(OOC: Again, Hestia's mun gave me permission to mod her to Nolan's flat. :) Hestia, Nolan, and Phelan last posted in A Lady's Companion on an Errand)

Hestia, Nolan, and Phelan arrived back at Nolan’s rented flat by the river in record time. They spilled out of the hansom cab in an orderly fuss and hurried up the stairs to Nolan’s flat. No words were exchanged, although Nolan had spent the greater part of the cab-ride thanking Miss Logan for her extreme kindness. It was extremely magnanimous of her to offer help, and he couldn’t express his gratitude enough. His earlier esteem of her had now multiplied a hundredfold. They arrived at his flat, where he hastily opened the door, finding that Phelan had left it unlocked. The three of them rushed into Shannon’s bedroom, where the most heart-stoppingly awful scene that Nolan had ever seen met his eyes.

The room was completely empty.

Nolan immediately turned and ran through the rest of the flat, his long legs taking him first to Phelan’s room, then his own, through the all-purpose main room, and into the dining-room. Shannon was nowhere to be found and Nolan’s panic grew progressively more all-consuming. Where was she?! He pushed open the door to the kitchen and stopped dead as it hit something, sending it skittering across the floor. As the knife blade rebounded from the base of a cabinet, life seemed to stop, and then with a hoarse shout Nolan took two giant, collapsing steps that brought him on his knees to the floor, beside the still form of his daughter.

His hands desperately pulled her off the checkered tiles, clasping her tight to his breast as tears began to roll down his face. Shannon’s white tea-dress was stained with blood, the cuffs so soaked as to appear that they had been dyed crimson, and the floor where Nolan knelt was a slow-spreading pool of the red fluid. He rocked his daughter’s body back and forth, a keening noise escaping from him. Phelan caught up with his father and entered the kitchen to this sight, and the boy leaned against the wall for support. Reality retreated from around Nolan and suddenly he was holding his dead wife again, her birthing dress stained and the dead child laid next to her. He sobbed, “Eileen, Eileen, you can’t be dead, you can’t.”

He might have continued like this for some time had not Phelan knelt beside him to smooth his sister’s hair from her face. When he did, Phelan suddenly started, and exclaimed, ”Father! She’s breathing still!”
Nolan didn’t seem to hear this at all. He continued rocking Shannon back and forth. Phelan first shook his father and then, when this produced no response, hauled back and slapped Nolan as hard as he could across the face. Nolan’s head was whipped to one side by the force of the blow, but he looked at his son with dull eyes. Phelan said again, ”She’s breathing, Father!”
Nolan blinked, then looked down stupidly at Shannon, his hands loosening. “Breathing?”
”Yes Father! She’s alive!”
Nolan was still for a moment, and then all in one movement he stood up, Shannon in his arms. “Phelan, find a doctor, any doctor. Promise whatever you have to. Go!”
Phelan scrambled wordlessly from the room, and a moment later quit the flat, the sound of his running footsteps thumping down the stairs.

Then Nolan turned to Miss Logan, who was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, and had been there for however long; Nolan had lost track of everything upon seeing Shannon. Miss Logan was partially trained as a midwife. She would know what to do. She had to know what to do. He trusted in her, and asked her simply, with all the sincerity and expectation of a father addressing his only hope for his daughter’s life, “What should I do?”

Hestia’s heart had been thumping in her ears from the moment she has spoken the lie at the fabric store. She was not a midwife. She was nothing of the sort. She was a foolish woman who read medical books and fancied herself something more than she was. She had no business trying to step into this awful situation. She might do more harm. She felt her own face growing pace as the cab moved along swiftly toward Mr Quartemaine’s home. She nodded nervously as he thanked her but said nothing and avoided looking directly in the eyes of Mr Quartermaine of his young son.

