Nynaeve managed to keep her calm, until the girl began screaming for her mother.
There was nothing for breakbone, but to let it run its course. You countered the height of the fever as best you could, and in some cases—although this was not one of them—you could dose for the pain, but ultimately there was little you could do to combat it. It either killed or it didn't. Usually, Mistress Barran pointed out, it killed early—a small mercy, as it were—and this was well into the third day. Usually, Nynaeve repeated to herself, snatching her thumbnail away from her mouth in chagrin. Maybes seldom are. The mean thought whispered through her head, and she stamped down on it. Her being jumpy would not help Egwene any.
A day or two, Mistress Barran had told her before ducking out into the late autumn wind to deal with a [Coplin's] busted fist. But somehow as she said it, she'd neglected to meet her apprentice's eye. She knew how much Nynaeve hated to lose anyone, and though Nynaeve loved the kindhearted Wisdom dearly, she resented the evasion—if not quite lie—even meant kindly, to keep her head clear of the panic that had crippled her once before.
It was very much a routine vigil. Mistress Barran often set her to watching patients deemed relatively stable...one way or the other. She'd told Nynaeve she was confident she could handle anything that came up in her absence. Besides, with breakbone, there really wasn't much else to do, save watch. But that was terrible enough by itself.
Egwene al'Vere was a small girl at nine years old, made smaller by contrast with the Wisdom's full-sized bed. She was an active girl, into everything, always bossing the boys in a way that made her mother smile and say she was destined for the Women's Circle. Nynaeve had watched her grow up, had often minded her when her mother was buy. Mistress al'Vere was a kind woman, a trait shared by her daughter: she'd let Nynaeve sleep a week or two under the Winespring's roof when her parents died, and she hadn't known whether she would be shifted off to nonexistent relatives in Deven Ride or taken on as a charity on someone's over-crowded farm. Mistress al'Vere had always been kind to her. Nynaeve did not want to be the one to tell her that her child had succumbed to the fever. The girl's whimpering filled up the small room: she'd hardly stopped crying, save when she fell exhausted into a restive sleep. Nynaeve had been sitting up with her.
For lack of any other way to disburse the nervous energy building within her, she took to pacing the length of the small room. One hand she kept wrapped absently around the end of her new braid, as if to remind herself it was there. To remind herself what it stood for. At hardly sixteen, she had been deemed mature enough to braid her hair up like a woman, when many girls were made to wait until they were seven- or eight- or even nineteen. Sixteen and a woman, she should be strong enough to see to what needed doing, and not flinch at the unpleasantness of it. Apprenticed to Mistress these last three years, she still had trouble adopting a healer's cool-headed dispassion, as was often essential. Mistress Barran asserted that a tender heart was no bad thing, but Nynaeve was well enough aware that it sometimes got in the way. The inability to detach the sufferer from the suffering itself could be a liability, causing bungling, hesitation at a vital moment, clouding the cool thinking and rapid judgment that was often needed, was often the difference between life and death. Nynaeve knew just how possible it was to care too much.
A moan from the bed became a shout as the girl woke herself up, again. Nynaeve was instantly at the bedside, hands fluttering uselessly, adjusting compresses that did not yet need changing, tucking the coverlet in more closely though the child's tossing tore it loose again just as quickly. In between the tears, now, Egwene was calling out for her mother. Nynaeve bit down hard on her lip, and brushed at the damp hair on the girl's brow, though she flinched away from the touch, uttering soothing noises. Though it was not regular practice to house sick persons in the Wisdom's own cottage, it was sometimes done, necessary in this instance to keep illness out of the Winespring Inn, but also because Mitrss al'Vere had failed to contract the childrens' disease before reaching adulthood and Mistress Barran had cautioned strongly against risking it now. Nynaeve, who'd pulled through breakbone fever as a toddler, had been set over the child.
It was not uncommon for a child to cry for a parent, or a sibling, in the throes of illness. Near the end, folk often called to loved ones that weren't present...Again, Nynaeve squashed the thought, but it lingered uncomfortably. Egwene's piteous cries grated at her, gnawed at the pit of her stomach with sympathetic pangs. Even three years after, she still woke sweating from the odd nightmare with that self-same word on her tongue. She too knew how deeply a mother's tender care could be missed, once removed. And didn't the girl deserve that, at least? Nynaeve was merely a substitute, and a markedly poor one at that.
