She might well die too—would certainly die without treatment.
Andrew Waggoner would simply not let that happen.
He stumbled to the dispensary, a dark room with a thick wooden door with a lock strong enough to deter a lumber-man with an axe. Less trouble for Andrew, who knew, as did the rest of the hospital’s staff, the hiding place for the brass key that opened it, tucked into a space in the door-frame. He was inside in no time, striking a match in the jar next to the wall lamp and setting the wick.
Then he set to work. He brought down a tray, and filled it with what things he might require: a glass thermometer, a bowl and clean washcloths, sterile lancets; after some consideration, a phial of morphine and a clean syringe. He found a cotton mask, and put it there too—although he wasn’t confident at all that that would be enough.
What he would have liked to have, was Norma Tavish and her pack of curative herbs with him now; as modern as this hospital was, there wasn’t anything that would by itself cure an infection that’d set in here, as well as Norma’s miraculous herbs had in the Tavish settlement.
Andrew set against a stool, and shut his eyes, and pushed Norma Tavish out of his mind. Letting regret steal up too close was a bad idea at any time; here, where the machinations of the Juke could make a man believe anything, it could be fatal. It might almost make a fellow think she was coming now, opening and closing the door to the stairwell, and walking down the corridor with efficient purpose.
Of course, Norma Tavish’s footwear wouldn’t clack on the floor, the way these did.
Andrew opened his eyes and took a breath. It wasn’t a Juke imagining. Someone was coming.
It was too late to douse the light or shut the door. Andrew was not in any shape to prepare for a fight, if it were one of the Feegers. He pressed himself against the wall of the dispensary, and prayed the footsteps would continue.
They slowed, and stopped. And then Waggoner heard a familiar voice.
“Hello? Who’s there, please?”
He laughed out loud.
“Nurse Rowe!” he exclaimed, and then added: “It’s Waggoner.”
There was a shuffling in the hall, and then Annie Rowe put her familiar face around the door jamb. Her eyes were wide in the lamplight.
“My Heavens,” she breathed as she beheld him. “Look at you. I’d sew you a shroud, I hadn’t heard you speak just now.”
Waggoner grinned. He was preposterously glad to see her—almost tearfully so. The exhaustion, no doubt, was catching up to him.
“It’s been an adventure,” he managed. Then he cleared his throat, and drew himself together. “Annie—we’ve got a medical emergency. Ruth Harper’s in the autopsy. She’s deathly ill. Whatever it is, it’s contagious.”
Annie frowned, and looked at the material he’d gathered. She nodded. “You’ve put together quite a kit, Dr. Waggoner. You were intending to carry it down the hall yourself? I’ve a better idea.”
“Which is?”
“Come with me.”
Andrew stood up. It occurred to a small part of him that Annie Rowe had not given him a good reason to follow her—and that part of him thought that he had decided to follow the mad Germaine Frost with scarcely more resistance, and obeyed Jason Thistledown to fly off, with scarcely less.
“I know what will heal your injuries,” said Annie, smiling and holding his good arm as they strode down the hall, to the door.
As they stepped outside into the rain, Andrew asked: “What is that?”
And Annie Rowe turned, and pointed to the narrow road that led down to the sawmill, scored now with strange tracks, and said:
“Jesus.”
A small part of him tried to bend his arm—send the visions away on a spike of agony—but this time, Annie was there to help.
“Easy, Doctor,” she said. “There’s no need for any more pain.” With great care, she reset the sling. “Jesus Christ will heal all. He told me so, in a dream last night.”
And together, they stepped around the hospital, and looked down the road—and Andrew gasped, at the great light that glowed there: warm, and welcoming, and so very melodious. Whether from Jesus Christ or the Dauphin, who rested within—he could not resist it this time. Willingly, he entered into His realm.
The autopsy room was not built with windows, but air moved through it all the same, within high vents in one wall that led straight outside. So it wasn’t as bad a place to be as the storeroom, where Ruth still rested. The voice from the shadows approved.
As Jason hauled Germaine Frost into it and slammed the door shut, it was only a little humid. Water was splashed here and there, from two large buckets that were foaming with soap. Not long ago, Jason had spent time with those buckets, washing himself as thoroughly as he could—as thoroughly as Germaine Frost had made him wash outside the homestead at Cracked Wheel. After he’d scrubbed himself clean of the Cave Germ as best he could, he searched some cupboards and found a white smock as might be worn by doctors cutting up the dead. He got to thinking that maybe some power had a good sense of humour; that outfit would do fine to cover him up for the work that lay ahead.
He was even more sure that that power had taken a hand in this latest moment of providence: delivering his quarry, the murderess Germaine Frost, right into his hands.
“This is fine that you came,” he said. “We can seal this whole matter here, and not put anyone else in harm’s way.”
“Oh Jason,” she said, sobbing, but Jason was having have none of it.
A week ago, he’d have thought when this moment came, when Germaine Frost used tears on him again… he would spew anger at her, call her foul names, and laugh when she objected—like a fellow in a book that Ruth Harper might’ve liked to read over and over again. But as he had held Ruth, comforting her over the death of her friend and sitting there in the dark of the cellar room… he got to know his anger a little better. It grew into a purer thing.
So when Germaine sobbed and cried here in the autopsy, he saw it for what it was. She was trying to trick him with tears, the same as when just idly, after she let him be locked up in the quarantine, he suggested he might head down south and pick up some work there. That made him feel badly—and feeling badly thinned that anger, like throwing water in a tub of lye.
You let remorse get in your way, you’ll never do the kind of thing you have to do.
“I know, Mama,” said Jason over his shoulder.
You let an old drunk’s begging turn you around—he’ll just get drunk again, and let friends even worse than that Etherton into the house.
“Oh Jason, please—think of your potential! The Harper girl is sick, true, because she’s not fit. We’ll find you one with whom to breed, and then—”
Shut her up!
Jason swatted Germaine across the ear.
“Don’t talk to me,” he said. “You talk to me, I’ll hit you. That’s how it’s going to go. Now—” Jason hefted her up by an arm. “Sit on that.” He motioned to the drawer.
She won’t cooperate. A shadow shook its head beyond Germaine’s shoulder. Sure enough, Germaine wasn’t having any of it. She might have divined what Jason intended; get her feet up, lie her on the table, and roll it in, and lock it with her inside. That was his ma’s wisdom, delivered from the shadows behind the jars: Show her what she showed me. Take her away.
So she twisted away from him and planted her feet firm on the ground. One of the lenses was nearly obliterated, and the other hung oddly from her nose.
She stared at Jason steadily. When she spoke, her tone was low and deliberate.