He repeated, “Miss Bennet, can you flex your toes?”
Another piteous moan.
“It would be very kind of you if you moved your toes.”
At last this time Jane flexed her feet. The doctor observed and nodded. He smiled. “Very good Miss Bennet, can you raise your arms?”
This time Jane immediately did as asked, but then she groaned. “My head hurts so much. Lord, it hurts so much.”
“Yes, I am afraid it must. Poor girl! — how much laudanum have you given her already?” Upon hearing the answer the doctor mixed another cup for Jane, dripping considerably more of the drug into it. “Here, drink this — it will help with the pain.”
Now Elizabethwasable to do something. Papa held Jane so she sat up, while Elizabeth held the cup to her mouth and helped her to drink. Not too much was spilled.
The doctor for his part looked closely at Jane’s eyes, sniffed her breath, and then stroked his iron grey moustache and looked worried and serious.
After Jane drank the glass of laudanum — it was much more laudanum than Elizabeth was used to seeing prescribed — everyone but the maid whose job it was to lay cool cloths against Jane’s forehead left the room.
“Is my daughter dying?” Mr. Bennet asked as soon as they had gone into the hallway, where Mr. Bingley also waited, anxiously pacing.
The doctor shrugged. “Her condition is very uncertain. I believe that she is suffering from dropsy of the brain — that is an accumulation of water around the neck and the base of the skull. It is quite unlikely that she has suffered an actual attack of apoplexy, because in almost all such cases with a complete paralysis of the face, all of the limbs on the affected side should be greatly weakened and immobile, and I can discover no sign of harm to anything but the muscles of her face.”
“Yes. That will be of great comfort should she live.Will she die?”
“Some recover, some do not. Mr. Bennet, I cannot say. She is young and appears to have a strong constitution. The case is by no means hopeless — but you must prepare yourself for the chance.”
“No!” Bingley exclaimed. He looked devastated.
Mr. Bennet looked at their host with something rather like a sharp, pained annoyance. He turned back to the doctor. “So there is nothing that you can do?”
“There is a course of treatment that may lead to better outcomes. As the condition is caused by too much fluid collecting around the brain, several physicians have had some success in treating it by attempting to dry out the body, so that less fluid can gather there to swell the brain. I will give her ipecac as an emetic so that she vomits up enough water to reduce the severity of the dropsy — I believe your local surgeon-apothecary bled her already earlier today?”
Elizabeth nodded.
Mr. Thompson continued, “Hopefully that shall have a further salutary effect. I do not wish to bleed her overmuch, as I do not find these complaints to be sanguinary in nature. Ipecac to make her vomit now, and then again in eight hours. No more water to drink until tomorrow. And pray to the Almighty that the best guess we have of what shall help her, will actually aid her recovery.”
Mr. Bennet closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the door to Jane’s room. “That is all you can say or promise? A quack treatment that even you do not believe will work?”
“I believe it will improve her odds.”
Mr. Bennet did not reply to that at first. Then he sighed. “I suppose treatments that are certain to work are the ones offered by those with no expertise in medicine.”
After saying that, Mr. Bennet went downstairs to speak to Mrs. Bennet. She had fallen into hysterics upon seeing Jane, and the sound she had made had seemed to bother Jane and lead to her moaning more than otherwise. She had thus been kept in the drawing room and away from the invalid for the remainder of her visit to Netherfield.
Elizabeth went back into the room, and she sat next to Jane’s bed, taking her hand and squeezing it.
Don't die. Don’t die. Don’t die. I wouldn’t survive it if you died.
Bingley knocked on the door. “Can I… I know that it is not… it is not my place, but… I cannot simply pretend Jane is not here. That she is not terribly ill.”
Elizabeth motioned for him to come into the room and sit down in the other chair near Jane’s bed, right by her head.
He looked agonized as he stared at her. Bingley hesitantly stretched out his hand and brushed his fingers over her forehead. “Why do such things happen?”
“She will recover fully. I am sure of it,” Elizabeth lied.
“I have never… it shall haunt me till the day I day. The way that she smiled during our first dance. And now… look at her face. She cannot smile.”
“Her heart and soul will always smile, no matter what happens.”
