Promise Me A Rainbow (37 page)

“Pat’s got pneumonia again—she told me to tell you that so you wouldn’t think she was dying.”

“Pneumonia’s bad enough,” Catherine said.

“She wants you to call her the first chance you get.”

“Thanks for bringing the car.”

“We didn’t mind. We all like Pat. She’s a gutsy lady—she participates in her treatment one hundred percent. But she still needs all the help she can get.”

Catherine’s eyes met hers for a moment in shared sympathy for Pat Bauer.

“Well, here comes my ride. You’d better get your virus back inside.”

Catherine smiled and went back into the Mayfair. She heard Mrs. Donovan call her when she was on the second landing, but she didn’t stop. She had to get to a place where she could lie down. She left her jacket on for a long while, lying on the couch again in an effort to feel up to calling Pat.

She finally got up and took her temperature, sitting on the side of her bed to read the thermometer. She had no fever, regardless of how bad she felt.

The telephone rang again, and she made herself go into the kitchen to answer it.

“Did you . . . get my . . . car?” Pat said, her voice straining with the lack of breath she was obviously experiencing from the pneumonia. She sounded so much worse than she had earlier in the day, and typically she’d said nothing about how she was feeling physically. It was as if the emotions Don Bauer precipitated in her were the only thing that mattered. Catherine could understand that. She had been preoccupied by her own emotional roller coaster.

“I’ve got it,” Catherine said, sitting down on the floor in the kitchen to talk, because the cord wouldn’t reach as far as the kitchen chairs. “I’ve also got your house keys and the virus Beatrice and Cherry had.”

“You’re sick?”

“Feels like it.”

“Who’s going to . . . tame the . . . lions tomorrow?”

“I’ll feel better by then. All I have to do is be there so they don’t run wild. I can let Beatrice handle showing some films or something.”

“Catherine, will you do something for me?”

“Sure,” Catherine said, expecting Pat to ask her to bring some nightgowns and things to the hospital.

“If this is . . . you know,
it
.”

“I thought you didn’t want me to think you were dying.”

“Well, I’m not dying now . . . but if I was . . . or if I get worse and do start dying or something . . . I don’t care how many times I tell you that I want to see Don . . . I don’t want you to go out and find him for me. I’m in my right mind now and I’m telling you I want to die in peace. I
don’t
 . . . want him at my bedside. Even if I cry and beg for him, okay?”

Catherine said nothing. She sat on the floor with her head bowed. She had no energy for this.

“Okay?” Pat said again. “Catherine?”

“Pat, no, it’s not okay. Whatever you ask me, if I can do it, you’ll get it. I’m not going to put myself in the position of having to second guess whether or not you mean it.”

Pat laughed, then began to cough. “Great,” she said when she could. “I knew . . . I could count . . . on you. Good night, Catherine.”

Catherine felt better in the morning.
She had no fever, and she managed to keep a few saltine crackers down. Whatever the illness was, it was passing, except for her feeling of tiredness. She went on to the school. The pregnant students’ program had no funds for substitute teachers, and Catherine certainly couldn’t afford to pay one out of her own pocket.

She had crackers again at lunchtime. And some tomato juice.

So far, so good
, she thought—prematurely. She barely made it to the restroom in time, and she spent most of her lunch hour waiting for the nausea to recede. Maria was in the hallway when she came out, watching her curiously.

But she felt better after a while, and she tried some crackers again. Those stayed down, and by the end of school she felt well enough to call Pat about bringing whatever she needed in the way of clothes to the hospital. She still didn’t want to chance giving Pat whatever errant virus she had, so she left the small bag of gowns and clean underwear she’d packed for her at the nurses’ station, all the while thinking of Sasha and the last occasion she’d had to come here.

She still hadn’t been able to get Sasha’s “memory envelope” for her. Grandmamma was going to have to come out here, Catherine thought as she left the building. Grandmamma had nothing if not a commanding presence, and people were a lot more likely to find the unfindable for her.

She sighed suddenly and thought about Joe, about being with him later on the same evening that little Treasure had died. When she closed her eyes she could remember everything about Joe. The way he looked and felt and smelled and tasted. Everything. She could hear his soft whisper: It’s all right, Catherine. It’s all right.

He had been kind to her—too kind, too accommodating. She’d been foolish enough to let herself need him physically and emotionally, and now she could think of nothing else.

Joe.

She was still feeling all right by the time she got home—except that she was so tired. She went to bed early and slept soundly, expecting to feel fully recovered by the time she awoke. She did, for a while. But the queasiness came back again, persisted, waxed and waned, no matter what she did to make it better. She managed to get through the school day, and the next one, and the next. In the front office on Friday morning she picked up a pen to sign for some videos she’d ordered about prenatal care. The UPS man handed her the clipboard and showed her the block where she was to write her name, and the next thing she knew, she had woken up on the floor in a circle of concerned faces, a cotton ball soaked in ammonia being waved under her nose.

Something was the matter. She’d never fainted in her life. She ran through all the things it could be. She’d been worrying about Joe and Della and about Pat. She hadn’t been eating very well. Sometimes she slept all night; sometimes she didn’t. She decided that it was just that she was so tired from the emotional strain, and perhaps the virus was more persistent in her case than it had been in the others.

