Once a Widow (6 page)

“Take it easy,” Shannon said gently. “You’ll be all right.”

She made no answer, seemed not to have heard him, and her eyes closed.

Lewis Sprang entered the cabin and stood quietly, puffing on a cigar. From out on the pier the siren died with a hoarse moan and in a moment a thin angular man wearing a dark blue suit and black Homburg poked his head into the cabin. He was panting as if he’d run all the way across the city to the pier, and his pale blue eyes bulged behind rimless glasses. His gaze darted to the woman. “She dead?”

Lewis Sprang removed the cigar from between his teeth and spoke in mincing, soprano tones. “No, she’s not dead. This is just a five dollar ambulance run. No funeral, no casket sale, no gouging the relatives.”

The undertaker shot Sprang a look of pure hate and was about to retort angrily when Shannon said sharply, “Get a stretcher and a blanket, Lee. This woman is going to the hospital.”

Lee Hoyt, owner and proprietor of the Hoyt Funeral Home, turned abruptly and left the cabin. Shannon grinned at Sprang. “You shouldn’t needle him.”

The lawyer grinned back, showing yellow teeth. “Hell, he’s too greedy, always was, like a—ghoul.” He drew on his cigar and added contemptuously, “Undertakers!”

“We need ’em,” Shannon said, “the same as we need lawyers—and doctors.”

“Hell, when my time comes I want to be cremated. No fuss, no bother, no flowers, no damned simpering relation. Funerals are barbaric, a carry-over from the jungle. Honest to God—” Sprang broke off abruptly and bent over, his face twisted. His cigar fell from his mouth and he slumped to the floor. “Clint…”

Shannon went to him. “What’s wrong?”

“Pain,” Sprang gasped, “all of a sudden, in—in my back, low down…” The old lawyer twisted convulsively. There was sudden sweat on his face.

Shannon turned swiftly, opened his bag, took out a hypodermic needle and a small glass vial. Deftly he filled the needle and made the injection in Sprang’s left arm, near the shoulder, after which he supported the lawyer’s head and wiped the sweat from his face. “You’ll feel better in a moment, Lew,” he said, “but you’ll need surgery this time. You can’t put it off any longer.”

Sprang lay with his eyes closed, grimacing with pain, and did not answer. Mortimer Watson stood by watching in shocked surprise. “What’s the matter with him?” he asked Shannon.

“Kidney stone attack. He’s had ’em before.”

Lee Hoyt entered the cabin carrying a rolled-up stretcher. When he saw Sprang on the floor his eyes bulged in surprise. “What happened to him?”

“He’s sick,” Shannon said softly. “We’ve got two patients for the hospital.”

George Yundt lay face down on the bed in his room at the Y.M.C.A., his fingers digging into the pillow, his thoughts skirting the edge of panic. The huge building held a Sunday afternoon quiet. The only sounds were the faraway traffic noises in the street three floors below, the whir of water from the shower room down the hall and the muted strains of music from a radio in one of the rooms.

There was a knock on the door and George jerked his. head up. “Who is it?” he asked sharply.

“Me—Al. What’re you doing, George?”

“Nothing.”

“Let’s go to a movie, or something.”

George sighed and gently pounded a fist against the pillow. It was just Al Habrig from down the hall, a genial, middle-aged bachelor who worked as a line man for the power company. “I don’t feel like it, Al,” he said. “You go ahead.”

“Okay.” Al Habrig’s voice was cheerful, “See you later, kid.” George heard his steps receding down the hall toward the stairway.

George lowered his head and his fingers resumed their gentle digging at the pillow.

At Memorial Hospital in Harbor City Dr. Shannon gave swift instructions. The woman found on Snake Island was to have a hot bath, plenty of blankets, warm liquids in small quantities, milk, clear soup. Watch her pulse and temperature, call him if there was any change. Because of her weakened condition and apparent shock he’d ordered a private room and complete quiet. He did not know if she could pay for the private room or even for ward service, but that did not worry him, although it did worry Miss Coral Thatcher, the hospital cashier, as she recorded the woman’s admittance at 2:45 P.M.

