A/N. Anyone for a little melodrama? :)
Warning: I have lured you in under false pretences, be Afraid…This story is something of a departure from the norm and not a pleasant subject matter.
I came to Atlanta when the town was in its infancy, when the white man first staked his claim to the land I was with him. Before Atlanta it was New Orleans. Before that New York, London, Paris. I have a woman in every port, and one in every small town between. Some are in brothels, others live in good homes, the wives and mothers of so-called respectable citizens. Scarlett Butler is one of these women. I have been her constant companion these twenty five years, albeit unbeknown to her. Until now. This is our story.
It was a balmy Spring evening in 1871 when I first found myself in an affluent home on Peachtree Street. No, technically that isn't true. I'd been there for some time already, but Scarlett and I did not become intimate friends until that night.
He gave me to her, I was a gift from a husband given during the act of love. Were he still alive, Rhett might appreciate that irony. Or perhaps not.
I ought not to romanticise what happened between them all those years ago. It was a night of passion, yes, a joining of sweaty bodies writhing and grinding in darkness, but I don't think love featured too prominently during those minutes when I first came to know Mrs Butler. He loved her yes, but that was not his motivation that fateful night. Jealousy and rage, punctured vanity and drink are what fuelled his actions.
It had been two years since she'd shared her bed with her husband. She locked him out under the pretence of not wanting any more children, but in reality it was a foolish attempt to remain true to her love for Ashley Wilkes. Of course she didn't willingly invite him back either, one thing just lead to another that night.
Would anything have been different had he remained welcome in her bed? Would he have still sought comfort elsewhere? Rhett Butler was a man of lusty appetites, would his wife alone have been able to satisfy them?
Speculation is useless. It is done.
Was it Belle, was it one of her girls who brought this affliction on them? Belle Watling, Scarlett knows, went mad towards the end. She was placed in a sanatorium and forgotten by anyone of consequence. Scarlett puts the thought from her mind.
It is only natural that she now looks to apportion blame. Should she, does she have that right? She was the one who banished her spouse from the marital bed, who told him he was no longer welcome. Therefore she is no more an innocent in all of this than he, but a victim of circumstances of her own making for it was then, during that period of exile, that he contracted the disease.
Truth be told it's a miracle it hadn't happened sooner. He exercised caution both during and after his liaisons, yes, but nothing is foolproof. Most of the preventative remedies are useless. As if applying to ones person a silk cloth soaked in wine and guaiac wood shavings following intercourse would have any real effect against disease. If you play with fire, eventually you will get burned.
And they were.
I first made my presence known in the weeks that followed that April night, as a small sore, painless and easily ignored, that appeared in a place Scarlett had no desire to show her doctor. When it vanished of its own accord a few weeks later she put it from her mind as she does anything she finds unpleasant. She would think about it tomorrow, and if it weren't there to be seen tomorrow, there was no need to attend to the problem. Had she done so Scarlett may have discovered a lot earlier that there was nothing to be done that would have benefited her. Mercury, the treatment of choice by many doctors of the time, causes far more harm than good.
She was better off not knowing.
When Doctor Meade pronounced her expectant of another child, she put any subsequent symptoms down to that fact alone.
The faint rash that appeared was simply a case of prickly heat caused by the hot Georgia summer. Her weight loss and fatigue were due to morning sickness. The headaches and swollen glands, the muscle aches and sore throat, all indicative of the beginnings of a cold. One that, at the time, Scarlett was thankful had never materialised. She was run down was all, missing her husband and daughter, with the new baby taking a toll on her body in the trying early months of pregnancy. Now I imagine she wishes it had been as simple as that.
Then came the miscarriage.
Chances are she would have lost her baby in one way or another anyway, even if she hadn't fallen. He, for it was to be a boy, would most likely have been stillborn or died in the days or weeks following his birth. Perhaps that accident, her current doctor suggested with a question mark hanging over the word, was a blessing in disguise.
Scarlett thanked him to keep his opinions to himself.
It is only recently, following nearly two decades of excellent health that she has started to notice a rheumatism in her hips and an unsteadiness developing in her legs.
Her physician diagnoses a degenerative spinal complaint, one that has occurred as a result of her tumble down the stairs and become aggravated with age, thus affecting her mobility.