The scene Hestia expected to see was a young woman with a throat injury lay neatly in a bed. The reality of the situation altered the moment they stepped into the house. The young woman was no longer in her bed and every person in that room new what that likely meant. Mr Quartermaine was running. He was tearing through the flat and in silent panic that seemed to echo off the wall. The energy immediately began to prickle with fearfulness and in only a moment, the awful truth of the matter made itself clear. Mr Quartermaine’s ungodly cry came from the kitchen and Hestia’s whole body jolted. At first she could not move. Her blood seem frozen but suddenly her feet began to move her forward toward the awful noise. What she saw, made her again stop for a moment but she did not look away. The metallic smell of blood hit her nostrils and Hestia’s eyes gathered in the image of the father cradeling his bloodied daughter and the emotion of it overwhelmed her. She needed to look somewhere else. Shannon’s arm hung loose, and there was the wound. The knife lay a few feet away and Hestia moved toward it.

“Mr Quartermaine, you need to lay her down, there is not much time.” Mr Quartermaine was covered in his daughter's blood. Hestia put a calm hand on his shoulder as she squatted down near the girl who was still breathing weakly and found a weak pulse. Hestia could see her redden throat from her attempted hanging but had to address the more pressing issue of her bleeding arm. She took up Shannon’s arm and looked at the wound carefully to determine the depth. It was deep but manageable.

What could possibly have happened to this young woman to want her chase after death with such single-mindedness? Hestia shook the thought away and focused her mind on what needed to be done, and done quickly. Hestia took the knife and began to cut into the girl’s dress. She needed to get to the fabric up nearer to the girl’s thigh that would be less dirtied than the dress’s hem. She turned to Mr Quartermaine as she worked, “Whiskey,” she said simply and with an authority that surpised even her. But she went on. “Quickly. And then a blanket.”

The wound needed to be compressed for fifteen minutes with sterile dressing. The whiskey poured on strips of fabric would serve that purpose for the moment. The girl was likely in shock and that could mean trouble, her blood pressure was likely dropping. The sense of panic that had gripped Hestia had been shoved out by the urgency to correct what was before her, to make it right. She, too, was now smeared in the girl's blood. The sticky warm pool of it on the floor was seeping into the hem of her skirt and her hands were stained. "Please hurry, Mr Quartermaine," she urged as she ripped the dress fabric into strips.

A doctor was coming. A doctor would be here and take over. That is what the boy had gone to find. Hestia could wash this all off her as soon as he came.

Nolan, mindful of Miss Logan’s urgency, hurried into the nearest room with a flat surface, which was the dining-room. It took him only five steps to cover the distance, and he laid Shannon on the table, first clearing the metal bowl of wax fruit from the top with a sweep of his arm. He could pick it up later. Shannon’s bloody dress and bleeding wound left smears on the tablecloth but he didn’t care. Then Nolan turned to Miss Logan, but she told him exactly what she needed. “Whiskey. Quickly. And then a blanket.”

Inwardly, Nolan cursed. His past sins were catching up with him. There was no whiskey in the house, not one drop of any kind of alcohol. Thirteen years ago he had been an alcoholic, until he and his children had been evicted from their apartments and thrown into the street and he had seen his son and daughter begging for their dinners. He had quit cold turkey then. But the only way he had done it was to completely remove alcohol from his life. He could not be a social drinker; the desire to drink until the troubles of the world retreated, at least for a while, was too strong. He had sworn off alcohol of any kind for any reason. And now he absolutely needed it and it was not to be found.

Hurriedly he ran to his room and ripped the blanket off his bed, and dropped it off with Miss Logan in the dining-room. “I have to go next door to get the whiskey—I don’t have any but Mrs Fitzpatrick next door will,” he told her briefly. He was already on his way out when her exhortation, "Please hurry, Mr Quartermaine," reached his ears. Wrenching open the front door of the flat he hurried along the public hall to the flat one down from his. Beating on the door, he obtained an answer in record time as old Mrs Fitzpatrick herself opened the door to say crabbily, ”Here now, what’s this?” Her eyes took in the blood all over the front of Nolan’s waistcoat and cravat and smearing his face and hands, and she let out a shriek and tried to shut the door.

