by M. J. Cates
“It’s a university policy, not the clinic’s.”
“Yes. But I thought, as you are director of the Phipps, it would be your opinion that would count.”
“I could ask for a waiver, true. That doesn’t guarantee it would be granted. This is a policy of long standing, and many able physicians and nurses have left the hospital’s employ because of it.”
“Then, if I may, I ask you to make a strong recommendation that the board make an exception. You know both of us well, you know our work…”
“I know you quite well. Mr. Kromer is a relatively recent addition.”
“But you’ll make the recommendation?” Imogen persisted, feeling pushy, but she had learned that clarity and persistence were the only things that worked with Dr. Ganz.
“I will—provided you think this over very carefully. It seems so hasty.”
“I will think it over,” Imogen said, “and I’ll consider everything you say. God knows, I have every reason to value your advice.”
He gave a nod. “Then please consider this: I have seen these marriages before and by and large they don’t work. Oh, the marriages may work, but the careers suffer. The women’s careers. Take a look around you—just here, at the Phipps. Look at the women who are doing well: Dr. Quinn, Dr. Fein, Dr. Artemis. Not one of them married.”
“Donna is brilliant. Are you really saying her career here at the Phipps would suffer if she were married?”
“Marriage seems alien territory for Dr. Artemis. We don’t know how she’d react. But I can name you half a dozen other women at Johns Hopkins whose careers were derailed when they got married. You’re competing with physicians for whom medicine, psychiatry, is the be-all and end-all of their existence. They live in one world, not two.”
“Well, that’s an excellent argument for marrying within the staff, then.”
Dr. Ganz smiled. “You delight me with your quickness, as always. But once you are married, it will be Mr. Kromer who comes first—not psychiatry, not medicine, not you. It will be your husband. And if you should be blessed with children, they will come first. You can’t be changing diapers and running a psychiatric ward simultaneously.”
“Not simultaneously. During working hours, one works. During off-hours—”
Dr. Ganz raised a hand to cut her off. “There will be competing demands on your time. Children are exhausting. So are schizophrenics, lab work, manic-depressives. If there comes a point where Mr. Kromer’s career demands one thing and your career another, it will be your career that suffers, not his.”
“Carl assures me he sees our two careers as equal.”
“He is unquestionably a progressive young man. I’ve heard him argue the suffragettes’ case quite persuasively. But the things a man says when he’s in love may change in the course of time.”
“Dr. Ganz, I don’t go into this with the expectation of a bad marriage.”
Ganz saw that his words had stung her, and softened his tone. “Forgive me for being so candid. I hope you will see my concern as paternal—in only the best sense of that term. Please think things over awhile, and when you have made up your mind I will do whatever I can to aid in your happiness.”
10
The deep pleasure of quiet, the uncluttered joy of being clean, Quentin wrote in his notebook. And the food is ambrosia compared to hardtack and bully beef.
He paused with his pen above the page, remembering the first morning he had felt like himself when he woke in the field hospital. The quiet had wrapped itself around his head so thoroughly that he thought at first his eardrums had been blown out. He made the slightest adjustment to his position, the slightest movement of his arm, and the sheets rustled, almost rasped. Wondrous. He ran his fingers along the sheet and made the sound again. The linen was blinding white and smelled of carbolic; he pressed it to his face. It smelled of health, of order and discipline. It smelled of optimism. In days to come, he would realize that it was not so quiet here, that you could hear the thunder of the front ten miles away, someone else’s bad dream.
He had been carried unconscious from Hill 70 and taken to a dressing station. He was streaked with blood, most of it from a broken nose and a gash on his cheek that must have been sustained when he was thrown into a trench support. Other than these, he had no obvious injuries.
Hours later he was conveyed by mule-drawn ambulance to a casualty clearing station.
He had no memory of any of this; he had been told about it days later when he regained consciousness in the hospital. His head throbbed and hammered with a headache beyond anything he would have thought possible; he was certain he had taken a round in the skull. The advent of consciousness brought with it a paroxysm of vomiting that lasted—although he had nothing in his stomach to eject—for what seemed an eternity.
For several days he did not remember his name or where he was from. He sensed dimly that this was a pathetic state to be in, but the vise-like headache prevented him from worrying about it. The doctors and nurses didn’t seem too concerned, having seen such amnesia countless times, and he gathered from the cries and moans that there were others worse off than he was.
Then one morning he woke up and had his life back; he remembered everything right up to hearing the approaching shell and running for it. Although it did not vanish entirely, the headache receded to a bearable level. He lay thinking about his childhood, his father and mother, his mother’s death. He thought about his abandoned medical career, and about a novel he would like to write. He thought about Imogen, and tried not to.
Not long after, a letter arrived from his father, with a tiny clipping from the Lake Placid paper glued to one sheet. Underneath, his father had written, “I recall you had a friend named Wisdom. I hope this is not the same man but thought it best to let you know.”
BODY IDENTIFIED AS MISSING PERSON
A body discovered in a rowboat last week on Mirror Lake has been identified as a 24-year-old Rochester man who went missing Monday.
