Tess began walking to the side of the road herself, when Fred observed that the end of a wire from the felled telegraph pole had come to rest in a newly formed puddle on the side of the road.
‘Tess, wait!’ Fred shouted. She kept walking, so he darted towards her, quickly pulling her back from the innocuous-looking, but rather dangerous, electrified puddle. Distracted by the rain, the chaos of the day and one or two thoughts of Jane, however, he stepped in the puddle himself.
As he ruminated on the thought that this might have been a bad move, a spark seemed to agree with him. It moved from the puddle and entered Fred’s left foot through his toe, where it shot up through his leg into his torso. It volleyed through the liquid of his chest, tickled the corner of his left ventricle, leapt through his shoulder, danced down his arm and shot out from his body through his right thumb, then escaped into the earth through the telegraph pole he was now holding. He flew across the laneway like a bird and came to rest against the iron-latticed window of the building opposite.
CHAPTER FORTY
Jane felt unfortunate to have upset Fred, but it made sense in the scheme of events. She would not see him again. She stared out the window at the back garden, where a glorious sight greeted her. Rain poured down and splashed onto the grass. The yellow foliage seemed restored to green.
A knock rang out at the front door. Jane went to answer it; perhaps Sofia had forgotten her key. She hoped it was not Fred. She opened the door. A man in a red shirt stood on the porch. ‘May I be of assistance?’ she asked him.
‘My name is Rob. I am to take you to the hospital.’
‘I do not understand,’ Jane said.
‘Ms Wentworth sent me. I’m a runner from set. Her brother had an accident.’
Jane held the doorframe. ‘What type of accident?’
Jane’s first ride in a horseless steel carriage went without ceremony. She rode in the passenger side while Rob, the runner from set (whatever that meant), steered the carriage to Bath Hospital. She commanded herself to marvel at the speed of it, the size, the air rushing in through the opened window. She ordered her mind to ponder how the engine was powered without steam. For some silly reason, it grew obsessed instead with the definition of the word ‘accident’ in the twenty-first century. Accidents where she came from were whispered about rather than spoken of. They meant someone had lost a limb, an eyeball or a head. But with all the advancements of two hundred years, with the steel buildings and train tubes, surely the big accidents had been wiped out, gone the way of the dodo bird. ‘Accident’ probably denoted something minor now, like a cut from paper or a stubbed toe. Definitely nothing to vex oneself over. She cursed herself for wasting her debut voyage in a horseless steel carriage occupied by such thoughts.
The boy in the red shirt deposited Jane at Bath Hospital and a member of staff showed her down a corridor. Jane had visited a hospital once before, at age nine, for someone to inspect her inflamed tooth. She and her father had travelled in a post carriage to Winchester, and her father had held her hand while the village barber, who also claimed the title of its doctor, relieved Jane of her left molar with a pair of pliers. She had not been fond of hospitals since. She hoped the physicians who treated Fred were gentler than hers, if only for his comfort.
Jane arrived at the room where Sofia waited. Sofia embraced her. Tears bathed her face. ‘I don’t know anything,’ she said to Jane. ‘I haven’t seen him.’
‘It was only an accident,’ Jane said. ‘I am certain all is well.’ Her voice sounded confident.
Jane and Sofia waited in silence. Steel boxes sat everywhere, beeping and ringing. Another member of staff, a nurse perhaps, escorted them after a time to the room where Fred lay. Jane felt annoyed. No stubbed toe or paper cut greeted them. Aside from a little bandage above his eye and one on his arm, Fred lay before them with naught a scratch on him.
Sofia embraced him. ‘What happened?’
Jane remained in the doorway and came no closer.
‘Is my hair spiky?’ Fred asked. He wore a short-sleeved white gown. Jane’s gaze fell to the floor.
Sofia pounded him with a fist. ‘We thought you were dead. No one told us anything!’
‘I’m fine. Never felt better. Might go to the gym after this,’ he said. Fred moved his eyes to Jane as Sofia spoke. He moved them back to Sofia again and made no other acknowledgement of her presence.