Nolan stopped it with one strong hand on the door and one on the jamb. “Mrs Fitzpatrick, it’s just me, Nolan Quartermaine. I need a bottle of your whiskey.”
Mrs Fitzpatrick stopped struggling to shut the door, but she didn’t let him in either. ”I say you do, boy. Why are you all over blood? Have you killed something?”
“I don’t have time to discuss it. My daughter is wounded. I need the whiskey.”
”It’s not cheap, boy. I buy only the good, strong stuff. You’d do better to get it yourself from—“
“I don’t have time. I will pay whatever you want.”

Mrs Fitzpatrick looked at the desperation in Nolan’s eyes, and perhaps thought about the fact that he could just barge in and take it from her if he took it to his mind, and capitulated. Opening the door, she left him standing in it as she went into a different room and came back with a bottle of strong Irish whiskey. She handed it to him and he took it and dashed back down the hall to his own flat, calling, “Thank you!” over his shoulder. He hurried back into the dining-room and uncorked the bottle. The stuff was so strong he thought he almost might get drunk just from the fumes. He handed it to Miss Logan with a concerned, “Is there anything more I can do?”

Mr Quartermaine was taking too long. Hestia's hands seem to be flying of their own accord, ripping the cleanest parts of Shannon's dress into long strips. The bleeding needed to be stopped now. She could no longer wait for Mr Quartermaine. The girl's face, her lips, they were turning an ashen in color and she was entirely unresponsive.

Hestial began to quickly bind the wounds tightly to compress the bloodflow. She tied the wrappings off tight and then added another layer at the blood seeped through the first. She had not wanted the girl on the table as she would need a way to elevate her arms. But Mr Quartemaine had been so desperate to set the girl somewhere suitable. Hestia needed to keep the girl's arms above her heart to slow down the flow quickly. She did not have time to stand and hold the arms up as the girl's throat needed attending as well.

Hestia too the knife and cut away more of the dress, leaving the girl with barely any of her skirt now. She then lifted one of the dining chairs and set the legs carefully over the girl's slim torso, edging it up til it was standing over her chest. She quickly tied the longer strips of fabric around the girl's wrists and attached the other ends to arms of the chairs to keep the girl's arms suspended in this self-created contraption. She was doing the best she could while alone. Her mind working fast and with a strange calm that conflicted with an odd churning sensation in her stomach.

She loosed the buttons of the neckline of the dress and clearly saw the reddened marks of the rope and the swelling. Hestia put her fingers lightly on the wound and felt how cold the girl's skin was. The shock was dropping her blood pressure. This girl was in grave condition and might not make it. But Hestia continued to move forward in time, to keep thinking in her mind, "What next? What should be done now?"

She left the girl and went to the kitchen to find sage. Most kitchens would have this herb. She needed to make a poultice for the girl's throat. If was swelling and if not controlled,it could compromise her breathing. She began to pull open the cabinets and search for the herb. All the while, Hestia thought, "The doctor will be here soon. No one can blame me for helping."

Miss Logan didn’t seem to hear him, and she didn’t take the bottle he offered. Nola shifted from foot to foot, not wanting to get in the way of the woman but wanting to be useful also. Shannon had been tied to a chair while he was obtaining the whiskey, fast work for such a small woman as Miss Logan. She seemed to know a great deal more than she should as a midwife’s trainee, but Nolan wouldn’t care if she turned out to be one of the American Indians' witch doctors if she managed to save Shannon. Miss Logan went into the kitchen to look for something; Nolan set the Irish whiskey on the table and stayed at Shannon’s side.

He decided that the best course of action was to stay out of her way until she needed his help. There was nothing he could do on his own, since he didn’t know toes from tails about medicine. He heard the front door open, and assumed it must be Phelan coming with the doctor, and so didn’t go to see who it was but rather stayed with his daughter. Miss Logan seemed to be doing all she could; Nolan hoped it was enough. Would Shannon live to see the end of this day? A cough from the doorway alerted him, and he turned, prepared to greet the doctor and get out of his way too. Miss Logan could inform him of what she had done for Shannon far better than he could. But it wasn’t the doctor that came through the door.

