It was almost midnight, central standard time, when I gave my name to the blue-uniformed nurse at the reception desk in the hospital. I slipped out of my topcoat while she checked the card file in front of her. Through the door I could see the taxi that had brought me from the airport pull away from the hospital.
A nun in a gray habit walked by the desk. “Sister Angelica,” the receptionist called.
The nun turned back. “Yes, Elizabeth?”
“This is Mr. Rowan,” the nurse introduced us. “Would you mind taking him up to eight-twenty-two? His son is there.”
The nun’s face was gentle. “Follow me, please,” she said softly.
We went up in a self-service elevator. “There are no operators on after ten o’clock,” she apologized, pressing the button.
We left the elevator on the eighth floor and started down a blue-painted hallway. There was another corridor off the main hall. We turned into it. Down at its end, I could make out a small figure huddled on a bench outside one of the rooms.
I broke into a run, leaving the nun behind me. “Marge!” I cried.
She lifted her face as I came up to her. Lines of worry and exhaustion were etched deep into it. “Brad!” she spoke huskily. It was a voice that had known many tears that day. “Brad, you’re here!”
She swayed and would have fallen if I hadn’t caught her. “How is he?” I asked anxiously.
She began to cry. “I don’t know. The doctors say it’s too soon to tell. He hasn’t reached the crisis yet.” She looked up at me, her gray eyes reminding me of Elaine. They were filled with the same kind of pain.
I couldn’t face those eyes. I looked at the closed door. “Can we see him?” I asked.
“They said we can peek in at midnight,” she answered.
“It’s almost that now.” I turned to the nun questioningly.
“I’ll get the doctor,” she said. She went back down the hall and vanished into one of the rooms.
“You’d better sit down.” I steered Marge back to the bench and sat down with her.
Her face was pale and drawn. I lit a cigarette and placed it between her lips. She dragged on it nervously.
“Have you eaten anything yet?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I couldn’t. I have no appetite.”
Footsteps were coming down the hall. We looked up. Sister Angelica was returning with a doctor. “You can look in now,” he said gently. “But only for a minute.” He held the door open for us.
Silently we stepped through the doorway. I heard Marge draw in her breath as we saw him, and I felt her nails grip into my hand. Later I found blood marks on my palm.
His body was hidden in a massive iron lung; only the top of his head showed. His thick black hair was glistening and oily with perspiration. His eyes were closed tight in his paper-white face. A small black tube led from his nostril to an oxygen tank nearby and his breathing was tortured and labored.
Marge stepped forward to touch him, but the doctor stopped her with a whisper. “Don’t disturb him. He’s resting, and he’ll need all he can get.”
She stood quietly there, her hand in mine, while we looked at our son. Her lips were moving as if she were speaking to him, but no sound came from them.
I looked at Brad closely. This was my flesh and I could feel its pain. This was the giant sprung from my loins, and now he lay there helpless, a part of me whose suffering I could not lighten.
I remembered the last time I saw him before he left for school in the fall. I had jibed him about being too light to go out for the football team. With his height, I had said, he’d better concentrate on basketball. It was less dangerous and if he was any good, he could grab fifty grand a year from the gamblers.
I couldn’t remember what he had answered, but I could recall the shocked expression on his face that I would even joke about such a thing.
And now he was wrapped in a piece of metal that had to breathe for him because his body was too wracked to carry on. My baby. I used to walk the floor with him at night when he cried. The strongest lungs in the world, I used to complain. I wouldn’t complain now. Nothing was strong enough. Not even I could breathe for him. Only a metal monster, whose white aseptic sides leered ominously in the hospital light.
“Better go now,” the doctor whispered.
I turned to Marge. She blew a kiss to the sleeping boy and I took her arm and followed the doctor out of the room. The door closed silently behind us.
“When will we know anything, Doctor?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “Can’t tell, Mr. Rowan. He hasn’t reached the crisis yet. Could be an hour or a week. It’s anybody’s guess.”
“Will he—will he be affected permanently?”
“We can’t tell anything until after the crisis, Mr. Rowan,” he answered. “Once that’s passed, we can check and find out whether any damage has been done. There’s only one thing I can say to you now.”
“What’s that, Doctor?” I asked eagerly.
“We’re doing everything that is humanly possible. Try not to worry or anticipate anything. It won’t help if you make yourselves sick too.” He turned to Marge. “You’ve been here a long time,” he said gently. “Time you got some rest.”
She brushed the back of her hand across her eyes. “I’m not tired.”
“Make her rest, Mr. Rowan,” he said to me. “You can see your son again at eight in the morning. Good night.” He turned and went down the hall.
We watched him go back into his room, then turned to Marge. “You heard the doctor,” I said.
She nodded.
“Come on, then,” I said. “What hotel are we at?”
“I didn’t bother,” she said dully. “I came right from the airport.”
“There’s a telephone downstairs that you can use,” Sister Angelica said. “You can call a hotel from there.”
I thanked her. “Where is your bag?” I asked Marge.
“At the reception desk,” she answered.
