Charles and Emma by Deborah Heiligman

Author:Deborah Heiligman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781429934954
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Published: 2010-02-12T05:00:00+00:00

When Charles arrived at the hotel in Malvern the next afternoon, Miss Thorley took him aside. Quietly, in an outer room, she told him how bad it was. Charles flung himself facedown upon the sofa. Poor Etty watched in horror; she had had no idea how sick Annie really was.

Dr. Gully had diagnosed Annie with a bilious fever, which meant that along with a fever and stomach upset, she was vomiting bile. What this also meant, as Charles knew, was that Annie was in mortal danger. Unless there was a miracle, she was likely to die.

Miss Thorley took Etty out of the room so she didn’t have to see Charles so upset. Now Charles could cry alone.

After he gathered himself, Charles went in to see Annie. “She looks very ill: her face lighted up and she certainly knew me,” he wrote to Emma. He told her the doctor said that Annie was doing a little better. They were giving her camphor and ammonia to stimulate her and to stop her vomiting. Medicine had not advanced much in the twenty years since Emma’s sister Fanny had died; all that could be done was to treat Annie’s symptoms. There was nothing to directly attack a bacterial infection. (Antibiotics, such as penicillin, would not be discovered for almost eighty years.) Dr. Gully came in the evening and felt Annie’s pulse. It was irregular, and he was afraid she would die that night. Gully stayed there to help however he could, and Charles wrote the next day to Emma that he had been “most kind.”

On April 18, Good Friday, Annie had another bad vomiting attack, which this time they chose to interpret as a somewhat hopeful sign. At least she had the strength to vomit. And her pulse was regular again.

Charles reported all to Emma and responded to a letter of hers. “Your note made me cry much,” he wrote, “but I must not give way, and can avoid doing so by not thinking about her. It is now from hour to hour a struggle between life and death.”

And he added, “God only knows the issue.”

When she vomited more green fluid, bile from her liver, they all knew it was very, very bad. But Charles kept up hope. “She appears dreadfully exhausted,” he wrote to Emma again, “and I thought for some time she was sinking, but she has now rallied a little. The two symptoms Dr. G. dreads most have not come on—restlessness and coldness.” While Charles was writing this letter, Dr. Gully came in and examined Annie. He felt sure she was dying, but he gave Charles something to hold on to. Charles continued his letter. “Dr Gully has been and thank God he says though the appearances are so bad, positively no one important symptom is worse, and that he yet has hopes—positively he has Hopes. Oh my dear be thankful.” But he knew the situation was dire.

Charles wrote to Emma every day, even twice a day, and she wrote back to him.

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