Charles Alverson Caleb (epub)

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.Her left arm, which lay on the bedcover, was almost black.Caleb picked up her right arm to feel for a pulse, but there was none.He tried pressing two fingers to her childlike throat.Nothing.Finally, in desperation, he went to the dresser, picked up the silver-filigree hand mirror, and pressed it to her slack lips.Again, he put the mirror to her mouth.Nothing.Miss Nancy was dead.There was no way out of it.Caleb was leaving the room to go tell Cassie, when he looked back at Nancy’s slim body with its incongruously distended stomach.There was a baby in there, he thought.Perhaps a live baby.Caleb left the room and met Cassie as she was coming up the stairs with a tray covered with a white cloth.He made up his mind.“Take that back downstairs, Cassie,” he said.“Miss Nancy doesn’t want it.”“But—”“You do as I say.And keep that fire on.Put a pot of water on the stove.As soon as it boils, you bring me a big bowl of it and put it down by the door.Don’t you come back in here until I tell you.Understand?”Cassie looked at him with big eyes, nodded, and went back down the stairs two at a time.Caleb returned to the bedroom.Miss Nancy’s body lay still on the big bed.Only the bump stood out; it seemed to be getting bigger.Caleb couldn’t look at anything else.Going to the window, he stared into the distance toward the turnpike, hoping to see a cloud of dust coming from that way.But there was none, and soon he wouldn’t be able to see.Caleb lit a big oil lamp with a leaded-glass shade that looked like a church window.He put it on the bedside table and again looked down at Miss Nancy.He shook his head.Looking was not going to get the job done.Going into the master’s dressing room, he picked up the ivory-handled straight razor from the marble washstand.Caleb felt the edge and gave the razor a few hard whacks on the leather strop hanging on the wall.He tested it again.Plenty sharp.Caleb took a large towel from a pile on a shelf near the washing bowl.He carried it and the razor out into the bedroom and put them on the bedside table.Caleb felt an urge to go back to the window, but he shook it off.Reaching down, he grabbed the bedding and threw it on the floor, completely revealing Miss Nancy in the nightgown that had crept up above her knees.She looked like a child, a little yellow child with a swollen belly.Steeling himself, Caleb reached down, gripped the hem of her nightgown, and gently worked it up until it was over the bump of her pregnancy.He deliberately kept his eyes on the nightgown, but when at last he had to look down and saw the small triangle of rich brown hair where her legs met, he felt nothing but anxiety.The blue-veined skin stretched tautly over her belly like an over-inflated balloon.Now how did Mr.Regan show them?His mind flashed back ten years to Boston, when Brent’s tutor, a failed medical school student at Harvard College, had interrupted their ancient history lessons with demonstrations of some of the basic surgical techniques he had learned before being asked to leave.“Now, boys,” he’d said, “there will be times when your patient will not be able to get that baby out by herself.She just can’t.What are you going to do, Brent?”The thin blond boy of thirteen looked blank.“Go for help?”“There ain’t no help,” Regan said scornfully.“There’s just you and that woman and that baby inside her.And they’re both going to die if you don’t do something and do it quick.I’ve told you all this, damn it.Don’t you boys ever listen? I’m giving you the benefit of my considerable education.Do you want to study that dusty old Greek history, or do you want to learn something useful?” Without waiting for an answer, he snapped, “Caleb?”Wide-eyed, Caleb stared at the tutor.Finally, he guessed, “Ces.cesarium something?”“Right!” said Regan.“Cesarean section.At least one of you dunderheads is paying attention—some of the time.” He looked scornfully at Brent [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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