Slowly we walked back to the elevator. We came out of the elevator and went to the reception desk. “The phone is straight down the corridor,” Sister Angelica told me.
I left them at the desk while I went to the telephone and called a hotel and a cab. When I came back, they weren’t there. I leaned over the desk. “My wife?” I asked the nurse.
She looked up at me from a magazine on the shelf in front of her. “I believe she went to the chapel with Sister Angelica, Mr. Rowan,” she said, gesturing with her hand. “It’s just past the elevator, first door on your right.”
It was a small chapel, filled with a golden light from the many candles flickering on the altar. I stood in the doorway for a moment, looking in. Marge and Sister Angelica were at the rail, their heads bent forward. Slowly I walked down the little aisle and knelt beside Marge.
I looked at her. Her hands were clasped on the rail before her and her forehead touched her fingers. Her lips were moving and her eyes were closed, but she knew I was beside her. She moved slightly closer to me.
34
I lay quietly on my pillow, listening to Marge crying in her sleep. Silently, I took a cigarette from the night table and, cupping my hand to shield the light from her, lit it. I let the smoke curl out through my nostrils.
There was no sleep for me. I kept remembering what Marge had said before she finally succumbed to the exhaustion that had seeped all her strength.
“I’m so frightened, Brad,” she had wept.
“He’ll be all right,” I said more confidently than I had felt. I could feel a strange band of tightness in my throat.
“Please, God,” she cried. “I couldn’t bear to lose him, too.”
Then I was sure that she knew and still I didn’t speak. Words of reassurance rose to my lips, but I could say nothing about myself. Another time, another place, maybe. But not now.
I thought about Elaine. Now I could understand what she had meant. The years of living would take their toll. Now
I knew why she had asked how I would feel.
I squashed the butt out in a tray. Marge was still weeping softly in her sleep. A tenderness for her came over me that I had never felt before. I slipped my arm beneath her shoulders and drew her head to my breast.
She rested there, softly, lightly, like a child, and soon her weeping stopped. Her breath came easy and restfully. I lay there, waiting out the night until the day crept in the windows.
It was a week before we got the answer. Then, one morning, when we came into the hospital, everyone was smiling. Sister Angelica, the receptionist, the elevator operator, the orderlies and attendants who were usually grim and sober in their duties. All were smiling for us.
The doctor came out of his little office down the hall, his hands outstretched. I took one, Marge took the other. “It’s over,” he said happily. “He’ll be okay. A little rest and he’ll be good as new.”
We couldn’t speak, only stare at each other with tear-filled eyes. Our free hands clung together tightly as we followed him down the hall to Brad’s room.
He was lying on a bed, his head slightly raised on a pillow, facing the door. On the other side of the room was the big white iron lung. Together we knelt at the side of his bed and kissed him and cried.
At last he smiled at us, a slightly weak version of his old grin. His hand moved on the sheet, pointing to the iron lung. “Man!” he said faintly, but with all his usual spirit. “Dig that crazy wind tunnel!”
I went right to the office from the airport. Dad was taking Marge and Junior directly home. It was a little before nine o’clock and the office was empty. I grinned to myself. There was a lot I had to catch up on. I closed the door to my office and began to go through the papers on my desk.
Bob Levi was going to be all right. He had stepped right in when I was gone. When the word went out that I was okay all my old customers wanted back in. He had taken them back, but at increased rates. I guess he felt they should pay for their crimes.
It was almost ten o’clock when I looked up. Where the devil was everybody? I punched down the switch on the intercom.
“Brad, is that you?” Mickey’s voice was startled.
“It ain’t a ghost!” I roared in my best Simon Legree manner.
Then everyone from the office boy up piled into my office and shook my hand. They were all happy for me. I felt good. Everything was going fine.
When they had left, Bob lingered behind. “We have a twelve-thirty luncheon meeting with the Steel Institute committee,” he said.
“Okay,” I answered.
“And their attorneys promised to have the contract on your desk right after lunch,” he added.
I looked up at him. “I don’t know what I would have done without you,” I said.
He smiled down at me. “I feel the same way about you,” he said. “Funny, isn’t it?”
“But good,” I laughed.
He went back into his office and the morning worked on. Shortly before lunch, Mickey came into my office carrying a package.
“The furrier sent this over to you.” She placed it on my desk.
I looked at it. For a moment I didn’t remember. Then it came back. Tomorrow was our anniversary. It was hard to believe that almost a month had gone since that morning I drove Jeanie down to school and she had put a bee in my bonnet. So much had happened.
“Have it put in the car,” I said to her.
She turned and took it out of the office with her. I watched the door close behind her. I had ordered it the morning I first met Elaine.
Elaine! My fingers froze on the desk. I had promised to call but never got the chance. A thousand years had passed since I spoke to her last. I picked up the phone and dialed long distance.
I was just about to give the operator her number when Bob stuck his head in the door.
“Better hurry,” he said. “You don’t want to be late for your first official meeting with them.”
Reluctantly I put down the phone and got up. I would call her right after lunch. I picked up my hat and coat and walked to the door.
