Child of Twilight

by Margaret L. Carter

“Enough to soak a washcloth,” Eloise admitted.

  “Wish I could give you something, but I only use tampons,” said Britt. “Listen, we have to get you to the emergency room.”

  Again that silent shriek of frightened protest. “I told you, I won’t go! Can’t you examine me right here?”

  Britt’s voice softened from its tone of brisk authority. “Can you tell me why you’re so against the hospital?”

  “If I—” Eloise gulped, “—if I lose it, the doctors might notice something—unusual.”

  Roger understood now; she was afraid of betraying Claude’s true nature. “Eloise, that concern is completely groundless. At this stage it would take DNA analysis to find any nonhuman traits in the embryo. Which they certainly wouldn’t bother with.”

  Britt gave him a reproachful glance for his bluntness. “Your welfare is the important thing.”

  “Of course it is,” said Claude. His hand tightened on Eloise’s as a fresh wave of pain suffused her. “Do what Roger and Britt tell you.”

  Eloise shook her head. “You check me, Britt. I trust you.”

  Roger felt Britt trying to curb her exasperation. “I’m not a gynecologist. I haven’t done this since my first year out of med school, not to mention the lack of proper equipment.”

  “You must have the basics,” Eloise said. Her facial muscles were drawn tight from bracing against the cramps.

  Britt sighed. “Yes, we should have disposable gloves and a speculum on hand. Not the kind of thing I’d normally need to use. Listen, you need to be seen by a specialist right away, not waste time here.”

  Eloise’s face tensed with pain for a moment. “I want you. If you tell me I have to go to the hospital, maybe—”

  Britt shook her head at this show of stubbornness. “Very well. Would you bring me the supplies, Roger?”

  He went to the hall closet to get his medical bag from the shelf. When he reentered the bedroom, Claude and Eloise’s shared physical and emotional anguish struck him afresh. The air was turgid with it. Britt rummaged in the bag for a plastic-wrapped pair of gloves and went into the bathroom to wash.

  “Claude, you have to calm yourself,” said Roger. “You aren’t doing her any good this way.”

  “I know,” Claude whispered through clenched teeth.

  Eloise searched his face in a silent appeal he couldn’t answer. While Roger felt her pain beating at his mind like the wings of a maddened hawk, it battered him from outside only. Claude, blood-bonded with her, felt every nuance of her suffering as his own. No wonder he couldn’t detach himself enough to give her relief.

  When Britt came in, gloved, she said to Eloise, “I’ll have to examine you in the middle of a contraction, and you aren’t going to like it. Claude, she’ll need you to suppress the pain and help her relax.”

  With a grim nod Claude began to massage Eloise’s abdomen in gentle circles with his free hand. Feeling superfluous, Roger stepped into the hall to give Eloise a partial illusion of privacy while she stripped from the waist down. Britt’s murmured directions followed. A minute later, a moan from Eloise drew him back into the room.

  She reclined with her bent knees draped in the top sheet. When Britt attempted to probe with gloved fingers, Eloise stiffened against the invasion. Claude’s face mirrored her pain.

  “I know it’s not easy, but you have to try to relax,” said Britt, keeping her impatience out of her voice. “Claude, if you can’t help her handle the discomfort, this won’t work.”

  “Damn it, I’m trying!” The low, strangled tone, hardly more than a whisper, intensified the torment he projected.

  Eloise flung his hands away from her. “If that’s trying, then just stop! You’re not helping!”

  Claude’s impotent anger lashed Roger like a fiery whip. He strode across the room and grasped Claude’s arm. “She’s right. You’re too immersed in it yourself. If you can’t do any better than that, you’ll have to leave the room.”

  Claude started to flare up at Roger, then sank into despair. With a wild, helpless look at Eloise, he pulled away from Roger and stormed out. Roger heard him hurry downstairs into the living room.

  Shelving his worry about his brother, Roger drew a deep breath to calm his own rioting emotions. Possibly a mistake, since his attention was thereby fixed on the sharp sting of Eloise’s blood in the air. An unhealthy scent that couldn’t stimulate his appetite, nevertheless, it irritated his hyperacute senses. He forced the distraction to the bottom of his thoughts.

