Hudson River Bracketed by Edith Wharton

Mrs. Tracy was not expected back till the following evening, and for twenty-four hours Vance struggled alone against the dark mystery of illness. As he watched through the night beside Laura Lou, watched her burning face and hollow eyes, and sought to quiet her tossings and soothe her incessant cough, he tried to recall what had been done for him during his own illness. He too had been consumed with fever day and night, week after week; and his mother and sisters had been always there, with cooling drinks, soft touches, ingenious ways of easing his misery--and here he sat by his wife, his hands all thumbs, his shoes creaking, his brain in a fog, unable to imagine what he ought to do for her.

At one moment her eyes, which had clung to his so anxiously, always asking for something he could not guess, suddenly became the eyes of a stranger. She looked at him in terror, and sitting up thrust him back. "Oh, go away--go away! You shan't take Vanny from me. I say you shan't!" For a while she rambled on, battling against the obduracy of some invisible presence; then she sank back, and tears of weakness forced their way through the lids she had shut against her husband. Vance threw himself down by her and held her in beseeching arms. "Laura Lou. Laura Lou. Vanny's here; love, it's Vanny holding you. ." With passionate murmurs he smoothed the hair from her forehead, and gradually her contracted face relaxed, and she opened her lids, and tried to smile. "Is it you, Vanny? Don't go. you'll never leave me any more, will you?". She dozed off on his shoulder for a few minutes before the cough woke her again. .