Maggie held on tight to keep Liam from falling, but the way the sleigh was moving, up and down slopes, it was damn near impossible to do. His body was so heavy, so limp, he seemed determined to fall to the floor and stay there.
“We have to go back,” said Béatrice, checking behind them, eyes wide in panic. “We need to `find him!”
“Shh, dear,” said Ada, trying to calm her. “He’ll be fine if—”
“If what?” snapped Béatrice. “If he can make it to Perth without being caught? Why would you send him to Perth?” She glared at Maggie. “Why would you send him to Perth?”
Maggie was so focused on Liam’s pale face, her response was distant and dazed. “It was the only way,” she said. “The only way to—”
“If he dies because of you…” Béatrice said. “Because he was too foolish and too kind to just let you burn, I swear I’ll—”
“Béatrice, please,” said Ada. “If anyone can handle themselves on a night like tonight, it’s Mr Deschênes. You know that. I know you do.” She nodded in Liam’s direction. “Now let’s focus our efforts on those who need it most.”
This earned another snarl: “Why should I care about a dying Irishman?”
“Because he’s the only family I have left,” said Maggie, feeling his heart beating so faintly, it seemed it almost wasn’t there. “Without him, I’m alone.”
“Without Émile, I’m alone,” said Béatrice, watching Maggie and Liam with clear disgust on her face. She gave one last desperate look behind them, as if she might catch sight of Émile after all, before Ada slapped her seat and smiled.
“Here we are,” she said as the sleigh arced up the path leading to her house. “Move quickly and confidently. We mustn’t be outside longer than absolutely necessary.”
Maggie frowned. “I thought you said no one would ever think to look here?”
“In normal times, no,” said Ada. “But these are anything but normal times, I’m afraid.”
Once the sleigh stopped, Maggie and Béatrice lifted Liam between them and dragged him up the stairs and into the house, while Ada stayed back and gave her driver instructions before sending him back out into the night. She paused before going in, taking pains to brush her foot across the ground to clear away any drops of blood from the snow.
She looked into the cloudless sky and muttered: “A little snow would do nicely, please.”
///
They set Liam down in the drawing room. Maggie pulled open his coat to check his body for more wounds, as Béatrice got the fire lit. “What did they do to him?” she asked Maggie, peering over her shoulder.
“I don’t know,” said Maggie, giving up on his torso and moving down to the blood-soaked trousers. She grabbed hold of the cuffs and tried to tear them open. “He was just there, and then this man attacked him, and—” The fabric ripped and what it revealed made her cry out in shock.
Béatrice turned to see, and gasped. “Mon Dieu…”
Maggie’s fingers hovered just over the torn and ruined skin, staying clear of the bone fragments, trying to find a place to settle that wouldn’t make things worse. Her eyes darted left to right, left to right, like she could read a solution from the air, find a way to fix him. But nothing came of it. She was just frozen in fear.
“Good heavens,” said Ada, coming into the room with a basin and cloth. “Good heavens indeed. Here…” she said, handing the basin to Béatrice. “I’ll fetch some towels. I’ve sent for the doctor, but I fear he can’t wait that long. We’ll have to make do.”
Béatrice soaked the cloth in the warm water and tried to hand it over to Maggie, who was still too shocked to move. “How did he manage to walk on that?” Béatrice asked.
“He’s a stubborn one,” said Maggie.
“No one’s that stubborn.” She noticed Maggie still hadn’t moved, and snapped her fingers. “Allo, Madame? Pity him when he’s better.” She handed the basin over, making it clear what needed doing.
Maggie didn’t even know where to begin. She squeezed the water out onto the leg, rinsing just the tiniest bit of blood away, but leaving so much more to be done. She repeated that three, four, five times, before it was clear that she couldn’t avoid the damage any longer. Blood was still seeping out, coating his skin with every heartbeat.
“Tourniquet,” she said to Béatrice, then called out to anyone listening: “We need a tourniquet!”
Ada rushed in, depositing fresh towels on the chaise before hurrying back out, saying: “I have just the thing!”
“We have to stop the bleeding,” said Maggie, mostly to herself. “We have to stop the bleeding, and then f-fix the bones, and sew him back up—”
“Madame…” said Béatrice, gently. “With wounds like this…there’s no way his leg can be—”
“We have to stop the bleeding,” Maggie repeated. “Stop the bleeding, fix the bones, sew him back up. It can work. It can work…”
Ada came back in with a thin belt in her hands. She held it out to Maggie with a smile. “Will this do?”
“I hope so,” said Maggie, dropping the cloth in the basin and snatching the belt. “How long ‘til the doctor arrives?”
“A half hour, maybe more,” said Ada. “He’s…” She frowned. “Is he sweating?”
Maggie and Béatrice both looked up at Liam’s face to discover he was slick with sweat, soaking through his shirt and dampening his hair. He was shivering in his sleep, eyes twitching madly like he was having the worst nightmare of his life.
Béatrice rushed up and felt his face, wincing: “Feverish,” she said. “Very hot.”
Maggie cursed under her breath, then wrapped the belt around Liam’s leg and looped it in as tight as it would go. He convulsed from the pain, but she pulled even tighter, latching it shut. She fumbled at the basin, knocking it over but grabbing the cloth again. She squeezed all the water out, then went back to wipe away the red one more time…and this time, mercifully, the blood stayed gone.
