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Bessy couldn't go to work any more. It had been a long time coming; she'd left the factory some time ago, and recently she'd been tapering off even the light jobs she'd pulled afterwards. Sure, she'd been bed-ridden before, but in the long merciless progression of her illness she'd come to be quite in tune with her body, and she knew that this was it.
She wasn't going to be going to work ever again, most likely.
So instead of doing something productive, she lay in her bed, kept company by her fever and her dreams. Margaret and her father spent time with her, and her sister was nearly always in the house with her. But they came and then they left, because no matter how much they cared they still had things that needed to be done. The world might have been stopping for Bessy Higgins, but everyone else had a future that needed taking care of.
The thought of death brought with it either a useless rage or a fatalistic sense of acceptance, and neither of those were things she wished to dwell on. So she thought about her life instead. And, unfortunately, she found it lacking bright spots. There was her family, and their love, which she was sure were the only thing that kept her going for so long. Oh, and there was Margaret, and she was so glad she had lived long enough to know Margaret in all her idealistic and well-intended charm.
Mr. Hale had been a preacher once, and Bessy was sure if he were there with her he would tell her to be thankful for what she had. And she was, truly she was. But she couldn't help but think that she could have had it so, so much better.
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She was a rich woman in this life. Or perhaps a more accurate term would be middle class - she wasn't a member of the nobility, but she didn't need to be. She was fed and warm and had enough time to do as she liked, and that was the crucial thing.
She flattened the silk of her dress against her leg as she sat in the parlor, not feeling a bit out of place. Margaret swept in a moment later.
"Bessy! It's been so long since you last stopped by," said Margaret. In truth it had been less than two weeks, but the two of them had quickly become so accustomed to each other that time had a way of stretching out when they went without each other's company.
Bessy waved off Margaret's comment. "It hasn't been half that long," she said, although it had felt like quite a while to her as well.
"Oh, come now, you know how much I've come to rely on your company. Father has his students and his books, but sometimes I feel like I'm the only girl in our social circle. Aside from you, that is."
"Your family has plenty of friends, Margaret. I dare say you're far more popular than us," said Bessy, laughing.
"Back in Helstone, maybe. But letters aren't really a substitute for companionship, are they?"
"No, of course not. Although you could always call on Fanny Thornton, if you were desperate."
"I could," said Margaret, and she'd clearly been aiming for a diplomatic tone, but missed it so badly that Bessy nearly laughed.
"I must say, although I know it's been hard on you, I'm so glad you moved to Milton," said Bessy. "My life is far better for your company."
"Mine as well," said Margaret, smiling.
How nice that both of them could be so happy in each other's company, with no illness and no class to keep them separated. And how very sad that it wasn't true at all.
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In reality, it was Margaret who visited her, because Bessy never really felt comfortable in the Hale house with its nice clean furniture and the maid looking at her so disapprovingly. Not that she could get out of bed to visit anyone at this point. So Margaret visited her, and Margaret was probably the best person for her, because Margaret had a way of pretending that everything was normal and fine. She'd managed to walk into Bessy's life as if the slums were the appropriate place for a woman with money, and now she generally managed to talk to Bessy as if Bessy weren't dying.
Today she did most of the talking, because Bessy's voice was currently coming out sounding more like a wild animal's than a young woman's. It was a miracle Margaret managed to understand her when she did speak.
"I've been going on walks," said Margaret.
"Must want to freeze, this weather," said Bessy. Her fever kept her face warm, but she could feel the freezing cold around her fingers. And that was just inside, not out in the wind.
Margaret shrugged lightly. "True, it's probably a bit early for it. But I think, having lived through the worst of this city's winter, that I can handle this bit of cold for a while. And I don't stay out for long, after all. It's just that I'm not used to being trapped inside the house for quite so long."
Ah, poor Margaret, thought Bessy. If she'd been allowed to stay in the South, it'd probably be pleasant outside by now. Or at least manageable. And she'd still have both her parents to walk with her.
"Do you go with your father?" asked Bessy.
"No," said Margaret, and Bessy could hear her voice faltering a bit. "Father... prefers to stay in the house."
