How long Noémi knelt during these days by the sick man's bed and prayed to God, who had tried her so heavily, to have mercy on her poor heart! If only He would give Michael back to life—and then if the grave must have a sacrifice, there was she ready to die in his stead.
Providence delights in what one might call the irony of fate—Noémi offered to cruel death the whole world and her own self, in exchange for Michael's life. She fancied she had to do with a good fellow who might be bargained with. The destroying angel accepted her challenge.
On the thirteenth day the fever and delirium ceased: the previous nervous excitement gave place to intense exhaustion, which is a symptom of improvement, and permits a hope that with the greatest care the patient may be given back to life, if his mind is kept calm and he is preserved from anxiety or emotion: sick people are so easily excited at this stage of convalescence. His recovery hung on perfect tranquillity; any violent excitement would kill him. Noémi stayed all night by Timar's sick-bed: she never even went out once to see little Dodi; he slept in the outer room with Frau Therese. On the morning of the fourteenth day, while Michael lay sound asleep, Therese whispered in Noémi's car, "Little Dodi is very ill." The child now! Poor Noémi! Her little Dodi had the croup, the most dangerous of all childish maladies, against which all the skill of the physician is often powerless.
Mortally terrified, Noémi rushed to her child. The face of the innocent creature was quite changed. It was not crying—this disease has no characteristic cry, but so much the more dreadful is the suffering. How terrible, a child who can not complain, whom men can not help! Noémi looked blankly at her mother as if to ask, "And have you no cure for this?" Therese could hardly bear this look. "So many miserable sick and dying people have been helped by you, and for this one you know of no remedy!"
"None!" Noémi knelt down beside the child's little bed, pressed her lips on his, and murmured softly, "What is it, my darling, my little one, my angel? Look at me with thy pretty eyes."
But the little one would not lift up the pretty eyes, and when at last, after many kisses and entreaties, it opened the heavy lids, its expression was terrible—the look of a child which has already learned to fear death. "Oh, don't look so! not so!" The child never cried, but only gave utterance to a hoarse cough.
If only the other invalid in there does not hear it! Noémi held her child trembling in her arms, and listened to hear if the sleeper close by was yet awake. When she heard his voice she left the child and went to Michael. He was suffering from great exhaustion, irritable and peevish.
"Where had you gone?" he questioned Noémi. "The window is open; a rat might get in while I was asleep. Don't you see a rat about?" It is a constant delusion of typhus patients to see rats everywhere.
"They can't get in, my darling; there is a grating over the window."
"Ah! and where is the cold water?" Noémi gave him some to drink. But he was very angry with it. "That is not fresh cold water, it is quite warm. Do you want me to die of thirst?"