Caroline woke softly. So softly. Everything was exquisitely still—the air, her skin. Her toes brushed against cool sheets and she smiled dreamily to herself. Nothing had ever felt so fine as that crisp muslin against her skin. For a moment she could not make herself understand why it all felt so singularly different. Everything was as it always was. Charles lay on one side of her, snoring lightly. Caroline turned her head to the other side and found . . . nothing. She stared, unable even to blink, at the space where the baby should be.
Nothing but her mind could move, and the sudden speed of it dizzied her. The sheets, her nightdress, the sense of comfort itself—all of it was wrong. Her memory groped backward and found Mary crying for water, the sound aswirl in a dreamlike haze of heat and inertia. Joining that moment and this one—nothing.
The memories stopped so short, Caroline’s mind seemed to plummet. Anxious to dispel the sensation, she fixed her eyes to the row of buttons up the yoke of her nightdress. White, round buttons. Their smallness and their neatness made a foothold for her thoughts, which came creeping up out of the void.
What had become of her shoes, her dress, her corset? Had she only dreamed the sobs and the howls, the throbbing in her breast and the terrible, shimmering heat? Had anything in that nightmarish whirl happened at all? Caroline concentrated harder yet on the small white buttons as another realization worked itself free of the void. Even if none of it had happened, Carrie should still be in the empty space beside her. Caroline shivered. A pinprick of fear, first cold, then white-hot, pierced her belly. Deep inside her head, a thin specter of a voice dared to whisper: Was the baby herself even real?
Caroline’s heart stuttered, too weak to pound. “Carrie?” The word was a creak. Her mouth tasted bitter and shrunken.
Suddenly Mrs. Scott’s face was over hers. “Don’t fret yourself, Mrs. Ingalls. The little one’s asleep in the washtub. Snug as a bug, next to the fire.”
The dreadful thoughts released her so suddenly, Caroline felt as if she were floating.
Mrs. Scott brought a mug of cool water and held it for Caroline to drink. The water rippled as it touched her trembling lips. She lay back on the pillow and her body continued to vibrate, softly, steadily. Not the ague, Caroline thought. Fear. It had lasted only an instant, but it had permeated her entirely. She could feel it melting away now, passing through her skin and lifting, harmless, into the air as Mrs. Scott used her knuckles to brush the matted tendrils of hair from Caroline’s forehead.
“Now you’re awake and the fever’s passed, let’s get this straightened out,” Mrs. Scott said. Her big nimble fingers coaxed the tangled hair pins loose as she talked, until she had Caroline’s long braid unfurled across her lap. “There’s fever and ague all up and down the creek,” she said, “all from watermelons, of all things. Some fool settler planted watermelons in the bottoms, and every soul that’s eaten one is down sick this very minute, with hardly enough folks left standing to tend to them. I’ve been going house to house day and night, but yours is the worst case I’ve seen. It’s a wonder you ever lived through, all of you down at once. Dr. Tann—he’s a Negro, doctors all over this side of the county, settlers and Indians both, heaven help him—was headed up to Independence when that dog of yours met him and wouldn’t let him pass. And here you all were, more dead than alive!”
“How long has it been?” Caroline asked.
“Couldn’t say for certain. I’ve been here since yesterday, and Dr. Tann stayed a day and a night before I came.” Her hands worked the braided strands slowly apart, all the way to the scalp. “No telling how long you’d all been down before that. Dr. Tann said by the way the stock went after their feed, he guessed another day or two anyhow.”
Three days, at least. Caroline tried again to call up some recollection. There was Mary’s voice. Then Laura’s face, and the sound of her crawling across the floorboards, and the next thing Caroline knew she was waking into that blessed stillness. In between was something abrupt as a ravine, the likes of which she had never encountered within her own mind.
Hidden in that deep, blank void were all the things Dr. Tann and Mrs. Scott must have done for them, Caroline thought—every one of them, down to the cow and calf. What state they had all sunk to by the time the doctor found them, she did not like to imagine. All of it was set to rights. Even the square of flannel between her skin and the straw tick was fresh and dry.
Caroline turned her head and covered her mouth, but Mrs. Scott heard the sound that slipped between Caroline’s fingers.
“Now,” said Mrs. Scott as she combed her hands through Caroline’s hair, “there’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
But Caroline was not ashamed. She was so grateful, her throat throbbed with it. Things she could not have asked of anyone but her own blood kin, these people had done for her. Such a debt could not be repaid, except perhaps to Providence itself.
Mrs. Scott combed and combed, not untangling now, but soothing Caroline with her long, slow strokes. To think that Mrs. Scott had it in her to be kind after everything she had already done. It was almost too sweet to bear, but Caroline had no strength to resist. The fever had wrung her so dry, she felt brittle, inside and out.
Most of all, she wanted to see Carrie, but she did not want to ask. To ask would be the same as confessing that she had believed the absurd notion that had risen out of the fever-addled coils of her brain. Mrs. Scott had told her the baby was safe, and Caroline did not doubt it. Yet her body was unsatisfied. Her arms begged for the reassurance of the weight and shape of the child, the perfect fit of her, belly to belly and cheek to breast. She felt the insistent press of her milk—Carrie’s milk—against her upper arms and took what comfort she could from its undeniable link with the baby.
While she waited for Carrie to wake, Caroline swallowed the powdered bitters Dr. Tann had left behind, puckering like a child at the way it drew every atom of moisture from her mouth. She lifted the mug for more water, but Mrs. Scott brought a spoonful of cream instead. “Don’t swallow it right off. Hold it in your mouth a minute.” Caroline obliged, and her entire face relaxed at the touch of that thick cream. It was silky-sweet and sank into the roughened surface of her tongue as softly as a kiss. Caroline’s eyes rolled up blissfully to Mrs. Scott, who burst out laughing. “My mother’s trick,” she said. “Never fails. Most folks put their dose of quinine right into a mug of milk, but it’s not nearly the same.”