Chapter 18

"Affliction is a good man's shining time."  Edward Young

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Chapter Eighteen

Luke had not died during the procedure. Doctor Harris had performed a mere miracle in simply keeping him alive. Another in the fact that both of his eyes still remained in his head.

It had been three weeks since he had arrive in London for surgery. He had arrived alone. Annaliese had wanted to come with him, but Luke had insisted that she remain with Isabella.

The procedure had taken place a few days later. Doctor Harris seemed optimistic. He had been able to remove the splinter from his optic nerve without causing any further damage. Luke was still on bedrest, however, with thick bandages covering his eyes.

He had not heard any positive news from Annaliese. Another three weeks and Isabella was still unconscious.

He had not heard anything from Matthew. Another three weeks and Jamie was still missing.

As he lay flat on his back in the familiar hospital bed, Luke prayed.

"I know you and I do not talk very often," he admitted quietly into the darkness of his room. Well, it could have been daytime but he would not have known. "I suppose that is my fault. I was never one for sitting still in church and singing or listening to sermons.

"But my wife is. You know her. Isabella Cassidy. She has been punished too many times, and I need you to look after her." Luke pursed his lips and thought back to how innocent and cheeky Isabella was before they married. How her life had changed. They had married, and he had effectively abandoned her. She had birthed their son, cared for him beautifully, and Luke's homecoming had only brought her pain. "I have failed her.

"My son, my boy," he continued, his words getting caught in his throat as he fought back tears. Luke's hands became fists as he squeezed his bedclothes tightly. "Jamie is the most innocent of us all. His only crime is having me as a father." A loud sob escaped his mouth. Everything was his fault. Everything terrible that had happened had happened because he had brought Mary back to Somerset with him. "I have not been able to look after him in his first three years of life, but I need you to help me this one last time.

"Protect Isabella and Jamie where I cannot. Keep them safe and I shall never fail them again. Please, I am begging you."

The bandage covering Luke's eyes was now horribly damp from his tears. He wondered if any nurses were around to change it for him. He felt anxious at the thought of a nurse being near him. It felt silly; every nurse he had encounter thus far had been wonderful, but the thought of Mary weaselling her way into his life would haunt him for a very long time.

Impatiently, Luke reached back and unfastened the knot that had been tied to fix his bandages in place. He pulled them from his face and cast them aside.

There was now nothing pressing against his eyes. It was strange. Before he had seen nothing. Now he saw blackness. All he had to do was open them. Luke took a deep breath and opened his eyes.

His room was very dark. Or perhaps that was his eyesight, he could not be sure, but it was not the same as before. His room was dark, but he could see the darkness. Luke pushed himself up on the bed and tried to focus his vision on the shapes in front of him.

And there were shapes in front of him.

"I can ... I can see," he whispered. Luke was in utter shock as the shapes before him came into focus. He saw the iron foot of the bed he was laying in. The furniture in his room was very basic, but he could see it all the same. A wooden chair, a wash basin, a table with medical bits and pieces. The night sky through the window told him it was night time.

Did Luke yell for the doctor? He could see. The surgery had been a success.

His first thoughts were of Jamie. Luke had gone through with the surgery for his son. Luke could now join his brother in the search. Luke had no idea where Matthew and his men were. The last he knew they were near Bath, but they could be anywhere in the country.

Luke's heart was beating so quickly, so quickly that he thought he was going to be sick. He was overwhelmed and shocked, determined and excited.

Luke needed to leave. He felt strong, as though his determination was flowing through his veins. Luke threw the bedclothes back and set his feet down on the cool floor.

His head suddenly spun as he stood up for the first time. His vision blurred, which sent him into a sudden panic. He settled once his vision refocused again, and concentrated on what he needed to do. Where were his clothes? He squinted his eyes and saw his folded clothes on the chair.

It was such an odd feeling to see where he was walking, and to not be holding on to anything.

