Writer's Corner - This is Maplecroft Part Three

      Katarina was groggy with drugs, fever and pain. She swallowed only liquids, and called out in her sleep. Once she even called Lizzie “Mama” and spoke to her in Swedish through the morphine, amusing Lizzie no end. Affection began to grow in her heart for Katarina, separate from her love for Bibi.
      It softened her daily existence, so much of which was spent alone of late. When people stared at her on the street or malingered in front of her house whispering, she now threw it off. Some knew of the ‘young man’ who’d been taken into her house after an accident in the street, and they questioned her staff about ‘his’ well-being. As if she had murdered ‘him’! Their superstition made her sneer with contempt.
      She swept passed them in the street as regally as ever, but having Katarina to look after gave her even more of an independent air. She was a Borden! She had no need for their approval or their dismal friendship, and they despised her for this more than anything in the past. She closed the door on their ridiculous faces. Such nonsense they represented to her. Such provincial nonsense!
      But she realized the extent of her loneliness as she found herself unable to stay away from her guests bedside. Despite the curious glances of her house staff, she spent much of her day in the sitting room. She read, but her book would drop softly into her lap as her eyes were drawn to her sleeping guest. An unfamiliar feeling of emotional power came to her in the presence of the injured, drugged girl. So helpless! Lizzie liked the feeling; she would protect Bibi’s child. In her heart of hearts, she began to fancy Katarina as their child.
      If Katarina moaned or tried to move about, Lizzie touched a cool cloth to her forehead and lightly stroked her short cropped hair. Intermittent fevers over took the girl, causing further delirium. Sometimes she would kick the sheet free with her good leg and lie there half naked. When Lizzie covered her, she would angrily toss the sheet away, and then shiver until Lizzie covered her again. There were moments of clarity too, between fever attacks and doses of the medicine when Lizzie would look up from her book to find herself under the girl’s bleary scrutiny. She would sometimes speak in Swedish until Lizzie reminded her of her whereabouts, and she would apologize looking confused. Lizzie found her quite charming, despite of, and maybe a little bit because of, her infirmity.

      She started coming around on the afternoon of the fourth day. The pain in her broken bone subsided, but movement was still dicey. Her arm remained taped to her abdomen while the collarbone mended. Dr. Bowen ascertained that no serious infection was setting in to her leg, and thus the fevers began to ebb. She drank copious liquids and insisted upon a bath. With trepidation Lizzie filled her own tub, then returned to the sitting room to help her guest.
      Katarina rose slowly upon her good arm until she was upright. Days had passed since she’d been able to sit up and she felt her face go pale with syncope. Lizzie rushed forward and knelt before her, grasping her hands. Kata’s stomach, seasick from the drugs and upright position, began to churn a bitter burning acid in its efforts to right itself and a wave of nausea overtook her. She turned away from Lizzie, and suddenly another wave crashed over her-a wave of despair. She knew that her injuries would heal, they had already begun to, but the long hours of infirmity now took their psychological toll on her optimistic nature. She worried that she would somehow never be as strong or as vital as before the accident; that her beloved scull would never glide quite as effortlessly over the rivers, or as fast.
      This thought brought tears welling to her eyes and Lizzie sat down next to her with an arm about her shoulders.
      “There, there, poor thing. Don’t cry…”
      She held another of her fine linen handkerchiefs to Kata’s face, intuiting that the girls tears were of despair, not pain. She knew the feeling so well herself that she could recognize it anywhere, in any degree.
      “You will be well, Katarina! Well!” she tried to cheer her young friend. Recollecting some of Katarina’s drug-addled conversation she cajoled her, “You’re going to teach me to row up and down the Quequechan like a champion, remember you promised?”
      But this only doubled Kata’s sorrow and her shoulders wracked twice with stifled sobs. Lizzie’s heart ached for her, but all she could think to do now was pet her commiseratively.
      Katarina rested her head upon the other woman's shoulder, and then she whispered some words that Lizzie Andrew Borden had never heard spoken to her in her life. Not before 1892, certainly not after; not from Bibi or Nance or her sister or anyone. It was a simple entreaty, several words so sweet and endearing that for a moment she was too startled to comply with them.
      “Hold me Lizzie,” Katarina said, “hold me”

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