The Gilded Hour (41 page)

T
HURSDAY
MORNING
A
NNA
woke at dawn, full of energy, and left the house without eating anything at all; to step into the kitchen would mean being caught up in the frenzied preparations for the party on the East River or the wedding. All the way to the New Amsterdam, Anna kept tripping over the idea that Sophie and Cap would be getting married in just one day’s time.

Anna had avoided dwelling on what it would mean to be without her cousin for months or even years, but now she could think of little else. There was a lot of letter writing in her future, but she had discovered that she liked writing letters to Jack, and she thought writing to Sophie and Cap might be a good thing, a way to sort through all the changes ahead.

She reminded herself that she had patients to see. She tried to remember the last time she had been unhappy to have to work, and could not remember a single instance. She wondered what it said about her that at almost twenty-eight years old she had never even imagined staying away from work. There were, in fact, more interesting and even more important things in her world.

There was Cap, who would board a ship tomorrow and never come home again. Anna imagined him wrapped in blankets and looking out into a world of winter blues and whites, the cold clear air and perfect silence of the high Alps.

The urge to turn around and go spend the day with Cap and Sophie came over her and had to be dismissed; she would see her patients and then spend the afternoon and evening on the East River. The party would be a great deal of fun, everyone talking and laughing, and the noise of the celebration on the bridge would overwhelm all else. Sophie would not be there, but Jack would.

At one he would fetch her and they would go to meet the rest of the family at the ferry dock and then she would be free for an unheard-of three and a half days: not on duty or on call until Monday. After the wedding her time was her own, to spend dozing in the garden or more likely, in the new house answering questions about window hangings and linen closets while Jack and his cousins began putting bigger things to rights and his sisters went to work on the sewing machine they had already determined must be installed before everything else.

By the time Anna reached the New Amsterdam she had reconciled herself to the day ahead and could turn her mind to rounds with her students, to a scheduled surgery and a meeting, and to seeing three patients who were in decline.

She left her most difficult case for the end of the workday, so that she didn’t have to feel rushed. The patient was a fifty-nine-year-old woman, unmarried and without family, who would die sometime in the next day or two because she had ignored a cut on the sole of her foot too long. Anna had amputated, knowing that it was almost certainly too late, and so it had turned out to be. Rachel Branson had led a quiet, even peaceful life, but her death would be neither of those things.

•   •   •

A
NNA
FOUND
HER
patient sitting quietly, her hands folded over the newspaper in her lap while she looked out the window. Her bed was at the very end of the surgical ward, which provided her with a little more privacy and a view.

Miss Branson was flushed with fever, her brow and throat damp with sweat. Pain had taken up permanent residence in her face, drawing creases down her cheeks and along her mouth. Anna reached for the chart that hung at the foot of the bed and made a note for an increase in her pain medication. She hoped that Miss Branson would slip into a coma before the pain outstripped every relief medicine had to offer.

Then she sat down on the single chair, holding the chart against herself.

“I’ve been watching the bit of the new bridge I can see,” Miss Branson told her. “Such a lot of excitement, rushing back and forth. The president is there, according to the newspaper. It’s a wondrous thing.” She raised her face to look at Anna. “Are you going to the celebration?”

“Yes,” Anna said. “Later this afternoon.”

“With friends?”

Over the time she had been practicing Anna had learned how to deflect personal questions without giving offense, but she found herself wanting to talk to Miss Branson.

“With my family. It’s a busy time for us. Tomorrow my cousin is getting married and she’ll be sailing for Europe with her new husband right away.”

“Oh, that sounds lovely,” Miss Branson said. “Fireworks and a spring wedding. I wouldn’t know what to do with my excitement.”

“It is exciting,” Anna agreed.

After a long moment Miss Branson said, “I would have liked to see the fireworks.”

“You have a good view of the sky from this window,” Anna said. “You should be able to see them.”

A thoughtful look passed over the older woman’s face. “Maybe,” she said finally. She seemed to rouse herself purposefully. “I have a little savings,” she said. “I’ve written out instructions for the bank, to release those funds to the hospital to pay for my care and—afterward.”

Some people needed to talk about practical matters, unwilling or unable to let go of details. Miss Branson outlined her arrangements for her small apartment and what would become of her things, and Anna listened without interrupting her.

“But really what I wanted to tell you is that I have some lovely hats,” she was saying. “Do you think you might like to have them?”

Startled, Anna marshaled her thoughts, but Miss Branson held up a hand to forestall Anna’s answer. “They are my own work, the best of my work. I started in a milliner’s shop when I was just eight years old. Six days a week, from seven in the morning to seven in the evening. At first I swept floors and at thirty I was the designer. I trained under old Mr. Malcolm and then I worked for his son and finally his grandson. My whole life in that one place. Fifty years in the same shop on the same street.”

“That is a very long time.”

“He’s still alive,” Miss Branson said. Her gaze was far away, but her tone was matter-of-fact. “The first Mr. Malcolm. Ninety-four years old but still spry, the kind of elderly gentleman who seems just as dry and tough as gristle.” She glanced at Anna, who nodded that she understood.

“But terribly absentminded about everything outside his business. Even when I first knew him, Mr. Malcolm could never remember birthdays—not even his own—or anniversaries or invitations, and he mixed up his children, running through all the names until he hit the right one. Jacob-Hans-Jeb or Amity-Ruth-Josie, just like that. They laughed it off, though I think when the children were little there were some hurt feelings, now and then. I didn’t see it at first but as I got older I realized that it wasn’t really comical, how much passed him by. How many small good things in his life went unnoticed.”

