The Death of Jane Lawrence(62)

She dreamed of blood.

Blood.

Lurching from her bed in confused panic, Jane at first could not separate reality from her vision of Elodie, the stench of blood filling her nose and turning her stomach. She gripped her dresser, begging reason to reassert itself. A glance out the window showed that it was midmorning. She took deep breaths, fighting to drive away the nightmare.

But the stench remained. Fearful, she opened her bedroom door.

Mr. Lowell had just reached the head of the steps. “Ma’am, you’re needed downstairs, in the surgery.”

A patient.

She had the wild urge to refuse. Her hands trembled from exhaustion and her feet were still painfully swollen. She had no real training and no real experience. She had been married only to do the books.

But she could not abandon a patient. Augustine would not have sent for her unless he needed her, and the stench of blood would not be so strong if things were not dire.

“Of course,” she said, and disappeared back into her room. She threw on her simplest gown, ignoring half the fasteners, ignoring her plaited hair that had grown wild and bulging from its confinement through the night. She stuffed her feet into shoes, ignoring the pain, and rushed down the stairs.

The surgery doors were shut, but not latched, and they opened at her touch. There, on the table, was the body of a woman. Younger than Jane. Pale, too pale. Her head lolled, her eyes heavy-lidded and unfocused. Her chemise was pushed up around her breasts, her bared flesh stained scarlet, and she was dying.

And all Jane could see was Elodie, Augustine’s hands inside her chest. She felt the pulsing of hot blood across her arms as if she were already cradling the body on the slab. It took every ounce of strength within her not to fall upon her husband, black clad and bloodstained, and tear him away from the pale woman on the altar, the woman dying in her dreams.

This is not Elodie. This is not Elodie. This was a patient, teetering on the edge of death. A dying woman who needed help.

Jane donned an apron, rinsed her hands, and came to Augustine’s side. “What can I do?”

“Retractors,” Augustine said, and Jane shuddered with grim, hysterical humor. Retractors. Just like Mr. Renton. The retractors were discarded on the operating table itself, already bloody, and she slipped them into the wound Augustine had made in the woman’s belly. The flesh was distended.

She was pregnant.

Augustine set his scalpel aside and slid his hands inside the incision, pushing and pulling. He muttered a curse, and Jane looked up at him, startled. There were dark circles below his eyes, and his skin was sallow. His forehead was still beaded with sweat.

He was not well. The dawn had not brought relief, not enough.

His hands trembled as he took a pre-threaded needle and began stitching something deep inside the wound, quickly but precisely. Skill and training won out over exhaustion, at least for the moment, and Jane made herself focus on keeping the surgical site clear for him. She used the flushing bulb when he demanded and shifted the angle of the retractor to open up more room to one side of her abdomen.

This was all too much like Mr. Renton. She could see him again, hear his moaning. But no; if this was not Elodie, this was also not him.

“Jane, look away,” Augustine said, softly.

“I—”

“Look away, please.”

She did so reluctantly. Augustine whispered what might have been a prayer. She felt the retractor shift as his hand went beneath it. Something wet squelched and thudded, and Jane’s stomach flipped.

Perhaps he was right to have her look away.

“Why isn’t she screaming?” Jane asked.

“Ether, exhaustion, blood loss,” Augustine responded. By the vibrations in the retractors, he was stitching again. Another flush demanded; another curse. He closed the skin, set the body to rights, inch by painful inch.

At last, he pulled away from the patient, exhaling a long, shuddering breath. He reached up to mop his brow, leaving a slash of blood across his face. His whole front was soaked in it. He looked monstrous and tired as he staggered over to the sink. Jane remained behind to wash the woman’s belly.

Her chest rose and fell in shallow rhythm. Jane cleaned up the woman’s legs and hips, then found a cloth to drape over her bare skin. From there, she focused on her stomach, cleaning gently around the sutures.

She circled around to the woman’s other side, then covered her mouth to contain the shriek that came from her lips without warning.

There, in a ceramic dish, lay the unmoving remains of a small, half-formed infant, alongside a mass of bloody flesh the color and texture of raw liver. The world seemed suddenly very far away, and she staggered to the wall, bracing herself against it and vomiting.

The tap turned off behind her. “She arrived several months pregnant and hemorrhaging extensively,” Augustine said. “Her husband reported that she’d been bleeding on and off for her whole pregnancy, but without pain. When they went for a ride together this morning, the bleeding began again and wouldn’t slow. I suspected a miscarriage, but when I attempted to induce labor, she only bled more and reported extreme pain. Palpation revealed that her pregnancy was taking place outside of the womb.”

“Outside?” Jane whispered.

“The fetus had damaged her womb beyond repair. The placenta had grown into the outside of the uterine wall, and had been torn from it during the ride. The tearing and subsequent bleeding meant that the only course of action was to remove everything. I had hoped maybe to save the child, but—” He shook his head, and she thought again of the still form in the pan.