The Bridgertons Happily Ever After - By Julia Quinn Page 0,69
watch, and even harder to hear, but maybe he could hold Lucy’s hand.
“I’m manipulating her belly,” the midwife grunted. She pressed down hard, then squeezed. Lucy let out another scream and nearly took off Gregory’s fingers.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he said. “You’re pushing out her blood. She can’t lose—”
“You’ll have to trust me,” the midwife said curtly. “I have seen this before. More times than I care to count.”
Gregory felt his lips form the question—Did they live? But he didn’t ask it. The midwife’s face was far too grim. He didn’t want to know the answer.
By now Lucy’s screams had disintegrated into moans, but somehow this was even worse. Her breath was fast and shallow, her eyes squeezed shut against the pain of the midwife’s jabs. “Please, make her stop,” she whimpered.
Gregory looked frantically at the midwife. She was now using both hands, one reaching up—
“Oh, God.” He turned back. He couldn’t watch. “You have to let her help you,” he said to Lucy.
“I have the towels!” Hyacinth said, bursting into the room. She stopped short, staring at Lucy. “Oh my God.” Her voice wavered. “Gregory?”
“Shut up.” He didn’t want to hear his sister. He didn’t want to talk to her, he didn’t want to answer her questions. He didn’t know. For the love of God, couldn’t she see that he didn’t know what was happening?
And to force him to admit that out loud would have been the cruelest sort of torture.
“It hurts,” Lucy whimpered. “It hurts.”
“I know. I know. If I could do it for you, I would. I swear to you.” He clutched her hand in both of his, willing some of his own strength to pass into her. Her grip was growing feeble, tightening only when the midwife made a particularly vigorous movement.
And then Lucy’s hand went slack.
Gregory stopped breathing. He looked over at the midwife in horror. She was still standing at the base of the bed, her face a mask of grim determination as she worked. Then she stopped, her eyes narrowing as she took a step back. She didn’t say anything.
Hyacinth stood frozen, the towels still stacked up in her arms. “What . . . what . . .” But her voice wasn’t even a whisper, lacking the strength to complete her thought.
The midwife reached a hand out, touching the bloodied bed near Lucy. “I think . . . that’s all,” she said.
Gregory looked down at his wife, who lay terrifyingly still. Then he turned back to the midwife. He could see her chest rise and fall, taking in all the great gulps of air she hadn’t allowed herself while she was working on Lucy.
“What do you mean,” he asked, barely able to force the words across his lips, “ ‘that’s all’?”
“The bleeding’s done.”
Gregory turned slowly back to Lucy. The bleeding was done. What did that mean? Didn’t all bleeding stop . . . eventually?
Why was the midwife just standing there? Shouldn’t she be doing something? Shouldn’t he be doing something? Or was Lucy—
He turned back to the midwife, his anguish palpable.
“She’s not dead,” the midwife said quickly. “At least I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?” he echoed, his voice rising in volume.
The midwife staggered forward. She was covered with blood, and she looked exhausted, but Gregory didn’t give a sodding damn if she was ready to drop. “Help her,” he demanded.
The midwife took Lucy’s wrist and felt for a pulse. She gave him a quick nod when she found one, but then she said, “I’ve done everything I can.”
“No,” Gregory said, because he refused to believe that this was it. There was always something one could do. “No,” he said again. “No!”
“Gregory,” Hyacinth said, touching his arm.
He shook her off. “Do something,” he said, taking a menacing step toward the midwife. “You have to do something.”
“She’s lost a great deal of blood,” the midwife said, sagging back against the wall. “We can only wait. I have no way of knowing which way she’ll go. Some women recover. Others . . .” Her voice trailed off. It might have been because she didn’t want to say it. Or it might have been the expression on Gregory’s face.
Gregory swallowed. He didn’t have much of a temper; he’d always been a reasonable man. But the urge to lash out, to scream or beat the walls, to find some way to gather up all that blood and push it back into her . . .