  Stroking Eloise’s damp hair back from her forehead, he said, “You’re going to be perfectly all right. I’m here to help you. Relax, let your arms and legs go limp, and focus on my voice.” At once he felt her respond to his more impersonal care, where Claude’s frantic urgency had been powerless to penetrate her anguish.

  Roger kept up the monotone of soothing phrases, low on content but useful as a diversion, while his touch laved the tension from her muscles. He made her gaze into his eyes to keep her from watching Britt’s face during the examination. Imposing serenity on Eloise’s near-hysterical mood channeled his own tension, too. Even amid their shared anxiety he felt gratified by her response. The familiar sense of competence calmed him.

  Shortly, Britt stripped off her gloves, wrapping them in a paper towel to throw away. “Well, I won’t deny that it doesn’t look good. We have to get you to the hospital stat.”

  Quiet now, though tears trickled down her cheeks, Eloise said, “Am I losing the baby?”

  Roger cupped one of her hands in both of his, willing her to cling to this fragile calm. Britt met her eyes directly and said, “You’re dilated between two and three centimeters. You have to be prepared for the possibility.”

  Eloise swallowed a sob. “Is there any chance?”

  “I can’t tell. Whatever chance there is, you’ll need qualified care to maximize it. We certainly don’t have the resources here.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  While Britt found a pair of slacks for her—too large, but they could be rolled up—and helped her wash, Roger went downstairs to check on Claude. He found his brother staring into the embers of the fire in the darkened living room.

  “We’re taking her to the emergency room,” said Roger. He drew back a corner of the curtain to glance outside. A light snow had started, not enough to make driving hazardous.

  Claude said without turning toward him, “She’s shutting me out. She thinks I deserted her. And she’s right. I never thought—never imagined I could fail her that way!”

  “You’ve hardly failed.” Roger’s human side wanted to offer a comforting pat on the shoulder. He restrained himself, knowing Claude wouldn’t appreciate unsolicited physical contact. “It’s not your fault that you couldn’t control the pain. She can’t blame you for an involuntary response.”

  “She does. So do I.” He broke off as Britt and Eloise came downstairs. The two men met them in the foyer and helped them with their coats. Bundled up in scarf and gloves, Eloise leaned on Claude without speaking to him.

  “Roger, you don’t have to come along,” said Britt. She knew how he felt about hospitals. “I can drive them perfectly well.”

  “Of course I’m coming.” He took a minute to tell Gillian where they were going. She was still working at the computer, as if focusing on it to shut out the turmoil around her. She barely acknowledged his command to stay in the house.

  Picking her way across the thin layer of snow in the parking lot, Eloise conjured up a weak smile. “What, you’re not driving the black monster anymore, Roger?”

  Britt said, “I convinced him gray was just as well suited to a doctor’s dignity, and it absorbs a lot less sunlight than black. So he finally traded in the Whale. I think of this one as the Battleship.” She helped Eloise get settled in the back seat.

  When Claude started to sit beside her, Eloise silently inched away. Without speaking, Claude took the front passenger seat, leaving the back for Britt. The physical and emotional pain that arced be
tween Claude and Eloise, despite the latter’s defensive barrier, made Roger’s head pound. He welcomed the need to concentrate on driving.

  Behind him he sensed Britt holding Eloise’s hand. Now and then Britt winced as her fingers were squeezed. Claude, vibrating with impatience at their slow progress toward downtown, stared straight out the windshield. When they crossed over the Severn River drawbridge into Annapolis, he said, “Shouldn’t you have called ahead to the hospital?”

  “Pointless,” said Roger. “The ER works on perceived need and first come, first served, regardless. Whatever influence I can apply will have to wait until we get there.”

  The hospital, red brick like most of downtown Annapolis, occupied a block in the middle of the historic district. Five minutes from the bridge, he pulled up to the emergency room entrance to drop off the other three. By the time he’d parked the car and walked back, Britt was seated with Eloise on the hard plastic waiting-room chairs, filling out forms under Eloise’s tight-lipped direction. Claude was pacing, oblivious to anyone who happened to cross his path.

