"I can help," he started.
"Ye can help by standin' back and stayin' quiet." She didn't soften it. "I need to hear him breathe and I cannae do that with ye at me shoulder."
A pause. Then he stepped back to the wall.
She heard it again from the doorway. That faint collective intake from the watching servants. She filed it away and forgot it immediately. She had James.
"Lift him," she said to the nearest servant, the young lad from earlier, pale-faced now, hands uncertain. "Gently. Both hands supportin' his back, aye, like that. Hold him forward, just slightly, so his chest can open."
Mairi arrived at a controlled run, the pot steaming in both hands.
Good girl.
Catriona added the compound. Measured, precise, and held the pot at the right distance, close enough for the steam without the heat.
She pressed two fingers along the boy's ribs and felt the resistance there, the way his body was working against itself. She guided his breathing with her voice the same way her grandmother had taught her, low, steady, a pace to follow when everything else had gone wrong.
"Breathe with me, James. Slow, in. Aye. And out. Again. Just like that."
His eyes were open, wide and frightened. She held his gaze.
"Ye're all right," she said. "I have ye. Keep breathin' with me."
Anthony had not moved from the wall.
She was aware of him with the part of her attention that was always tracking the room. Not interfering, not speaking, the effort of both visible in the absolute stillness he was holding himself in.
A man who'd spent six years being helpless in this room, and had learned to be still about it.
The steam worked. The wheeze eased. James's shoulders dropped a fraction, then another. The fist his hand had made in the blanket loosened slowly.
"There," she said quietly. "Well done. Keep goin'."
The wheeze faded. James's breathing evened out fraction by fraction, the way a storm eased. Not all at once, but in stages, each one a small concession until the worst of it was past.
When the last of the tension left his small frame she let out a slow breath of her own and sat back on the edge of the bed.
"Is it goin' to happen again?" James asked.
His voice was thin, worn at the edges, but it was there.
"Maybe," she said. No point softening it. "But each time I learn more about how yer lungs work and what sets them off. And each time I can manage it faster." She pressed the back of her hand briefly to his forehead. "Ye did well. Ye kept breathin' with me the whole time."
He was quiet a moment. "It hurt."
"I ken. It willnae always hurt that much."
His eyes moved past her shoulder, just briefly. She knew without turning that Anthony was still at the wall.
"Is he angry?" James asked very quietly.
"Nay, he's just worried."
"He really looks like that when he's worried."
She said nothing to that. Smoothed the blanket over him and stayed until his eyes had closed and the breathing had deepened into real sleep.
Then she sat back and felt two hours arrive on her all at once.
