Mary usually doesn't sleep in his room. But that night, she does. She falls asleep by his side. It's entirely appropriate, she reasons, as she is lying on top of his covers, wrapped in her own duvet. But it is enjoyable proximity. She sleeps deeply, comfortably, happily. Hearing his breathing by her side reassures her.
She wakes up the next morning and feels hot.
She figures that is normal when sharing a bed. She has never shared a bed for the night in her life, so everything is new to her.
Matthew is not yet awake.
She sits up and looks down at him. His face seems rather flushed, or at least as far as she can tell in the rising daylight that is streaming through the window.
Heat seems to radiate off of him.
She purses her lips. This does not seem quite right. She reaches a hand out to touch his face and sure enough, it is very warm. Out of the ordinary.
She feels her stomach drop, her heart pounding in her chest.
"Matthew," she whispers. "Matthew, wake up."
He slowly opens his eyes, although it seems to be a struggle for him. "Mary?" he questions groggily.
"How are you feeling, Matthew?" she asks, trying to hide the hint of desperation in her voice.
"I'm so cold," he murmurs, burrowing himself into the covers.
"Matthew, you're burning up, you..." Mary stops suddenly as everything becomes clear. "Don't move."
She runs across the hall to Isobel's room, and finding it empty, runs down the stairs. She is in her nightgown, without even her dressing gown over it, but she doesn't care. There is no time to think.
"Isobel!" she yells, sliding into the dining room where Isobel is quietly reading the paper and having breakfast. "Isobel, you need to come to Matthew's room right now."
Isobel isn't sure what is going on, but she doesn't need to be told twice. She hurries up the stairs to Matthew's room nearly as fast as Mary does.
When she enters the room, Mary is by his side already. "He has a fever," she says, in a whisper, "and it seems to be awfully bad and it just came on so suddenly, he was perfectly alright last night and now..."
Isobel comes over to him and feels his forehead and winces at the warmth. "Matthew," she whispers, "can you hear me?"
"Mother? My leg... it hurts," he whispers hoarsely.
Isobel frowns and looks at Mary. "Was he complaining of that last night?"
Mary nods. "He said he... must have moved it too much or something. He asked for medication for it."
This is obviously not a reassuring thing to say. Isobel takes a deep breath, trying to stop the panic from setting in. "Mary, go down to the kitchen right now and ask Daisy for a knife, and bring it back here right away. And be ready to call an ambulance."
Mary frowns. "Isobel, what is..."
"I can't explain now, Mary, just go quickly," Isobel says, returning to Matthew. She hurries to the bathroom and wets a rag with cold water, holding it to Matthew's forehead. "Shh, you're okay, darling. You're going to be okay," she murmurs.
He groans. "I'm so cold, Mother."
"I know. And soon you'll be very hot. You have a high fever, and that's normal with a fever like this," Isobel says.
"It hurts so much, it hardly hurt this badly when I came back."
"I know, I know," Isobel says.
Mary rushes back into the room with the knife. Isobel takes it from her wordlessly and pulls the covers off of Matthew. She begins to carefully cut into the plaster around Matthew's leg. It is slow going, difficult to get through but also necessitating carefulness. Eventually she manages to cut off the section right around where his bullet wound was.
Isobel's worst suspicions are confirmed.
The very nearly healed bullet wound is red, inflamed, and weeping. Isobel shakes her head. This was what she was most concerned about when they came to Scotland, and if it does damage...
She has to pull herself together. She looks at Mary. "Call the hospital. Right away. See if they can arrange to have an ambulance brought out here. If not... call Shrimpie and insist that he sends his chauffeur here right away. But an ambulance would be much better, easier to transport..."
"Isobel, what is going on?" Mary asks.
Isobel looks up and sees the desperation and the love in the young woman's eyes. "His leg's been infected."
Mary has to blink back tears. "Will he be alright?"
"Probably, but not if we don't get him to the hospital as soon as possible," Isobel says. "And once you've called, you'll probably want to get dressed. I think you're going to want to be with him."
