by Jodi Thomas
Sarah didn’t seem upset by his account. “Folks do strange things sometimes. They’re like that when someone dies at the hospital. No matter how bad a dead person looks, there’s always one family member who has to see the body and touch death before believing it.”
“I’d be like that if someone I cared about died.” He looked down at her and wondered if he’d ever cared about anyone as much as he cared about her right now, after knowing her for only a few hours.
“Not me. I want to do all I can for the living, but when they’re gone, they’re gone.”
Bart wanted to change the subject as they neared the door. He didn’t want death to be the last thing he talked about with Sarah. He also knew if he had any sense, he’d say good-bye to her. The last thing she needed in her life was him hanging around. But he couldn’t bring himself to say the words that would end what had started between them. “So, in a few weeks you’ll be graduating and moving on to a real job,” he finally said, more just to keep the conversation going than out of any need to know.
Her mood lightened. “I can hardly wait. There’s nothing greater than being able to help people. I think I was born wanting to be a nurse. Kat and I will move to Columbus at the end of the month to work at the state hospital. It’s huge and pays better than most places.”
“Need any help moving?” Bart could have slapped himself after he asked. Here was his chance to stop seeing her, and what did he do? Offer to help her move to Columbus.
Sarah cocked her head slightly, studying him. The action made his heart turn over inside a chest that seemed suddenly too small to hold it.
“Kat and I don’t have much, but the trip would be easier if we could ride over in a car and not have to take the train.” She looked guilty of being selfish. “But that’d be a lot of trouble for you.”
“No trouble at all,” Bart lied. He’d lose a day’s work, but he would gladly have lost a week’s pay to see her again. “What are friends for?”
Smiling, Sarah extended her hand. “Friends,” she said.
Bart fought the urge to kiss her fingers as he covered her small hand with his. “Friends,” he answered as if she had paid him great honor by speaking that word. He hoped she would just allow him to be close to her. Being near her and never touching her would be a small hell compared to the tragedy of not seeing her at all.
Suddenly Bart did something he rarely did. He smiled.
Eight
IN THE FIRST few weeks after Cody left for Denver, Sarah watched Katherine channel all her energy first into graduating and then into moving out of the dormitory. Katherine seemed unwilling to tell Sarah about her feelings, and she wanted no part of Sarah’s close friendship with Bart.
She’d been moody and silent when Bart drove them and their belongings to Columbus. As early Christmas presents he’d given them both trunks, which made the move easier. Though he told them the gifts were also from Cody, Sarah knew that neither Bart nor Katherine had heard from Cody since the day he left to join the air show, even though he’d promised to write.
As Sarah dressed for her first day of work, she couldn’t shake the feeling that trouble waited just out of sight. Katherine’s refusal to talk about Cody worried her. It was almost as if Katherine believed any mention of his name might somehow endanger him. They both counted time in the number of days he’d been gone.
Sarah watched Katherine unpack her few belongings in their boardinghouse bedroom. Once again they were starting over, only now—unlike the time they ran away from the farm—they had direction and purpose. She broke the silence, wishing they had hours to talk and not minutes. “I wish we’d been given the same shifts at the hospital.”
“Me, too.” Katherine piled a handful of clothes in an old pine dresser. The room they’d rented in Columbus was plain, but twice the size of their dorm room. It had lots of open space and floor-to-ceiling windows facing south. “We couldn’t very well complain, though, since they at least gave us both a job. The state hospital may not be the best place to work, but where else could we make so much money? We’ll be able to pay back our tuition in less than a year.”
Sarah lifted her chin slightly. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to work with the mentally ill. Remember some of the stories the girls in the dorm used to tell?”
Kat laughed. “It’s my opinion there are a great many people running around outside who should be locked up. At least in the hospital we’ll know who the crazies are.”
Sarah shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t mind treating pain, but how am I going to deal with wounds deep inside a patient’s mind?”
Kat patted her friend’s shoulder. “You can do it. I believe in you. Miss Willingham said you’re a natural nurse, remember. Well, just do what comes naturally today. Then tonight when I go in, all I’ll have to do is follow you.”
Sarah pulled her ebony hair into a bun at the nape of her neck in what Kat always called the Miss Willingham style. “But we’ll hardly see each other. I’ll be here in our room at night, and you’ll be here all day.”
Katherine laughed. “Better that than the other way around. I’d hate being here at night. This way I can sleep all day and you can see Bart in the evening.”
“Are you giving me permission?”
“I don’t know….”
“You don’t see him as I do, Kat. Whenever he’s near, the world’s a little brighter for me. Even though our evenings are just friendly and quite formal, I can feel my heart beating faster just being close to him.”
“But he’s only a friend, nothing more?” Kat wondered if either of them believed that.
“We’re just friends,” Sarah agreed. “Only sometimes when we accidentally touch, it’s all I can think about for hours. I daydream about him holding me in his arms.”
“Sarah!” Kat tried to hold her laughter long enough to act shocked.
Sarah lifted her chin, refusing to be embarrassed. “We’ve spent hours talking, but someday I plan to do more. Far more.”
“I don’t think you’ll get much of a chance, with him in Dayton and us in Columbus.”