Jonathan “Jack” Wisdom was last seen at the train station in Rochester NY. The body was found Tuesday adrift in a rowboat off Mount Whitney Road by a concerned citizen who alerted State Police. A spokesman for the Medical Examiner’s office said cause of death was a single gunshot to the head but there was no evidence of foul play.
Over the following days and weeks, images of Jack would come to him—his laugh, the exultant way he looked when he read a particularly fine line from Keats or Shelley. And he remembered what Imogen had said—so long ago it seemed decades—about how Jack was so attentive to him, the way a gentleman attends to a lady, how he looked at Quentin with devotion. And I, Quentin thought, self-regarding fool that I am, did not even notice. I, who prided myself on being some kind of virtuoso of romance, could not recognize love when it was right beside me. The letter of rejection he had written to Jack now seemed an unwarranted attack. He had punished the most loyal of friends for the simple crime of loving him.
But even the lacerations of loss, regret, and self-blame could not set Quentin back for long. Obviously, he wrote in his notebook, because I am a supremely shallow person. Slowly, all the good food and rest had their effect. The headache was still a problem first thing in the morning but tended to be gone by noon. It would be a long time before the scar on his cheek would fade, but the bruises along the left side of his body were shrinking like retaken territory. He grew daily more comfortable with walking and exercise.
At his request, Lieutenant Pegram had written to central command and filled out myriad forms, thereby securing for Quentin orders for scout training at Étaples. He would never have to live in a trench again, although the odds were still good he might die in one. It was a warm day in June when, after a comfortable train trip, he arrived at Étaples and was duly shown to the tent he would be sharing with a half-dozen other trainees.
“Where is everybody?” he said to the corporal who had driven him across the enormous grounds.
“Recreation hall. Decorating. Got a big social p
lanned for this evening. May as well join ’em—you’re still officially on leave until reveille.”
Quentin arranged his trunk at the end of his assigned cot and spent the next hour at the baths cleaning up. He paused in the middle of shaving and held his hand in front of his face. Quivering. There was a fluttering sensation in his chest that had been getting worse all day.
The noise of battle was louder here. The earth shuddered beneath his boots. His tongue and throat dried up in a way they had not since leaving the front. Soldiers talked of leave all the time, talked excitedly of the meals they would eat, the beer they would drink, the numberless women they would conquer. But he remembered the pallor and sweat on their faces when they came back.
“Are you all right?” he’d asked a battle-damaged man named Jimmy Cooke, just returned from London.
Cooke had been a rock in his platoon, a man who never hesitated, never whined, but he looked at Quentin with worried eyes and said, “It’s a bit hard, that’s all.”
“What, coming back?”
A tight nod. “It’s like goin’ over the bags,” he said, and Quentin now knew this was true.
He finished shaving and made his way to the recreation hall. It was a lovely June evening, the sun drenching everything in amber. In the hall, men on ladders were looping blue-and-white bunting over the rafters. Others levelled an enormous sign that said WELCOME, BLUEBIRDS! Quentin racked up some billiard balls and passed the time by sinking a few. It wasn’t long before some other men joined him and he lost several games that parted him from actual cash.
Dinner in the mess hall was noisy. He’d forgotten the racket hundreds of men could make. It made him edgy. He would be joining a new battalion after training, and didn’t feel like making the effort to make friends with people he would never see again. It was a bad attitude, but he couldn’t help it.
The nurses arrived at the recreation hall promptly at eight o’clock and an enormous cheer went up, the stadium roar that follows a home run. The band was not quite ready, and a period of confusion and hilarity set in—soldiers making whooping noises, nurses pairing off in confidential giggle-fests, an enormous crush of people around the bar. Quentin found himself heartened by the sudden wealth of femininity. The cloud of perfume conquered, at least for the moment, the acrid smell of cigarette smoke.
When finally the band started to play he pushed and slithered his way through the crowd and, reaching out blindly between two soldiers, tapped on the tiny shoulder of a dark-haired woman with her back to him.
“Oh, my stars,” she said, when she turned and saw him—shouting above the hubbub, “if it isn’t Private Goodchild of Rochester.”
He shouted back, “Nursing Sister Morley of Bracebridge. I didn’t even know it was you.”
“Just randomly shoulder-tapping, were you?”
“I was! I was!”
“Well, are we going to dance or stand here yelling at each other?”
They squeezed their way out from the bar area and proceeded to hop and crash amid the dancing crowd like dice in a cup—waltzes, foxtrots, one-steps—grinning at each other. When it became impossible to actually dance, Quentin grabbed her hand and said, “Come on, let’s step outside and have a proper chat.”
“Chat,” she said when they were outside. “You’ve picked up some words from your Tommy pals.”
“Indeed—not all of them fit to print. Oh, you’ve been wounded.”
In a gesture that he realized was thoughtless even as he made it, he brushed aside a fringe of her dark hair, revealing a jagged, pale crease. She didn’t pull away, just closed her eyes and tightened her lips.
“Sorry,” he said, “I was just—”
“It was at a casualty clearing station. Couple of shells brought the roof down on us. It was misery for the poor patients.”
“And for you too, looks like.”
