“Miss Allene!” she called as Allene trotted away in her heels as quickly as she could.
She needed fresh air, to be away from those staring, sympathetic eyes that made her wretched. Her buckled shoes were too tight, and she slowed to a walk. Her legs felt stuck in tar, every step more arduous than the last. The bad feeling inside coated her lungs, and her breathing became labored.
Was she going east or west? How would she find the train to get back home? Her reticule was still hanging from her wrist, and faintly she heard the jangling of a few coins inside. It wasn’t enough for a cab. Her blurred eyes searched the streets, but there were no livery cabs anywhere, anyway. Harlem was an altogether alien landscape to her. Passersby stared at her and gave her a wide berth—she must have looked a fright, with tears still pooling in her red eyes. Her nose began to run, and she blotted the back of her hand to her face. Blood smeared on her skin. Somewhere in her milky consciousness, Allene thought, This is very bad. But she was too driven to keep walking, walking, walking. Go home, she told herself. You must get home.
Her breath came in wheezes, and her hands flailed out, pawing the air as if it were water drowning her. Darkness nipped at the edges of her vision—the sun was setting, but darkness had never come so quickly before.
The muscles of her legs spasmed, and she felt herself falling. It would be a relief to lie on the dirty sidewalk, just to rest. Rest. If she could only rest, and sleep, and leave all these terrible thoughts behind. If only—
“Whoops! I’ve got you.”
Strong arms caught her before her knees could slam against the hard ground. She felt another arm scoop her legs up below the knees, and her head knocked against a broad shoulder. Unconsciousness began to close like an aperture over her vision and thoughts. Before she fell into a dead faint, she was able to see a bit of blond hair and brown eyes full of concern.
It was Ernie.
CHAPTER 27
Jasper had been watching over Allene for almost a week now.
She had shown up at the Cutter house after Ernie Fielding had miraculously found her insensate. What a champ. He’d followed her on foot like a pet on a long leash, taking his usual hovering habits a bit far this time but with good effect. He’d caught up to Allene the moment she’d swooned and had carried her for an exhausting twenty blocks before he managed to get a cab. Ernie was far stronger than Jasper gave him credit for.
Once she was at home, it was clear that Allene’s body had become an estuary of blood. It poured from her nose, her mouth, at times even her ears. It curdled into the edge of her scalp and turned her lovely, cushioned bedroom into a scene of muted violence. Sometimes the torrent would stop and her breathing would settle, become less frothy; at other times, death hovered too close.
The sickness exhaled its inevitable fog over the whole household as more servants grew sick and fell to the floor—sometimes dying before they could even speak for help. George, the elderly butler, had succumbed that very night. Two of the youngest maids, barely in their twenties, went by the same dark path later that week.
Allene’s body was being devoured by sickness. Mr. Cutter was paralyzed by the blood that caked his daughter’s waxy, white face and lips. The same night that she was rescued by Ernie, Jasper demanded that she be brought to the hospital.
“Is there no other way?” was all Mr. Cutter managed to say.
“She can’t be nursed back to health. It didn’t work with Lucy. I don’t understand why, but this influenza is like none the doctors have seen. I can ask them to administer oxygen, maybe some transfusions. It’s a stretch, but there’s nothing to lose but Allene. We have to do something.”
With the help of Dawlish—eyes wide with fear and suffocating under the three layers of gauze masks—Jasper had carried Allene into the car. Within the next few hours, Jasper secured Allene a rare open bed at the hospital, surrounded by an entire long, windowed room filled with the dying. The exhausted doctors and nurses, scant in number, shook their heads at him.
“It’s useless. Calomel is all we can do—and aspirin.”
“We’ve been doing that already.”
“Then she’s done for. An oxygen mask and blood can’t help, boy. You’re trying to outrun a waterfall. Call her priest if you want to do something useful.”
“Damn the priest,” Jasper muttered. “I’ll treat her myself if you won’t.”
The doctor was older, too old for the draft. He watched Jasper as he rolled up his sleeves and barked orders at the nurses.
“Are you one of the medical residents?”
“No sir. I’m entering medical school next year.”
The doctor clucked at him, wiping his bloody hands on a cloth, before tossing it onto a pile of rust-colored, stained linens in the corner. “There’s a war going on.”
“I already registered. I didn’t get called yet,” Jasper said defensively.
“Not that war. This one.” He pointed at the forty or so other patients lying on the cots in the gigantic ward. “You have to prepare.”
“For what?”
“For the next bloody war, and I don’t mean the next kaiser. They never stop getting sick. Don’t burn yourself out for one person. Steel your heart. Save it for your future patients.”
Jasper turned away, ignoring him. He was sick of people being plucked haphazardly out of his life and tossed into his memories. Allene’s breath came shallow and quick, black liquid staining her chin. Steel his heart? He didn’t want to save it for anyone, not anymore. He’d rather use it, and then some. It was no good to Jasper anymore.
It took hours and hours to arrange the blood donation. He managed to pin down the only available physician familiar with the apparatus and practically dragged him to Allene’s bedside. The copper cannula was a wide bore, and it hurt like hell to tunnel into his arm vein, but it was worth it. Thank goodness he was a match. And the second he had a chance, he phoned Mr. Cutter and Andrew. Andrew wasn’t a match, but Mr. Cutter and Ernie had type O and were universal donors, and they were more than willing to give to Allene.
Jasper prayed that the blood wouldn’t simply go into her vein and pour out of her lungs. He procured some oxygen too. The tank rolled to her bedside was a behemoth. He fashioned a tent of oilcloth about her upper body and let the oxygen issue around her. Every few minutes, he’d duck beneath the tent to sponge away the bubbling, frothy liquid emanating from her lungs so she wouldn’t aspirate her own secretions. It was a constant struggle to bathe her, keep the tent on, force-feed her calomel, and clean up the ensuing bedpan mess from the potent cathartic.
The nurses didn’t offer to help. The staff was too busy wrapping up the dead and comforting the dying.