Home by Morning (11 page)

“Your mother will be here in a minute.” But he’d slipped back into the shadowy world between life and death, and this time she didn’t believe he would come out again.

Time lost its meaning as Jess sat beside her patient’s bed. It crept by while she waited for Helen, and she worried that the woman wouldn’t have a chance to say good-bye to her son. But time flew in terms of the moments that were left to Eddie on this earth. With each gurgling rattle, Jess watched the shallow rise and fall of his chest. His breathing had become irregular, stopping for several agonizing seconds before commencing again with a gasp. Outside, rain began to fall in heavy, spattering drops.

“Hold on, Eddie,” she urged, squeezing his hand, “hold on. You can’t leave us yet. You have to wait for your mother. She should be here any minute.” She had no idea if he could hear her.

At last Jess heard a frantic knocking on the door downstairs, and then the rattle of a key in the lock. She ran out to the landing to look over the railing and saw that Cole had let Helen in with his own key.

The poor woman was soaked to the skin. She had obviously thrown on her clothes in a hurry, wearing only a light dress, her bedroom slippers, and no coat. Her hair was plastered to her skull and swung in a wet, braided rope down her back.

“Is he…?” Helen couldn’t finish the sentence.

“He’s still with us. Go up.”

Helen bounded up the stairs, grief already etching her face. Jess patted her shoulder and came down to the clinic to give the mother and son privacy.

In the waiting room, Cole stood by the door, his long frame limber and easy. He was drenched too, and his thin tan shirt stuck to his torso. Though he still wore his hat, his ruddy-fawn hair curled at the ends from the dampness.

“He’s dying?” Cole asked quietly.

Jess nodded.

That someone in the prime of life could be taken so quickly was astounding to Cole. “He’s only been sick for two days.”

Jess whispered, “I know. It’s frightening. I wanted to make sure his mother had a last chance to see him, but he didn’t want me to leave him alone.” She poked at some loose strands of hair framing her face. “H-he said someone is sitting at the foot of the bed, waiting to take him when he dies.”

Cole stared at her. “Did you see—”

She shook her head and shrugged. “So I couldn’t go for her.” She lifted her chin. “I’m grateful for your help. What were you doing out there at this hour, anyway?”

They spoke in hushed tones. “I was just catching up on some chores next door.”

“At midnight.”

“Well,
you’re
awake.” And beautiful though she was, she looked as if she’d been up for days. Her white bib apron was stained, and purple smudges underscored her eyes.

“But I’m working.”

“So was I.” It was a partial truth Cole told her, and he knew she realized it. There was no end of work to be done these days, but he had come into town because he’d gotten bored and restless just staring at the ceiling over his bed. Like Susannah, he hadn’t slept a whole night through for weeks. His sister-in-law had a good reason; he wasn’t sure of his own. Tonight, instead of tossing and turning until the bedding was a wad at the foot of the mattress, he had gotten dressed and come to the shop.

She searched his face, looking for a better explanation. When they’d been closer, Jess had always been able to tell when he was hiding something from her. He didn’t know if it was her woman’s intuition or the sensitivity of her vocation. Or just that she knew him so well. He glanced away from her inquiring gaze.

He settled in a chair and Jess sat as well, in an unspoken agreement to keep a deathwatch.

“Have any others gotten sick?” he asked.

“A few, but none as critical as Eddie. Yet.”

“You think it’ll get worse?”

She nodded. “That was why I followed the Red Cross’s recommendation about banning public gatherings. Amy was pretty unhappy about that.” She sighed. “She was unhappy with me, too.”

He took off his wet hat and turned it in his hands. “I know. She told me she even went to Cookson’s office, asking him to make an exception on the ban just for the Liberty Bond Committee and the hotel dining room.”

“She did?”

“She came by the shop yesterday afternoon to tell me about it.”

“What did he say?”

“He refused. I guess you convinced him to stick to his guns.”

“She mentioned that she’s been waiting for you to, well…” There was a question in her voice, one that asked for an explanation Cole was not prepared to give.

He shifted in the chair and crossed his ankle over his knee, distinctly uncomfortable. “Yeah, I know. With one thing and another to do with this war business…”

“So she said. I was kind of surprised.”

“About what?”

“For a man so eager to get married, I would have expected you to propose to her by now.” Her green eyes glinted slightly.

He hadn’t forgotten how direct Jess could be. He simply hadn’t experienced it lately, and he resented being put on the spot, so he deflected her attack with one of his own.

He uncrossed his ankle and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Yeah? Once upon a time, you were eager to get married too. How is it that you can’t explain why you wouldn’t come home?”

She pulled in her chin like a turtle retreating into its shell and fiddled with her collar. “I don’t see any point in discussing that now.”

“I think you owe me that much, don’t you?”

She sat up a bit straighter. “I don’t owe you a thing. You never proposed to me, either. And you’re the one who changed…everything.”

A question sat in his mind like a burning coal, one that his wounded pride had never allowed him to ask. One that Amy had hinted at but never really expressed. But now, with death waiting to claim a soul upstairs, perhaps waiting to claim others, he reined in his ego. “Was there another man?” They were already speaking in low voices. This question came out in a whisper.

She stared at him, her mouth ajar. “What?”

“Amy mentioned that you told her you made the acquaintance of a doctor’s son. Someone named Stafford, Stanton—”

“Dr. Stavers? Yes, I knew him and his family. They were kind enough to ask me to their home for dinner. I went to the theater with them a few times.”

“And the son?”

“Andrew?”

He sat back and studied her. “Well? What was he to you? Is he why you didn’t come back?”

She rested her forehead against the palm of her hand. Reaching into the pocket of her dirty apron, she pulled out a handkerchief to swipe at her eyes. He couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying.