Luke discarded his hospital nightclothes and stepped into his trousers. He never thought he would really appreciate dressing himself, but fixing buttons without misaligning them was a treat.

No sooner had he slipped his arms into his coat, he heard a commotion downstairs.

"My grandson, my grandson!" the woman shouted hysterically. Her voice, and the utter fear present there, carried up the stairs. There was something familiar about her voice. He had heard her voice before.

She sounded awfully like ... but it could not be her.

Nevertheless, Luke opened the door and went to investigate. No sooner had he exposed his eyes to the light of the candlelight, he squinted. It was a shock to his eyes, and it hurt. Taking a moment to adjust, Luke made his way carefully down the stairs.

The sound of the commotion grew louder and louder. The little hospital in which he was in consisted of treatment rooms on the ground floor, and patient rooms above stairs.

In all their haste, the front door had been left open, and an icy, January breeze was filling the little foyer.

Luke could hear the sound of his doctor, Doctor Harris, fussing over the patient that had just been brought in. The treatment room door was open. Cautiously, Luke made his way towards the threshold.

He saw Doctor Harris first. His doctor was an older, experienced looking man, who wore a fine black suit and small, round spectacles on the end of his nose.

The hysterical woman had her back to him, blocking the patient, but Luke recognised her. Her once fine blonde hair was now wispy, and tucked underneath a practical cap, and her once grand gown was now a sturdy, grey work dress.

"He's very ill, he's very ill," Mrs Dawson stressed.

Could it be? Luke had never felt more anxious in his life.

"He's the boy they write about in the papers. The missing boy, Jamie," Mrs Dawson continued frantically.

As soon as she said his name, Luke needed to brace himself on the door jamb. He did this none too quietly.

The sudden noise of his hand grabbing the timber frame caused both Doctor Harris and Mrs Dawson to turn towards him. In doing this, Mrs Dawson was no longer standing in front of the patient.

He was dirty. His hair was thick and matted with black grime. His clothes were cheap and thin; not at all appropriate for the January weather. He had nothing on his feet, and he looked slightly too thin for a growing little boy.

Worst of all, he was shivering uncontrollably, and his exposed skin was slick with sweat.

But he was the most beautiful thing that Luke had ever seen in all his years. That little boy, without any confirmation of his identity, was his son. Luke could feel it in his very soul. This boy was his reason for existing.

"Captain!" remarked Mrs Dawson. "What are you doing here?"

Luke ignored her question. Instead he slowly made his way towards Jamie, who was shivering in the bed.

"How is your eyesight, Captain?" asked Doctor Harris cautiously.

Luke ignored that question as well. "My son," he whispered. "Help him!" he ordered Doctor Harris, in a much harsher tone than he had intended.

Doctor Harris set to work. He inspected Jamie's throat and listened to his heart and lungs. He then filled a basin with water and removed Jamie's thin clothing. "Would you mind bathing him?" he asked Mrs Dawson. "I need to go and make a tonic and our nurses have left for the evening."

"Of ... of course," stammered Mrs Dawson as she hurried around to the basin. She dipped the wash cloth in the water and set to work in cooling down Jamie's feverish little body.

Jamie looked like he was slipping in and out of consciousness. Luke had seen many cases of fever out at sea, and it was dangerous in even the strongest of men, let alone a little child.

Just that thought made him feel as though he could die right then and there. He would give up his eyesight a thousand times over if he could take Jamie's place in that bed.

"What has she done to you?" Luke asked himself in disbelief as he sat down on the small bed next to Jamie. What had Mary done to him? Where had he been? How had Mrs Dawson found him? Had Mary abandoned him because he was ill?

Mrs Dawson watched him with cautious eyes as she concluded bathing Jamie but she did not say anything. Instead, she washed out the grime from his hair, revealing his dark blond hair, the exact shade of his own.

Doctor Harris returned, stirring a tonic in a teacup. "Sit him up," he instructed. "He needs to drink this."

