She’d bathed the needle in alcohol, as well as the incision line, in an attempt to stave off infection, and Cate knew that the only thing she could do now was to keep the wound clean and replace the bandages regularly. The rest was out of her hands, and she had no medical supplies to turn to if anything went wrong.

“You’re finished?” Adelaide asked, coming in to the room with a tray.

Cate flopped back, leaning against the closest chair, her legs feeling like jelly and certainly not capable of rising yet. She could see that Adelaide had made a hot drink for them, and there was food, too.

“Yes,” she finally replied. “Now we just have to pray that I’ve done a good-enough job of patching him up.”

She sat, gathering her thoughts and steadying her breath, as she stared over at Jack. He was still stretched out in front of the fire, eyes shut and his chest rising and falling heavily. It was a blessing that he was asleep, that he’d finally succumbed to the pull of slumber as she’d finished her work, because the pain was going to be immense when he woke.

“We don’t have a lot, but I have some bread here,” Adelaide said, setting the tray down on a small table beside the chairs. “There’s some jam too, although it’s a little tart as we didn’t have a lot to sweeten it with.”

Cate’s stomach growled as she wrestled with herself and tried to move slowly instead of behaving like a starved, wild animal. But the idea of jam, however tart, on any kind of bread, sounded like heaven to her. Harry stayed back as she took a piece and spread it, before sitting down and forcing herself to slowly savor each mouthful.

When she finished, she realized that everyone in the room was looking at her.

“When did you last eat?” Elise asked.

Cate swallowed her mouthful. “I honestly don’t know.” Suddenly she couldn’t remember, the hours, days blurring together, her fatigue so deep, her hunger, her thirst . . . It was all hitting her like a steam train. “The morning we left the hospital I suppose, so—” She wished she wasn’t feeling so foggy.

“Have another piece,” Adelaide said, taking a second piece of bread and spreading it for her. “You deserve it.”

Cate took it, pleased when the others settled down and ate too, making her feel less self-conscious, with Adelaide pouring them all coffee. It was the strangest scene, as if they knew one another when in fact they were all strangers sitting in a room, huddled away from the terrors of outside.