Immediately, the physician declared Mr. Amwell’s condition to be dire, noting that his patient’s abdomen swelled and convulsed in a way he had never before seen. The doctor attempted to explain this to my mistress in strange medical words I did not understand, but anyone could see the convulsions, like an animal writhed inside of Mr. Amwell’s belly. His eyes were bloodshot, and he could not even keep his gaze on the candlelight.

As the physician and my mistress stood together in hushed conversation, Mr. Amwell turned his head and those hollow black holes looked right at me, right into my soul, and I swear in that moment he knew. Biting back a scream, I rushed out of the room just as the physician palpated his patient’s groin, drawing from him a howl so deep and primal that I feared Mr. Amwell’s spirit had just released.

Only his raspy, stuttering breaths—audible from the corridor, where I stood trembling—told me it had not.

“His bladder is near rupture,” the physician told Mrs. Amwell as I left the room. “This type of episode has happened before, you say?”

“Many times,” my mistress said. It was not a lie, and yet she was lying. I leaned against the wall of the hallway, just outside the door in the cool, inky darkness, listening closely to the words of my mistress and the haggard breaths of her dying husband. “The drink is his vice.”

“The swelling in his abdomen is unusual, though...” The doctor trailed off, and I imagined him considering the strange case before him and whether to call for the bailiff. The dying man, his pretty wife. Had the physician seen the empty bourbon bottles we scattered about downstairs in an effort to fool him?

I took a step forward, unable to restrain my curiosity, and peeked around the open door. The doctor crossed his arms, drummed his finger and stifled a yawn. I wondered if he had his own pretty wife waiting for him at home with supper nearly ready. The doctor hesitated, then said, “You ought to send for a pastor, Mrs. Amwell. Straightaway. He will not survive the night.”

My mistress covered her mouth with her hand. “Heavens,” she breathed, true surprise in her voice.

At my mistress’s command, I showed the doctor the exit. Afterward, as I shut the door at the front of the house and turned around, she stood waiting for me.

“Let’s sit by the fire together,” she whispered, and we went to the place we had always gone. She wrapped a blanket around our legs, withdrew a notebook and began to dictate a letter to her mother, in Norwich. “Mother,” she began, “my husband has fallen terribly ill...”