Chapter 10
Author's Note: Hi all! Sorry for the shortness of this chapter and the last – shorter chapters seem to be working for this stage of the story and it does allow me to update more regularly. Please let me know whether you prefer this or the longer chapters in a review or message! As usual, I'm going to beg shamelessly for reviews here, as without them I honestly have no idea whether people are enjoying the story. I know it's got a bit more plot heavy lately, so don't want that putting people off. If I don't update again before, I hope you all have a very merry Christmas! xxx
…
Katherine doesn't go to work on Friday. She wakes early, shrugging on a silk dressing gown and, perching before the large, ornate writing desk in front of the window, pens a short note to her editor telling him that she's terribly ill. She sends one of the maids to deliver it to her office, determined that by Monday, when she'll be expected in the office again, she will be right as rain. She has a little cry thinking about the pigeonhole in the office's lobby, where Jack used to sneak in little sketches of her or watercolour sunsets painted on discarded handkerchiefs. She considers getting out the scrapbook she's been keeping under the bed, but decides against it. She doesn't want it to be tearstained.
She stays in bed, feigning illness and feeling thoroughly dejected, the whole day. Then she feels guilty for lazing around when Jack will be out in the frosty autumn weather, selling papers as always. Then she thinks that he probably deserves it. Annie, the housemaid, brings her lunch on a tray and gives her a sympathetic look as she sets the tray down. Katherine feels pathetic. She hates it.
On Saturday morning she drags herself out of bed, tames her curls, washes her face, and dresses with intent. So Jack doesn't want her. Fine. She doesn't need him. She spends the morning working on an article. That is, until Greaves, the butler, summons her downstairs, informing her that there's someone at the door. Her heart leaps in her chest momentarily, hoping that it's Jack, before she remembers that she's not supposed to be excited to see him.
She takes her time descending the stairs, purposefully slowing her steps. If it's Jack, then he can damn well wait. Her stomach drops a bit when she sees it's Crutchie.
"Crutchie, if Jack wants to speak to me, then tell him that he can do so himself." She says, a little more snappishly than intended, before the boy can even get his mouth open. Crutchie's face, painted white with cold and shock, darkens.
"No, actually, he can't." Crutchie says, more harshly than she's ever heard him speak before. "He's ill, Katherine, real ill, and he's askin' for you."
"Ill?" She pales.
"Yeah. Your father told the Delanceys to soak 'im, an' now Davey says he's got an infection. So lord knows why he wants you around, but he keeps on cryin' out for you in 'is sleep, so get yoursel' over to our apartment." With that, the boy swings round and sets off down the street, not waiting for her.
…
"Katherine, hey-" Davey stands up from his position at the low kitchen table, hunched over, balled fists pressing into his eyes, when she throws open the door.
Katherine flat out ignores him and heads in the direction of Jack's bedroom. It's the only door that's open, so she uses her initiative and stalks in, throwing off her coat as she does so. Jack has curled himself up on the centre of he bare mattress, sweat soaked and shirtless, a large brown stain blooming across the bandage wrapped around him.
"He's more peaceful now, he's stopped shouting in his sleep," she hears Davey tell Crutchie, behind her, "but his temperature hasn't gone down. He woke up for a bit, but just told me that he needed to go to work and then fell asleep again, poor kid."
Katherine drops to her knees behind the bed and reaches out to brush back the curls that are stuck limply to Jack's forehead, wincing as he shifts a little in unconscious response and she gets a full view of the damage the Delanceys had done. Not only is his whole abdomen one enormous purple bruise, but both his eyes are blackened and his lip split and swollen.
"Jack, honey?" She whispers, then, when he doesn't respond, repeats herself, a little louder.
She is rewarded by Jack stirring, shivering, then blinking open woozy, confused eyes. He can't seem to quite focus on her face properly, his pupils blown so wide that she can barely even see a ring of brown around them.
"Kath?" He asks, his voice like sandpaper.
"Hey." She smiles softly, trying not to let the tears that are welling in her eyes spill out and down her cheeks, rosy from the cold outside.
"'M sorry." He mumbles, only just intelligible. Even in his half-conscious state, Katherine can sense the very real distress that lurks in the space between his words. Suddenly, she can no longer be angry at him. She can't even be upset with him, only for him.
"We'll talk it through when you're better, okay? It's alright." Her fingers smooth back the matted hair from his scorching skin. It's like he hasn't even heard her when he next speaks.
"'M sorry I's screwed up. I love you."
Her heart grows about two sizes in her chest. She knows he's delusional, knows he barely even knows she's here, but he loves her, damnit, and that means there's hope. It means that, if she can get him to pull through this, she might have someone to believe in still.
