Chapter Fifty-Three

They kept Grace’s fever at bay most of the afternoon, but by suppertime, it had begun to climb. The little girl grew listless, refusing more than a couple drops of tea. Both Jacob and Claire sat by her bed all night, alternately dozing off and jerking awake and mopping Grace’s brow in between.

Sometime after the clock in the parlor struck two a.m., while Jacob wiped Grace’s forehead yet again, she opened her eyes and rolled her head toward him.

“Papa?” she said through thick lips.

Jacob wrapped an arm around her feverish body. “I’m here, baby.”

“Don’t feel good.”

“I know, Gracie, I know. I’m doing everything I can to make you feel better.”

Grace nodded and weakly patted his arm. “Don’t be sad,” she said and closed her eyes again.

Jacob pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth to keep from sobbing. In the dim light from the lamp they’d kept turned low all night, he studied her pale face. Her chest rose and fell in the even breaths of sleep. Her face had lost its babyish roundness, but he could still see the infant he’d found on his clinic porch in Washington nearly four years ago.

“Remember that first night after I found you?” he said in a whisper. “You woke me up four times. And you did that every night for months. There were a few weeks when I would have given just about anything for a full night’s sleep.” He sighed and rested his forehead on hers. “Oh, Gracie, if you make it through this, you can wake me up every night for the rest of my life. Just don’t go, baby. Please don’t go.”

******

Grace’s fever still raged the next morning. Luo Shu stopped by to check in like she had done every morning. When she saw the lethargic little girl in the bed, she burst into tears. Claire tried to comfort her, to tell her that Grace would be all right, but Luo Shu shook her head, kissed Grace’s forehead, and fled the house.

Around noon, someone pounded on the front door. Jacob was trying to coax Grace into taking a little tea, so Claire answered the door. Jacob didn’t need to hear the booming baritone voice to know Will had arrived. His brother’s heavy footfalls approached Grace’s bedroom door, which swung open without a knock.

Will hustled into the room and bent over his niece, who had fallen back to sleep almost the instant Jacob stopped trying to dribble tea into her mouth. He rested a hand on her forehead and frowned.

“How bad is it?” he said.

Jacob rose from his chair, took Will’s elbow, and led him into the hallway. Grace hadn’t been truly lucid since last night, but he didn’t want to chance her overhearing anything that would frighten her.

“Real bad,” he said.

Will closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. “That’s what Luo Shu told Frank when she stopped by your store this morning. Frank rode home like a ball of lightning was chasing him to let us know. I got out here quick as I could. Jake, what happened?”

Jacob sensed Claire hovering behind him, and he waved her into Grace’s room and led Will into the parlor. He dropped heavily into an armchair and paused to gather himself while Will paced the room. He hadn’t wanted to tell the family about Grace’s appendicitis. He knew he’d have to say something eventually, but he’d hoped to wait until Grace was recovered, so he’d sent word to the store only that Grace was a bit under the weather and he was going to stay home with her for a day or two. What a fool he’d been, thinking this would be easy. But no way out of it now, he supposed. He spilled the whole story to Will in one great rush.

Will’s eyebrows nearly hit the ceiling.

“You performed another surgery?”

Jacob nodded.

“Alone? In the middle of the night?”

Jacob shrank under Will’s open-mouthed stare. “Claire assisted me,” he said in a soft voice.

“Jake, that’s incredible.”

Jacob snapped his gaze onto his brother, only now understanding that Will’s questions had been those of praise, not admonition. The sense of guilt and shame that crashed down on him almost knocked him out of his chair.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “Will, she’d been sick for days. I was so caught up in my own self-pity I didn’t even notice.” He clutched at his hair. “I didn’t even notice my baby girl was ill. I’m all she has, and I didn’t notice.”

Will hadn’t sat down when they entered the parlor, and now he laid a hand on Jacob’s shoulder.

“You noticed when it mattered most. You knew she needed the surgery right away, and you performed it.”

Jacob shook his head, tears now streaming down his face. “I should have noticed sooner.”

Will sighed and knelt next to Jacob’s chair.

“If you’d noticed sooner, what would you have done? Let’s say you noticed even half a day earlier, before the pain got real bad. What would you usually have done for a four-year-old with a bellyache?”

Jacob scrubbed his face with his hands and considered Will’s question. “Probably given her some salts or some soda and sent her to bed.”

“Which is exactly what Doc Titus did for Frank at that age when his belly hurt so bad he couldn’t stand up straight. And you know what it turned out to be? Constipation.” Will sighed. “Jake, you’re the doctor here, not me, but even I know that little kids get bellyaches. Even if you’d noticed sooner, there’s no guarantee you would have operated any earlier than you did. And probably no other doctor would have, either.”

Will had a point. Jacob had never performed an appendectomy significantly earlier than the one he’d done on Grace. But that knowledge didn’t flush the fever from his daughter’s body. It didn’t change the fact that Grace was barely clinging to life. His chest constricted, and he felt as if he couldn’t breathe.

“I need some air,” he said, standing. “It’s too close in here.” He headed for the door and grabbed his jacket off the peg.

Will followed him and positioned himself between Jacob and the front door. “I’ll come with you.”

Jacob shook his head. “I need a moment to myself.”

Will shifted his weight and stared hard at him.

Jacob rolled his eyes. “I’ll come back in one piece. Grace is going to reach a moment of crisis with that fever sometime today, and whether she passes through it or not, I plan to be at her side.”

Will continued to stare.

“Please, Will. Stay with my girls. I won’t be long.”

Will stepped aside, clearing the path to the door. “I’m trusting you.”