It wasn’t so bad if she kept herself perfectly still. Maybe if she slept . . .
“What’s wrong with her?” Gregory demanded. Behind him the babies were squalling, but at least they were wriggling and pink, whereas Lucy—
“Lucy?” He tried to make his voice urgent, but to him it just sounded like terror. “Lucy?”
Her face was pasty; her lips, bloodless. She wasn’t exactly unconscious, but she wasn’t responsive, either.
“What is wrong with her?”
The midwife hurried to the foot of the bed and looked under the covers. She gasped, and when she looked up, her face was nearly as pale as Lucy’s.
Gregory looked down, just in time to see a crimson stain seeping along the bedsheet.
“Get me more towels,” the midwife snapped, and Gregory did not think twice before doing her bidding.
“I’ll need more than this,” she said grimly. She shoved several under Lucy’s hips. “Go, go!”
“I’ll go,” Hyacinth said. “You stay.”
She dashed out to the hall, leaving Gregory standing at the midwife’s side, feeling helpless and incompetent. What kind of man stood still while his wife bled?
But he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to do anything except hand the towels to the midwife, who was jamming them against Lucy with brutal force.
He opened his mouth to say . . . som
ething. He might have got a word out. He wasn’t sure. It might have just been a sound, an awful, terrified sound that burst up from deep within him.
“Where are the towels?” the midwife demanded.
Gregory nodded and ran into the hall, relieved to be given a task. “Hyacinth! Hya—”
Lucy screamed.
“Oh my God.” Gregory swayed, holding the frame of the door for support. It wasn’t the blood; he could handle the blood. It was the scream. He had never heard a human being make such a sound.
“What are you doing to her?” he asked. His voice was shaky as he pushed himself away from the wall. It was hard to watch, and even harder to hear, but maybe he could hold Lucy’s hand.
“I’m manipulating her belly,” the midwife grunted. She pressed down hard, then squeezed. Lucy let out another scream and nearly took off Gregory’s fingers.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he said. “You’re pushing out her blood. She can’t lose—”
“You’ll have to trust me,” the midwife said curtly. “I have seen this before. More times than I care to count.”
Gregory felt his lips form the question—Did they live? But he didn’t ask it. The midwife’s face was far too grim. He didn’t want to know the answer.
By now Lucy’s screams had disintegrated into moans, but somehow this was even worse. Her breath was fast and shallow, her eyes squeezed shut against the pain of the midwife’s jabs. “Please, make her stop,” she whimpered.
Gregory looked frantically at the midwife. She was now using both hands, one reaching up—
“Oh, God.” He turned back. He couldn’t watch. “You have to let her help you,” he said to Lucy.
“I have the towels!” Hyacinth said, bursting into the room. She stopped short, staring at Lucy. “Oh my God.” Her voice wavered. “Gregory?”
“Shut up.” He didn’t want to hear his sister. He didn’t want to talk to her, he didn’t want to answer her questions. He didn’t know. For the love of God, couldn’t she see that he didn’t know what was happening?
And to force him to admit that out loud would have been the cruelest sort of torture.
“It hurts,” Lucy whimpered. “It hurts.”