Whatever relief she felt quickly dissipated at Béatrice’s expression. She was checking Liam’s forehead with the back of her hand, and her eyes said everything—and nothing good.
“I’ve never felt a fever like this before,” she said.
Ada kept looking to the door, like a miracle might arrive at any second. “The doctor will know what to—”
“He won’t live that long,” said Béatrice. “Do you have any ideas?”
“Snow…” said Maggie, then repeated it with more certainty. “Snow. Lots of snow!”
“Are you—”
“Go! Quickly! We need to cool him down!”
Béatrice grabbed the water pail on the way out the door with Ada, while Maggie kept cleaning the wound, trying not to cry at the state of it. Béatrice was right: with injuries like this, any responsible doctor would insist on amputating the leg. She couldn’t even fathom how to go about fixing it, and—
“I’ll do…” said Liam, muttering through his chattering teeth. “Rían, I’ll do…”
“Liam?” she asked, moving to his head, brushing his hair back and feeling how hot he really was for the first time. Scalding hot. “Liam, I’m here. It’s—”
“I’ll do what needs doing,” he said, so urgent it was like he was begging for his life in his sleep.
“No, no,” she said. “You just hold still, and I’ll—”
“She can’t be…” Liam muttered. “She can’t be hurt again…”
“Shh,” Maggie said, tears in her eyes. “It’s alright. We’ll be alright. Just please don’t leave me, Liam. You can’t leave me here. Not like this.”
“Maggie…” he gasped—
—and then started to convulse. It happened so suddenly, Maggie jerked back in surprise as his head arched back and his neck tightened until every vein was in stark relief. He seized to the side, then the other side, flinching like he was gasping for air.
“Liam!” she shouted, trying to hold him down. “Liam!”
She heard a ping sound as the belt broke free and his leg began pumping blood even faster than before. She wanted to fix it, but it was taking every ounce of her strength to keep him even slightly under control.
Ada let out a shriek as she and Béatrice returned with buckets of snow. The two of them dashed in to help; Ada joined Maggie, trying to hold Liam down, and Béatrice scrambled to the leg, taking up the belt and trying to re-attach it—though it was so slick with blood, it was hard to keep hold.
“Hurry!” Maggie shouted. “Hurry!”
“I’m almost…almost…” said Béatrice, and finally got the belt looped again, and pulled tight!
Just then, he gave another violent jerk upward, knocking Maggie and Ada off, and immediately sagged back to the floor, limp again. If not for the slow and raspy breaths he took, he might’ve been dead.
Béatrice pulled the belt tighter and latched it closed. She looked up at the two others and gave a faint smile. “I really wish I’d stayed in bed.”
Maggie gave a faint smile back, too. Ada, though, was dumping snow on and about Liam. packing it all around his head and neck until it looked like he was wearing a fur coat. Against the white, his skin looked positively red, and his sweat seemed even more stark. His teeth were chattering so loudly, it was even louder than the fire.
“He won’t survive much more of this,” said Ada, dumping the rest of the snow on his chest. “M-Mrs Kelly, I think it may be wise to say your good—”
“No,” said Maggie. “No, he’s not—”
“It’s not up to you,” said Béatrice. “You can fight all you like, but if God—”
“If God wants him, He can come through me,” she said, deadly serious. “Liam Kelly is not dying tonight. I cannot lose everything in less than a week. Not again. He has to live. He can’t die for my sins, and—”
“Mrs Kelly,” said Ada, resting a hand on Maggie’s shoulder—Maggie flinched, pulling away, but Ada persisted. “God or not, some things are simply out of our control. And if you don’t—”
“No! I—”
“If you don’t say what needs saying, I think you know too well how much you’ll regret it.” She took up the bucket, nodded to Béatrice. “We’ll get more snow.”
They left silently, leaving Maggie with Liam and his chattering teeth. She pushed her palms into her eyes, trying not to cry—or maybe trying to cry, she couldn’t tell. There was a panic deep inside her that was trying to crawl up her throat and turn into a wail, but she wouldn’t let it. She fought it back, fought it down, and with a long, painful breath, got ready to say her goodbyes.
“Sometimes I wonder,” she whispered, “what life would’ve been like if I’d just gone to Cloyne after all. Not for me. For you. You and Rían, and Colleen…and now Émile and Béatrice, and everyone else whose life I’ve ruined by being selfish. By letting myself believe I deserved happiness.”
She sniffled, hung her head low. “I bet you’d be happy, without me. I bet you’d both be so happy, and so free, and so…so alive. Rían would’ve married someone better, and you’d have a wife of your own, and…”
She stopped and looked up, because she noticed something was missing, suddenly. The fire was still crackling, but Liam’s teeth weren’t chattering. She leaned closer, listening carefully, and her eyes widened when she realized she couldn’t hear him breathing, either.
She pressed her ear to his chest, praying silently in her head to hear a heartbeat. To please, please please just hear a heartbeat, and—
She sat up, staring down at him in horror. No breath. No heartbeat.
“No!” she cried. “Liam, no!”