She shook her head. “Others fared much worse. You’ve been busy yourself, I see. I thought duelling was illegal.”
“Mortar. I got off with nothing worse than a nasty headache but everyone makes a fuss as if you’re a hero.”
“You are a hero, you nitwit.”
“I’ll have to steal some medals from someone. Couple of Victoria Crosses ought to do it.”
She gave a small smile but a shadow crossed her face.
“You’ve lost some people, haven’t you,” Quentin said.
She nodded. “Two brothers. Both at Vimy.”
“Oh, I’m sorry—that’s hard. How are your parents holding up?”
“They’re devastated, of course. I’ll be seeing them pretty soon though.”
“You’re headed home?”
“Early October, supposedly. But these things are subject to change, as you know.”
“Do you mind if we walk a bit? It’s so nice to just talk and, I don’t know, just be.”
“Just be, exactly.”
He looked around, and pointed off toward the setting sun. “There’s a sports field over there. Should be pretty quiet now.”
They strolled across the grounds like two old colleagues taking the air. The noise from the recreation hall diminished behind them, and the distant shelling had ceased for the night. Quentin told her about his training course.
“A scout? But that’s so dangerous.”
“No, cowering in the trenches when the shells are coming down is the scariest thing. You’re just waiting for God to point his finger at you and say, ‘That one.’ ”
“But you’ll be out between the lines.”
“At night. When the shooting’s stopped—unless they see you.”
She shuddered. “Terrifying.”
“Hah. This from someone who’s been bombed in her casualty station.”
“Let’s talk about something else.”
“All right. How many soldiers have fallen in love with you?”
“None. Well, lots, I suppose. I mean, they think they have but it’s not love, of course. I know from my own experience. When the doctor gave me a shot and sewed up my scalp I wanted to kiss him all over his face. I restrained myself, thank God. You’re so helpless, so vulnerable, and suddenly there’s somebody offering you a little sympathy and your heart just floods with gratitude.”
“But you weren’t in love.”
“Can we talk about something else?”
“How many times can one change the subject?”
“I don’t know.” Her shoulders sagged a little, and for a moment she looked like a schoolgirl who has just failed a test. “Every subject’s painful in wartime, if you talk about it long enough. Sooner or later it will remind you of someone who’s died, or you’ve left behind, or who’s hurt you.”
The war had aged her. Quentin knew it had aged him too—and not just with the deep creases at the corners of his mouth, or the bruise-coloured shadows beneath his eyes. Often during the course of a day he’d catch himself sounding like a man three times his age. People in their twenties were supposed to be gay and carefree, not grumpy and pessimistic. Curmudgeonly.
“Curmudgeonly?” She looked at him with dark round eyes.
“Sorry. I was thinking out loud. Thinking what a grumpy old man I’ve become.”
“You’re just a man of the world, that’s all. Happens to all of us. I’m a man of the world too.”
Quentin laughed.
She touched his arm. “I’m sorry I never came to meet you on the Metagama.”
“That’s all right. I assumed you had a battle-axe for a matron.”
“Oh, matron was evil, but that’s not what stopped me. It was just—I’m a coward, I suppose. I was worried I’d fall for you and that was not something I wanted right before stepping into the lovely fields of Flanders, thank you very much.”
“I went every night—to the prow, like we said—and I waited.”
“You didn’t pine, I hope.” There was a touch of flint in her tone; she was a no-nonsense sort of woman, despite her talk of love.
“Can’t say I pined—I hoped
you’d come, though. I wanted very much to see you again.”
“You did tell me you were hoping to get shot, you silly twit.”
He nodded. “I loved someone. Someone who didn’t love me. I suppose it sounds pathetic.”
“Not pathetic.”
There was a silence. They had reached the abandoned baseball diamond and sat on a wobbly bench near third base. Sounds of merriment from the recreation hall were distant yet vivid, like the sounds from a passing paddle steamer on Lake Placid.
Margaret touched the back of his hand with one finger. “Did she have someone else?”
“No, she was probably just trying to protect me. She could see I was in love and she wasn’t, so what was she to do? She knew if we kept on it would just get harder and harder for me, and…”
“Yes, I see. Oh, dear. And you’re still in love with her?”
“No, I…Probably not. I think of her all the time, though. Wonder what she’s doing and so on. But I’ve no plans to get in touch when I get back—if I get back. Do you have anyone back home?”
She shook her head. “Strictly solo. I mean, I had fellas before I volunteered but…I don’t know. I wanted to avoid complications, I suppose. Look at that sunset!”
The sun was a wafer of fire bisected by a telegraph line. They looked at it in silence for a few moments.
“It must have been hard for her,” Margaret said. “Breaking off with you, I mean. It would be hard to lose a friend like you. I bet she’s regretting it now.”
“Oh, she’ll be busy with work. Surrounded by handsome doctors.”
“She’s a nurse?”
“A physician. She’ll be a psychiatrist by now.”
“She’s brave—that’s a difficult field for anyone, let alone a woman. What are your own plans when you get back?”
“I don’t know—I’ve stopped thinking about it.”
“What were your plans then?”
“Write books. Become an author. If I’m lucky. God knows how I’d support myself.”