Chapter 16 Accused.
She tried to speak but nothing came out. Her hands clawed at his wrist. His grip was iron. She could not break it.
The room was spinning. Her vision was going dark at the edges.
She thought about the baby.
Not like this, she thought. Please. Not like this.
And then—
A sound.
A gasp, wet and so loud.
The old woman drew in a breath.
It was not a small breath. It was a huge, heaving, desperate gasp, like a drowning person breaking the surface of the water. Her chest rose. Her back arched again. Her mouth opened and she coughed, a deep, rattling cough that cleared the foam from her throat.
Dorian’s hand loosened.
Veyra dropped to the floor. Her knees hit the marble. She sucked in air, her hands going to her throat, her lungs burning.
The old woman gasped again. Her eyes fluttered and then they opened.
"Henry?" she said. Her voice was thin. Cracked. "Henry, is that you?"
Henry was her dead husband. He had been dead for fifteen years.
Dorian was at her side in an instant. His hands were gentle now and his voice was so soft.
"Grandmother. It’s Dorian. You’re okay. You’re safe."
The old woman blinked. Her eyes focused. She looked at Dorian’s face. Then she looked around the room. At the crowd of people. At the servants. At Celeste who was frozen by the fireplace. At Eleanor, her hand was still raised.
"What happened?" the old woman said.
Dorian looked at Veyra.
Veyra was still on the floor, her hand on her throat, her cheek red, her lip bleeding. She looked at him and he looked at back at her.
Something passed between them. She did not know what it was. Guilt, maybe. Or gratitude. Or something else entirely.
She did not have time to figure it out.
Dr. Harrison arrived ten minutes later.
He was a small man with kind eyes and hands that had been delivering babies and setting bones for forty years. He had been the Thorne family physician since before Dorian was born.
He examined the old woman thoroughly. Checked her pulse. Her blood pressure. Her pupils. Listened to her heart. Asked her questions and watched her breathe.
Then he stood up and turned to face the room.
"Your diagnosis was correct," he said. He was looking at Veyra. "Torsades de pointes. I haven’t seen a case in twenty years. Most doctors would have misdiagnosed it as a heart attack."
Celeste stepped forward. "But the convulsions—the foam—"
"A side effect of the medication," Dr. Harrison said. "The arrhythmia was stabilizing. The convulsions were a sign that the heart was resetting. Unpleasant to watch, but not dangerous."
Eleanor’s face went red. "So she didn’t kill her?"
"She saved her life." Dr. Harrison looked at Veyra with something like respect. "If she had waited for an ambulance, your mother would be dead. Or brain dead. The nitroglycerin would have made things worse. The magnesium sulfate compound she administered was exactly what the patient needed."
The room was quiet.
Veyra stood by the wall, her hand still on her throat, her cheek still throbbing. She did not say anything. She did not know what to say.
"How did you know?" Dr. Harrison asked. "How did you identify torsades de pointes?"
Veyra swallowed. Her throat hurt.
"My grandmother," she said. Her voice was hoarse. "She died of it. When I was very young. The doctors thought it was a heart attack. By the time they figured it out, it was too late."
She paused.
"I’ve never forgotten what it looked like. The blue lips. The twitching hands. The way her pulse felt under my fingers. Fast and wrong."
Dr. Harrison nodded slowly. "You’ve been studying medicine."
"On my own. For three years."
He was quiet for a moment. Then he smiled at her.
"Talent doesn’t need a license," he said. "Sometimes it just needs an opportunity."
Eleanor scoffed. Loudly.
"Don’t give her too much credit," Eleanor said. "She got lucky. Anyone could have recognized the symptoms if they’d seen them before. It doesn’t make her a doctor. It doesn’t make her worthy of this family."
Veyra said nothing.
"And that medication she used," Eleanor continued. "She said she developed it herself. But how do we know that’s true? She probably bought it from some black market pharmacy and peeled the label off. She’s trying to make herself look important. Like she’s something she’s not."
Veyra’s hand tightened around the metal box.