She turned her head to watch the activity on the bridge for a moment, and then she picked up her story again. “He was a strict taskmaster, but not mean. Never mean. Gruff but good-hearted, is how I think of him. My own father died young and I felt the lack, so I sometimes pretended that Mr. Malcolm was my father. I think the idea came to me because he always remembered my name, you see. His daughters he couldn’t keep straight, but he knew my name. And that made me think I was a little special.”

Anna was fairly sure that Miss Branson had had no visitors, though she had been admitted to the hospital the previous Saturday.

“I sent word, Monday morning. Paid a messenger to take a note to say that I was here and couldn’t come in. Didn’t hear back but after—after you told me my situation I thought I should write again, but maybe not. They might be closed up for the celebration. They might.”

Anna drew in a deep breath and held it. The simplest of stories, and her heart was beating so fiercely she could feel the pulse in her wrists. A physician had to keep some distance, but once in a while a simple story would catch her unawares, sliding like a needle through a crack in a thimble to embed itself deeply, without warning, in tender flesh.

Miss Branson was looking at Anna with an expression that couldn’t be identified. Not pain or sorrow or regret, and nothing of anger. Anna could not rail against an insensitive and cruel employer in the face of such placid acceptance. She certainly could not disturb the woman’s peaceful state of mind, not now or ever.

“Things never quite turn out the way you imagine, do they,” Miss Branson said, her voice low and almost amused in tone. “You have to pay attention to the moment in your hands, before it’s gone.

“Now, would you have any use for my hats? I don’t like to leave my bills unpaid, and you have looked after me very well.”

•   •   •

A
NNA
CHANGED
INTO
the summer-weight frock she had brought with her, brushed out her hair and put it up again in a loose chignon on the back of her head, changed her shoes, and picked up the straw boater that would protect her from the sun on the river. She regarded herself in the mirror. Margaret was fond of pointing out that Jack had done wonders for Anna’s complexion, making it more of a subtle accusation than a compliment. Anna saw that it was true, her color was high and her skin clear. She wondered if sexual frustration could be as invigorating as sex itself, wondered what Margaret would say to this question. The idea put a smile on her face. She hadn’t been alone with Jack for a very long time, but that would change soon.

It was just after one and he would be waiting downstairs. She was suddenly very impatient to see him, and had to remind herself that it would not fill patients or staff with confidence to see a doctor skipping down the hall. She thought in passing of Maura Kingsolver, the surgeon coming on shift. Fortunately there were no pending surgeries that she had to be informed about. It seemed as if Anna might really get out of the hospital on time.

Jack was talking to Mr. Abernathy in the lobby. He stood with his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels, his chin lowered to his chest. A powerfully built man at ease in his own skin, listening closely to an old man’s story. He had been raised in a household that valued stories and the people who told them. It was one part of what made him good at his work.

He was wearing a beautifully cut suit that fit him perfectly. A summer-weight wool of a deep buff color, his jacket was open to reveal a checked vest buttoned over a soft white shirt and a copper-colored silk tie in a loose bow around a standing collar. His sisters’ influence, and one way in which Anna could never compete; she paid little attention to fashion and was satisfied to let her aunt and cousin choose for her. As they had today, because it wouldn’t have occurred to her that the clothes she wore at the hospital were not right for an afternoon on the river. Or not until it was too late to go home and change.

Jack looked up and caught her eye. His whole face came alive as he broke into a smile. He was here for her. That odd and wondrous thought
was in her mind still when the wide front doors flew open with a tremendous crash that made Anna jump in place.

An ambulance driver appeared holding up one end of a stretcher, backing through the door carefully. Jack and Mr. Abernathy were there before Anna even realized they were moving, blocking her view while they helped maneuver the stretcher all the way in and then carrying it through to the examination room.

A young woman wrapped in bloody sheets was struggling and writhing to free herself while the ambulance doctor tried to put three fingers to her throat to time her pulse. The driver stood back, arms crossed over his chest, looking studiously bored. To Anna he said, “This one’s asking for a Dr. Savard.” Ambulance drivers were notoriously hard to shock and often simply rude, but Anna had no time to teach him manners.

“You’re in the way,” Anna said. “Step outside.”

•   •   •

A
MBULANCE
DOCTORS
WERE
employees of the police department, generally men newly out of medical college and in need of practical experience. Jack knew most of them at least by sight, but this one he had never met before.

“I’m an intern at Bellevue, Neill Graham. You’re Dr. Savard?”

“I’m one of two Dr. Savards at this hospital. This lady is a stranger to me. She must be my cousin’s patient.”

“You’ll have to do,” said Graham. “She can’t wait.”

Anna’s expression cleared, all her questions and confusion leaving her face to be replaced by a focused calm. She looked over her shoulder at Mr. Abernathy. “Is Dr. Kingsolver available?”

“Already in surgery,” he said. “Room two is free.”

Orderlies appeared out of a side door to scoop up the stretcher.

To Neill Graham Anna said, “It’s the first operating room on the right. Please stay with her until I get there, I’ll just be a moment.”

Then she turned to Jack.

“I’m sorry.”

He nodded, adding a half shrug. He understood very well the regret, and knew too that it would last only until she stood in front of her patient. The woman’s condition would drive all other thoughts out of her mind. He said, “I’ll go to the ferry dock to explain.”

“I’m sorry about your day too.”

She was already moving away, but she changed direction and dashed toward him, stopping short to go up on tiptoe and press a kiss to his mouth, a fleeting touch he might have imagined if not for the scent of her skin. Then she was gone, flying down the hall to the operating rooms.