Luke obeyed, and placed his hand behind Jamie's head and lifted him up gently. He could feel the clamminess of his skin behind his neck.

Jamie stirred ever so slightly, but Luke could tell he was not properly awake. Jamie choked most of the tonic down, but some spilled down his chin. Mrs Dawson was quick to catch it with the wash cloth.

"It is a tonic made from ingredients known to treat fever symptoms in malaria," explained Doctor Harris has covered Jamie with a thin bedsheet. "Fevers in children of your son's age are very dangerous, Captain. It is essential that the fever breaks overnight, or else I am afraid your son has a very slight chance of survival. I am sorry to be blunt, but it is the truth."

Luke stared down at his seriously ill son. "Do you think he will die?" Luke could not believe that the words were coming out of his mouth.

"It is a very real possibility. We cannot do anything more for him. It is in God's hands now," replied Doctor Harris honestly. Doctor Harris retreated from the treatment room, and left Mrs Dawson and Luke alone with Jamie.

Luke held on to Jamie's little hand and pressed his lips to his small fingers. "You take me instead, you take me instead," he chanted over and over in his head.

"If he is anything like Isabella, he will be stubborn and strong," Mrs Dawson offered weakly.

"Isabella says he is like me," Luke replied quietly. "And what am I? Weak and foolish. To be blind both literally and to what was right in front of me. A bloody lunatic."

Mrs Dawson did not reply for a few minutes. After a period of silence, she said, "The papers said that woman was your nurse."

"She was," Luke confirmed. "Isabella did not trust her. I did not listen, and so my wife and son suffered because of my foolish judgement."

"I have come to understand in these last few years, Captain, that it is not one's triumphs that define a person, but how a one makes amends for their mistakes."

However could Luke make amends? Would Isabella wake up to the news of her son's death? Would Isabella wake up at all?

"Is Isabella going to be alright, Captain?" Mrs Dawson asked very quietly.

Luke looked up at her, and he saw the genuine fear in her eyes. No matter her many faults, she was experiencing the same emotions that he was in that moment. Her child was gravely ill as well.

"Her doctor is very good," he assured her. Mad, but talented. Only a madman would drill into a skull. Only a very good doctor could do it successfully. "We have to wait and see."

Mrs Dawson nodded stiffly. "He looks so much like her at that age, you know. Like Isabella as a toddler." She smiled ever so slightly. "I thought so the first moment I saw him."

"When was that?" asked Luke.

"About a month ago. The woman, your nurse, masqueraded herself as a widow and asked me for work. I oversee a textiles factory," she explained. "She had disguised Jamie. She had put that horrid grease in his hair to make it look black, and she had dressed him in those thin clothes."

Mary's lies infuriated him, but how fortunate it was that she had found her way into a factory where Jamie could be recovered.

"She worked well and I did not suspect her. Perhaps, in the beginning, I suspected that she was an unwed mother, but her story was convincing. It was not until I received Annaliese's letter that I took notice of what was going on in the papers. I still did not suspect. I did not realise who she was, who he was, until tonight." Mrs Dawson shed a tear. "If only I had realised sooner, got him away from her sooner, then he would be well."

Luke knew it would be easy to blame Mrs Dawson, but it was not her fault. The fault lied with him, and it was a burden he would have to bear. "Thank you for finding him at all," he said sincerely. "You have managed to do what we have been trying to do for weeks on end."

"I just wish I had realised sooner," Mrs Dawson repeated sadly.

They were silent from then on. Luke counted every one of Jamie's breaths, daring not to miss a single one. This was going to be the longest night of his life.

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What is this? Two updates in two days? When was the last time I managed that?

That's what happens when I've got a few hours up my sleeve! Finished uni for a few weeks so I can finally get some writing done!

I hope you are all still enjoying this book! I know it's been a long time, but let me know!! I write for you guys after all!

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