The hospital in their new town was not a sleek, glass-and-steel "A-type" institution. It was a small, two-story, brick-and-cinder-block building that smelled of floor wax, old coffee, and the sea. The fluorescent lights in the emergency room were a sickly, buzzing yellow.
Karlman sat next to Eunice's gurney, his hands clasped so tightly his knuckles were white. He was a data analyst in a world with no data. He had given them the facts: her age, the fever, the pain. He had, with a shame that was a cold stone in his gut, given them the other facts. "A... a history. Of... infertility. IVF. Many... many cycles."
Eunice herself was a silent, pale, analyzing presence. She was detached. She was a strategist, observing a hostile environment. She had been given morphine, which had dulled the pain to a throb, but it hadn't touched the ice in her eyes. She was furious with him. He had interfered. He had stolen her penance, her dignified end. He had dragged her back into the world of trying, and fixing, and living.
A doctor finally came through the curtain. He was not a slick IVF specialist with a gold watch. He was an older man, maybe mid-60s, with a face like a worn-out catcher's mitt, and a name tag that read "Dr. Aris."
"Mrs. Dowman. Mr. Dowman." He didn't offer a hand. He held a file, and a scan. He looked at Karlman, then at Eunice. His eyes were tired, but they were clear. He wasn't a "judge." He was just a doctor.
"I've read your file," he said, his voice blunt. "Or what I've been given. You had... a lot... of fertility treatments."
"Yes," Eunice said, her voice flat. "We did."
"Ten years of them, it looks like," Dr. Aris said, not unkindly. "You put your body through a war, Mrs. Dowman."
"It was," she agreed. "A war I lost."
Dr. Aris nodded, accepting this. "Well. The war has a new front."
He clipped a scan—a grainy, black-and-white ultrasound image—onto the light-box on the wall.
"Your white-cell count is sky-high," he said. "You're septic. We've started you on the most powerful antibiotics we have, but... I need you to see this."
He pointed with a pen. "This... is your womb."
Karlman looked. Eunice looked. It was just... a gray shadow.
"I don't... I don't see anything," Karlman said.
"That's the problem," Dr. Aris said. "It's barely there. It's... a knot. A knot of scar tissue. From the... the 'war,' as you said. The constant procedures. The harvesting. The drugs. It's... it's a mess, to be blunt. But that's not the immediate problem."
He pointed to a darker, more chaotic shadow around the knot. "This... is the problem. You have a severe, deep-tissue infection. It's not on the womb, Mrs. Dowman. It's in the scar tissue. It's in the damage. It's old. It's been there, festering, probably for years. A low-grade infection, walled-off by scar tissue. But... something broke it loose."
Eunice's dead eyes flickered to Karlman. Two years of relentless, grieving, walking. Two years of... penance. I broke it loose.
"This infection," the doctor continued, "is now life-threatening. The antibiotics... they're not going to be enough. The blood supply to this... this knot... is non-existent. The antibiotics can't get to the infection."
Karlman, the analyst, was finally catching up. He saw the variables.
"So... so what do you do?" he asked. "You... you go in? You... drain it? You... you fix it?"
Dr. Aris looked at Eunice. He saw her face. He saw her detachment. And he made a decision. He would not "manage" them. He would be blunt.
"Mr. Dowman," he said. "I need to be very, very clear. This isn't a... a 'problem' to be 'fixed.' This is a... a state of being. The tissue is necrotic. It's dead."
Eunice let out a small, quiet, breath. It wasn't a sigh. It wasn't a gasp. It was... confirmation.
Of course. It's dead. It's been dead for 20 years. It was just... waiting... to make it official.
"So," Eunice said, her voice a chill, academic curiosity. "What happens now, Doctor? The antibiotics don't work. The tissue is dead. Am I... am I just... 'septic'... until I'm not?"
Karlman looked at his wife, horrified. She was asking if she was going to die. Like she was asking for the weather.
Dr. Aris met her gaze. "No, Mrs. Dowman. You're not. Because we're not going to let you."