It is one of the most nightmarish days Mary has experienced, and it comes right after the nightmarish day before. How is this fair, she wonders. Yesterday, just yesterday, had been so difficult, and that night she had finally felt better and now here she is, watching as Matthew's life hangs in the balance.
The hospital does send an ambulance out, thankfully, and Mary watched helplessly as two men carry Matthew down the stairs and out to the vehicle. She follows along, a small bag of things in hand as she and Isobel climb into the back of the ambulance. Mary holds Matthew's hand throughout the entire drive; he is half-conscious, groggy but aware of his surroundings, although the fever seems to be rising every minute, and the words he is saying make less and less sense. Holding his hand seems to be very hot. Isobel says nothing.
When the ambulance arrives at the hospital, Matthew is immediately taken away, leaving Mary and Isobel alone to wait.
The waiting is hard. It seems interminable. A few times, Isobel tries to see Matthew, so that she can offer advice and make sure he is alright, but a nurse holds her back. Mary has no such expertise, but she has fear, plenty of fear. Did saving Matthew's life yesterday simply lead to this?
Mary can't tell how long the wait is, although it seems like hours, before Dr. Warren comes out to speak with them. He wears a very grim look on his face.
"Mrs. Crawley, Lady Mary," he says curtly. "We've done all we can for him at the moment, but it's definitely infected, and badly too. We've put him in a room, and we're keeping him under close observation. The infection seems to be limited to his leg at the moment, and it it gets any worse, we may have to consider amputation."
Mary cannot hold in her gasp. She looks at Isobel, who seems grim but unsurprised.
"I see," Isobel says. "Well, you must do everything you can to ensure that amputation is not necessary, but if it is a last resort... I would much rather have a son with one leg than no son at all."
Mary shakes her head, unable to process. "Are we... allowed to see him?"
"You may, provided you clean your hands before going in. He's asleep right now, though. He may be sleeping a lot of the time in the next days. That or... delirious," Dr. Warren says. "He was quite delirious when he came in. Yelling nonsense about the war and all that. Another manifestation of his shellshock, I suppose. We did have to restrain him, for his own safety."
Mary's heart squeezes painfully. "Well, show us to his room," she says, with a bravery she does not feel.
Dr. Warren leads them wordlessly down a hallway to a small, private hospital room. "I'd advise you to let him sleep. He needs to be well rested to fight the infection."
"How did this happen?" Mary asks. "I thought the wound was healed."
"It was, almost. But bacteria is crafty and can get in, and with his leg being plastered it was a perfect environment for anaerobic bacteria to survive in."
"And the fever? It seemed so high..." Mary says.
"Normal reaction to an infection like that, the body is trying to burn off the bacteria. He'll likely be feverish for some time."
Mary presses her lips together and nods. She glances desperately at Isobel, whose face is impassive.
Dr. Warren opens the door to the hospital room and waves them in.
It is so painful to see him like this, Mary almost can't bear the sight. He is so much paler than he had been just the evening before, even more so than he had been when he came back from the front. The only color to his skin is the red, feverish flush of his face. His light hair is dark with sweat, matted to his head. He is moaning something indistinct, but from the deep unconscious furrow of his brow, Mary can tell it is something about the war. Her eyes trail down his body to where his arms are tied to the bed, his injured leg no longer casted, but instead splinted and heavily strapped down to the bed. She bites her lips and tries not to cry.
"He was flailing around too much, yelling nonsense about the war. We had to restrain his arms so he wouldn't hurt himself or the staff, and his leg because we didn't want him re-injuring it," Dr. Warren explains, noting her distress.
Mary frowns and turns to the doctor. "Won't that stress him more when he wakes up?"
"Someone will be with him when he wakes up to explain," Dr. Warren says.
"And hopefully we'll be here with him, too," Isobel says, putting a gentle hand on Mary's shoulder. She looks grim, but understanding.
