Page 156 of An Unholy Affair
‘God… Help…’ Any coherence was lost again in fragments of disjointed sentences.
‘Fucking hell,’ Estelle said.
‘Pass me the thermometer.’
She did, and he shook the mercury down, then tried to place it in Eveline’s mouth. She bucked and writhed to get away, screaming through gritted teeth.
He clutched his head, trying to stop it from splitting in two. ‘We need to get her to the hospital.’
‘Do you have a car?’
He shook his head. ‘I can use Mum’s but it’s at hers. Do you have yours?’
‘At the livery. I rode over on Duke this afternoon.’
‘Fuck! I’m ringing 999.’
‘Hang on. Let’s try her armpit. See if you can calm her down.’
Jack passed Estelle the thermometer and went to Eveline’s head, stroking her hair. ‘Angel, it’s me. I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m here.’
She grabbed his hand. She was still shivering and mumbling, but no longer fighting to get away. Estelle carefully put the thermometer under Eveline’s arm.
‘We need to get her dry,’ she whispered.
‘I know,’ he whispered back. ‘As soon as we’ve got a temperature, we can do that.’
Every minute that ticked by was painfully slow.
‘Have you looked under the bandage on her arm yet?’ Estelle asked.
He shook his head. ‘I wasn’t able to. After we’ve done this, put the torch on your phone and I’ll see.’
‘It must have become infected. When did she do it?’
‘Few days ago? She kept telling me it was fine.’
‘Fuck’s sake.’ Estelle let out a huff and slid the thermometer out. ‘I’ll go into the corridor and take a look.’
Jack reached for the bandage and tried to peel it off, but stopped when Eveline cried out in distress.
Estelle re-entered the room. ‘It’s nearly forty degrees. That’s super fucking high.’
‘Can you take the bandage off? I don’t want to hurt her.’
Eveline jerked away as Estelle touched it. ‘I don’t know if you can hear me, but we need to look underneath, okay?’ She tried again, but Eveline flailed her arms. ‘Fuck this.’ With one hand, Estelle held Eveline’s arm down. The other ripped the bandage off.
Eveline screamed, curling towards him.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay, love,’ he soothed, as Estelle turned on her phone’s torch. ‘We’re just going to take a quick look, then turn it off, okay?’
Jack took Eveline’s hand, pulling her arm away from her body as Estelle leaned forward with her phone.
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Estelle whispered.
The wound was puffy and inflamed, pus oozing from the livid cut. Streaks of red stretched down Eveline’s pale arm.
‘Can you call 111 back?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to leave her.’