"Oh, Jack, honey." A pause. He closes his eyes. Katherine can't work out whether it's because of tiredness or regret.
"D'you still love me?" He rasps, barely audible.
"Of course I do, you impossible boy." Katherine chokes. "Of course." He seems calmed by the words.
"It hurts." He mumbles. He's so young. It's easy for her to forget that, even more now he's technically older than her. He's still just a child. It's just that he doesn't have a rich family to patch him up when he falls down.
"I know, honey." She shushes, trying to soothe him.
Jack doesn't speak for a few moments after that because he's coughing so violently that Katherine wouldn't be entirely surprised if he managed to hack a lung up and onto the floor. He doesn't though, only a little blood that spatters across the mattress, all the while clutching his ribs in white-hot agony.
"Please don't let 'em take me back." He croaks out, when the coughing is finally over.
"Let who take you back? Take you back where?" Katherine frowns.
"The bulls. Synder. The Refuge."
Her heart breaks a little more.
"I won't. Don't worry, I won't."
A pause.
"'M cold. It was cold in the Refuge." He shivers, proving his point. Katherine sighs, reaching out and cupping his face, ghosting her thumb back and forth over his cheekbone.
"I know you feel cold, Jack, but you've got a fever. We've got to try and keep you cool, okay?"
"Don't want blue fingers again." He mumbles.
Katherine reaches out and gently pries his arms from where they're wrapped around him, enveloping his trembling, clammy hands in hers. Jack whimpers as she does so, feeling his broken rib shift inside of him.
"I won't let them go blue, see?"
Jack nods and closes his eyes, his shoulders relaxing for the first time since she arrived. Slowly, his laboured, rough breathing evens out and she lets go of his hands. Even blackened and bruised, he looks so young in his sleep. Vulnerable. None of the endless twitchy, nervous energy that he carries around with him in wakefulness like a particularly heavy burden. With a sigh, Katherine leaves him there and heads back toward the kitchen.
But before she rounds the corner, she stops, hearing the two boys talking in the kitchen. It's bad manners to eavesdrop, but she's a reporter. It's basically her job, isn't it?
"We needs a doctor, Davey." Crutchie. That's Crutchie's voice.
"And it's Jack's money, Crutchie. We can't just take it!" Katherine can almost see Davey now, spluttering out his usual protests. "It's barely enough for a doctor anyway."
"He's dyin'."
"We don't know that. And he'd be devastated. You know what he's got it set aside for."
"He can't marry her if he's dead, can he? Some ring ain't worth Jack's life."
Oh. Jack was saving for a ring? For marriage? They'd talked about it, of course, but it had always felt so distant, years in the future. But then, few serious courtships lasted longer than a few months before engagement and theirs had been more serious than most. Katherine quite expects the prospect to terrify her, expects to run in the opposite direction screaming in a most unladylike manner, because she's about to turn nineteen and her beau is thinking about marriage. But the idea of being married to Jack… well, it's not unpleasant. She'd always hated the idea of marriage, of being trapped, caring for a husband and children, playing the part of a pretty accessory at a husband's odious business meetings. But with Jack, she never feels trapped. With him, she feels freer than ever. Jack doesn't want, as he's stressed to her many times, a normal girl. He wants her. Beautiful. Smart. Independent. She turns, looks through the doorway at the man laying sick there. She doesn't want to be anywhere more than at his side.
"If he gets worse." Inside the kitchen, Davey concedes.
Katherine steels herself and walks in. Davey shoots to his feet, throwing an accusing look Crutchie's way. Crutchie, at least, has the decency to look down at the floor. She knows that he might never forgive her for her father setting the Delanceys on Jack – hell, she might never forgive herself – but that problem could wait. That problem could wait until Jack was well enough for her to leave him to go and knock her father's lights out.
"Katherine. How is he?" Davey steps forward.
"Okay." She nods, slowly. "I'm, um, I'm going to call on my friend Rose. Her husband, he's a doctor. I'll bring him back here directly." Crutchie's eyes ricochet up to the other boy.
"That's kind of you, Katherine, but, uh," Davey scratches at the back of his neck awkwardly, "I don't really know if we's got the money for a doctor."
"Let me deal with that." She says firmly, striding toward the door.
…
"John!" Rose calls over her shoulder, beckoning for Katherine to step in out of the drizzle which has begun to seep out of the dense grey clouds overhead. "Kathy, darling, you're white as a sheet." Katherine only nods, out of breath from her journey across the city.