Mrs Fitzpatrick peered into the dining room, her white-haired head disapproving. ”Tried to kill herself?”
Nolan hurried over and blocked her view of Shannon by standing in front of her. He cleared six feet by a good two inches and Mrs Fitzpatrick was barely over five, so it was easily accomplished. “Mrs Fitzpatrick, you need to leave.”
”Humph. She did. She’s far too high-strung. You know I’ve been saying it for years.”
“The door is this way, Mrs Fitzpatrick.”
Mrs Fitzpatrick harrumphed and turned away from the dining-room, walking very slowly and decrepitly back towards the front door. ”She’s hysterical. I’ve known it for years. This sort of thing wouldn’t happen if you raised her properly.”
Trying very hard to keep hold of his temper, Nolan didn’t say anything, but kept shepherding Mrs Fitzpatrick to the door.
”You should have taken her to a doctor the first time I said it, you know.” When this produced no reaction from Nolan either, Mrs Fitzpatrick seemed disappointed and continued to elaborate what should have been done for Shannon to have headed off her attempted suicide. ”You should have taken her for regular therapy. I don’t think you could afford water massages, so it should have been a doctor. Pelvic massages would have prevented this.”

Nolan, who had no idea what she was talking about, merely ushered her on. Mrs Fitzpatrick continued, ”If she survives, you should start her on regular weekly visits to the doctor. I was hysterical myself when I was younger. Pelvic massages were the only thing that kept me alive.”
Thinking to get her to quit flapping her gob, Nolan said, “I’ll ask the doctor if it’s necessary.”
Mrs Fitzpatrick snorted. ”You won’t get a straight answer from one of them. They don’t like hysterical patients, they think it takes to long to produce a paroxysm. A good doctor who knows what he’s doing, though, can finish a treatment in five minutes. You can tell how much medical experience a physician has by how many hysterical patients he’s got, you know. The experienced ones always have more.”
Nolan opened the door for her and said graciously, even though he felt like picking the slow old biddy up and throwing her out bodily, “Thank you for your opinion, Mrs Fitzpatrick.”

When she made no move to leave, he looked into the hall to see what was keeping her. Bill Briggs stood there, just lowering his hand from raising it to knock on the door. The cabby said, ”Afternoon, guv’ner.”
Nolan looked at him impatiently. “Mrs Fitzpatrick was just leaving.”
Briggs stepped aside, and Mrs Fitzpatrick reluctantly started walking out the door. Briggs called over her shoulder, ”What was all the hurry then, guv’ner?”
Mrs Fitzpatrick looked extremely satisfied to be able to say, ”His daughter tried to kill herself. It was hysteria, I’m sure.”
Mrs Fitzpatrick was still in the door, blocking Nolan from shutting it, so he tried to change the conversational topic. “What do you want, Briggs?”
Briggs looked down at his hands, then looked at Nolan’s left ear and informed it, ”Three times the normal, guv’ner, you said. I haven’t seen a shilling now, have I?”
Mrs Fitzpatrick, now out in the hallway beside the cabby, exclaimed, ”Oooh! He forgot to pay you, did he? Maybe he’s getting hysterical too. Dreadful neglectful, that was.”
Briggs nodded in agreement, and looked back at Nolan. ”Well, guv’ner?”

Nolan’s temper finally snapped. Drawing in a huge lungful of air he bellowed at the top of his voice, “MY DAUGHTER MAY BE DYING! I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR YOU!” He slammed the door in their shocked and affronted faces and rammed the bolt home. Then, casting them out of his mind completely, he hurried back to the dining-room to see if there was anything he could do.

Out in the hallway, Mrs Fitzpatrick and the cabby looked at each other in mutual understanding. Their eyes met and agreed; some people just couldn’t appreciate any concerns but their own. How unfortunate that Mr Quartermaine had to be that way.
”The whole family is high strung, I’ve always said,” Mrs Fitzpatrick commented.
”He had no call to be so rude.”
”I quite agree. What is the world coming to these days?”
They walked away from the door, consoling their each other by abusing Mr. Quartermaine’s character, and the character of his children, and his dead wife, and his stock, and every thing about him they could think of.

