Chasing the Sunset(22)

Yellow jack!

People died with yellow jack, many, many people. She remembered her mother telling her how she herself had contracted it when she was only a toddler, and how they had been frantic with worry, thinking that she might die. But she had been blessed with a strong constitution, even as a young child and she had pulled through, though it had been a close thing.

“Yes, when I was a child,” she said very quietly.

“That is very good,” said the doctor grimly. “That means that you probably will not get it again. Keep everyone else out of this room, indeed out of this house if possible, unless they’ve already had the fever. Yellow fever is highly contagious, and if we can quarantine enough of the sick, perhaps it will pass quickly.” He looked at her from underneath his shaggy brows. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Maggie said faintly. “Yes, I am fine. Tell me what to do.”

“They are both in the second stage of the disease. They are going to vomit up everything they take in, but you must keep forcing liquids down them. Diarrhea is inevitable, and they need the fluid, and every drop of water you get them to drink is helping to keep them from dehydrating. They are going to have, if they do not already, tremendous pain in their backs and their limbs, a headache, and a stomach ache.”

“Yes,” Maggie murmured. “Tommy said that he had a headache.”

“It is going to last for a day or two, then they will be a little better, except for maybe the vomiting. Their stomachs will be sensitive for quite a while."

He put his hand on her arm. “This part is very important, Mrs. Reynolds. You must keep them in bed at least two more days after the symptoms cease. If the symptoms return, the rapid breathing, the headaches, then you have to prepare yourself for their death. They will get the black vomit, their temperatures will go tremendously lower . . . and they will get weak. There is one blessing, if you can call it that. It will go quickly for them, then.”

Maggie nodded, her face white. “Do I need to give them anything? Can you leave me any medicines to help them?”

He handed her two small bottles. “Keep a small fire going in their room and a big pot of water boiling on it all times. The moisture from the boiling water will help them to breathe more easily. This is quinine, and this other is laudanum, for the pain. They can both be mixed into water. Do not mix them with too much, just a tablespoon or two, or you might not get all the medicine down them. Both are bitter, especially the quinine, and they might fight you, so have someone here to help you when you dispense it. It is very important that they take it all.” Maggie listened intently as he explained to her exactly how much of the medicines to administer and when.

“I have to go now,” he told her. “I have a lot more places to go. If you think that you are starting to get sick, get someone immediately, because yellow fever moves fast. You will not have much time.” He put a hand on her arm again, and Maggie felt no menace from him, no desire to run away from his touch. That she felt no fear of the doctor was due partly to the two lying sick in the other room, and she made a sudden, fierce vow to herself. They were not going to die, not if she had anything to do with it.

“They both have a strong constitution, and that is in their favor. Keep them comfortable, and give them lots of fluids, even if you must dribble it down their throats a drop at a time. Good luck,” he told her, and Maggie saw him out. She sent Ned, who had also had yellow fever before, to tell Kathleen and the others to stay away for the next couple of days.

She lost count after that of how many times she sponged Tommy and Nick off, dripped water down their throats one agonizing drop at a time. She cleaned up diarrhea, mopped up after sick stomachs, soothed their anguished apologies as one or the other of them regained consciousness for brief moments. Late that night, aching from exhaustion, worried near to tears,

she pulled a pillow and blanket in between their beds and tried to catch a few minutes of sleep. She was afraid to go to her own room and sleep for fear of one of them worsening, so she curled up on the hard floor and tried to get comfortable.

She was up and down all night, dozing briefly between caring for them. Sometime early in the morning Ned came back and tried to urge her to go and get a real rest. She refused, saying that she had slept a little bit while he had been on the back of a horse all night.

“Go sleep for a few hours in one of the bedrooms,” she told him. “You are going to have plenty to do around here, with no other help coming to the stables. You can spell me for a while in the morning after you tend the horses.”

He was hesitant, but she insisted and sent him on his way, then she went back to sponging and pouring water down reluctant throats. Ned relieved her for three hours later in the morning, and Maggie used the time to eat and prepare some broth to feed her patients with, and some other food that she and Ned could grab quickly. She got a small nap, then grimly went back to the sickroom. Nick seemed a little better, his breathing not so rapid. He was able to sit up and drink some of the lemonade she had made while she was downstairs.

“Cold,” he whispered as he gulped from the cup she held for him. “Good.”

“I went and got some of the ice from the icehouse,” Maggie said quietly. “I figured as hot as you were, it would taste good to you.”

He smiled at her, then laid his head back down on the pillow and went to sleep, his lashes fanning out across the black circles that ringed his eyes. Maggie spent another interminable night, an unspoken prayer in her heart. She could not lose these two, she could not.

By noon of the next day, Nick and Tommy were well enough to sip some broth. They kept

it down, too, and drank all of the water that Maggie provided. They were just weak now, a little nauseated, but Maggie refused to let them up beyond using the chamber pot. She remembered what the Doctor had said, and she did not want them to relapse.

The next morning, Nick tried to get out of bed, and Maggie forced him back, grinning at him as she put her hands on her hips. Tommy giggled from the other bed, and Nick glared at him before turning his disturbed gaze on Maggie.

“What are you so happy about?” he grumbled. “Glad you have got me weak and can order me around?”

“If you are well enough to start complaining, you are going to be all right,” she said tartly. “In the meantime, do as you are told. I have worked hard to get you well, and I do not want you sick again.”

Kathleen came over in a buggy, and Maggie opened a downstairs window to talk to her from a safe distance. Nobody had come down with anything at her house, and even though she knew she should stay away, she told Maggie that she just had to come and see how everybody was faring over here. Doctor Fell had told her that two of the men who worked for Nick were sick as well, she said gravely, and one of them had already lost two children to the yellow jack. Maggie cried a little bit at that, then waved an equally teary-eyed Kathleen off home, and went to nap while Ned took her place in the sickroom. She was on the edge of exhaustion; she knew she had lost weight these last two days because her clothes were hanging on her, loose in places they had not been before.

She heated some water and washed herself, thinking absently that she would wash Tommy and Nick’s hair for them this afternoon. She had just finished braiding her hair and pinning it up when Ned came to tell her that Tommy had diarrhea again and was complaining of another headache.

Maggie leaned her head down and rested it on the coverlet, letting herself dissolve into easy tears. Tommy had worsened quickly. Maggie had Nick, who was still feeling better, moved to another room and told Ned to take care of him; then she took over the sole care of Tommy. Doctor Fell came again and stood at Tommy’s bedside and stared somberly down at him after a cursory examination.

“I am sorry, Mrs. Reynolds,” he said heavily. “There is nothing else to do. Keep him as comfortable as possible, keep putting liquids down him and giving him the quinine, and pray. It is in God’s hands now.”

Maggie did not sleep at all that night; she was too busy sponging Tommy down, giving him sips of lemonade and apple cider, and talking to him. All night, she kept up a running one-sided conversation, until her voice was little more than a cracked whisper.

“You are going to get better, Tommy,” she told him over and over. “I want you to concentrate. You can hear me, I know that you can. You are going to get better, you listen to me now. Do as I say.”

It was morning now, and Tommy was still tossing and turning, moaning in his sleep and curling up into a ball as he tried to escape the pain in his joints. he black vomit had not come yet, and Maggie was heartened by that. Surely that meant he was on the mend, surely if he was going to die, he would be showing these other symptoms. She told herself that over and over, and she told it to Tommy, too.

She knelt now beside his bed. She was tired, so tired. She wiped away the weak tears that coursed down her face and turned her head as she heard the door creak open. Nick stood silently in the doorway.

“Go back to bed,” she told him wearily. “You are not better yet and you should not be here.”