East McMillan, which was the widest and busiest thoroughfare on Liz’s run thus far—there were few pedestrians and many cars—shimmered in the sun. Kitty’s baseball cap was royal blue, with a University of Kentucky logo, though UK was a school no one in their family had attended, and Liz wondered if the cap was making her head warmer. Removing it didn’t seem to help matters, however, and on the Reading Road overpass, she donned it again. She considered slowing to a walk, but Auburn Avenue wasn’t far off, and once she reached it, she was practically there.
By the time the enormous brick edifice of Christ Hospital came into view, Liz felt that time had collapsed and she had been running for several years through a stasis of heat. Behind her sunglasses, perspiration fell into her eyes, making it difficult to see. Glancing at the map on her phone, she followed Auburn Avenue to Mason Street and curved toward Eleanor Place and the entrance of the emergency room. Just outside its automatic door, beneath the porte cochere, she stopped and bent, setting her hands on her knees, to catch her breath.
“Liz?” said a male voice, and Liz stood up straight. Sweat was dripping from all the usual places, her temples and the back of her neck and her armpits, but also from a range of body parts less commonly associated with thermoregulation, including her kneecaps. She removed her sunglasses to wipe her eyes with the heels of her hands, and a droplet of sweat flew through the air and landed on the forearm of Fitzwilliam Darcy’s white coat; she saw it happen, and she was certain that he did, too. In a tone that fell somewhere between confusion and disapproval, he said, “What are you doing here?”
Only at this moment did her choice to run to the hospital appear strange as opposed to merely uncomfortable. It seemed difficult to avoid the truth, though surely the entire truth wasn’t necessary. Still breathing unevenly, she said, “Jane fainted, and they brought her to the ER. But I think she’s fine. What are you doing here?”
“Seeing a patient. Does Jane have a history of syncope?”
“If that’s the same as fainting, then no.”
“It is a very hot day. And not the time most people would choose to go running.”
“Only mad dogs and Englishmen, I hear,” Liz said. “But there were no cars at our house. Do I go through there?” She gestured toward the automatic door.
“I’ll go with you,” Darcy said, and as they walked inside, he added “Jane’s thirty-nine?”
“Yes.” In spite of the other subjects preoccupying her, Liz couldn’t help noting that her sister’s age must have been a topic of discussion between Chip and Darcy.
“If she’s generally in good health, I suspect it’s heat syncope,” Darcy said. They paused at a reception desk, and Darcy said, “I’m Dr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, and I need to find a patient named Jane Bennet.”
The receptionist typed briefly on her keyboard before saying, “Room 108.” Neither Liz nor Darcy spoke as they continued walking. At a set of double doors, Darcy held a badge on a lanyard around his neck up to a sensor, and the doors opened toward them. They were in a wide hall and had no sooner rounded a corner than they saw Caroline Bingley, who wore such a peculiar expression—it seemed to be a combination of mirth and fury, but was that even possible?—that Liz had the hysterical thought that Jane might have died. “Is she okay?” Liz asked with alarm.
Caroline’s eyes narrowed. Glaring, she said, “Congratulations, Auntie Liz.”
WHEN LIZ PULLED back the curtain at the entrance to Jane’s small room, she saw her sister in a bed whose mattress was set at a semi-reclined angle. Jane wore a hospital gown (Liz hadn’t expected the change of clothes, which somehow made Jane’s status as a patient official), and a tube inserted into a vein at her left inner elbow delivered clear liquid. Quietly, almost silently, Jane was crying. The sisters’ eyes met, and Jane brought a tissue to her nose. “Oh, Lizzy,” she said. “What have I done?”
Liz climbed onto the bed beside Jane and set an arm around her. “I stink,” Liz said. “Just to warn you.”
Briefly, Jane appeared to forget her distress. “Did you go to CrossFit?”
“I ran here,” Liz said. “There were no cars at home. Are you okay?”
Jane’s lower lip quivered.
“Not to put you on the spot, but is it Chip’s or from IUI?”
A few seconds passed, then Jane shook her head, unable to speak. After another interval of silence followed by an enormous sniff, Jane said, “Everything was so chaotic with Dad’s surgery. I kept meaning to buy a test, to see if the last round at the clinic had worked. Then I met Chip, and we were having such a good time that suddenly it seemed like maybe it’d be better if I wasn’t pregnant.”
“So it’s not Chip’s?” Liz said.
“They’re going to do an ultrasound to figure out how far along I am. Anything is possible, I guess, but we’ve been using condoms.”
“Does he know you’re pregnant?”
Jane sighed. “At the restaurant, the EMT asked if I could be, and I said maybe, but I didn’t mention the donor stuff. Of course, Caroline heard, and she told Chip before I had a chance. I think she called him from her car as I was riding in the ambulance. So he found me, and he was very sweet and worried. I wasn’t even sure I was pregnant at that point because they hadn’t done the blood test. But I felt like I had to explain to him about the IUI, and he was a little shocked, and then he got called away for a stab wound before we could finish the conversation. That was an hour ago.”