Hestia had set her mind so on the task at hand that she had not felt Mr Quartermaine move near her with the whiskey. She was only aware for his presense when she heard the din of other voices suddenly filling the room. She emerged with a bowl of water and a small sack of the dried sage that she found on a kitchen shelf. Her eyes suddenly caught sight of the the movement in the room and her ears tuned in to all that what was being said. Hestia faulterd for only a moment in her work, a sudden urge rose up that made her want to hurl the bowl of water at them. Hestia had a temper that she worked very hard to keep at bay. She had tamed it mostly, for the sake of her Aunt. But at times it seemed to want to rear it's ugly head and make her act out in ways she was sure to regret.

Mr Quartermaine finally shouted and Hestia jumped so that the water sloshed out of the bowl a bit and fell across Shannon's chest. Mr Quartermaine had been succesful in driving off those awful meddling people but Hestia could see that his mood was becoming frantic and she hoped the real doctor would show up soon.

"Mr Quartermaine," she spoke softly but directly. "I am sure your son will return soon with the doctor. Please come here. I need you to help." She began to take sage from the sack and rubbing it between her hands to crush it over the bowl of water. It was something she remembered seeing her father do. He said it released the oils.
"I need you to take that bottle of whiskey and pour it over the rags on Shannon's wrists." Hestia gestured with her chin toward the bottle of whiskey that Mr Quartermaine had secured from a neighbor. "Put those people out of your mind. Nothing matters right now except this. Soak the bandages with it. And when you are done, pour some along her throat. I am preparing a poultice."

She began to mix the sage and water into a paste. Her eyes were watching Shannon's breathing and her color. She was still an ashen color and her breathing was shallow. Hestia was doing all she could think of but she was not sure it would be enough. She looked up at Mr Quartermaine who looked quite pale himself. "Nothing else matters right now," she repeated. "Stay calm. The doctor shall arrive at any moment."

Andrew had had a bad feeling the second he saw the boy come into the room. He didn't say anything to the boy when he saw him standing in the middle of the waiting room. Somehow he knew that when something was truly wrong people didn't have say anything. There was something in the boy's face. A shock, a completely un-exaggerated shock.

"Which way?" he asked, walking over to the boy and picking up his doctory bag that was on the desk. He didn't bother to put on a hat or a coat or gloves which was very disgraceful but the fact that he had his doctor bag would perhaps be explaination enough.

The ride to the flat at the river bend was a tense one. Andrew ran his hands over his face. His five-o-clock shadow was coming in. After taking a breath he asked, very calmly what the matter was. The boy answered him, telling him that his sister had attempted to take her own life and that there was lots of blood. Figuring out that she'd tried to take her own life had taken a bit of deciphering on Dr. Marcs part. The boy had been understandably vague. No person wanted to admit that their family member had tried to take their own life. Andrew didn't tend to judge people who did this though as a person who was employed to help those who were in pain without choice most of the time, it was a bit odd to attend to those who wanted death when he was so used to warding it off.

The piled out of the hansom cab and made their way up the stairs. Andrew could hear the frantic footsteps and prepared himself. He rolled up his white shirt sleeves, took of the white piece fo fabric around his neck and unbuttoned the the top button of his waistcoat.

He knocked firmly but calmly on the door and waited someone to come to the door.

Phelan hopped from one foot to another, impatiently waiting for the door to the flat to open. Why had his father locked it? The doctor was here, he could help, why was the door locked now? The fifteen-year-old glanced at Dr Marcs and said, “I think—“
He was cut off by the next door neighbor poking her head out of her flat in response to Dr Marcs’ loud knock on the Quartermaine’s door. Mrs Fitzpatrick took one look at Phelan and Dr Marcs and then called back into her flat, “The doctor’s here!”
A man Phelan recognised as the cabby who had ignored him earlier came out and the fellow and Mrs Fitzpatrick descended on Dr Marcs.

