The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner Page 0,36
with that notion, something inarticulate and grasping stirred inside him, the very essence of life.
Chapter Nine
Chawton, Hampshire
November 1945
It had been over a month since the loss of Adeline’s daughter, and Dr. Gray had been summoned to her bedside yet again.
He knew that the degree of her loss was incalculable. It was measured both in reality and in the extinguishing of all the motherly hopes and dreams that had carried her through the earlier waves of grief over Samuel’s death. By holding on to the idea of the baby in order to survive that pain, she had invested all she had left, only to now be left with nothing. From all his years of practice, Dr. Gray knew only one thing for sure: that some of us are given too much to bear, and this burden is made worse by the hidden nature of that toll, a toll that others cannot even begin to guess at.
She had grabbed at his arm that very day, pulling hard on the sleeve of the suit jacket he always wore, as if to keep her back from some invisible brink.
“I just want the pain to end. You have to help me.”
“I know, Adeline, I know. But it will ease, somewhat, with time, I promise you.”
“Don’t lie to me—you of all people know it won’t.” She turned her face away from him and let his arm drop hard, almost hostilely. “How can it, when I’ve lost everything—everyone—that I’ve ever loved? What would that say about me, if I could just go on?”
He stared down at the back of her head. “No one will ever judge you for trying to be happy again.”
“I don’t care what others think,” she said harshly. “I gave everything I had to Samuel and then to our baby, every last bit of me. I did it knowing how much I could get hurt—I took my chance and I was wrong.” She gave a strange, bitter laugh.
“You speak as if you could have held back somehow, from life.”
She turned back to look at him.
“Can’t I? Don’t you? You certainly act like you do.”
He shifted his weight a bit under her gaze. “We’re not talking about me, Adeline.”
“Maybe we should be.”
“Adeline, you have every right to be angry and upset. But I don’t think it’s appropriate to direct it at me, as your doctor and, I hope, your friend—do you?”
She turned her head away from him again. “Appropriate. Fine. I’m sorry. Just give me something, please, anything to help me sleep. Please, just for a bit. Just this once.”
He reached into his black bag and took out the tiny vial he had filled back in his office, knowing she would ask for it again, knowing he would not be able to say no. He prayed she wouldn’t ask him for anything more.
He placed the vial down on the bedside table without a word, then left the darkened bedroom just as silently.
Emerging into the purple dusk of early winter, Dr. Gray walked the half-mile home weighed down by both Adeline’s loss and his own futility in the face of it. He had been so panicked and distraught that terrible night at the hospital, and weeks later he continued to feel a pervasive helplessness where Adeline was concerned.
Worst of all, he had just left medicine with Adeline that—like him—was doing nothing to help. All that the morphine was doing was helping her not to live—to avoid what she must endure—to deafen the voices inside. That was all he could do for her now: keep her alive by letting her kill the very essence inside her. He could not stop the pain, he could not give her a reason to live—he could not heal the trauma in her brain. As he thought back on all of this, he struggled to think of what recompense a good doctor got for having to face such life-destroying failure. He struggled at the best of times to figure that out; tonight he couldn’t even try.
His nurse had gone home for the day—as usual, he entered a quiet and lonely house. Throwing down his coat and bag on the old deacon’s bench in the front vestibule, he walked slowly into the examination room and back through to his office, shutting the door behind him.
The rest of the bottle still sat on his desk. He had not locked it away earlier as he was supposed to; he just made sure to leave only enough for one dose. Then he had left his office