Nynaeve found that she was angry, furious, even; so much so that her entire skin tingled. It was just not fair. Egwene was a bright child, more settled than Nynaeve herself had been but still a bundle of energy that embodied the Light. Hot needles pricked the rims of her eyes, burned as the tears blurred her vision. Both hands now gripped her braid white-knuckled and she tugged steadily, scalp protesting, as righteous anger at the injustice of life roared through her. The child lay there soaked in sweat, groaning and twisting until Nynaeve could not understand why she didn't hear her bones snapping. She had watched Egwene go from swaddling clothes to short skirts, and now, she would have to stand here and watch her die. And she could do nothing. She couldn't save Egwene, any more than she'd been able to save her mother, or her father.
Nynaeve dropped to her knees at the bedside, seizing the child's small hand even though she recoiled from the painful touch, because she had to do something, or, failing that, explode. Please, she thought incoherently. Please. She gripped the little hand firmly, gently, carefully, wishing crazily that she could will the girl health and strength that way. Her own fingers were a stiff cage, every muscle in her body clenched rigidly as the useless, helpless tears continued to slip down her cheeks. She hardly noticed when Egwene quieted; her screams spent themselves, then the crying, until an interminable time later even her whimpering petered off into hiccup-punctured breaths. Nynaeve was more than half afraid to make certain whether she'd finally slipped away or not. So she continued to kneel there clutching her hand, numb and stiff, brow resting against the edge of the mattress. She wasn't even aware when her own eyes drifted shut.
She roused as someone disentangled her fingers: Mistess Barran, bent over the bed above her, fussing with the quilt, checking the patient. Nynaeve scrambled up, backing away in quick paces til her heels bumped the far wall. She couldn't bring herself to look.
"Is she...?" it was less demand than it was plea.
Mistress Barran turned briefly at the note of panic in her voice, brows raised. "Sleeping," she assured her.
"Sleeping?" Nynaeve repeated stupidly, scrubbing her sweaty palms on her apron.
"Aye," the Wisdom affirmed. "Fever's broken at last." When Nynaeve only stared, she gestured, "Come and see for yourself."
So Nynaeve did, sidestepping the odd look Mistress Barran touched on her as she moved up to the bed. And indeed, the unhealthy flush was gone from the child's face, her eyes flicking beneath their lids only with the quiet dreams of an easy sleep. Nynaeve stood there a moment, reassuring herself, as she became aware of the discrepancies. 'At last,' Mistress Barran had said, when not two hours ago she hadn't expected that the fever would break fro a day or two yet. It was harder still to reconcile the screaming child whose hand she'd held as—she thought—she was dying: sleeping peacefully now, Egwene hardly looked as if she'd ever been ill.
"She'll pull through now, do you think?" Mistress Barran asked the leading question as she often did, expecting her apprentice to provide the answer a Wisdom should give, assess her judgment. But her voice sounded strange. Nynaeve spun, and then nodded jerkily, unable to speak.
"What are you looking for?" she ventured at last: Mistress Barran was stil rumaging through the modest apothocary arranged on the sideboard as if looking for something that wasn't there...counting. She was counting.
The Wisdom shrugged, tapping a knuckle against her puzzled frown. "Perhaps, in combination, another antipyretic proved more effective than we've thought before?" she conjectured. Oddly, she was looking directly at Nynaeve, who began to squirm under the unwonted scrutiny. "Or... …..Anise, perhaps?" the rapid question fired directly off at her out of seeming nowhere caused her to jump. Out of reflex, she shook her head. "Or yarrow and valerian together?"
"No." Nynaeve stammered, cozening on. "No, I...I didn't...I haven't done anything..."
"There now!" Mistress Barran looked up from her counting again, crossed to the bedside. "Never you fear. The child's fine, as you see." She cupped an arm around Nynaeve's shoulders, sweeping an arm over the sleeping form.
Nynaeve broke away, alarmed. "I didn't do anything!" There was a plaintive note in the denial that seemed disproportionate to the accusation—if accusation it was—even in her own ears.
The Wisdom opened her mouth, but changed what she'd been about to say with a shake of the head and briskly shooed Nynaeve towards the door. "Get on with you, child, and take a walk. You've been cooped in here long enough to rattle anybody."
Thoroughly bemused, Nynaeve complied.