“He’s asleep and he’s fine. You want to be rested the next time he wakes up.”
She had been up all night with him, and she spent half of it crying.
“Just take an hour,” I said.
“I can sleep here.” She shrugged.
“You’ll strain your neck sleeping in that chair.”
She bobbed her head.
“I’ll let you know when he wakes up.”
She sighed and stood up slowly, sewing in hand. “I won’t be long.” She hobbled out of the room, her skirts swishing.
I sighed, realizing how tired I was, too. The curtains blocked the daylight, and the room felt gloomy. I glanced down at my book, but the words blurred. I stared at the wall instead, losing myself in my own thoughts. I still wondered what my father had meant by asking me to make sacrifices. I planned to ask but only when he felt better.
Whenever he woke, a terrible pain tormented him, but he could sleep if given enough morphine, so when he stirred a little while later, I immediately grabbed the tiny bottle from the nightstand. “Father? I need to give you some medicine.” Although Dr. Morris had shown Mother and James how to inject the morphine directly into the vein, the task usually fell to me. I was the only one who didn’t squirm or recoil, and I was glad. It felt good to help in a way no one else could.
He blinked a few times and then opened his eyes wide. “Emeline?”
“I’m here. I’m going to give you some medicine.”
“Still here?” He struggled to lift his head and look around the room. Bright red lines squiggled across the whites of his eyes.
“I’m here. Mother went for a nap.”
He leaned back again. “I meant I’m still here.”
I frowned and picked up the syringe.
“No.” He held up his hand and stared at the ceiling.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s unbearable.” He shuddered. “The pain.”
“I know. Let me give you this.”
He waved and tried to raise his voice. “No.” He wheezed a little.
“What can I do?”
“I don’t want this. Not for you or your mother, the girls—”
“But the doctor said—”
His breathing was hard and raspy. He stifled his gags and coughs, trapping the soft barking sounds in his throat. His face crinkled as the effort tugged at the stitches in his abdomen. “I—I know I—” The gagging overpowered him, and I quickly gave him a brown-and red-stained cloth from the nightstand. He held it to his mouth and coughed. When he pulled it away, a sticky bright red blotch moistened it. “I’m dying.”
“Father…” I put the syringe and morphine back on the nightstand. “The doctor wouldn’t have done surgery if he thought—”
He shook his head. “It’s inevitable.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The doctor told me. That’s why I had the family come together.”
“What? When?”
“Operations will keep me in this bed for a time, but I won’t get out of it again, and I will die.”
“No. Maybe he’s wrong,” I practically begged.
“Emeline,…I’m ready.”
I put my hand on his. “Everything will be all right.”
“Emeline, I want—I need you to help me.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked up at me. “Help me.”
“I’m trying to.”
“No. Help me die.”
I pulled my hands away.
He gagged hard and lifted the rag back up. He tried to wipe the blood from his lip but smeared it across his mouth and chin and looked back up at me. “All I do is suffer. Our family suffers. I want it to stop. You promised to take care of them. This is how.”
“Please, let me get Mother.” I moved to stand.
He grabbed my wrist. “This is how you are going to take care of our family. I’m going to die anyway. Your mother—God, I love her—but she won’t stop trying. The longer you keep me alive, the more you spend on doctors and operations, the more my death is going to tear this family apart when I’m gone. You—Emeline—are already going to have to make sacrifices to take care of this family.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“Lillian said something about you wanting to be a nurse.”
I closed my eyes, ashamed. “No, it was silly.”
He reached up and touched my cheek. “You would make a wonderful nurse. You are brilliant, but you aren’t going to be able to chase dreams when I’m gone. I don’t want you to have to forfeight such ambitions, but you can’t take care of other people when I need you to take care of our family.”
“I know. I will. I promise, but please don’t ask me—”
“I’m ready.”
“I can’t.” I wrapped my hands around my waist. “I’m so sorry, but I can’t.”
“Emeline. Help me.”
I crinkled my face and a tear broke loose. “I can’t.”
“You can. You can for me.”
I rolled my lips inward and another tear fell. “But Mother?”
“It’s better for her—for them. I can’t stand everyone watching me in agony. I can’t stand the pain.” He cringed. “Ending this now is the best thing for this family. It’s the only thing I can do for our family now, but I can’t do it on my own.”
I shook my head. “It’s a…sin.”
“I need you to make this sacrifice with me.” He smiled a little and gulped. “God will understand. I’ll explain it to him myself.”
My lips trembled.
“You remember the dog, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“The dog was dying anyway, suffering.”
I shuddered. I loved him so much. I took a breath and tried to speak, but it came out like a whisper. “I don’t know how.” Another tear fell, warm.
“The morphine.”
I moved my eyes in the direction of the medicine and then back at him.
“I’ll just fall asleep.”
My bottom lip trembled and I wiped my eyes with the back of my hands.
“You can do it,” he said. “You can do it for me.”
I glanced at the bottle of morphine and blinked, wide-eyed.
His voice was steady, confident. “It won’t hurt.”