It’s nothing
, she kept thinking, but in the face of her general lack of improvement as the day wore on, she made an appointment for a checkup anyway. She had no doctor other than the gynecologist who’d done her infertility studies and her regular Pap smears, and she felt no qualms about using whatever professional clout she had to get in to see him as soon as she could.

She called the doctor’s office, asking for one of the nurses she knew personally. She hated having to telephone from the office at school, but she had no choice about it. She didn’t feel well enough to go someplace else.

“Mary Beth,” she said when the nurse came on the line, “this is Catherine Holben. I’m having some problems. Can you move heaven and earth for me so I can be seen today?”

“You’re having a gynecological problem, Catherine?”

“I’m…not sure. I just know I feel like the devil.”

“Hold on. Let me look at the appointment list.”

Catherine waited, trying to ignore the collective interest in the women supposedly working at their desks behind her had in this telephone call. She had heard quite clearly one of their remarks when she’d scared the UPS man out of his wits. “Somebody in this place is always throwing up or passing out.”

“Good news and bad news,” Mary Beth said when she came back on the line. “We’ve got a three-thirty cancellation, but it’s with Clarkson. You know Clarkson? He’s a good doctor, but he’s kind of raw—doesn’t care what he says. I have to resuscitate about three scandalized little old ladies a week.”

“I’ve seen him before,” Catherine said. She could hear the click of computer keys in the background.

“Is that a no?”

Catherine laughed. “No. Clarkson’s fine. I feel too bad not to take whatever I can get.”

“Okay. The computer says it’s past time for your regular checkup. You want the works, or do you just want me to put you down as a problem?”

“I want the works, Mary Beth.”

“You
are
feeling bad, aren’t you? Okay, kiddo. We’ll see you at three thirty.”

Catherine felt reasonably well for the rest of the day, and she was tempted to call back and cancel her appointment—except that “reasonably well” in this case was a far cry from “good.”

She rushed to get from the school to the doctor’s office on time, only to find that Clarkson was running behind schedule, because, she was advised privately, he was
always
running behind schedule. It took a long time for her to be called back to an examining room, and an even longer time for him to come in to see her.

“What’s this with the fainting and the nausea?” he said as he opened the door, apparently feeling that they were beyond small talk and social amenities.

“I don’t know,” Catherine said. “That’s why I’m here.”

“So how many times have you fainted?”

“Once . . . today.”

“That’s where you got the goose egg, I guess.” He looked back at her chart, and Catherine reached up to touch her forehead. She did have a knot there.

“How long with the nausea?”

“About a week.”

“You haven’t been exposed to anything unusual, have you?”

“Just a peeled willow-tree root with chicken feathers stuck in it.”

“That’s not it,” he said absently, as if patients reported similar exposure every day. He looked up at her. “Come again?”

“A willow-tree root from Grandmamma,” Catherine said. “It’s a charm.”

“Well, it can’t be that. She
likes
you. If she gave me a charm, I’d call the bomb squad.” He frowned and flipped some pages in her chart. “Lot of winter viruses going around. You look like hell, by the way. You are definitely not your usual self. Mary Beth! Get your buns in here!”

“Dr. Clarkson, you do know that’s no way to summon a fellow health professional, don’t you?” Mary Beth said as she came in. She rolled her eyes at Catherine, and Clarkson grinned.

Catherine took a deep breath and gave herself up to the ordeal of being examined. There was a clock on the wall, apparently put there to take the patients’ minds off their troubles—Mickey Mouse, whose eyes clicked back and forth to mark the seconds. It wasn’t helping.

“Okay,” Clarkson said at the end of his poking and prodding. He helped her get to a sitting position. “You been exposed to pregnancy?”

Catherine looked at him blankly.

“You know, Catherine. The Big Trick? Okay, read my lips. Have you had sexual intercourse with someone of the male persuasion within the last six to eight weeks?”

“Yes.”

“Did you use an effective birth-control method?”

“Condoms.”

“Then you could be pregnant.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Catherine, women have been saying that since the Virgin Mary—”

“I’m supposed to be barren.”

He shrugged. “Famous last words, Catherine. The fertility of infertile people is what keeps us ob-gyn men humble. Besides that, there was no physiological reason for your not conceiving that I can see here in your record. Your husband is going to be one more happy—”

“You didn’t read far enough,” Catherine said. “I don’t have a husband.”

“No husband? Why do I get the feeling that you’re leaving out all the good parts here? Okay, this is what we got. You throw up easy. You faint easy. You’ve got extreme fatigue. Your uterus is enlarged. Your breasts are tender and you haven’t had your period. All of those things could be associated with a screwed-up menstrual cycle, particularly if we throw in one of the viruses that’s been going around. But I don’t think so, because you’ve got Chadwick’s sign. Now, some doctors don’t put too much stock in Chadwick’s sign, but I’m not one of them. I’m going to have Mary Beth draw some blood so we can be sure. Go ahead and get dressed and I’ll send her in here.” He paused. “What’s the matter? You’re not going to fall out again, are you?”