His wife was sick.
There was nothing to be done.
No remedy to be found.
No reprieve to be hoped for.
Frederick refused to accept that. He sought out doctor after doctor, apothecary after apothecary, surgeon after surgeon. They all said the same thing: Anya was dying.
In desperation, Frederick turned to the local native doctors. Multiple Vaidyas and Hakims were consulted, but even their Ayurveda and Unani medicine was no match for the disease that seemed to be eating Anya from the inside out. Each morning, she awoke with new evidence of her disease’s progression: a new lump here, a new swelling there.
And each night, she suffered.
The pain came in waves at first, sharp and sudden, stealing her breath and leaving her trembling in their wake. Frederick could do little but remain beside her, holding her hand, murmuring what comfort he could while feeling the terrible inadequacy of it. In time, even that small relief failed her. Sleep became fitful and brief, broken by quiet cries she tried, and failed, to suppress.
Laudanum and other draughts were prescribed in an effort to ease her suffering, and though they afforded some measure of relief, they could not wholly quiet the pain that gripped her.
Even so, she took them sparingly, often refusing more than the smallest portion. She did not like the heaviness they brought—the dulling of her thoughts, the distance they placed between herself and those she loved. What time remained to her, she wished to meet with a clear mind and open heart.
She would not have her husband and her son remember only a shadow of her, softened and obscured by medicine, when she might instead give them the truth of herself—however fleeting, however frail.
But there were moments—when she thought him asleep, or when the pain grew too great for concealment—when he heard her whisper prayers into the darkness, her voice soft and unsteady as she pleaded not for healing, but for strength enough to endure.
Towards the end, even that changed.
Her prayers grew shorter. Quieter.
More desperate.
She no longer asked for relief from the suffering alone, but for release from it altogether—for an end to the pain that neither medicine nor devotion could ease. And Frederick, who had once believed himself capable of bearing anything, found that there was nothing more unbearable than listening to the woman he loved beg God for death, and knowing that such a prayer might, in truth, be the only mercy left to grant.
Frederick bore it as best he could, though the helplessness of it weighed upon him more heavily than any hardship he had known before. He had survived jungle fever and its occasional relapses, rebuilt his life from nothing, carved out a place for himself in a land not his own—but this was beyond him.
And in the end, when her strength had nearly left her, she took his hand and spoke of only one thing.
“Promise me, Frederick.”
He knelt at her side and took her limp, frail hand in between his. Her fingers were freezing in spite of the summer’s oppressive heat.
“Anything, my love.”
“Teddy… you must take him…”
“Take him? Take him where?”
“To England. To your home.”
Frederick shook his head at once. “No.”
“You must,” she insisted, her voice faint but unwavering. “He deserves more than this. He deserves what is his.”
“He has everything,” Frederick said, though even as he spoke, he knew the argument was a poor one. “He hasus.”
“He will only have you,” she whispered, her fingers tightening weakly around his. “And so, you must give him the rest.”
There were tears in her eyes then—not for herself, but for the child she would soon leave behind.
“In England,” she said, “he will not be alone. He will have family, and he will make something of himself.”