My hands trembled as I reached out and clasped the tiny bottle and syringe. My hands quivered so much that I couldn’t get the needle into the bottle.
He reached out and clasped it with steady hands.
I used both my hands to slip the needle into the bottle while he held it. I pulled out three times the maximum dosage. I removed the syringe, stopped, and regarded him.
He nodded, smiling.
I tried to put the bottle back on the nightstand, but my hands trembled so much that it tipped and tumbled to the floor. I heard it clack and roll across the floorboards.
“It’s all right,” he said.
I didn’t reach for it. I tied the rubber tubing around his arm and tapped until a blue vein bulged, as ready as he was. I swallowed and then stiffened myself from the inside out. I slid the needle in and fought not to shake. I took a breath, closed my eyes, and hesitated for a moment that lasted an eternity and passed faster than the blink of an eye. I pushed the plunger. When I opened my eyes, the last of the clear liquid entered his body, and I could not feel what I had done. I removed the syringe and the tubing and placed them on the nightstand.
“Thank you.” He reached for me.
I hugged him hard.
“You are taking care of them. You are taking care of me.”
I pulled back so I could see him. I wiped away the tears falling down my cheeks. Then I reached out and wiped one from my father’s jaw.
He took my hand from his face. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I asked this of you.”
I reached for his hand and brought it to my cheek.
“I asked because you’re strong. Things are going to be hard, but I know you will do wha
tever it takes to care for them. You will be strong.”
I squeezed his hand. “I will. I vow it. I will.”
He took in a deep breath and exhaled his words. “I…love you.”
“I love you.” I squeezed harder.
He stopped talking and just breathed while gazing at me. His face relaxed and his lips turned up peacefully. His breathing grew long and shallow and his eyes sank, heavy. He kept his eyes on me through slits. I desperately tried to think of something to say, anything. I wanted our last words to never end, but I couldn’t think. Moments passed. He hadn’t closed his eyes, but he clearly wasn’t awake. I whimpered and held his hand to my cheek. I just held his hand and stared as his breath slowed and slowed until it stopped.
I stared at his lifeless body for a long time. Finally, I remembered to breathe. Blood was smeared on his lips and chin. I used the blood-smeared cloth to dab and swab it off as best I could and realized that his own blood was the last thing he’d tasted. I closed his eyes and stared at my hands.
I don’t know how long it had been when I heard the swishing sound of my mother’s skirts. If I saw her at the moment when she realized he was gone, I wouldn’t be able to hide what I’d done, so I rushed out of the room. I passed her, my cheeks ablaze, but she didn’t stop me. It would happen any minute; she would realize he had gone. James came out of his room, and I quickly squeezed his hand and asked him to sit with her so that someone would be there when it happened. I rushed away, expecting to hear her shriek at any moment. Everything inside me screamed to stay, but I couldn’t. I could not stay. I would not stay. I wanted to flee. I wanted to run out of the house and down the street and never stop running. But I made it only halfway down the stairs before I heard her wail, the sound I had been dreading. I halted and turned back. I didn’t have a choice. I had to be strong. I had to stay.
Forty-Four
October 1901
Labellum, Missouri
The next morning, Marcellus placed a tray with an ink well, a pen, and paper on the table outside my cell. “Are you ready to confess?”
Why had he waited until now? I must have looked ready to give up. I had taken my hair down after it collapsed into a heap on the side of my head. It now hung to my hips in distraught waves and half-curls. I had taken my shoes off, and my dress was stained and wrinkled.
“We know everything, Mrs. Dorr. We have Dr. Bradbridge, your husband, and the dying confession. It’s up to you to see that no one else is held accountable.”
My face felt greasy, and my eyes were sore and swollen from crying all night without any more tears to give. I stared through the bars, exhausted, parched, and starved.
“If you don’t want the innocent charged, tell me the same story they told me, exactly. I’m going to copy down your testimony, and you’re going to sign a confession.” He lowered himself into the chair, propped a leg on his knee, and dipped the pen to charge it.
I saw my white room in my mind. Had I broken out or was I still in it? If I had escaped, was this the part where I suffocated?
“Did you perform an abortion on Mrs. Schwab?”
I lifted my absent gaze and blinked, momentarily lost, breathing heavily. “What?”
“Did you perform an abortion on Mrs. Schwab?”
I couldn’t escape it—all the white—without killing everyone in the process. I had thought on it all night, along with the promise I had failed to keep. Maybe I could still save those who survived me, my selfish escape from a white room. I could fight back and allow my actions to ruin everyone I cared about, or I could save them. I couldn’t have freedom, but if I confessed, maybe they still could. I thought I’d broken my promise to my father, but maybe I could keep it in some small way. Maybe I could put the white walls back up—start making sacrifices.
“Mrs. Dorr?” He narrowed his eyes. “Your husband is cooperating, and I highly suggest you do the same.”
“She was suffering.” I mumbled.
“I don’t care why you did it. I need to know how you did it.”
“Pardon?” I glanced up. Why did walls have to be white? Why couldn’t I paint them a different color?
