After he had recovered from his shock, he picked her up from the floor of the lab and ran to the house with her. Without much thought, he settled her in his own bed, and started ransacking the house to find clean towels and rags that would serve to contain the blood from her nose. He rolled a towel in a handkerchief and tied it around, and that seemed to serve as well as anything.
He took a wet towel and wiped at her face to soak off the blood that had already dried. Through the panic that he was exerting himself to contain, a thought surfaced: she is beautiful. As he wiped gently at a stubborn spot, his finger caressed the curve of her cheekbone, and this made her cry out and move, trying to roll away from him. Blood gushed and soaked through the first towel, and he replaced it, cursing himself for his stupidity.
He went and found a pair of heavy leather gloves that he wore in winter. He tried an experimental finger down her arm and was relieved to see that she did not respond.
The blood had slowed now, and she seemed to be dozing. He resolved to go as quickly as he could out to the lab and retrieve the valise that she had tossed through
With one final glance at her, he opened the door and ran at top speed to the small outbuilding that housed his lab. He had left the door open, so it was the work of a moment to step inside and find the suitcase to carry it in the house.
He set it on the table and made to open it, then was seized by a sudden qualm of conscience. He walked over to the bed, stroked her arm, and spoke to her in a low voice.
"Rosalind, I'm sorry to have to do this, but I'm going to go through your suitcase to see if I can find something, anything about what's going on here. I know I'd hate if someone did this to me – and if you're like me, you'll hate that I did this too – but I have to take the chance."
He took a deep breath, and opened the latches. The first layer was neatly folded clothing, basic and well-made. As he lifted it out, he was shocked to see that each piece was a feminine counterpart of a piece of clothing that he owned, down to the color of the stitching, though the maker's mark differed. He reddened when he came to the undergarments, but soldiered on, only touching them long enough to move them out of the way.
A few more pieces of clothing set aside revealed what he had been searching for - notebooks, bundles of sketches, technical drawings, a few choice texts. He paged through each, but could not find any reference to an illness caused by inter-dimensional travel or any remedy for it. He racked his brain to try to think of any mention that she had made in their conversations prior to her journey of difficulties that she could anticipate, but he could remember none.
He set all of her things aside in a cabinet, so that there was no chance that they would get ruined or lost, and glanced over to her. She was murmuring, and he went closer to try to hear, but he could only make out a few scattered words.
The sun was going down by this point, so he lit a lamp, cut some bread and cheese and put the kettle on for tea. He realized that he had missed dinner, and it was well past suppertime, and he was ravenous. As he moved around the kitchen, he hummed, nothing in particular, but it had been a habit of his mother's, and somehow it had become a habit of his. In the darkness of the other room, a smile played across the woman's lips, and the blood slowed and stopped, if only for a moment.