“He said he’d drive up to see me when he could.” Sarah blushed. “Do you think I could make such a strong man fall in love with me?”
“I think he’d be a fool not to.”
“You’re starting to like him.”
Kat shrugged, trying not to smile too easily and knowing Sarah would continue to see Bart no matter what she said. “I suppose he’s not so bad. He did help us move and all. But I swear I’ll thrash him if he ever calls me Red again.”
Sarah laughed. “You are starting to like him!”
“He’s growing on me. Maybe in twenty or thirty years, I’ll be able to tolerate him.”
“My guess is you’ll like him by the time Cody returns in the spring.”
The smile briefly faded from Katherine’s face, then returned as she held Sarah’s cape for her. “You’d better hurry or you’ll be late on your first day.”
Sarah could tell that Kat didn’t want to talk about Cody, but they couldn’t maintain this silence forever. “He’s coming back, Kat. I feel it.”
“All the way to your bones?” Kat’s smile never touched her green eyes.
“All the way to my bones, and my predictions are far more reliable than yours.” She crammed a biscuit in her mouth and ran out the door, waving and mumbling goodbye and praying her bones were more accurate about Cody than Kat had been about Bart. “Cody will write,” she said to herself as she left. “He’ll write and he’ll come back.”
Quickly Sarah walked the several blocks to the hospital. Her new blue wool uniform and cape were enough to warm her in the early December air.
She felt very professional in her white starched apron and spotless round collar. This was it, what she had wanted to do all her life. She was a nurse at last. Sarah fought the urge to shout it out to every person on the street and push the tiny fear out of mind. Life had never been so wonderful for her, she realized. She was out of school, she was
a real nurse, and she was falling love with Bartholomew Rome.
As she entered the grounds of the mental institution, excitement and apprehension built inside her. The dark brick had the look of a great wall devoid of any architectural design except the half-moon brickwork over each window. Large evergreens had been planted close to the walls as if the gardener had tried to hide what was inside.
Sarah studied the building in the morning light. She’d heard horrible stories of what happened in the hospital from nurses who’d tried to work there. Yet the building seemed solid and devoid of demons. She half expected to hear cries and screams as she neared. Bars striped all the windows, but other than that the hospital could have been any other in the state.
When Sarah reached the front door she was surprised to find it unlocked. She straightened her dress and shoved her fears aside as she entered the lobby in what she hoped was her most professional manner.
Walking to the desk, she wished Katherine were with her. A massive oak counter was strategically centered where several hallways converged. Doors of solid oak blocked each hallway. A clerk, dark circles under his eyes, stared at her with a bored expression.
Sarah cleared her throat. “I was told to report here. 1 was just hired to—”
“I know.” The clerk nodded as though he’d heard this speech a hundred times before. “You’re one of the new nurses. Sit over there and I’ll send for Mrs. Filmore.” He waved a bony finger toward a long wooden bench against the opposite wall.
Sarah sat where she’d been ordered. She wanted to start work, not wait on a bench. She heard the low sound of someone crying. A door slammed somewhere deep inside the building and the crying stopped. Silence followed. Another door opened and Sarah heard a cry for help, an agonizing cry that tore at her heart.
She stood to ask the clerk if she could be of assistance. But before she could say anything, the front doors burst open with a thundering sound that echoed off the walls like a drumroll.
“Hold him down!” yelled an overweight policeman with sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve. He barreled through the door with three men shuffling in his wake.
Sarah watched in horror as two other policemen dragged a screaming man into the corridor. The man twisted and thrashed as if Lucifer himself had a hold on him. Though his hands were bound to his sides, the officers held the prisoner tight between them. A cut on his head sprinkled blood over everything, but no one seemed to notice except Sarah. The man’s clothes were filthy; there were urine stains on his pants, and caked mud hung from his cuffs. Sarah fought back the bile climbing up her throat.
The police sergeant slammed a fistful of papers under the clerk’s nose. “Sign this guy in. We aren’t keeping him any longer over at the jail. He’s as crazy as any I’ve seen.”
The clerk picked up the papers and smiled sarcastically. “You giving out diagnoses now, Sergeant? I thought that was the wing doctor’s job.”
The sergeant glared at the clerk with a long-nurtured hatred in his eyes. “Tell me, Ralph, did you get this job
’cause you’re the lowest attendant in the place, or are you the top inmate? I never figured out which.”
Ralph twisted his head back and forth as if anger somehow made it loose at the neck.
The bound man screamed. “No! I won’t go! I won’t be locked up in here!”
“Shut up!” yelled the sergeant. “Shut up or I’ll slap you a good one with this nightstick.”
The clerk looked at the papers before him. “Won’t do no good to hit the man. Crazies don’t have feelings like the rest of us.”
“Ya, but it would make me feel better.” Before the sergeant could strike the man, two orderlies came from behind a locked door on the right. The policemen almost threw the bound man to his new captors. He fought as the two men in white jackets pulled him through the doors. One talked to him quietly as though he were a child who had a very limited vocabulary. The orderly’s tone sent the bound man into even more convulsive attempts to free himself.