"Miss Pulitzer!" The man in question emerges at the top of the stairs. He's older than the two women, in his late twenties or early thirties, and sports a suit in a rather daring shade of blue. "What a delight to see you again, I haven't had the pleasure of your company since the wedding-"
"It's lovely to see you again too, Dr. Graceton," Katherine interrupts breathlessly, "but I'm afraid this isn't a social call. A friend of mine, he's terribly ill, and I am in desperate need of your assistance."
The friendly expression morphs into one of concern, as if he's taken off his gentleman's clothes and put on his doctor's coat.
"Why, of course! Let me get my equipment." He turns and Katherine offers up her thanks.
"Katherine, you're ghostly pallid." Rose presses the back of her hand to her friends forehead, the picture of elegant concern. "You must allow me to come with you."
"Oh Rose, you're too kind; but-"
"Nonsense, you must be quite out of your mind with worry." Rose takes up her coat and hat from a hook beside the door in the entrance way.
Within minutes, the couple are hurrying along beside her back towards Jack's apartment. Katherine wants to curse Rose for her smart heeled boots and click along the pavement painfully slowly, but she bites her tongue. They're only trying to help. Trying to help. Is that what she's doing? Is she trying to help? Is she trying to help Jack? Or is she trying to help her selfish self, because she doesn't think that she can live without him?
When they enter the apartment, Katherine sees Rose's face fall. She could throw her arms around Dr. Graceton for being so tactfully unreactive, merely asking to be shown to the bedroom. Davey and Crutchie lead him through, leaving Katherine and Rose in the kitchen, the hem of the former's skirt dripping a melancholy tune on the tiles. Rose opens her mouth as if to say something, then presses her lips back together.
"It's alright." Katherine sighs. "You can say it." Rose looks at her.
"Is this the home of your Mr. Kelly?"
Katherine nods in response. Rose opens and closes her mouth a few times, censoring herself as she casts her eyes over the apartment. Tiles spattered with blood and dirt. Cobwebs covering the kitchen cabinets in a fine film of silky threads, interlacing, interlocking, sealing them shut but protecting nothing. They're bare inside, both women know that without even looking. Rose steps forward, examining. Her eyes light upon the mirror propped on the sideboard. In it, Katherine's face is distorted. Cracked in half. Pained. She whips round to face the girl she's known from their infancy and asks the question that has been burning inside her for weeks, her voice eerily calm.
"Is this really what you want, Katherine?" Rose finally asks. Katherine knows she isn't just asking about the apartment.
"More than anything." Her voice comes out less shaky than she anticipated.
"And will you still want it when you haven't eaten for days?" Rose's calm demeanour snaps, turning away from her friend and glimpsing her own shattered reflection. "When you're shivering with cold because you can't afford to light a fire?"
"That won't happen, Rose. Jack wouldn't let that happen."
"But if he does?"
"We've been through worse together and come out the other side." She thinks of the strike. Thinks of Jack's torture in her father's cellar. Thinks of the way that he held her even through that. She's never been sure of very much, but she feels quite certain of this. It's only when Jack's beside her that she feels that she's doing the right thing. And sometimes, just sometimes, she glimpses that he feels the same way.
Rose nods tersely, her back still to Katherine. She only looks round again when her husband enters the room.
"I'm afraid there's nothing I can do for this, Miss Pulitzer. It's an infection alright, and a nasty one, and it's been exacerbated by malnourishment and sleep deprivation, I'd wager." Dr. Graceton declares. Katherine is surprised by the genuine compassion in his voice.
"Malnourishment?" She squeaks.
"This man has not been eating enough for quite some time." The doctor frowns, choosing his next words carefully. "I see this in much of my work with the… less fortunate; parents or older siblings foregoing food to feed the younger members of the family. I gather the crippled boy is his brother?"
Less fortunate. Those words again. They sound so unbearably kind, measured, when spoken from upper class lips. She wonders what they make her. Unfortunate? She's been fortunate her whole life and one thing is for sure, none of her brothers had ever told her stories about Santa Fe to ease her through the nightmares. If she can have love or fortune, family or fortune, then the fortune be damned. She can do just as well without.
"They grew up together." Katherine tells him. Dr. Graceton nods without understanding.
"Well, you're doing exactly the correct thing. Keep the wound clean and dressed, and when he's lucid try to get some food and drink into him. Between the beating he's received and the infection, he's going to need something to keep him going."
The doctor bends to pick up the bag by his feet. Katherine doesn't know what to say.
"Is it – will he-"
"I'm afraid I don't know." Dr. Graceton slowly sets his bag back down on the floor, his expression carved into a careful figure of sympathy. "His fever will worsen and at some point it will either break, or it won't. I'm sorry. I'll be back in a few days."