"Ah," said Bessy, and for a moment there was silence. "I'd go with you, if I could."
"I know," said Margaret, smiling and resting her hand on Bessy's arm. "I know."
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Maybe it was Margaret, maybe it was the weather, but Bessy'd been dreaming of green hills recently. She'd never been to the South, never had the time to even really get outside the city, but she had a fairly good imagination and Margaret always jumped at a chance to talk about what it was like. It wasn't hard to put it all together in her head.
She could live in Helstone, and be able to breathe in air that didn't scratch and burn against her lungs and make her cough it back up again.
"How's your mother?" asked Bessy. In this life, she'd grown up here, and while walking through the hedges and the flowers was pleasant it wasn't unusually so. It was just a normal day, and not enough to distract her from her conversation.
"A picture of absolute health," said Margaret. "And your father?"
"Oh, he's happy. You know how he throws himself into his work," said Bessy. "He keeps talking about the news, all those problems in the North with the pollution and the strikers."
Margaret sighed. "So much strife, and no good solutions anywhere. I feel so terrible for those poor people."
"Makes you glad you don't live there, doesn't it?" said Bessy, smiling in the sunshine.
"Oh, I think I'd die if I had to live there," says Margaret.
"Me too," said Bessy.
It seemed as if the issue was inescapable, even in her own fantasies.
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Then again, it wasn't being poor that killed her, was it? It wasn't even the cotton. Thornton inhaled as much of the fluff and other mess as she ever did, and he was fine. Her father was fine, her sister was fine. No, it was just that Bessy had the worst luck. Weak lungs and absolutely terrible luck, she thought as she had another body-wracking cough.
Her father looked over at her, the worry evident in the lines that her illness and his failed strikes had left permanently etched into his face.
"You all right?" he asked.
"I'm fine," said Bessy, although the gasping breath she had to take immediately probably didn't do much to assure him. It was a lie, but it wasn't as if either of them could do anything about it at this point anyway.
"Bessy," he said, softly, and from the tone of his voice she could already tell what was going to happen. He was going to choke over his words trying to apologize to her for things that were never his fault, again. "The factory was..."
The factory was never what he wanted for his children. "I know," she said. They'd done this conversation already, too many times, and she just couldn't go through it again. He gave her a smile even though he was clearly still upset, and a hug and a pat on the back before going over to his own bed.
Maybe it was for the best that she was never going to have a chance to have children. Watching them live this life would only have broken her heart like it had broken breaking her father's.
////
Sometimes, though, she thought about the family she might have had. Her husband changed, in her head - sometimes it was the boy who ran the shop down the street from the mill, with the sweet little smile he sometimes gave her. If she was really feeling wild, it would be one of the mill owners or a banker or somebody, sweeping her off her feet and out of poverty. Sometimes it was the boy who grew up in the house across the street from them, John. She'd actually thought that one might go somewhere, when she was younger, before the coughing had started and never left and made it clear she wouldn't be marrying anyone.
The husband changed, but everything else stayed mostly the same. A simple wedding, because practicality had been too deeply ingrained in her to ever be knocked out, and three children. She wasn't sure why, but three had always seemed like the perfect number. Two girls and one boy, or two boys and one girl, she wasn't quite sure on that yet.
She saw, in her mind, a small child on her lap, laughing with delight at the attention his mother was paying him. Bessy had helped raise her sister, and half the neighborhood's children as well. She knew she would have made a good mother, if she had been given the chance.
But then she coughed, so hard that for a few minutes she could hardly think at all for the effort of trying to breathe between the painful contractions in her chest, and by the time her fit had cleared the vision had gone, and she couldn't summon the strength or attention to pull it back to her again.
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She could have been anyone. She could have been rich, she could have been a farmer, she could have been the girl down the street who'd worked in the same mill she did for years and who was still healthy as a horse. She could have been a teacher, she thought, if she had ever found the time to educate herself. She could have been a girl who didn't die and break the hearts of everyone around her.
But right now she was tired, and she was going to sleep. And she couldn't even bring herself to hope she would wake up again.