  Odors of blood, sickness, and disinfectant hit Roger in the face. Breathing shallowly, he assessed the other patients in the room. He glimpsed a gurney being wheeled in from the ambulance bay. Snatches of conversation from the paramedics suggested a stab wound, doubtless the main source of the blood smell. That patient disappeared into the treatment area at once. Huddled in chairs around the cramped waiting room, each hovered over by one or more adults, were a feverish little boy in Disney pajamas, a teenage girl with a bruise on her forehead, and another boy with what looked like a sprained ankle. Roger decided none of them rated above Eloise in urgency.

  He strode to the check-in counter. “My brother’s wife has a threatened spontaneous abortion. I believe she should be seen at once.” He handed the nurse one of his business cards.

  The puzzled expression on her face cleared. “Oh, yes, Dr. Darvell, I remember you.” Roger recognized her as having been on duty last time he had to visit the ER to counsel a suicidal patient. She dubiously glanced around at the other occupants of the room.

  Roger willed her to look at him. When he had her full attention, he said in a lower voice, “They can wait. Take my sister-in-law, now.”

  “Of course, Doctor.” She called Eloise’s name and directed her into the emergency room proper.

  Britt walked in with Eloise, holding her arm. Claude stopped them with a tentative touch. “Shall I—?” His voice was barely audible. Roger sensed how powerfully the oppressive atmosphere affected Claude, more than Roger himself with his mixed heritage.

  Eloise doubled over, clutching her abdomen and Britt’s forearm. When she could speak, she whispered, “No, don’t come in. You’d only make it worse.”

  Jaws clenched in frustration, Claude backed off. Britt said, “Why don’t you go out for some fresh air? I’ll let you know as soon as they’ve decided anything.”

  “Excellent idea,” said Roger. He headed for the exit, trusting Claude to follow him.

  Outside a few snowflakes drifted down. Roger inhaled deeply of the icy air, clean despite the car fumes, compared to what they’d just left. Claude echoed his thoughts. “That place is like the seventh circle of Hell! How can they stand it, even with the sensory fog they wander around in?”

  Together they strode along the deserted sidewalk at a rapid pace. “I’m sure it helps to be unable to read emotions,” Roger said. “Why do you think I chose a specialty that keeps me out of hospitals most of the time?”

  After several minutes of silence—though his jangled aura spoke for him—Claude said, “She’s right, I would have made it worse for her if I’d stayed. That room, closing in on me, on top of what she’s broadcasting—” An inarticulate snarl escaped him. “But I should have been able to stand by her, help her bear it.”

  “Should?” said Roger. “Not much logic in that. How can you impose obligations on an emotional response?”

  “We pride ourselves on controlling our emotions.” He paused at a corner and slammed his fist into the low brick wall around someone’s front yard. Roger noticed a web of fresh cracks in the brickwork. “Dark Powers, if she died—!”

  “Practically impossible. She’s having an uncomplicated miscarriage and receiving competent care.”

  Claude glowered at him. “Damn it, you can say that! It isn’t Britt! How would you react if it were?”

  “Probably even more irrationally than you are,” Roger admitted. They made a right-angle turn, not wanting to get too far from the hospital. “But you must see that it would help if you’d relax. You and Eloise are reinforcing each other.”

  “I don’t want to relax. I want to kill something.”

  “Not in the middle of town, please. Wait until later.”

  “I’d destroy anyone who dared to hurt her. But when I’m the one who’s hurting her—” Claude turned on Roger. Pinpoints of red glowed in Claude’s eyes. “If I hadn’t cooperated with the pregnancy idea, she wouldn’t be suffering now.”

  “She wanted it,” Roger said. “Listen, Claude, what’s bothering you is something any responsible man who impregnates a woman thinks of—humiliating as it may be to see yourself having human reactions.”

  “Is this how guilt feels?”

  “Yes.”

  They walked on, with long, ground-eating strides, dodging ancient tree roots that protruded through the sidewalk. “Well, I don’t like it,” said Claude.

  “I gather that’s the general idea. Negative reinforcement.”

