Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(78)
? ? ?
I’ve spent over an hour staring at the list of symptoms, compiled above. I’m seeing something, yet I’m missing something, too. I feel like there’s a thread flowing between them, and I’m not catching it.
I’m either looking too hard, or not looking hard enough.
I’m reminded of something, but reminded so barely, so faintly, that I can’t lure the memory to my mind’s surface. I refuse to believe that it’s mere desperation or false hope bubbling up to taunt me.
There’s something here. And I will find it.
Lizzie Andrew Borden
APRIL 30, 1894
It’s been a day of hope, and a day of misery. I’m tempted to say that on the balance, it evens out . . . but with Nance’s life and sanity in some kind of suspension, it’s difficult to lend too much weight to what scant hope did manage to appear.
She’s been thirsty. Gasping, as if for air—but not satisfied unless it’s water. She isn’t passing much of it, I shudder to say, and I do not think it’s my imagination that she’s taking on something of the bloated appearance of my father and stepmother. She’s not so bad yet, but I can see it coming. It’s barreling down on me like a train, and there’s nothing I can do. No action I can take to prevent or stall the matter, and it’s killing me more certainly than it’s killing her. After all, it might be argued that it’s only changing her.
But I’ll begin with the hope. It came earlier in the day, after all, so I might as well present things chronologically.
? ? ?
Doctor Seabury beat on the door sometime right after breakfast. Emma was upstairs, and Nance was upstairs, too—in the extra room, tied down to the bed lest she wander, roam, and prove some danger to anyone. Therefore, I was alone so far as capable adults went, so I was delighted to see our visitor. I was lonely, and I hadn’t even realized it.
He arrived with a wild look in his eyes, but not an unpleasant one—he had achieved some great idea! Or so he told me, as I bid him come inside and offered him coffee or tea. He picked coffee, and we both went into the kitchen while I set the percolator in motion. Without waiting for a cup, he began to speak.
“I’ve been looking at the symptoms, the list we made together, you and I and your sister—and I’ve been considering the other factors, things we may have known to serve a pattern, but not in the same way as the physical changes have presented themselves.”
“I’m not certain I understand,” I confessed.
“Neither do I. Not precisely, but that’s all right for now. Patterns aren’t always precise, and there’s an exception to every rule. But we can learn something, even from the exceptions. The exceptions can show us plenty. That’s what I mean—it’s the exceptions that are revealing a whole picture, even if it’s a picture with holes in it.”
I was frankly concerned. He was talking in circles, and the line between madness and normalcy as I knew it had grown so narrow in this past year.
“Doctor, I do pray you’ll explain yourself. You’re beginning to worry me.” Might as well be honest. After all, we were veritable partners in madness these days.
He shook his head, accepted a porcelain cup and a pitcher of cream, and offered his apologies. “I’m very sorry, though I know what you mean. There’s been some shift, hasn’t there been? And here, on the other side, it’s difficult to retain perspective. But no, let me assure you, there’s no madness or affliction to be found in me. Not yet.”
Until just then, I hadn’t noticed that he’d brought a satchel with him, but now he lifted it onto his lap and extricated a medical textbook, one which was intended as a basic introduction to common diseases and their causes. A freshman’s book, I should think. He flipped it open before I had a chance to note the title or author.
A page was dog-eared, and he turned to it swiftly. “I spent all of yesterday afternoon and evening mulling the question, staring at it from every possible direction, hoping to figure out what the pattern might be. Then this morning, I shot awake with an idea. This idea,” he told me, slapping his index finger onto a heading titled “Tetanus: Generalized, Local, and Other Manifestations.”
“Lockjaw?” He couldn’t be serious.
“The overlap is not one hundred percent, but I think you’ll agree there’s enough similarity that it warrants further investigation.”
I wasn’t prepared to agree to anything yet. “Convince me.”
Just the invitation he was looking for. His face was positively alight. “Very well. Here’s our list of symptoms, presented in and around Fall River—in various combinations and severities. Now watch the correlation: difficulty swallowing, resulting in excess salivation; fever, seizures, and spasms. All of it, right here. Symptomatic of tetanus.
“You mentioned seeing your stepmother’s body arching backward—there’s a term for that, you see? Opisthotonos. It’s every bit as violent as you reported, and often results in broken bones and muscle tears. The difficulty of controlling one’s body, see, it’s right here in black and white. Tetanus. And in the later stages, sufferers have terrible difficulty breathing, resulting in something like the rasping we heard the other night.”