The Jane Austen Society(27)

“Might you stay, for a bit? I mean, it’s already after hours, thanks to me.”

“I should get going. You need to rest.”

“Well, make sure you get that drink on your way out.”

She looked very tired to him, sitting up in bed against the white pillows in her white lace nightgown, her face so pale that he hesitated to leave.

“Adeline, do you promise to have your mother call me if anything changes, anything at all? I don’t care how insignificant it might seem.”

“You sound worried.”

He picked up his medical bag. “No, not worried. I just know how stoic you can be, and I don’t want anything to get missed.”

“Stoic? Me? But I was such a rabble-rouser with the school board, remember? Couldn’t keep my mouth shut, if I recall correctly.”

He smiled. “You are not remotely stoical about others, yes, that is correct.”

“Well, I promise then, but you have to promise to not come flying over here every time my mother telephones. You looked quite unlike yourself when you came through that door.”

He headed down the stairs, testing part of the old oak banister as he did so, then looked back up when he reached Mrs. Lewis waiting at the bottom with his gin and tonic in hand.

“Make sure she uses that banister, especially in this last month. Her balance will be off. She is quite large already.”

Mrs. Lewis passed him the drink and showed him into the front drawing room. “I hope you didn’t tell her that—Adeline can be surprisingly vain.”

“Oh, I know that,” he said between sips. “She is missed at the school, you know.”

Mrs. Lewis sat down on a nearby sofa. “Adeline is doing exactly what she wants to do.”

“I know that, too. But the board was foolish to come down on her so hard.” He sat back against the sofa facing hers. “Will she return to teaching one day, do you think? It would be quite a waste of her talents otherwise.”

“I have no idea. Right now the baby is all she thinks about, as it should be.”

“Quite right.” He felt strangely self-conscious under Mrs. Lewis’s gaze, as if he were being told off for something he hadn’t even yet done. Looking about the room for a distraction, he spotted a framed photo from Adeline’s wedding to Samuel the previous winter. “Does she talk about Samuel much?”

“Why do you ask?” Mrs. Lewis replied curtly.

“No reason. I just, well, I know how it feels. Although I can’t imagine how it feels when one is expecting.”

“No, Dr. Gray, you can’t. And you were fortunate—we both were—to have had so much time with our late spouses, to at least give us memories to spare.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat as she kept on talking. “Although sadly I don’t think being briefly married is any kind of insurance against the loss. It’s the hole someone leaves behind that matters most. Adeline and Sam knew each other from the time they were babies—she was his entire world. He spoke about marrying her from the time he could talk. And then they had—what?—all of one week together before he had to return to that god-awful war. One week of marriage. And now a baby to raise all on her own.”

“She might marry again.”

“Will you?”

He smiled and downed the rest of his drink in one go. “No, I am getting old now. Nobody would want me.”

“Oh, come now, Dr. Gray,” Mrs. Lewis said archly. “You sell yourself short. There’s Miss Peckham, for one.”

He stood up. He could see where Adeline got both her nerve and her sharp tongue.

“Promise me you’ll call, Mrs. Lewis, no matter the hour, if anything changes. Anything at all. Especially any new bleeding. Alright?”

He was in deepest sleep—a second gin and tonic back at home had done the trick, and thinking he had the night to himself, he had collapsed early into bed. So when the phone rang at midnight, it took him a few seconds to pull himself awake and process what was going on.

When he entered the bedroom behind her stricken mother, he saw the bedsheets covered in blood, and a bucket and towels scattered about the floor, and in the centre of it all lay Adeline, her white lace nightgown shredded and stained as she writhed and screamed in pain, gripping the headboard posts, one in each ash-white hand.

Dr. Gray felt her abdomen as gingerly yet as thoroughly as possible, watching Adeline flinch at every negligible pressure of his hands. He took out his stethoscope and listened carefully to both her and the baby’s hearts, then turned back to Mrs. Lewis, standing trembling behind him.

“The baby’s heart rate is irregular—and her pain—the bleeding—it’s happening way too fast. Get the hospital on the phone and make bloody sure the ambulance I requested is on its way.”

Stunned by his tone, Mrs. Lewis rushed out of the room in a panic.

The minute she was gone, Adeline grabbed wildly at Dr. Gray’s arm. “Is the baby okay?”

“We need to get you to the hospital right away. You’re not in labour yet, but you’re bleeding profusely, and the baby is feeling the stress.”

She grabbed his arm even harder. “Am I going to lose this baby? Tell me the truth, Dr. Gray, please, I’m begging you.”

“We’re going to get you into surgery for a Caesarean section—the baby is too distressed to wait for a natural labour. But I have no reason to believe that he or she can’t be delivered safely that way. Time, however, is of the essence, so I will get you downstairs now, alright?”