The Covenant of Water

Digby and Cromwell have settled into the estate, which Digby has named Gwendolyn Gardens after his mother. Digby now thinks of himself as a planter rather than a surgeon; they grow several lucrative crops. Still, word gets out that Digby is a doctor, and he is one day visited by a young woman who is pregnant: her abdomen has been sliced open, and the baby’s fist is poking out. It is too early for her to give birth. She explains that her husband did not intend to harm her, but that he was smoking medicine for his asthma, and it made him hallucinate. It turns out that the young woman is Lizzi, and her husband Kora has been abusing the medication that is allegedly for his asthma. Digby is able to coax the baby’s arm back into the womb and sew up the abdomen. As Lizzi is recuperating, he teases her that the baby will be as fierce as one of the most famous revolutionaries of all time: “He had his fist out there like Lenin […] I proclaim you Lenin, evermore” (415).