Grabbing his receipt, the sergeant glared at the clerk. “I can’t stand this place. Full of creeps.” He hurried toward the door muttering, “Hell on earth, that’s what it is, hell on earth.”
The clerk dismissed the sergeant’s words with only a slight lift of his shoulders. He pulled a towel from under the counter and wiped the blood off his desk. After a few minutes he looked up and noticed Sarah. “I like to see them come in like that.” He seemed to be talking more to himself than to her. “When they come in fighting, there’s more of a chance they’ll get out of here. It’s the ones who come in all quiet who never see the outside of these walls.”
Sarah jumped as a voice shouted from the end of a windowless hallway just as the stout frame of a nurse appeared. She was built like a tugboat, and her voice echoed like their low toneless whistle. “So you’re the new nurse? I’m Nurse Filmore. Fresh out of school, are you?”
Sarah nodded.
Mrs. Filmore came into the light. The head nurse looked as if she belonged behind locked doors rather than outside them. Her uniform was sloppy and in need of a washing with lye soap. She’d pushed her long sleeves up far enough to reveal hairy arms and dirty elbows. She smiled at Sarah like a hungry lioness who’d just found fresh meat. “You ever been in a nuthouse before?”
Sarah shook her head.
The nurse laughed with a snort. “Well, I’d like to start you out in the snake pit. That’s where we keep the lowest of creatures. We have to feed them in a trough, and they mess all over the floor like animals.”
She sighed unhappily. “But the doctor needs nurses on the infirmary wing. Crazy people get sick just like everyone else.” She shook her head. “Start you with the worst of them is what I’d have done. That way no matter what you see after that, it ain’t as bad as the pit.”
Sarah let out a long-held breath. “Can you tell me where the infirmary is?” she asked the clerk before the nurse could give her any more information about the other parts of the hospital.
The clerk pointed without looking up from his papers. “Just knock on that door over there and someone will let you in. Check in with Dr. Farris.”
Sarah said thank you and hurried away from Nurse Filmore. She hoped the remainder of the staff wasn’t as lacking in compassion as these two. If so she would never be able to tell the patients from the employees. As she waited for the door to open, she could hear Nurse Filmore grumbling to the clerk about Dr. Farris. Sarah didn’t hear all that she said, but it was plain the head nurse didn’t think too much of working with him.
The lock on the other side clicked, and the massive door swung open. To Sarah’s surprise, a kindly middle-aged man in a white coat appeared. Though he offered her a genuine smile, his eyes looked tired, and his was the kind of exhaustion from which it would take much longer than a night to recover.
“Welcome, nurse.” His voice was low and slow, and a southern accent flavored his words. “I’m Dr. Farris.”
Sarah introduced herself.
The doctor nodded formally, but again she noticed no life in his eyes. He looked like a man who had long ago given up on finding any meaning or joy in his life.
Dr. Farris pointed. “There’s blood on your apron.”
Sarah looked down in shock. Her first day and she hadn’t even started work yet. “The man they brought in a few minutes—”
Dr. Farris smiled. “I know. I’ve already treated him. In the future bring an extra apron. In our infirmary we maintain high standards for our nurses.”
As though they were on a stroll through a southern mansion, Dr. Farris offered her his arm and led her up a narrow hallway with closed doors on either side. “This is the infirmary. When patients are checked in, they’re put in the infirmary for a few days of tests and observation. Then they’re classified. The more violent and disruptive they are, the higher the floor they’ll be assigned to.” Dr. Farris could have been reading his speech like a bored tour guide.
“When patients fall ill or hu
rt themselves, they’re moved here, and here they remain until they’re well enough to return to the ward. The last two rooms are for patients with tuberculosis. When they become too ill to be violent, they’ll be moved to the TB cottages out back. Many of our TB patients are not mentally ill, they simply have nowhere else to go.”
He reached the center desk, where two men were playing cards. “These are our orderlies. You are never to enter a room without an orderly beside you, no matter how sick the patient.” He turned to face Sarah. “Do you understand?”
Sarah nodded, but she thought she might be safer with some of the patients than with these two men. One was muscular and tattooed, as though he’d spent most of his life at sea. He looked like a man who would kill someone for pocket change. The other orderly looked like his first cousin.
The doctor explained all the workings of the ward. Except for the locking and unlocking of doors and being shadowed by an orderly, Sarah found the procedures similar to those she would have expected in any other hospital.
“We try to treat all our patients with kindness, and most respond in time. Should any violent patients come down from the fourth floor, they’ll be strapped into bed while recovering.”
Sarah nodded.
Dr. Farris handed her a stack of folders. “Now if you will accompany me, I was just about to make my morning rounds.”
Sarah followed him as he moved from room to room, unlocking door after door and examining each patient with unlimited kindness. To her surprise all the rooms were clean and the patients seemed well cared for. A few were talkative, but most were too sick to speak or chose to be silent. Even the man she’d seen enter an hour before was sleeping soundly on his bed, his arms still strapped to his sides. His clothes had been changed, but he hadn’t been bathed. Several others had suffered broken bones, two had pneumonia, many were afflicted with fever or bowel trouble, and one had been severely burned.