Mary nods mutely and sits down, putting a palm to Matthew's feverish forehead.
When asked when the hardest year of her life was, Mary would without a doubt answer '1918'. But when asked when the nightmare of 1918 really started, she could not answer so easily. She could say it began that morning when Matthew woke up from a fever, and she feared so heavily for his life. She could say it began the day before, when she walked in on him with a gun to his head. Or she could easily mention the day she found out he was coming back from the front badly injured, the day she was told that her scandal would be published. Any of those were points of the nightmare. This point is simply one of the lowest.
The next few days pass by in a blur. She doesn't leave the hospital, instead, sleeping on a chair in his room. Isobel leaves only once, to get some things from the house. Mary stays by his side the whole time Isobel is gone.
The doctors and nurses come and go, checking on the wound, frowning occasionally. Dr. Warren comes by every so often and gives some grim sounding words to Isobel, but whenever Mary inquires as to what they were talking about, Isobel gives a tight-lipped smile and says, "Nothing for you to worry about, dear."
That only worries Mary more.
Matthew wakes intermittently, sometimes long enough for him to drink water and eat a little broth, but sometimes not even long enough for that. It is more and more difficult to get fluids into him, but the doctors insist they must have him eat and drink as much as possible.
Mary sits next to him, hardly leaving his side. Fear grips her heart, but she must be strong for him. What would she do if she lost him? She doesn't want to think about the possibilities. She cannot. All she desires is that he wakes up again, that he looks at her with those bright beautiful eyes, that he is once again with her.
But as his delirium continues, that hope seems to slip further away.
The fever doesn't break for five straight days. The infection isn't spreading too quickly, or at least that's what Mary can piece together from her limited medical expertise and the nothing they are telling her, but it's clearly not going away either.
Part of Mary is grateful that he is so unaware of his circumstances, but her heart constricts when she sees him call out in his delirium for other soldiers. For William... Her stomach drops when she sees him pull against the restraints. She knows it is for her safety and yet it seems to her that they're marking him as a madman, which Mary knows he is not.
Had it really been the night before this infection cropped up that they had spent so long talking and worked so much out? Had it really been the day before that he held the gun to his head, that she saved his life.
Now his life hangs in the balance yet again.
The fifth day is when things really take a turn for the worse. Dr. Warren comes in and checks on Matthew. After careful observation, he comes in and turns to Mary and Isobel, tightlipped. "The infection is spreading again. If the signs of infection are still this present by tomorrow... I'm afraid amputation may be our only option."
Mary grasps Matthew's hand tightly, trying to hold in a gasp. As hard as his current injury is on him, she can't imagine how much harder it will be if he actually loses his leg.
"I know that is very hard," Dr. Warren says, appearing more sympathetic than he ever has before, "but it may be his only chance at life."
Isobel nods, but Mary hangs her head and squeezes Matthew's hand tighter. "You really think it's that bad?" Mary whispers.
"He's been fighting for nearly a week, and so he's been weakened considerably. If it spreads too much further... I fear he may not be able to fight it."
Mary has to hold in a cry.
Isobel nods, her eyes not really focused on anything. "Thank you, Dr. Warren." She turns to Mary as the doctor leaves. "Mary, you need to go back to the house for a night," she says firmly.
"But..." Mary protests.
"Go call Shrimpie's chauffeur and ask him to take you back to the house. You haven't left here for five nights, you need a night of sleep in a real bed. Matthew will be fine for one night, I promise."
Mary frowns. "What if he isn't..."
"He will be," Isobel assures, although her voice shakes. "If anything goes wrong, I'll send for you to be picked up. How's that?"
Mary isn't particularly happy about it, but she agrees reluctantly.
Maybe, somewhere there, she'll be able to find hope.
Yes, the angst is not over yet, but all I will say is trust me because I love this ship a lot. Everything will be okay eventually. Anyway, thanks so much for reading, and as always, I would absolutely love to hear what you think! Seriously, reviews mean so much to me!