  Some time later Claude said, “She’s trying to exclude me except for surface thoughts, but her pain still leaks through. I can’t escape it, and yet I can’t heal it.”

  “When the first shock passes, she’ll open up to you again,” Roger said. He felt Claude disdaining that remark for the hollow reassurance it was.

  “I never thought,” said Claude, “I would envy the human ability to cry.”

  Shortly, Roger mentally heard Britt’s telepathic voice informing him that Eloise’s examination had been completed. He passed the fact on to Claude, and they headed back to the ER.

  Roger waited in the anteroom while Claude joined Eloise inside. Britt emerged to update Roger on Eloise’s condition. “She’s definitely miscarried. They’re keeping her overnight for a D and C in the morning. Also, there’s some worry about her low hematocrit.”

  Symptoms of anemia weren’t surprising, in view of the long-sustained intimacy between Claude and Eloise. Roger hoped that once a blood transfusion raised Eloise’s red cell count, absence of further anomalies would quell the hospital staff’s curiosity. He joined Britt in the one unoccupied corner of the waiting room. “What about her emotional state?”

  “Not good.” Britt spoke quietly. “We had a tough time convincing her there was no hope of saving the pregnancy. And intellectually she realizes Claude couldn’t control his reaction, but she still can’t help blaming him for—well, you know.”

  Roger nodded. Britt only confirmed what Claude had said outside. A minute later Roger heard Eloise’s voice raised to such a pitch that his inhuman ears couldn’t help picking up the words: “Get out of here and leave me alone! You never wanted the baby in the first place!”

  No answer from Claude. He emerged, grimly silent, and walked out the door. After Britt popped in for a quick farewell to Eloise, she and Roger followed Claude to the car.

  The snow had stopped for the moment. On the way home, Britt, from her place next to Roger, twisted around to face Claude, sitting alone in the back seat. “Want to talk about it?”

  After a drawn-out pause Claude said. “I did want the child—for her sake. I never claimed I wanted it for my own. But I was sincerely happy, happy in her joy.”

  “And yet—?” Britt prompted.

  “You’re too perceptive by half, dear lady. I admit one part of me didn’t care for the change. We’ve had to—cut back.”

  “And after the baby came, it would’ve drained more from her, leaving even less f
or you.”

  Claude made a wordless sound of acknowledgment. Roger felt, like an itching at the nape of the neck, Claude’s discomfort at exposing himself this way to an ephemeral, even a close friend. Britt must have intuited that too, for she suspended her inquiry, gazing out the window as if the white-on-black landscape visible to her human sight held absorbing interest.

  When they reached the townhouse, Roger heard Gillian’s slow respiration as they opened the front door. He went to the office to check on her. As he’d expected, she was still playing the computer game. Roger heard her heartbeat accelerate when Claude walked in behind him. Gillian spared them a quick glance. “Eloise?”

  “Hospitalized until tomorrow,” said Roger. He saw Gillian’s shoulders slump in relief, probably at the news that she wouldn’t have to deal further with human sickness tonight. No doubt she’d never seen it firsthand before. Claude’s anguish seemed more than enough disturbance for her to handle.

  Sounds of cabinets opening and ice clinking in glasses came from Britt in the kitchen. “How about a drink?” said Roger.

  In the kitchen, dimly lit only by light spilling from the adjacent dining room, the three of them sat around the circular redwood table with tall glasses of Scotch and soda. Roger made sure Claude’s ran heavily to Scotch. Alcohol couldn’t affect their kind as strongly as it did human drinkers, but enough of it might blunt the edge of Claude’s grief.

  “What now? How long do you think they’ll keep her?”

  Britt made an impulsive gesture in response to the weariness in Claude’s voice but stopped short of touching him. “If there aren’t any complications, they should release her shortly after the D and C. Miscarriage isn’t normally physically debilitating. Women can go back to work the next day.”

  Claude rubbed his eyes and took several sips of his drink. “But she might already be debilitated. She’s built up an energy debt, so to speak.”

  “True,” said Roger. “I wouldn’t worry about it. They’ll transfuse her, and that should take care of any problem.”

  Britt expressed one worry that might have been on Claude’s mind. “Think the anemia will make them suspicious?”