Miss Thatcher was also worried and annoyed at the disturbing absence of necessary information concerning the patient, such as name, address, age, marital status, and do you have Blue Cross? It was an emergency, Dr. Shannon had said, but emergency or not, Miss Thatcher disapproved. When they’d wheeled the woman into her room Miss Thatcher had left her desk and peeked, had seen Mrs. Andrews, the head day nurse, put the woman to bed. My goodness, she’d been almost naked! Just a flimsy two-piece bathing suit, and she was at least as old as she, Coral Thatcher. It didn’t seem—moral.

All right, Miss Thatcher thought sullenly, it was an emergency. Dr. Shannon had said so, and she liked Dr. Shannon, even if he was the youngest staff member. He always smiled at her and said, “Hi, Thatcher,” which was very professional, even if she was just the cashier and not a registered nurse. Nevertheless, she was annoyed. She liked everything to be orderly, neat and complete, and this admittance was certainly irregular. A strange woman, almost naked, found on Snake Island, they said. She probably would not be able to pay her bill and there would be unpleasantness with Mr. Grange, the hospital administrator. Mr. Grange was very strict about patients putting the money on the barrel head, as he always said, before they left the hospital.

Poor old Mr. Sprang had been brought in at the same time as the woman, a stroke or something, but Miss Thatcher did not worry about securing the necessary data from him before he was assigned to a bed. Everyone knew that Mr. Sprang was wealthy. Even if he died, his estate would pay the hospital. Besides, she knew almost everything she needed to know about Mr. Sprang, including his age, which was seventy-one, the same age as her father when he’d died two years ago. In fact, she could practically fill out Mr. Sprang’s admittance form without talking to him. But that strange, half naked woman…

Miss Thatcher sniffed and resumed her typing of lab reports. Out of the corner of one eye she saw Dr. Shannon and Mrs. Andrews come out of the strange woman’s room, which was number 102, and move toward her. She pretended to be busily typing as they came abreast of her office, and looked up suddenly with a false expression of surprise as Dr. Shannon said, “Hi, Thatcher.”

“Hi,” Coral said, smiling. She watched them as they turned into the north wing, no doubt going to see Mr. Sprang, who had been placed in room 140. They returned in about five minutes and as they passed her desk once more Coral heard the doctor say to Mrs. Andrews, “We’ll take some pictures right now, and then I’ll do a cystoscopy. Dr. Carlyle can check the pictures in the morning, but I’m pretty certain what they’ll show. Schedule him for surgery at seven-thirty in the morning.” Mrs. Andrews nodded and the doctor’s voice receded as they moved away.

It wasn’t a stroke, after all, Coral Thatcher thought. It sounds like kidney stones, or gall bladder trouble, something like that. Dr. Shannon had mentioned a cystoscopy and she had a vague idea of what that meant. In her five years as an employee of the hospital she liked to think that she’d acquired a professional knowledge of medicine and surgery, although some of the things she’d seen in her first year, when she’d been a nurse’s aide in the maternity ward, had disgusted and frightened her. She had been born and raised on a farm near Harbor City and was therefore aware of the biological processes of birth, although at the age of forty-five she was still somewhat puzzled at certain aspects, particularly the initial maneuvers which eventually produced the calf, chicken, colt, kitten or human baby.

Even so, Coral Thatcher had kissed a man once, less than two years before, after a church supper. It was the first and only time such a thing had happened, and even then she had not really kissed the man—he had kissed her. He had been drinking (a filthy habit, indicating weakness of the flesh, her mother always said) and after he’d kissed her he’d touched her with his hands and had attempted to escort her from the rectory lawn to a tall hedge bordering the church cemetery. But her screams (why had she screamed?) had alarmed the people attending the potluck in the church basement and they had rushed out to the lawn. The man had said reproachfully, “Why did you do that? I wouldn’t hurt you.” And then he had fled.