“Oh, God, there was
never
another man,” she said, finally. “There was poverty. There was squalor. And misery and ostracism. I treated immigrant women worn out from hunger and constant childbearing. There were children who died from something as simple as a cold because they didn’t have the strength to fight the infection.” The words tumbled out, and her expression reflected anger and helplessness. “I saw rat bites on babies who were too weak to nurse, and women with black eyes and broken faces because of the beatings they got from drunken husbands or customers they met in dark alleys. I visited old people who’d been left to die in the corners of filthy, airless rooms barely big enough for four people, but were jammed in with twelve. A lot of the rooms had no windows because they were partitioned off from other rooms so the greedy men who owned those firetraps could make even more money. They were dark, stinking boxes of suffering humanity.”

He listened without flinching, but he clenched his jaw so hard he felt a muscle twitch.

“If you haven’t seen it with your own eyes, haven’t experienced it, you can’t understand.” Her hands were wrapped around her hankie in a tight knot. “The dogs at your ranch have better lives than those people. That’s why I stayed. How could I turn my back on them?”

“But you finally did,” he said at last, his throat tight. “Why?”

Jess turned her face and looked at the bouquet of mums that sat on a small table between them. She didn’t answer. In the silence, broken only by the soft patter of the rain outside, they heard muffled, wordless sobbing coming from upstairs.

“Oh…dear…”

Cole glanced up, listening. “It’s over.”

Jess nodded and rose from her chair. “I’ll keep him here until morning. By then Fred Hustad will be open and the Cooksons can make arrangements with him. He’s still running an undertaking business from the back of his furniture store?”

“Yeah. Do you need anything from me?” He wanted to help her if he could, wanted to do
something
.

To Jessica, it was a loaded question. She could have requested a dozen things from him, none of which was hers to ask for any longer.
Yes, oh, yes, please hold me, comfort me, take these nightmare memories from me, help me to feel alive again, make me laugh again, the way you used to.

She realized she was leaning toward him, trying to close the gap between them and looking at his mouth. He bent toward her, too, as if unseen hands pushed them both from behind. Her field of vision was filled with his face, the straight nose, the mouth that was neither too full nor too thin, the square jaw and his eyes, fringed with lashes that she’d always envied. He smelled of leather…

The sound of another sob slashed through the quiet, breaking the dangerous spell, and she pulled back.

“No. I’m fine,” she lied.

Adam Jacobsen laid Eddie to rest the next day with no one but his parents to witness the burial. Jessica wanted to attend but she was busy seeing influenza patients, and those who were still well had taken to hiding behind their doors as much as possible. Almost as soon as she had put clean bedding on the mattress upstairs, she had another patient to occupy it, a six-year-old boy, and his mother for the other bed in the room.

With Amy’s help, she strung a sheet between the beds, hoping to reduce the exchange of contagion. But Anna Warneke wept so pitifully over not being able to see her child, Philip, that they took it down again. Jess conceded that it probably didn’t make much difference anyway.

That night she kept watch over the two, catching naps when she could. Although Philip was certainly sick, he seemed to be doing better than his failing mother, which baffled Jessica. Influenza was known to strike down the very young and the elderly, not people in the strength and prime of their lives.

Anna was not yet thirty years old.

Eddie had been just eighteen.

At lunchtime the next day, Amy and Jess sat at the small kitchen table in her apartment to bolt down quick cups of coffee and sandwiches.

“Here,” Jess said, pushing a pitcher of cream to her sister.

“Wherever did you manage to get this?” Amy asked, completely transported by the sight of the cream. She poured enough of the forbidden luxury into her cup to turn her coffee a light beige.

“Horace Cookson. He told me he’d bring me cream and a little butter from his dairy every day. He’s grateful that I took care of Eddie, but I’m not sure I deserve this after what happened.”

“Take it anyway,” Amy said, sipping the coffee with an expression of profound bliss. “You did everything you could, and it’s a small gift. It probably makes him feel better.”

Below, the door opened, ringing its overhead bell. But the women needed no such signal. The visitor’s cough was loud enough to announce his arrival. Jess started to rise, but Amy put a hand on her arm and went to the landing.

She heard Amy call down, “Oh, Mr. Driscoll, Dr. Layton will be right with you. Please, have a seat.”

Before Amy returned to her own chair, the bell rang again. “Dr. Layton will be down in a moment, Mrs. Lester.” She came back to the table and said quietly, “You have to eat your lunch, Jessica. You look worn out.”

Jess
was
worn out. She had turned her office into a round-the-clock clinic. A few people had called on the telephone, begging her to make house calls, but it simply wasn’t practical. She had no transportation, and when someone came to pick her up, she found patients waiting for her when she returned. They came night and day. Even when she was able to lie down for a few hours, nightmares of indigent, gray-faced patients and dreams of Cole interrupted her sleep.

She poured a quick dollop of cream into her own cup. “Amy, goodness knows I appreciate your help, but this isn’t going to work. We two can’t treat all of these patients alone, and we need more room. There are people who have no one at home to take care of them, and they can’t be left to fend for themselves. They need to be fed and washed and tended. I have to do something more. Has anyone heard from Pearson?”

Amy shook her head while she swallowed. “Not a word, as far as I know.”

“The Red Cross offered me a nurse a few days ago and I told them I didn’t need one yet. Now it’s already too late, and I could kick myself for turning them down. I telephoned their office in Portland and they have their own epidemic brewing. They’re not willing to spare anyone. Will you ask every woman you know if she can pitch in?”

“Yes, although I think some of them have sick families of their own to look after. I hate to suggest this but…” Amy said and trailed off.

“What?”

“Granny Mae isn’t running the café now that it’s closed under the mayor’s orders. I imagine she’s probably available.” Delicately, Amy nibbled the last crust of her sandwich.