As her symptoms worsen he suggests the Sayre Suspension as a form of treatment to affect realignment of the spine. It is undignified and painful to be suspended from ones head with nought but your toes touching the ground and Scarlett won't submit to being strung up in the apparatus. Who can blame her. The benefits of the therapy are small when weighed against such barbarous treatment of the human body. The procedure is of no value to her, it won't really help.
Her doctor suspects tabes dorsalis, he's not incompetent, but surely a woman like Mrs Butler would never-
He keeps his suspicions to himself and treats the symptoms in isolation. Once more Scarlett goes her on her way, none the wiser as to her true condition.
When her vision starts to fail as well, she has to put her vanity to one side and resort to wearing spectacles. It is another of the curses of age, she tells herself. In this instance she is wrong.
As further time passes, Scarlett starts to exhibit behavioural changes. At first she attributes this to the passing of her husband who died earlier in the year. Grief after all can make a person do strange things. She hadn't seen Rhett in over a decade, and much as she hates to admit it, he still had a hold over her heart after all their time apart. It is Ella who eventually suggests it might be something more than emotional pain as the months pass and the changes in her mother's personality start to become more pronounced.
Scarlett returns to the doctor once more at her daughter's insistence.
He reviews her records, asks numerous uncomfortable questions and pronounces his verdict. Individually her ailments mean little more than discomfort for the patient. When viewed collectively however, they speak volumes. The evidence is overwhelming.
Her physician has taken an oath to protect the privacy of his patients, and gives her his assurance that no-one will hear the true nature of her condition from him. Once he's told her his suspicions, Scarlett pulls on her gloves, thanks him for his time and takes her leave.
She goes home, pours herself a drink and weeps.
She weeps at her lot, at the unfairness of it all.
Rhett. This is all his fault. It never occurs to her that perhaps if she hadn't turned him from her bed- but maybes never solve anything.
The fact that he is dead does not prevent her from being angry with him. In truth it makes her even more angry that she is no longer able to confront him, to rage at him for what he has done to her. It is an impotent rage now, one that festers and gnaws at her insides just as the reason for that anger slowly eats away at her body. It is his fault, he has been the cause of this damaged shell she is now forced to live in.
Rhett never knew. He exhibited none of the external manifestations of disease that some poor souls do. No ugly telltale rashes, no suppurating, disfiguring ulcers. The valves and vessels around his heart had begun to degenerate, but he died suddenly and unexpectedly of a cerebral apoplexy before any aneurysm might take him. He was in his late sixties, always a dangerous decade for a man, and had led a rich, full life.
He was dead in moments.
She will not be so lucky.
Scarlett, who is barely passed fifty, should have many years more, decades even, with her children and grandchildren. Now all they will know of her is what she is to become. Her disease is progressive and will eventually lead to dementia and paralysis.
For now her legs still work. In the not too distant future they will not.
In time, her mind begin will begin to fail as well. Her servants will find her squatting over the coal bucket, her skirts hitched up around her hips. Later she will deny the incident, will accuse them of lies and deceit.
She will insult her children, lash out and rail against their attempts to help her. There is nothing wrong, she insists, she is perfectly fine. Sometimes she even believes it to be true.
Until it happens again.
Scarlett contemplates ending her life in moments of desperation and who can blame her for wanting to escape the horrors of her condition. Her crawl towards death will be slow and merciless.
She does not see it as taking the easy way out, but rather sparing her family the pain of watching their mother and grandmother turn into a monster. She wishes to save them that pain.
Her motives for considering taking her life are naturally not entirely unselfish. She does not wish to live with the stigma that is attached to having this disease any more than she wants to live in a broken body, her skin crawling relentlessly, mind wandering aimlessly and legs increasingly uncooperative. She knows in her more lucid moments that she does not want to become what she eventually will - a cripple and a lunatic.
And when she gets to Hell, for surely that is where she is headed should she go through with her plan, she will hunt Rhett down, haunt him for eternity and make his death as miserable as he has made her life. She knows it as surely she knows her own name.
Is the threat of eternal hellfire enough to deter her from suicide and keep her bound to this decaying body until it gives out? I cannot say.
When she is aware of her state it destroys her to know it. When she is not, it is a blessing.
What will be her decision?
Only time will tell.
FIN
A/N. My humblest apologies. If you don't know by now, the narrator of this story is syphilis, neurosyphilis in particular. The disease was called 'the great imitator' due to its tendency to resemble other ailments, which resulted in great difficulty in giving a definitive diagnosis.
Feel free to click the green button and tell me what a horrid girl I am! (although to be fair this scenario is entirely possible.)