As the church members gathered around her, Coral pretended to be slightly hysterical. She knew the man, but pretended that she did not. She was ashamed and at the same time happy, glad that she had stepped outside to be alone, to smell the dogwood and look at the moon. She had recognized the man as he approached from the street, a nice black-browed young man (not so young, really—maybe thirty-nine or forty) who worked as a meat cutter in the Erie Market, a bachelor named Arthur Standish. He had always been especially nice to her when she went to the market to buy four pork chops or a pound of hamburger for supper. She had even dreamed about him, but had been ashamed of the dreams and had never related them to anyone. His sudden appearance in the moonlight on the rectory lawn had surprised her. And she knew he had been drinking; she could smell it when he was five feet away, but she did not know that he was drunk.

“Hi, Coral—thought I recognized you.” His voice was slightly slurred, but somehow she had not minded and was even pleased with his use of her first name. In the market it had always been “Miss Thatcher.” He loomed before her, smiling. “Out here all alone? Listen, Coral, I—I like you.” He touched her shoulder.

Coral stiffened, but did not move away. He was the first and only man who had ever said he liked her. The touch of his hand was like fire on her shoulder, burning through the thin summer dress. She had never been popular, not even with the girls in high school who knew that she would never be any competition to them. She was too withdrawn most of the time, too tart when her mood would change, too superior-acting, even though she did not feel superior at all. Usually she felt inferior and sorry for herself. And she was not pretty; her nose was too long and sharp, her hazel-tinted eyes too small and close together, her mouth too tight and thin. This was unfortunate, because her body was marvelous, a young woman’s body still, tall, long-legged, with full breasts and gently curving hips below a slim waist. But Coral did not appreciate her body; she hated it sometimes and hid her curves with drab severe clothing.

The meat cutter leaned closer, swaying a little. In addition to the liquor fumes Coral smelled an exciting blend of after-shaving lotion and tobacco. She shivered a little, keenly aware of his hand on her shoulder. He said, “I see you in the store all the time, always liked you. Wanted to ask for a date, but never had the—the nerve. Would you kiss me, Coral?” Clumsily but gently he pulled her to him.

Coral had been startled and confused. She had let him kiss her and the warm pressure of his lips had strangely excited her. Her heart pounded and she had not minded the odor of whisky. He pressed her body against his and the potluck supper had seemed far away, fading to nothing in the May moonlight. His hands went over her, caressing her back and the soft curve above her hips, and then she felt herself being pulled slowly toward the hedge bordering the cemetery. Suddenly Coral was frightened and it was then that she screamed.

She remembered Arthur Standish’s sad, reproachful voice. “Why did you do that, Coral…?”

“I—I’m sorry, Arthur, I…”

But he was gone, fleeing between the tombstones, as the excited potluck crowd emerged from the church and surrounded her. She told her mother and the rest a vague story about how she’d seen a prowler spying on the church, a tramp perhaps who had dropped off the 8:30 B. & O. freight, probably hungry. She was sorry she had startled them, she said. It had really been nothing, but seeing the man had startled her so. Reverend Morrissy had made a perfunctory search through the cemetery with a flashlight and someone had suggested calling the police, but no one did, and eventually Coral had found herself walking home with her mother in the summer night.

When Coral went to the butcher shop a few days later Arthur Standish had smiled at her, as he always did, and had been very polite. It was as if the incident on the rectory lawn had never happened. Coral wanted desperately to remind him of it, in some casual way, but could not summon the courage. Maybe he did not even remember it, she thought. After all, he’d been, well, intoxicated. She did not blame him for that, in spite of her mother’s fanatical aversion to persons who drank spirits of any kind. But even if Arthur did not remember, she knew that she would remember always. Arthur Standish was still in her dreams. She awakened from them ashamed but excited, and bitterly sorry that she had screamed that night.

On a Sunday afternoon, a week after the incident on the rectory lawn, Coral decided that she would remind Arthur Standish, laughingly of their brief meeting in the moonlight, and apologize for her senseless scream. She would do it on Monday afternoon, tomorrow, after work at the hospital. She would make it light, casual, and he would surely remember. Maybe he would smile at her and apologize and perhaps make a date for—for the movies, or something. There was not too much difference in their ages. He was a bachelor and no doubt lonely, too. It was just that he was shy, and ashamed, waiting for her to make the first move. On Sunday evening Coral went to bed happily and dreamed of Arthur Standish.

