’ Henrietta ordered, plumping his pillow as she settled him and brushed back his fair hair.
She made her way into the bedroom next door to check on Fanny, whose condition had deteriorated rapidly. The poor child was shivering, her teeth chattering with rigors. She would barely open her eyes when Henrietta tried to rouse her.
‘Sally! Sally!’ she shouted in alarm. ‘You must go to the dispensary immediately and fetch Dr Dan. Tell him that the children are sick and he must return home.’
Nearly two hours passed before Dan returned. By that point Fanny was in a deep sleep, her skin burning with fever, while young Daniel tossed and turned in his small bed.
Dan examined each child in turn, talking gently to them as Henrietta looked on.
‘It is typhus,’ he announced.
‘Oh, Dan, don’t say such a thing!’
‘They both have the symptoms,’ he admitted dejectedly. ‘Half the town is sick with it.’
‘Then you must make them better,’ she demanded in fear, her hysteria rising.
‘My dear, the fever will run its course. Unfortunately there is little else I can do except ensure the children are kept comfortable and drink some water.’
‘What about all the people who have it? What do you say to them?’
‘Many who have the fever are severely malnourished and weak, but our children are strong, young and healthy,’ he explained quietly.
‘You are a doctor and you will make them better,’ she insisted. ‘I will not have anything happen to our children, Dan. Do you hear me?’
Henrietta broke down when she saw the powerlessness in her husband’s eyes and the pain he felt that the disease was now within their own home.
Harriet too soon fell sick with fever. The Donovan family were now in the grip of typhus, as were so many other families in the town. As death lingered at her own door, courting her beloved children, Henrietta was filled with a mother’s fear like that of every poor mother in the town.
Dan too was consumed with worry, but he still had to attend to his professional duties. Henrietta knew that her husband blamed himself for their children being ill. She thanked heaven that Henry, Jerrie, Ellen and twenty-month-old Maggie displayed no signs of the fever yet and insisted that Sally tend to them.
Fanny’s small body was now covered with a dark spotty rash and her fair hair clung damply to her head in curls. Her fever refused to break and her breath came raspingly in her small chest, like a butterfly trying to escape from a net.
‘She is much worse,’ Dan sighed as he took her wrist and felt her pulse.
Henrietta had no words for him, for her heart was heavy with anger. How she wished she had packed up the children and fled this place when she was able to. She had condemned them to this. Why had she not acted to protect them!