Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match(97)
“Calm yourself,” Dr. Corentin warned. “You do not seem to comprehend the situation. This young man is close to death.”
The man’s pessimism was frustrating. “He isn’t dying, he’s just tired. What else shall we do?” Angelika’s stress levels rose with each instrument that the doctor packed away in his case.
The doctor said, “Keep him warm. Pray for him.”
“Our mother died from a prayer-related illness,” Victor informed him acidly. “I expected more from you, sir. Give us real things to do. Science. Medicine. That is what we believe in this household. Got a goddamn leech somewhere in there?”
Angelika watched as the doctor became offended, and she searched for a solution; the best one she knew. “His return to health will entail a thousand-pound gift for yourself, Dr. Corentin, which should be easy money, because he will be fine after a good night’s sleep. Please, may I entreat you to stay the night across the hall?”
It was midnight, and the wind outside howled. Dr. Corentin patted his pocket as he readily agreed. “I should be most interested to learn your method of resuscitation,” he said as a peace offering to Victor as he was shown out. “To save a man’s life in such a way is no small feat.”
Victor and Dr. Corentin closed the door behind them. Angelika was alone with her love, and she promptly fell apart. She wept as she struggled out of her gown, undergarments, and boots, and sobbed as she put on her silky nightdress, placed in her drawer a lifetime ago by that old scamp Mary.
Mary would know what to do now, with her witchy folk remedies. She would put a green pine cone in the fireplace, or pack some damp yew leaves into his armpits or some such nonsense, but it would absolutely help, because it would mean she was here. Perhaps she was nursing poor Adam in a similar state? Angelika cried for Mary, and Arlo, and Adam, and her parents, and her own wretched soul.
With chattering teeth, she got into the bed and moved close to Arlo’s side. He was as cold as a pane of glass. Rubbing his arms and chest, she called out loudly to her brother, “Ask Sarah for heating bricks. As many as we have. I’ll save you again,” Angelika told Arlo’s sleeping profile. “I swear I will. As many times as it takes.” She imagined his wry expression at this dramatic declaration. “I will even allow Victor to assist me, like I did earlier.”
At the graveside, she and Victor had fallen to their knees beside Arlo’s prone body and rolled him over.
“No pulse. The Persian book—the compressions,” Victor had told Angelika. She’d read every book he had, and it was why she would always be his ideal assistant. It was advice from the fifteenth century, but it was all they had. Tearing Arlo’s shirt open, Victor had begun pressing on his left-side rib cage.
When Angelika looked up at Christopher, he shook his head, helpless.
“No heartbeat, no breath,” Angelika observed, kneeling at Arlo’s head. Improvise, experiment, use your brain, Jelly. She put her mouth to Arlo’s in a passionless kiss, and exhaled. When she felt air tickle her cheek, she blocked his nose and forced him, over and over, to take her air, her love, and her abundance of fussing.
Victor reentered the room now, interrupting the memory, loaded down with heating bricks wrapped in cloth, and more in Lizzie’s arms behind him.
“I would swear it, Vic,” Angelika told him absently as the bricks were packed in around them under the blankets, “when I was breathing the air into him, I swear I felt his soul in my lungs.”
Victor said briskly, “You’re in shock. We don’t believe in—”
She cut him off. “Never again tell me what I think. Never again attempt to convince me of what you think is true. He has taught me to believe in everything.”
“I cannot believe you knew about this,” Victor spat out. “A priest? Father bloody Northcott, in my own house? How long were you aware?”
“Who he was is not his fault,” Lizzie said pointedly. “It is your fault, Vic, for experimenting on him in the first place.”
“It is our fault,” Angelika agreed. “Victor, we did this to him. We let him dig that hole, completely exhausting his life force.”
Victor ignored her and kept at it. “Your complex reveals itself again—you do prefer those unattainable types. You truly believe a man would choose you, over his own God?”
With the confidence of an empress, Angelika replied, “Yes.”
He choked laughing. “Then you are more delusional than I ever imagined. Well, if there are pitchforks and flames down below, you had better ready yourself for them.”
“Happily.”
“Vic, get out!” Lizzie snapped at him, and he stalked out, banging the door shut. Lizzie lay down on the top of the quilt, on the other side of Arlo. “Don’t listen to your absolute pillock of a brother. I will always believe you. Tell me everything.”
Angelika made a grunt that meant something like: You’ll tell Victor.
Lizzie persisted. “I’m your sister now.” She put her arm across Arlo’s stomach, and the two women held hands. “How did it feel? His soul?”
The warmth in the bed was making Angelika drowsy. “Like stars. I breathed it all back into him, and then Vic found his pulse again.”
“What a pretty way to describe it. I may borrow that line.” Lizzie mulled this over as they all lay there. “Funny, when I’m not vomiting into a chamber pot, that’s what it feels like here.” She patted her lower stomach. “Silvery and magic. Stars.”