It wasn’t until Monday morning at the hospital that Coral learned that Arthur Standish had been killed when he fell two stories from a fire escape during a Saturday night dance at the Beaver’s Hall. He had already been laid out in the Hoyt Funeral Home on Sunday afternoon when Coral had made her plans to remind him, laughingly, of the happenings on the rectory lawn in the moonlight. She had not attended his funeral, but she had gone to the undertaking parlor in the afternoon when few people were present and gazed briefly at the still white face and then turned and fled. Out on the street in sunlight she had sobbed a little as she walked home. But her eyes had been dry when she faced the sharp gaze of her mother and told her that Fox’s Department Store was having a sale on yard goods.

Shortly after Arthur Standish’s death Coral began to see the pink fog. It appeared at odd times, swirling gently, and people moved in it slowly and happily. Sometimes the people waved and beckoned to her. At first, the pink fog frightened her, But she became accustomed to it and eventually began to enjoy it, especially when it appeared at night, when she was in bed. At such times she would imagine that Arthur Standish was out there, smiling at her. It was only a dream, she told herself, but she wished that it would not appear so often, as it had lately.

It was almost five o’clock when Dr. Shannon left the hospital. On his way home he stopped at a delicatessen and bought buns, frankfurters, marshmallows and a bag of charcoal briquettes for the Sunday cook-out. In pleasant weather it was a ritual at the Shannon home which little Jack Shannon looked forward to with almost as much pleasure as Pop Corn Night during the winter. When school was in session Pop Corn Night occurred on Friday evening. After dinner on this night Celia Shannon popped corn and served it in the living room with orange soda or root beer for Jack, and beer for Shannon and herself, with the doctor sometimes substituting a bourbon highball. His choice of beverage was determined by the condition of certain patients at the time, the possibility of an obstetric call, and his surgical schedule for Saturday morning. It was one of the prices a doctor paid for his profession. Not that Shannon ever drank to excess, but except when he was away from Harbor City and his practice he could not ever really relax. Often he would have liked an extra cocktail before dinner, or more than one nightcap, but he refrained in the interest of a clear head and a steady hand, not to mention the dubious reaction of patients and colleagues to alcoholic fumes on his breath at a bedside, or in the antiseptic aura of the operating room.

The boy ran to Shannon as he got out of the car carrying the packages. “Did you bring the marshmallows, Daddy?”

“Sure. It’s Sunday, isn’t it?”

“Cook-out night!” the boy cried, dancing about.

Shannon crossed the lawn to where Celia sat beside the picnic table already laid with paper napkins, cups and plates. Shannon placed his packages on the table and smiled at his wife. “How about a martini?”

“I’d love one. You were gone quite a while. Complications?”

“Some.” He told her about the woman found on Snake Island, about Lewis Sprang’s attack, and ended by saying, “I’ve scheduled Lew for surgery in the morning. He’s pretty old, but tough—I think he’ll make it. John Kovici is handling the anesthesia. The woman should be okay in a day or two.”

“Who is she?”

“We don’t know. She was in shock and couldn’t talk—I didn’t force it. Middle-aged, but quite attractive. George Yundt said he’d seen her at the Y, but didn’t know her name. Mort Watson called the Y, thinking that someone there could identify her so that her family could be notified, but the Y office is closed on Sunday afternoon. Mort tried to reach Russ McClory, the physical director, but he’s out of town for the weekend. We can check in the morning, if it’s necessary. Anyhow, she’s in no danger. She should be able to talk by tonight and I’ll learn who she is then.” Shannon dumped briquettes into the barbecue burner. “Any calls while I was gone?”

“One—Ed Malone. He thinks his wife is about due.”

Shannon sighed. “He could be right. I’ve got her down for next week, but you can never tell about Alice Malone.” He poured lighter fluid over the charcoal and applied flame from a match. The charcoal flared and then subsided to a steady licking flame which would soon result in an even glow. The boy clapped his hands and whirled about in five-year-old antics.