“Explain the procedure.”
I stared at the floor, feeling the cool stone under my bare feet. “Um—a curette.” I realized I didn’t feel the house anymore off in the woods grinning with blood-stained floors and teeth. I had really defeated it, my self-conjured prison traded for a stone floor and iron bars.
“No, Mrs. Dorr, explain it step by step.”
“Pardon?”
He glared through the bars at me with impatience. “What did you do first?”
“Um…” Don’t cry. “I boiled the instruments.”
His pen scratched on the thin paper. “Go on.”
“Then I…” I sighed. “I used a curette.”
“You didn’t ask the victim to lie down? She didn’t remove her clothing? You didn’t look at her?”
“Um—I—uh—yes, before I boiled the instruments.”
“Then you should start with that, shouldn’t you?”
A tear slipped down my cheek and splashed near my little toe. I quickly wiped the trail from my face.
“Mrs. Dorr, this is no time for emotional outbursts.” He shifted and the chair creaked. “You have to explain everything in as much detail as possible.”
“Why?”
He clenched his teeth. “Just do it.”
I pressed my wedding ring deep into my skin.
“Then what?”
“I told you, I used the curette.”
“Did you have her spread her legs?”
“What?” I didn’t want to reveal these intimate details out loud, let alone to this disturbing man.
“You must not skip anything, Mrs. Dorr. Did you ask her to spread her legs?”
I felt exposed, naked. “I—um—I suppose. I’m not sure.” More tears dripped.
“Start over.”
“What?”
“From the beginning—start over. You are hysterical, not making any sense.” He scratched something onto the paper. “Start from the beginning.”
“Uh…” I wiped my face with the palm of my hand and felt dirt scrape across my cheek.
“Did you have her remove her clothing?”
“No?”
“Is that a question?”
“No.”
“What did she have on?”
“Her drawers, a chemise. Underclothes.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“Was this your first abortion?”
I hesitated and nodded.
“Use words.”
“I—um…yes.”
“You have had no actual medical training and performed this procedure without consulting a physician? Is that correct? You have no understanding of these matters?”
“No, I do. In college I studied—”
“Do you have a license to perform medicine Mrs. Dorr? Yes or no.”
“No.”
“Dr. Walter Bradbridge didn’t advise you?”
“No.”
“Were you aware that you were likely to rupture the victim’s uterine wall, damaging her internal organs?”
“Is that what happened? Is that how she died?”
“Answer.”
“I knew, but I took precau—”
“And you still performed the procedure?”
“Yes, but you—”
“And Dr. Bradbridge was the one who warned you?”
“No. He didn’t know anything.”
“Was this Mrs. Schwab’s first abortion?”
“What happened to her? No one will—”
“Answer the question!”
“Please just—”
“Mrs. Dorr! Was this Mrs. Schwab’s first abortion?”
“Yes.”
“How was her husband involved?”
“He wasn’t.”
“How was your husband involved?”
“He wasn’t.”
> “How was he involved?” He repeated through clenched teeth.
I didn’t answer. I wondered why he was pushing this. He said John would testify against me. Did he think I’d accuse him because he’d turned me in? I wouldn’t. I wasn’t even angry with him.
He yelled. “Your husband—how was he involved?”
Why wasn’t I angry with him, I wondered. Then it hit me like an avalanche: I care for him. No, I thought. This feeling was more than that. I think…I think I love him. I love him. I smiled, and Marcellus’ face contorted in anger. I loved John, and I felt horrible for the way I had treated him, for forcing him to marry me, for having hated him when I really hated myself, for pushing him away when he tried to show he cared, for betraying him and putting him through all this when all the while he had sacrificed for me from the beginning. He didn’t even want to be here. He loved me. I was going to keep my promise and sacrifice for what I loved, and I loved John Dorr.
“Mrs. Dorr!”
I stepped closer to the bars so I could glare straight into Marcellus’ eyes, yellow against his moist skin. “He wasn’t involved. Nobody was involved. It was only me.”
“You’re lying!”
My wedding ring clanked as I slapped my hand against the bars. “Are you deaf? I just told you. No one was involved.”
He rose from his seat. “Mrs. Dorr, control yourself! Your husband has obviously known about your exploits and hidden them.”
“No!” I yelled. “He found out the other night for the first time. He had no idea.”
He stepped closer to me, an inch from the bars. “You need to calm yourself, Mrs. Dorr.”
I breathed hard and pushed all my frustration into my fists.
“What about your brother and his wife?”
“No one, damn it!”
“Mrs. Dorr, if you do not calm yourself, I will take measures to ensure your cooperation.”
I dug my nails into my palms to keep from screaming.
“Mrs. Dorr?”
I sighed. “No one knew anything. It was all me. I just wanted to help her.”
He huffed. “You didn’t.”
I didn’t wipe away the tears. I rolled my lips inward and tasted the salt. “I will tell you whatever you want, but only if you swear to me that no one else will be punished for what I did. It was me, all me. I’m guilty.”
Just then someone shouted from the jail entrance, “How can you condone this?”
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