I didn’t know it then, but she had already been dead more than twelve hours.
The Beginning As The End
My head ached and my eyes were burning with unshed tears. I don’t know how long I sat there staring out the windows but I found no answer.
The buzzer hawked. Wearily I walked over to my desk and picked up the phone. “Yes, Mickey.”
“Sandra Wallace is here to see you.”
I hesitated a moment. The clock on my desk said almost six. Then I made up my mind. “Send her in,” I said.
I stood there as the door opened and Sandra came in. She was strong and blond and vital. The basic forces of life were powerful in her. There was nothing in this world that could destroy her. I was sure of that. She was so different from Elaine.
Her blue eyes looked at me. “Hello, Brad,” she said softly, standing just inside the door.
“Sandy,” I said gently. “Come on in.”
She came slowly into the room. “How are you?”
“Okay,” I said wearily.
“I’m glad your kid’s better,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said. I wondered vaguely where she had learned about it. “What brings you to town?”
“I have a message for you,” she said.
“From Mr. Brady?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No.”
I looked at her questioningly.
“From Mrs. Schuyler,” she said.
For a moment the words didn’t penetrate, then they burst in my brain. “From Mrs. Schuyler?” I said stupidly. “But she’s—she’s—”
“I know,” Sandy said quietly. “I heard about it this morning. Mr. Brady was very upset.”
“How did you get a message from her?” I asked. “Did you see her?”
She shook her head again. “No. It came this morning in the mail.” She opened her pocketbook and took out an envelope. She held it toward me.
I took it from her and looked at it. The envelope was open. I looked up at her.
“The first one is mine,” she said quickly. “There’s another one inside. That’s yours.”
I lifted the flap. The faint familiar scent of Elaine’s perfume came to my nostrils. I closed my eyes. I could see her standing there before me. I pulled out the inside envelope. It was sealed. I slit the flap. I looked at Sandy. She was still standing.
“I’ll wait outside,” she said quickly.
I shook my head. “Stay here,” I said.
She went over to the couch and sat down. I sank into my chair and began to read Elaine’s letter. Her hand was neat and orderly, it betrayed no excitement. Apparently her mind had already been made up when she sat down to write it. It was dated two days ago.
My Dearest Brad,
Ever since I left you at the plane I have been thinking and praying for you constantly. My one great hope is that your son is well. That is the most important thing in the whole world.
It was in thinking of him, that I realized how small and foolish we had been, how selfish both of us really were. We, who were ready to sacrifice all our worlds for the sake of a moment’s passion.
For in truth, that was all we could ever have for each other. I realized that too. My life had already gone and I was trying to borrow some of yours.
I think I may have mentioned that you reminded me of David, that you had the same qualities and the same regard and love for your family that he had for us.
That was what first drew me to you, but I didn’t know it then. You were the same kind of people.
In my loneliness while you were gone I found my way to the cemetery where David and the children rest. I sat there on the bench and looked at the monument that already bears my name. It is a place at his side, the place at his side I always held in his life. It was then it came to me that if I were to be with you, I could never be with him and the children. We could never be together again; we who meant so much to each
other!
That is how I found that I did not love you less, but that I loved David and my children more.
So please do not think that I have betrayed your love. I cherished it more than I could ever tell. Please think kindly of me and pray for me.
Love,
Elaine
My eyes still burned from all the tears that day but I felt better now. There was a weight off my soul. I got to my feet. “You’re very kind to bring this to me, Sandy,” I said huskily.
She rose to her feet. “I had to bring it,” she said. “I knew that you loved her.”
I took a deep breath. “I loved her,” I said. I just never knew how much pain she lived with, how hurt she had been. All I could remember now were her eyes, so smoky blue, almost violet with the pain swirling in their depths.
She was at the door. “I’ve got to get back,” she said. “I promised Aunt Nora I would be home by twelve.”
“Aunt Nora?” I asked, surprise creeping into my voice.
She nodded. “Mr. Brady took me home to meet her. He said he wants me to feel that I’m her daughter. I’m staying with them for a little while.” A curious smile crossed her lips. “I wonder what you said to him that day. He’s been a completely different person since. I’m even beginning to like him. He’s actually a very gentle man when you get to know him.”
“I’m glad, Sandy,” I said, walking over to the door and looking down at her. “You’ll be good for both of them now.”
“I hope so.” She smiled, holding her cheek up to me to be kissed like a little girl.
I kissed her. “Bye, Sandy.”
The door closed behind her and I went over to the window and opened it. I stood there quietly and tore Elaine’s letter into tiny little shreds and let them flutter out the window.
It was an end, but it also was a beginning. A new life and understanding for me. I was no different from many other guys who forgot that fall was the season of maturity and reached back desperately for the fires of spring. I knew better now. You can’t turn back the clock. There was a lot of living to be done with Marge and the kids. Good living. Now I knew what Elaine had meant. A place at their side. I took a deep breath. The cold air went far into my lungs and felt good there. Suddenly I was anxious to be home….
Harold Robbins Thriller Collection Page 19