“Tried to kill herself, she did,” Mrs Fitzpatrick said.
“Sad, isn’t it? One wonders why,” said the cabby.
“There’s blood all over. Slit her wrists, I shouldn’t wonder,” Mrs Fitzpatrick commented
“Might be dying,” the cabby added.
“Tried to hang herself first, I saw. There’s a ruddy great bruise on her neck.”
“Remarkable determination.”
“Indeed. She’s hysterical, doctor.”
“Undoubtedly.”

Phelan shifted his feet and hoped that the door would open soon.


Nolan did as Hestia instructed, not even paying attention to her last comforting words; they were wasted on him as he bent all his concentration to doing exactly as she had asked with the whiskey. He soaked the bloody bandages at Shannon’s wrists; some of the liquor ran down her arms as gravity pulled it from the place where his daughter’s arms were tied to the chair on the table. He tenderly ran some of the pungent liquid over her throat. He was disrupted from his task when someone pounded on the door. Wiping the liquor in his hands off onto his coat he set the now half-empty bottle down and went to answer it. Damn Mrs Fitzpatrick and damn Bill Briggs. He would see to it that neither of them knocked on his door again.

Shooting back the bolt, he wrenched open the door, shouting, “IF YOU THINK—“ He cut off abruptly as he realised it was Phelan, along with a stranger who had to be the doctor the boy had been sent to fetch. “Oh, the physician. This way.”
He turned and strode back to the dining-room, dispensing with politeness in favour of speed; he would apologise later, once Shannon was assured of living. He left the door open behind him, trusting that the doctor would follow, and opened the door to the dining-room. The sight of Shannon, laid flat on the table, her wrists bound to the chair place above her to keep them elevated, the blackening bruise at her throat and the blood all over, almost reduced him to tears again. But this was not the time for grief, it was the time to do anything he possibly could for his daughter.

He said, “Please. Anything you can do for her. No price is too great, spare no expense.”


Hestia continued to crush the sage when Mr Quartermaine left to answer the door. When he came back a moment later with his son and another man, she assumed it was the doctor and gratefully let the burden of Shannon’s life fall on him. She told the man what she had already done for the girl and then stood back, waiting for him to take over.

“The doctor’s here!”

Andrew was all set to dash in the door as quickly as possible to find the girl who was in trouble but two people who must've been neighbors quickly explained the situation to him. The poor girl had slit her wrists and they were talking about it like they would have gossiped about the milk-maid running off with the farm boy. He gazed at them trough his glasses with a dissapproving, angry look and waited on the door to open.

“IF YOU THINK—

Andrew was slightly shocked that the man was angry at him but then realized that he must have thought he was the ghastly neighbors and quickly became very understanding.

“Oh, the physician. This way.”

"Right," said Marcs shortly.

As he was led through the home he felt a forboding feeling in his gut that told him he was not about to see a pretty sight. The streams of sunlight coming in through the small windows did not sparkle and barely shined. There was no noise at all. The only thing Andrew could hear was the eerily muffled sound of their footsteps.

The sight before him would have been enough to make someone collapse in despair. A girl, in her very prime had a ring around her neck that looked like rope burn and there was blood everywhere. Andrew allowed 5 seconds to feel despair, fear and every other emotion that could deem him unalbe to do his job and walked over to her to assess the damage.

“Please. Anything you can do for her. No price is too great, spare no expense.”

"Of course," he said as he pulled some gauze out of his bag. "You've done an excellent job already, Miss," he said, not looking at her and focusing on the girl's wrists, the most pressing matter.

"Mr. Quartermine, I must warn you...If she cut her wrists veritcally there'll be no saving her. You need to prepare youself," he said sternly. He splashed some water that the girl had brought him onto Miss Quartermine's wrists so he could see the wound. There were shallow horizontal cuts on them. A smile lit up his eyes but did not reach his mouth, which was still very worried.

