"Breathe. Robert, breathe," said a familiar voice. "Come on, Robert."
Slowly, he opened his eyes again to find himself looking straight into Rosamund's concentrated and quite concerned face. She had been trying to gain his attention again for at least a minute by gently slapping his cheek repeatedly, to no avail until now.
"Welcome back, brother dear. It is over, she made it. You just need to focus on your breathing now," she said when she saw that he came back into consciousness.
Everything was so bright. The walls were painfully white, the lamps were glaring garishly, and the windows let in far too much natural light for his liking; he felt as though simply looking ahead was scorching his eyes. With a tight grimace, he squinted at Rosamund and sat up straighter in the chair he had sunk into before losing consciousness.
Rosamund's brow was still furrowed in worry. She had never seen her brother faint before and they had more than enough on their plates already with Cora's surgery and recovery. But maybe that was the reason for Robert's collapse, she then thought. Maybe this was just all the stress and tension of the last few months falling away. She had heard that things like this could happen after withstanding too much pressure for too long, and her brother had really endured a lot in the last year.
His breathing was still shallow and quick, no doubt his pulse must have been racing, too. Reaching for a glass of water from a tray nearby, Rosamund said: "Here, take a sip and try to breathe deeper or you might faint again from lack of oxygen."
Her elder brother complied with her instructions and took the glass from her with trembling hands, drinking it all down in two big sips. Once his breathing started to slow again and his violent trembling stopped, he handed her the glass back. "Did the doctor truly say that? That she made it?" he asked, looking up at her with disbelieving, pleading eyes.
"Oh brother, dear. Don't be so surprised! You can't have been that pessimistic about it all, can you?"
Upon seeing his breathing getting more even, Rosamund sighed in relief and got back up from her crouching position on the floor in front of him. Pulling another chair closer, she sat down next to Robert and took his hand in hers.
Robert avoided looking at her and drew in a shuddering, shaky breath before he began to talk quietly into the open space that was the waiting area. "Would it stretch belief if I told you that I had more than twenty different scenarios made up in my head on how today would go and every single one of them ended with us at the graveyard again, standing in between Mama's and Sybil's graves where a new one had already been prepared?" he replied slowly, barely audible in the waiting room.
Rosamund inhaled sharply at that, resisting the strong urge to clutch at her heart in shock at how dark her brother's thoughts had been. However, she could not resist the sudden urge to hug him close. She had known that this was all very hard on him, of course it was. Cora had been by his side for so long, had been his loyal and steadfast companion through everything life threw their way; and to have to fear for her life like that was simply horrible. She remembered vividly when Marmaduke died. She would have given anything for more time with him. She would have given anything to be granted more than just the few years they had together, and to have him taken from her without warning almost broke her irreparably almost thirty years ago. She'd have given anything for even the slightest chance back then, for hope that things might actually turn out alright, instead of having the certainty and finality of death to deal with.
Seeing Robert like this, however, changed her view slightly. Maybe knowing there was hope wasn't all everyone made it out to be. Because in the end, hope was just that: hope. It wasn't knowing with certainty, it couldn't guarantee anything. Maybe hope was not a good thing to have at all because, for every possibility that things might work out, there were at least a hundred different ways for things to go wrong, too.
Robert had been given this hope of the doctors trying to save her after spending weeks trying to come to terms with the reality of having to say goodbye long before her time should have come. Rosamund couldn't blame him for imagining only the worst things to happen.
It still worried her greatly how broken her brother was deep down — he had seemed to be coping so well at Mama's funeral, and even when they returned from America, he was not too different from his usual self. He was not ecstatic or overjoyed, that much was to be expected, but he appeared calm and collected when they stopped and stayed with her in London. Rosamund had silently admired him for how well he seemed to shoulder everything. He didn't look as if he spent his days sitting near a window, watching the world pass by with tears running down his face, tears that seemed to never end. He did not look as if he was coping as badly as she was. But the man sitting next to her in the waiting area seemed nothing like that man she had called her brother for the last six decades, he seemed so different to the Robert who had always tried to stay optimistic, who helped her so much when Marmaduke had passed. Had he been broken like this the entire time since they lost their mother, only putting on a brave face for her and everyone else; was all of this just a strategically placed masquerade that he had shown them the last few weeks and months? Surely not — someone would have noticed, right? He had never been good at hiding his emotions. He had always carried his heart on his sleeve, ever since they were children, much to their mother's dismay. She frequently said he was too much like his father, much too open and also too lenient and forgiving to those undeserving.
Rosamund felt him tense up when she put her arms around him and it took a few seconds of her holding him tight for Robert to let go and relax slightly. When she still wouldn't let go of him, he eventually started to hug her back and they stayed that way, silent, for a while.
++++++++++++++++
He had just dozed off, sitting at her bedside and holding her small, cold hand in both of his, when the door to her room opened again. Carefully, trying not to disturb their slumbering father, Mary and Edith entered after the nurse had opened the door and peered into the room.
Gently, Mary tried to wake Robert by whispering his name and nudging him on the shoulder.
"What? Is she waking up?" he asked, appearing quite disoriented when he opened his eyes.
"No, Papa. She is still asleep, it seems," Edith replied quietly with a smile.
