they would say next.
“I must say, the water treatment brings more peace and tranquility to the female than any narcotic I have ever used,” Seward said.
The men spoke in shaded tones, trying not to wake me.
“She is very still,” Jonathan whispered. “I do not like that she is so pale.”
“Harker, I want you to go to your room and rest. We are going to need your blood for the second transfusion,” Von Helsinger said.
I raced, mouselike, through the tunnels of my mind for something that I could say, an argument that would convince them to let me walk, unscathed, out of the room, and out of the institution. I tried to peek through the tiny slits between my eyelids without alerting them that I was awake. I saw Von Helsinger nod to Seward, who held a syringe in his hand. I shut my eyes tight but heard his footsteps approach the bed. He took my arm in his hand, turning it palm up. My eyes darted open.
“No!” I was so weak that the word came out as a whimper. I tried again, but it was as if I were in a dream where I was trying to run but could not move.
“Don’t hurt her!” Jonathan said, pulling Seward’s arm away. His face, along with the rest of the room, was hazy to me, but I could tell he was concerned and perhaps would forbid them to proceed.
“Do not worry, young Harker,” Von Helsinger said. “We are going to pump her full of brave men’s blood. That is the best thing on earth when a woman is in trouble. Your wife will be cured of her ills and, with the superior blood, will bear you strong children. That is what you want, is it not?”
“Even the most benign medical procedures can be disturbing to the layman,” Seward said. “We will send for you when we’re ready.”
Jonathan came to the bed and kissed my forehead. “You are going to get better, Mina. The doctors are going to make you well again.”
I reached up with whatever strength I had and clutched at his shirt, but I did not have the strength to hold it. “Do not let them,” I whispered, my words slurred.
Jonathan’s brown eyes, soft with concern, were searching mine. “What did you say?”
“Lucy.” I whispered her name as best I could. The syllables dripped slowly from my numb lips.
“I believe that she is calling for Lucy,” Jonathan said to Seward.
Seward tried to move Jonathan aside. “She is hallucinating. Best to let her stay drowsy.”
Jonathan gripped the doctor’s arm. “Lucy died here. You must promise me that you won’t let that happen to Mina. I must have your guarantee.”
Oh steadfast reader, how many times do we revisit the past and wish that we had made differentt choices? Even at that moment, when I was virtually unconscious, I rued my decision to spare Jonathan the worst details of what the doctors had done to Lucy because I had feared that their gruesome aspects might impede his recovery. Why had I not given him her letters to read for himself? I believed that in protecting him, I was acting in his higher interest; little did I know that I was possibly signing my own death warrant.
“Lady Godalming was given the blood as a last resort to save her from acute anemia. Your wife is physically strong. With the blood, she will also gain strength of mind,” Von Helsinger said. “But the donor of blood must also be in a state of relaxation to achieve a beneficial result. Perhaps the blood of Lord Godalming failed to save his wife because he was in an excitable state at the time.”
“No wonder he is having nightmares,” Jonathan said thoughtfully. “He believes that he failed his wife. That will not happen here, sirs.”
“I will take good care of her,” Seward said. “You can trust me.”
“I do trust you,” Jonathan said. After all, who had stepped in front of Godalming as he wielded his fishing knife at Jonathan in Lucy’s crypt? Of course Jonathan would trust Seward.
Jonathan leaned over me and took my limp hand. “Good-bye, Mina, darling,” he said, with a little catch in his throat. He kissed my hand and then squeezed it tight before turning away. I tried to speak again, but he receded from me, and I heard his footsteps as he walked away.
Von Helsinger closed the door behind him and stood over the bed. “Now be a good little miss,” he said. Seward held my arm while Von Helsinger stroked it up and down. He put his monocle to his eye and examined me. “Such lovely skin, like a little baby’s.” He looked up and down my body, moving the neckline of my nightdress aside and slipping his hand inside, putting it over my chest. Then he cupped it under my left breast. “But she is not a little baby after all.” He left his hand on my breast for a long while, looking up to the ceiling. Finally he moved it away. “The heart rate is good,” he said. “You may give the injection now.”
Seward took my arm in his hand. I tried to jerk it away, but he said, “No one will hurt you if you do not resist.” With brawny fingers, Von Helsinger held my arm in place while Seward slowly traced the lines of my veins from shoulder to wrist and back with his finger. “What a fine and delicate network,” he said as his finger slid the length of my inner arm, making me squirm. “As if a master painter has been here with his brush.” He caressed the sensitive skin near the top of my underarm. “I think you like that,” he said, smiling.
“This is good!” Von Helsinger said enthusiastically. “She is getting more receptive to the blood.”
Seward retraced the line of my vein back down my arm, stopping at my inner elbow, gently teasing the crease. “Here, I think,” he said, and he brought the needle to that place and stuck it in my vein.
I felt the sting of the injection and the burn of the medicine as it flooded my arm. He rubbed the spot where the needle went in and then put his hand on my face, caressing my cheek. “Sweet Mina,” he said with a wry laugh. Von Helsinger said something to Seward in German, and the younger doctor laughed and answered him back in that language.
The room around me faded; I was rapidly losing consciousness. I wanted to stop the doctors, but I was completely incapacitated and the medication made it easier to give into my fate. Floating into that darkness, I felt less and less attached to the idea of escape. I thought that perhaps I should pray, but I could not summon the mental energy to do so. Strangely, the words of a hymn came to me, one I’d sung at the last service I had attended in Exeter. I recalled the resonant pipe organ filling the cathedral, vibrating the nave.
You, Christ, are the king of glory
The eternal Son of the Father
When you took our flesh to set us free
You humbly chose the Virgin’s womb.
You overcame the sting of death
And opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers
You are seated at God’s right hand in glory…
The image that the hymn brought to my mind was neither Christ nor heaven but my savior, standing on the banks of the river with his arms outstretched, inviting me to go to him. What a fool I had been. How I wish that I had known that the danger ahead lay not in his arms but in stubbornly clinging to the life of safety and security that I wanted with Jonathan. What exquisite gifts had my dream lover offered me that I would never know?
I saw his face in my mind’s eye, and I imagined staring into his feral blue eyes, dark as twilight. I wanted to sink into them, to melt into the escape that they promised. My mind was now like a stage where my dreams of the mysterious stranger were played again-his voice, his touch, his kisses, and his blood-draining bite. I was in a somnolent state, in which the line between reality and hallucination was easily blurred, my mind alternating between the sweet sensations of my imagination and the faint sounds in the room-the tinkling glass and metal as Seward and Von Helsinger prepared for the procedure, words muttered between them in German, and the low, ambient hum of the asylum’s inmates.
All of a sudden, I felt a shift in the room, as if someone had made a surprise entrance, but through hazy eyes, I saw that the door was still closed. Von Helsinger’s alarmed voice barked exclamatory words to Seward in German, and Seward responded with a strange cry. I wanted to slip back into my reverie, but then something crashed to the floor, as if one of the doctors had dropped a thing made of glass. I opened my eyes again and in my dreamy state, I thought I saw a thick mist seeping through the shuttered window. Confused, wondering if this was part of a dream, I blinked my eyes and looked again. The two doctors-eyes wide with astonishment-stood frozen, watching the vapor as it swirled before them, growing in luminescence and intensity. Before our eyes, the numinous particles began to sculpt into a form, and I thought that perhaps an angel had come to save me.
Slowly the thing took shape. It was not an angel but a shimmering coat of silver fur, which gradually molded itself over great muscled haunches, its outer ends elongating into a bestial tail and head. My dream world collided