"Mr Quartermine. You should consider yourself lucky," he said as he went about binding her wrists with gauze, among other things.

He spent about 45 minutes attending to her wrists and neck combined and did not stop until he was sure he'd done everything he could. He found her heart beat though it wasn't strong and stood back. It was a bloody scene, the table was slick in some parts with blood and Andrew found that the cuffs of his white shirt had speckes of maroon on it as did the front of his shirt.

"I have done everything I can Mr. Quartermine. She will probably survive but there is always a chance that she...will not," he said matter of factly, "If she survives her physical wounds will be your smallest concern," he said in coldly sad voice," I suggest you move her and make her as comfortable as you can. My prayers are with you," he said as he shook Mr. Quartermine's hand.

He turned and left after giving them brief instructions on what to do when she woke and how to know if she wouldn't. He took his leave as respectably as he could and wished them the best of luck.

((Next Post to be announced.))

Nolan stood by while the doctor worked, not intruding into the situation at all unless the doctor asked him to do something. He knew very well that there was absolutely nothing he could do to help Shannon himself; that fact caused him no end of misery, but his determination to do his part by not interfering with the doctor held him still. Once Dr Marcs was finished, he left; Hestia, very much subdued, left only a couple minutes after. Nolan was left to his own devices, and after only a few seconds to gather his thoughts, proceeded to take Shannon off the table and to her bedroom. There, after asking Phelan to clean the dining-room and throw away the bloody cloths, he stripped his daughter and washed the blood that had soaked through much of her clothes from her body. Carefully re-garbing her in a loose night-gown, he placed her in her bed and then sat beside it on a straight-back wooden chair, keeping vigil over her. After a couple hours, Phelan came in to set up a cot in the corner, and sat on it to keep watch also. His eyelids grew heavy, however, and he was asleep by one in the morning.

Early the next morning, about three thirty, Shannon woke up. Nolan saw her eyes flutter and was instantly at her side, supporting her shoulders as she tried weakly to sit up. He crushed her to his chest, being careful not to touch her wrists, and pressed his face to her hair. Tears started in his eyes, and he sent a prayer to the Lord, thanking Him for allowing Dr Marcs to be such an excellent physician. Shannon merely lay in Nolan’s arms for long minutes before finally stirring again; he felt her move and loosened his embrace a little, still helping her sit. She moved one arm slightly so that she could touch the bandages about her wrist with her other hand. Nolan watched anxiously, but all Shannon did was to sigh and let both arms relax alongside her. He tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t, and so only continued to hold her.

Eventually, Shannon said, “I tried, father.”
Nolan had no idea what to say, so he said nothing again, only keeping her in his arms, trying to make her feel safe.
Shannon was still for a while, and then said softly and without much emotion, her voice rasping in her bruised throat to quote the Bible, “‘For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten. Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.’”
Now Nolan could think of things to say, and desperately wanted to say them, but they were trapped behind a huge lump that suddenly blocked his throat; his windpipe constricted and it seemed he couldn’t breathe. Seemingly to make up for the lack of words, huge tears fell from his eyes onto the top of Shannon’s head, making damp spots in her hair.
She didn’t look up, though, only continuing on in the same quiet, hopeless tone. “I have disgraced you. If I die, the world will move on, and forget the disgrace, forget about me. You can be happy then.”
Nolan, his voice cracked and breaking, and so low it would not be heard except that it was the only sound in the room, said, “I would not forget you, and I will never be happy without you. I am your father, and I love you. I will always love you.”
Shannon started to cry as well, and would have clung to her father but that she was too weak from loss of blood. “I have shamed you.”
Nolan held her tighter. “I am not ashamed to love you.”
Shannon continued to protest, and Nolan continued to affirm his love for her without condemnation, until both trailed off and all that was left was the sound of tears and their embrace.

From the cot set up in the corner of the room, Phelan, woken by the low conversation and now not knowing what to do and feeling useless, pretended to be asleep, trying to ignore his father’s crying and his sister’s words.