"Edith? Mary? Where is your aunt, wasn't she just here?"
"Yes, she was, but we sent her home and you should follow her soon as well. It's been a long day for both of you and you look more than done in," his eldest replied warily.
Edith smiled gratefully at the nurse who had brought in another chair and put it to her mother's bedside, taking a seat opposite her father.
"No, I'll stay," Robert simply said. He sat up straighter, only having eyes for his wife who was lying so terrifyingly still in her bed. Had he not known that the operation had been successful, he would have been worried out of his mind by how motionless she lay in the bed that seemed much too big for her reduced form.
"Papa, we all need to go home soon, they want to close the practice for the day. The nurse won't leave her side even for a second in case Mama wakes up and they will telephone as soon as there is even the slightest change," said Edith, pleading with him with her big brown eyes.
Robert only vehemently shook his head no in reply to Edith's plea.
Mary put her hand on her father's shoulder and tried: "Papa, you are of very little help to her when you are overly tired. You look as if you haven't slept in days, and a bed is sure to guarantee for a better night's rest than any of these chairs here ever could. Come with us, sleep in a comfortable bed and we can come back here tomorrow as soon as they let us in."
"No," he whispered, and when neither of his daughters replied, he added: "No, I can not leave her. I promised to stay with her. I promised I would be there when she wakes up."
The two sisters looked first at each other and then at their parents — their mother, her complexion almost ashen, breathing very slowly and softly in her sleep. And then their father, an old, heartbroken man who was waiting so desperately for his wife to wake up. His left hand let go of Cora's only to gingerly tuck a strand of hair behind her ear that had managed to stray from the braid he made while he gazed lugubriously and incredibly longingly at her.
"You have to understand. I promised," he whispered, his hand stroking her cheek.
Edith looked at her sister again before she left the room quietly, leaving Mary alone with their parents.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Hello, excuse me."
The young nurse turned around and pressed the stack of freshly starched linens close to her chest as she smiled at Edith. "Oh, yes, how can I help you?"
"I was wondering if there was a way for my father to stay with our mother for the night. You see, she has just been through cancer surgery today and neither my aunt nor my sister and I managed to persuade him to leave her side until she'd woken up," Edith said pleasantly, while also pleading with the brown-haired woman almost a head smaller than her.
"I'm so sorry, Madam, but I am afraid that's not possible. They never allow visitors to stay overnight."
"Who are they, if I may ask?"
"Well, it's mainly our head nurse, Mrs Nugent. The doctors wouldn't mind much, I think."
"Could you tell me where to find her, then?"
+++++++++++++++++++++
Mary was more than surprised when her sister returned almost an hour after she had left. And she was even more surprised when she saw that Edith had not returned alone. Along with her, an old nurse came in, and Mary couldn't shake the feeling that she knew the woman somehow.
"Good evening, don't mind me, please," she said quickly, as if she were on a run. "I just wanted to make sure there was enough room in here before we bring it in."
Mary could only furrow her brows and asked incredulously: "Before you bring what in?"
"The bed," the nurse retorted apathetically.
And with that, the rather patronising woman left again, only to wheel in one of the standard metal hospital beds they all knew only too well from times long gone and push it to the wall.
"I will have Nurse Beckett bring a pillow and duvet in a minute once she is done with her rounds," she said, nodding curtly at Mary and Robert, who both looked astonished at the scene before them. Turning to Edith as she left, she quietly said: "And please, don't mention this to anyone. I could get into a lot of trouble for this, Lady Hexham."
"Thank you so much. How can we make this up to you?"
Looking briefly at Cora sleeping on the bed, the old nurse said: "Take good care of her and we are even. And maybe take this as an apology for my sister's behaviour, too."
And with that, she was off and away; leaving Mary, Edith, and Robert confused in her wake.
"I feel like I know that woman somehow," Robert said, thinking hard about where he could have possibly met her.
"Maybe not her, but you do know her sister, and also her son. This was Nurse Nugent — her son Alfred was a footman at Downton before becoming a cook at the Ritz a few years ago, and her sister — well, her sister is Miss Sarah O'Brien," Edith said.
"O'Brien, Mama's former lady's maid O'Brien?" Mary exclaimed in question.
"The one who sneaked off like a thief in the middle of the night to run off to India with Susan?" Robert added, just as perplexed as his daughter. "And how did you convince her to allow this?"
Edith only nodded, not reclaiming her seat from before.
"I guess being the Marchioness of Hexham and a Crawley has its perks sometimes, and owning a quite successful and well-known newspaper for women, too. I managed to convince her to let you stay the night. I will return to Belgrave Square and update Aunt Rosamund on what's happened. Telephone if there's even the slightest change, promise?"
Mary nodded at her sister with a grateful smile on her otherwise quite worried face.
Edith's eyes shifted to their father, who was sitting stooped in the old wooden chair and looked at her with tired eyes. Robert seemed to be more than relieved at the turn of events brought on by his daughter, and he even managed to smile nervously at her.
Confident that this was indeed the only possible way for any of them to have a peaceful night's rest, Edith turned and left her family behind in the small hospital room. Robert watched her walk out, clad in her thickest woollen coat to brave the cold winter weather outside, before his sole focus lay on his sleeping wife again.