Jane felt foolish and out of place; she invaded a family scene. She wished she had not come.
A man entered the room. He had a bald head and soft brown eyes. ‘Which one is the sister?’ he asked them. Sofia raised her hand. ‘My name is Dr Marks.’
Jane observed the man. Doctors dressed differently now, it seemed. Where Jane’s own physician wore riding boots and a frock coat, this one wore green pyjamas. Sofia seemed unconcerned by the nightclothes and shook hands with the doctor. He turned to Jane and held out his hand. ‘And you are?’ he asked.
‘Jane,’ she replied. ‘I am no relation.’ She shook his hand. Fred looked at her again.
‘What happened, Doc?’ Sofia said.
‘Mr Wentworth got a bit too close to some electricity,’ Dr Marks replied.
‘He’s always been a bit daft,’ Sofia said affectionately. ‘May we take him home?’
The doctor studied one of the boxes beside Fred’s hospital bed. It shone with lights of green and blue lines and beeped in a rhythm. He wrote something down with a self-inking quill and turned to the box again, then repeated this several times, watching and writing, as though the box dictated to him a song which he transposed in his notes. ‘We’d like to keep him here for a few hours,’ he said.
‘Is that necessary? He’s acting his normal, annoying self and he looks healthy enough,’ Sofia said. Her face pulled into a rubbery smile to show she was joking, but her eyes looked worried.
‘We’d like him to stay,’ he said with a smile. He finished his conversation with the box and left the room.
‘Is it cold in here?’ Fred shivered. ‘I feel like they turned the aircon up too high.’
‘It’s always cold in these places,’ Sofia said.
‘Could someone get me a blanket?’ he asked.
‘I am not your maid,’ Sofia said.
‘I will go,’ said Jane. Anything to leave the room.
‘No, that’s okay, Jane,’ Fred said. She searched his face for feeling. He stared into the distance.
‘I insist,’ Jane said, and started walking away.
Sofia stayed by the bed. ‘What are you looking at, Fred?’ she asked. ‘Fred?’
Jane turned back. Fred stared at the floor for some reason. Jane followed his gaze. No point of interest presented itself in the spot where he peered, except a shiny white floor. His eyes lay unfocused. His body remained in the bed, but his mind seemed to have left the room.
‘Fred?’ Sofia called again. Fred lay his head on his shoulder and slowly closed his eyes. He did not move; he appeared asleep. Sofia pushed his shoulder, hard enough to wake him. He did not stir, but continued sleeping. Sofia ran to the door. ‘Someone?’ she called down the hall. ‘Help!’
A woman with strawberry hair entered the room. She addressed the steel box first. Then she moved to the patient. ‘Mr Wentworth?’ she asked. She shook Fred’s shoulder. ‘Mr Wentworth, can you hear me? Do you know where you are? Mr Wentworth?’
Mr Wentworth gave no answer.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The strawberry-haired woman consulted the steel box once more. Numbers flashed across its frame, changing constantly, each figure moving up and down in a rapid blink.
Two more people entered the room. They all looked at the box. A line ran across the box’s frame, patterned like the stitches on a blanket. The woman pressed a red circle on the wall. An alarm sounded in the room and rang out in the hall. Not an echo, but the same alarm repeated, from another source.
The line that was a procession of blanket stitches now shaped into a chaos of troughs and peaks, moving
across the frame at random heights and spaces. ‘Ventricular fibrillation,’ the strawberry-haired woman called out, using pieces of Latin which Jane understood but rearranging them into words she had never heard. ‘Lower the bed,’ she commanded. One of the other people turned a crank on the bed. Fred, who had been sitting upright, now lay flat. A man gently moved Jane and Sofia to the edge of the room. ‘Please wait outside,’ he said to them. They moved outside the room but lingered and watched from the doorway.
