Tegan wakes feeling profoundly unwell—shaking, feverish, and disoriented—while sensing her baby’s kicks have grown weak. She hallucinates Simon Lamar at her bedside burning papers, then recognizes the vision as a sign of her deteriorating condition.

Struggling with temperature swings and nausea, Tegan notices the pain in her injured left leg has faded into alarming numbness. Fearing something is very wrong, she calls for Polly.

Polly arrives, feels Tegan’s hot forehead, then removes the boot and sock Tegan had refused to take off. Tegan’s calf and foot are grotesquely swollen, dark red to purple, bent at an angle, and draining thick yellow fluid—clear evidence of a severe infection. The lack of pain terrifies Tegan.

Tegan begs for a hospital. Polly acknowledges the fever and infection, says Tegan needs antibiotics and a hospital, then goes upstairs. Left alone, Tegan fears that without immediate help she and her baby may not survive.