Fever 1793

Mother Smith provides a mule cart to transport the twins and Nell to the coffeehouse. Matilda and Eliza travel at night when Philadelphia is “darker than I had ever seen” (201)—the lamplighters have all left or are dead.

At the coffeehouse, Matilda and Eliza decide to keep the children downstairs where it’s cooler.

Matilda finds the painting Nathaniel sent her and hopes he’s staying safe indoors, and she wonders where Mother is as well. Eliza calls her to watch the children; the twins’ eyes are “yellow-stained” (203) and Nell has the illness as well, though she’s not doing quite so poorly. Days pass, and Matilda finds that tending to the children is harder than any of her previous patients. Eventually the children are so weak that Eliza suggests finding a doctor to bleed them, but Matilda argues that the French doctors—who have treated yellow fever for years in the West Indies—say that bleeding is deadly. They continue to care for the children on their own until Matilda thinks the suffering will go on “endlessly, with no time to rest, no time to sleep” (206).

After struggling to find the strength to fetch water from the well, Matilda wanders into the dying garden and wonders where her younger self—“the little girl who planted the bean seeds” earlier that year (207)—has disappeared to.