The strawberry-haired woman jumped on top of Fred, as one jumped on a horse. Small and round and at least in her sixth decade, she leapt onto the bed with the grace of a springbok and thumped his chest with her fist. Again, she checked the steel box. Of all the boxes Jane had seen, this one reigned supreme. All in the room obeyed its commands; it told them to smile or frown. The woman frowned. She placed her hands, one on top of the other, over the middle of Fred’s breastbone and pushed down and released. She repeated the motion in a rhythm. After several cycles, another person tapped her shoulder and indicated that he could take over. He stood beside the bed in readiness to do so. Jane watched the strawberry-haired woman, tiring but determined, and saw that this required intense work, to move a person’s chest up and down for them.
Words were passed between the hospital staff in whispered calm. Jane understood little of it. She watched Sofia to gauge what was occurring. Sofia’s face seemed to change from pink to grey.
Everyone looked at Fred, then at the box.
‘What takes place, Sofia?’ Jane asked her.
‘Oh,’ Sofia replied, and said nothing more.
Footsteps thundered down the hall and a man pushed a chest of steel drawers on wheels into the room, which rattled as it entered. More steel boxes painted white and blue sat atop the chest. The trolley pusher handed out items to the group. The group sprang into action. One person placed a clear mask over Fred’s mouth and pumped a balloon into his throat. Another removed Fred’s gown.
Next, a man with grey hair entered. He wore a suit. More people entered after him. Each new person seemed older than the last. In less than thirty seconds, a dozen people had entered the room.
Dr Marks entered last. The trolley man handed him two black paddles, shaped like irons. The boxes buzzed and beeped. ‘Charging to two hundred,’ the trolley man announced. ‘Clear.’
Dr Marks placed the irons on Fred’s chest. The irons buzzed. The sound sickened with its volume and flatness. Fred’s body lifted half an inch from the bed, then flopped back onto it like a rag doll dropped by a child.
The group all looked to the box. It must not have given them the answer they wanted, for they chatted and muttered again. Dr Marks shook his head. He looked at the irons as if to check that they worked.
‘What has happened, Sofia?’ Jane asked.
‘His heart has stopped,’ she replied. Jane nodded. She knew little, but she knew a heart was made for beating. Sofia seemed to have ceased blinking and breathing.
Jane clutched the chair beside her, then cursed herself for the display. This person was but a friend. She had known him less than two weeks. It was silly to get swept up in the affairs of persons she hardly knew, but she hoped he survived, for Sofia’s sake.
Sofia took Jane’s hand. Jane held it, if only to bring Sofia comfort. She did not need comforting herself.
‘Charging two hundred,’ the trolley man announced. ‘Clear.’
Dr Marks placed the irons on Fred again. They buzzed, and he rose from the bed once more, then flopped.
They all watched the box. ‘Damn,’ said Dr Marks.
After Sofia had banned Jane from observing the advancements of the twenty-first century, Jane made her peace with shutting her mind to the wonders of the new world. Now, as words rushed past her ears like ‘cardiac arrest’ and ‘ten thousand volts’, she yearned to have disobeyed Sofia and learned every detail of the medical endeavours of the past two hundred years.
The strawberry-haired matron bowed her head. The trolley man exhaled.
Jane sensed the group begin to tire. Not in their physical action, which remained crisp and practised, but in their mood. The strawberry-haired woman’s voice grew less sure. Dr Marks’ commands were less vital. A vapour seemed to descend upon the room, some sort of malaise, or wobble of faith. She saw that the longer this process went on, the less likely it stood to succeed. These doctors and nurses completed not the steps of some infallible sequence, which, when followed correctly, would lead to their patient’s recuperation. Instead they made a series of attempts, with each subsequent shot wilder than the last. The more boxes and tubes and people were added to the gamble, the more diminished the chance of return.
Earlier, when she was presented with the option of leaving him on her own terms, Jane had resigned herself to the notion with sadness but determination. Now the choice was taken from her – Fred threatened to depart from her life with the audacity to not even check with her first. She found it an unacceptable proposition.
‘What are they doing, Sofia?’ Jane asked.
‘Giving him electricity,’ Sofia said.
