There is angst here, angst in a massive way. This is only a one shot and while I originally wanted to write it as Lydia I chose Jane because I think the impact of the end result here is harder. I come at this from personal experience and it serves as an explanation of sorts of my inability to post regular updates of A Turn of Fate (which I promise I'm still working on). If you want a happy ending I suggest you hit the back button, you won't find it here. To some degree I also chose to write this because so many people here want the sisters to be happy, to have a half dozen children each and to sail through their pregnancies with very few difficulties at all. Even now, from my own experience and that of friends, I know that is not always the case and I'm convinced some one or other of the sisters would have fallen into that category eventually. Since we don't see much of Kitty or Mary in order to really care about them, and Lydia was something of a spoiled brat, I felt that Jane would be the best choice, Lizzy is a very hardy woman and I can't see Darcy allowing her to be put in such a position again should she have been there the first time.

Confinement

Jane Bingley had not been well during her pregnancy with her son. Her sickness had been frequent and severe and even once that had passed she had spent much of her time confined to her bed too exhausted to do more than consult her able housekeeper and attend her correspondence. Her sister, Mary, had spent a great deal of time with her reading various works in an attempt to entertain her during the long months. Jane would have preferred the presence of Elizabeth, who resided with her husband in Derbyshire, but she had been entering her second confinement and was unable to make the journey.

It had taken Jane six years of her marriage to conceive a successful first pregnancy, even with all of her mother's assurances that she came from hardy and able stock nothing seemed to have prevented her from suffering the anguish of eight early miscarriages. It had been thrilling to think that after so many false starts, so many instances of shattered hope, she had been carrying her husband's heir at last. The trials of being so unwell, of having to be constantly near a chamber pot should she cast up her accounts and the embarrassment of it happening so often, of being so very exhausted that sometimes she could not attend the beginning of a sentence to its conclusion, were soon forgotten as she held her son in her trembling arms. The hours spent in her chambers, refreshed as soon as she was well enough to leave her bed and sleep in a different room, were relegated to a necessity borne with humour and good grace as was her nature. Her mother had promised her that the second time would be easier, that conception would happen with fewer visits from her husband and that she would pass through the time with all the ease that Elizabeth seemed to have managed.

True to her mother's word the second conception did happen quickly, Jane began to experience all of the early symptoms on the day that her first born reached eighteen months of age. She had, naturally, missed her courses that month and over the course of some weeks had begun to wake with a nauseous sensation that began to follow her through the day. Mornings brought a resurgence of that illness which had so incapacitated her during her first pregnancy but she continued to tell herself that it would ease in time.

It did not.

Soon that illness was not confined to only the mornings but spread through the day, increasing in frequency until sometimes she would have been ill up to forty times before she retired to her bed at night. Her head ached constantly from the lack of fluids, for even tea and water would not stay down, and her figure became skeletal. Once again she took to her bed, her only respite now to be found in lying down. The slightest movement, even just to adjust her position on the bed for her own comfort, caused her to once more cast up her accounts into the chamber pot by the bed. She could barely stand to see her son, the child wanted nothing more than to play with his mother and feel all the warmth of her affection but his boisterous nature left her exhausted in moments. Trays were returned to the kitchen barely touched, her cheeks and eyes becoming sunken in appearance.

This time, blessedly, Elizabeth was able to come and nurse her sister. She encouraged her to take small sips of clear chicken broth at regular intervals, mopped her brow and read to her, all the while attempting to keep her spirits high. All of her sister's care, all of her husband's calls to doctors and midwives, could do nothing. Even though her waist line expanded, the sign of her increasing clear, Jane continued waste away.

Jane Bingley died one afternoon. By the estimations of the doctors who had seen her she would have been nearly five months into her pregnancy. The ravages of her first confinement, coupled with the early severity of her second had weakened her to such a state that she could not survive. Though in death her face had regained the serenity of her early life, there was little else of the beautiful Jane Bennet left. Her face had aged drastically, lined and hollow where it had once been so full and clear. Her skin was grey and clung to little more than bones, the distention of her abdomen nearly grotesque against the starkness of her frame.

Elizabeth, who had discovered her, was nearly inconsolable for she had never allowed herself to acknowledge the fear that spoke to her only at night that Jane might not survive. Bingley, though clearly moved, was stoic. His normal good humour shadowed with a grief that would seem mild had he not spent the last eight years with a woman who was becoming ever more a stranger to him as she suffered the ravages of her pregnancies and miscarriages. That this second confinement had been the one to take her from him had come as no great surprise and though he blamed himself for returning to her bed and resuming to take his marital rights, it had been little more than she had offered herself. Jane had been as eager that they resume as he, desperate to give her son a sibling in spite of her suffering just to bring him into the world. After watching her struggle with her illness and the fading of her serenity of spirit and tone it came as something of a relief to know that she had passed from the world and was no longer in such undeserved agony.

Darcy, though aware of his sentiments, did not pretend to understand them. Elizabeth had experienced two very easy and very successful pregnancies and he was certain that some of that was due to her hardy nature. Elizabeth, even now, was regularly found walking and riding in all but the most inclement of weather. She rarely suffered from colds and sickness and even during her pregnancies she had had long, if not going as far as she would like, walks through Pemberley's gardens. Her health and fitness had never been in question but Jane, beautiful as she was, had always been somewhat more delicate. Darcy would never forget the early days of his acquaintance with Elizabeth when she had cared for Jane as a guest at Netherfield after the elder had been caught in the rain. More than once in their married life Elizabeth had misjudged to rapidly changing Derbyshire weather and been caught in a storm but it rarely resulted in anything more than a minor sniffle. For his wife's sake he wished that the circumstances could have been different and he grieved for her but knew that little more could have been done.

Jane Bingley's funeral took place nearly a week after her passing and was well attended by family and friends. In time Elizabeth Darcy recovered from the loss of her closest sister and went on to have three more children with as much ease as she bore her first two. Bingley remarried an heiress some three years after Jane's passing and together they had two more children.

The condition, hyperemesis gravidarum, still affects women today although modern science has a number of ways of reducing its effects. Medication, hospital stays on drips and dietary restraints are the most common ways of treating it. It can affect between 0.5 and 2 percent of pregnant women but is difficult to diagnose early on as some sickness is usually expected. Many historians believe that this illness is what killed Charlotte Bronte and it certainly would have killed countless others as they did not have the benefits we do today. Even now many women suffering from it have to fight to have it recognised by those who should be aware of it and ultimately an inability to cope leads many to seek abortions. I'm not looking for sympathy (even though I'm still fighting it at seven months pregnant) I just want people to be aware. It is debilitating, it is horrible and it is far too little acknowledged or understood.

Artemis