‘But the electricity is what did this! He does not need more of it!’ Jane announced so loud Sofia jumped. ‘Is it working, at least?’ she asked then.
Sofia shook her head.
‘Charging three hundred,’ the trolley man called. ‘Clear.’
Dr Marks placed the irons down once more. Fred lifted and flopped. His eyes remained closed.
Dr Marks lowered his irons. He scratched his face.
Jane then had the grim notion, the one afflicting fools throughout the ages, of only realising the worth of something once it was gone. Throughout almost the entirety of her acquaintance with Fred, Jane had been preoccupied with the issue of returning home, concerning herself primarily with reversing a spell she considered to be faulty. But Mrs Sinclair had made no error, she realised now. Jane had not come to the twenty-first century by mistake. The witch had promised to take Jane to her one true love, and she had delivered.
Jane’s legacy in this time, her books and her authorial reputation, were indeed disappearing in front of her eyes, because a return to her own time to create them was growing less likely by the day. But her unlikelihood of returning home was not due to her being so enamoured by this era that she felt obliged to stay in it; it was not the horseless steel carriages, the tube trains and the abundance of food which compelled Jane to remain. It was a person. He had bought Jane sea-bathing clothes and danced with her. As a child, he had tried to walk across England to save his dying mother and almost managed the task. Now he verged on departing the earth without ever knowing how much Jane loved him.
Was it always supposed to end this way? Mrs Sinclair’s promise had mentioned nothing of electricity or destroyed heart muscle. She had said nothing about him surviving once Jane got there. Perhaps this stood as her lot, to meet him briefly before he departed. What a cruel thing. How should she act now? Should she thank the gods for the short time they’d had together? Speak wistfully in hushed tones? She wished it were not so. But then who was she in the scheme of these things?
As he died there before her on that splendid twenty-first-century hospital table, surrounded by experts and wizards who could not make him well, Jane wondered if she would go on breathing in a world without him in it.
Then the box beeped.
The group all snapped their heads towards it. It beeped once more, and then again.
‘A-fib,’ announced the strawberry-haired woman, in more twenty-first-century medical jargon. Someone else nodded. Another smiled.
‘Is he alive?’ Jane demanded.
‘Yes,’ Sofia cried. ‘I think!’
Dr Marks nodded. ‘Let’s get him to theatre.’ The group moved in balletic coordination, bundling blankets up, separating tubes from the wall and placing boxes on Fred’s bed.
‘Where are you taking him?’ Sofia bellowed.
‘There’s more work to be done on his heart,’ Dr Marks told her. ‘He n
eeds surgery.’
Six people took hold of his bed and wheeled him from the room, past Jane and Sofia. His eyes stayed closed and his head rocked as they moved him. A tube protruded from his mouth.
‘Take care with his head,’ Jane whispered, pulling Sofia out of the way.
They rolled him down the hall. He disappeared through swinging doors.
Sofia screamed to a woman in green who sat behind a desk to explain what was happening.
Jane stood in the doorway and watched the place where he went. There was more work to be done on his heart. Now she carried around something in her own heart, too. She wondered how its weight could be borne in her one little chest.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Jane returned to the room where they had waited before. Sofia joined her.
‘I’m a selfish woman, Jane. I’m afraid if I lose my brother, I might do something stupid like be sad for the rest of my days.’
Jane touched her hand. ‘You must be calm, Sofia. The physician said the operation will take one hour. It has only been three minutes.’
‘If he leaves me, I will have no one left. I will die alone naked in bed like Marilyn Monroe after a barbiturate supper.’
Jane had long stopped asking Sofia what she meant with her references to people and places Jane could not possibly know anything of, so she simply nodded and smiled and offered what best encouragement she could. ‘I am still here, Sofia. I will not leave you.’ Sofia sat down next to her.
‘You say that now,’ she said. She paused. ‘Probably not the time to tell you this, but Mrs Sinclair writes you a letter in 1810. Make of that what you will.’
Jane shifted in her seat. ‘Mrs Sinclair? She writes me a letter?’
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