The Nurse Novel

by Alice Brennan

  Before they could move to stop her, she was running lightly across the drive and up the steps into the house. She stood just inside the door for a moment until she heard the sound of the car starting up, and then she hurried on tiptoes to her own room and closed the door just as she heard Alden crossing the verandah.

  From Miss Jennifer’s room she heard, “That you, Lindsay? Come in here.”

  Lindsay smothered an impatient exclamation and went into her aunt’s room.

  “Did we wake you, Aunt Jennifer? I’m sorry,” she apologized.

  “I haven’t been asleep,” Miss Jennifer dismissed the thought. “Well, what did you find out?”

  “Find out?” Lindsay repeated.

  “Well, you went to the Tavern, didn’t you? Where else could you go for dinner in the Bayou? How’d you find things?” demanded Miss Jennifer.

  “Oh,” Lindsay recalled Pete’s message to Miss Jennifer, “Pete said to tell you that the first of the shrimp boats was in and more are coming in tomorrow.”

  “That’s a lie!” Miss Jennifer said sharply. “The first one won’t be in for at least a week; maybe longer. Now what’s that lyin’, thievin’ so-and-so up to?”

  “I really don’t know, Aunt Jennifer,” Lindsay answered wearily. “He wanted me to tell you that he’ll be out in a few days with a payment.”

  “He did, did he?” The ruffles on the old fashioned nightcap quivered beneath the old woman’s sharp nod. “Well, he’s up to something, and you must find out what.”

  “Aunt Jennifer, I came here to be your nurse; not your spy,” Lindsay reminded her. “If you want a private investigator, you’ll have to hire somebody with different training. Now is there anything I can get you that will make you more comfortable before I go to bed?”

  Miss Jennifer studied her shrewdly.

  “Sassy, aren’t you?” she sneered.

  “I don’t mean to be, Aunt Jennifer. It’s just that you seem to expect so much of me that I’ve never been trained to do. I’m a nurse, and I’ll be glad to give any nursing service that I can. But spying, checking up on your employees, finding out what they are doing that you don’t want them to do, I can’t feel that’s part of my job.”

  “Your job, miss? Your job is to do whatever I ask you to do, because it’s your duty after all the years I took care of you and raised you.”

  “Aunt Jennifer, it’s late and we both need sleep. Would you like a sleeping tablet?” Lindsay interrupted the angry words.

  “No, I wouldn’t like a sleeping tablet,” Miss Jennifer sourly imitated her weary tone.

  “Then good night, Aunt Jennifer,” said Lindsay, and went out and closed the door that connected the two rooms.

  Chapter Eight

  It was several days later at breakfast when Alden said, “I have to go to the mainland for the day. Why don’t you come with me? Do you good to get away for a few hours.”

  “I’d love to,” Lindsay answered impulsively. “But I’m not sure I should leave Aunt Jennifer alone all day.”

  Alden grinned at her and put down his crumpled napkin.

  “Leave it to me,” he said happily. “I just wanted to know if you’d care to go. Now I know you do, everything will be fine. You run along and get dressed in whatever you want to wear, and I’ll talk to Miss Jennifer.”

  “And I’ll see to it that Lucy-Mae stays close enough to answer the bell if Aunt Jennifer needs anything,” Lindsay answered, and hurried out to the kitchen.

  Lucy-Mae asked, “You goin’ to see Granny at the hospital?”

  “Of course I am, Lucy-Mae. Anything you want me to tell her?”

  Lucy-Mae hesitated, and then she shook her head.

  “No’m, I reckon not. If she knew Jasper and me wasn’t happy here, that’d make her feel bad. No’m, you just tell her everything’s fine, Miss Lindsay.”

  “I will, Lucy-Mae, and we won’t be late getting back,” Lindsay promised.

  In her own room, she slipped on a cool-looking yellow pique frock, tied a matching scarf about her head, picked up her flat clutch bag and went into Miss Jennifer’s room.

  Miss Jennifer eyed her from head to foot.

  “About time you were getting out of that ridiculous uniform and out of the house with an attractive young man,” she observed dryly. “Tell Amalie to get herself back here as fast as she can, because you are champing at the bit to be seeing the last of me and of the Bayou.”

  “I haven’t said that I am, Aunt Jennifer, but would it be so hard to understand if it were true?” Lindsay asked quietly.

  “Of course not. I’m as anxious for it to happen as you are,” snapped Miss Jennifer. “Now get going. You mustn’t keep the young man waiting! Or is that the modern technique?”

  There was no answer Lindsay cared to make, and she offered none as she left the room and hurried out to the verandah where Alden was waiting.

  He grinned happily as he tucked her into his car and slid in beside her.

  “Another thing,” he said as he started the car, as though carrying on a briefly interrupted conversation, “that’s good about being a freelance writer is that any time you like, you can take a day off and escort a lovely girl places. Men with jobs—doctors, for instance—aren’t that lucky.”

  “Well, no, of course not,” Lindsay said, and felt her spirits rise.

  It was a lovely day, with a cloudless deep-blue sky overhead, the ever-present breeze from the river stirring the palm fronds, swaying the curtains of Spanish moss, and bringing a drift of fragrance that was underlaid with the scent of rotting vegetation that was the smell of the bayou itself. Here and there were bright clumps of flowering shrubs, and occasionally a dark pool of water caught between rare hummocks of almost dry land showed the glory of pond lilies and water hyacinths.

  “It’s really lovely country, isn’t it?” said Lindsay softly.

  Alden shot her a swift glance, his brows furrowed. Then he looked about him, as though not until that moment had he been aware of the scenery through which they were driving.

  “Lovely country?” he repeated, his tone questioning. “Oh, sure, sure, it’s frabjoulously beautiful country if you’re an alligator or a water moccasin. But for people? Thanks a whole heap, but it’s not for my kind of people. I’ll take city streets, traffic congestion and crowds. To me, this is all like something in a horror movie. I fully expect Jean Lafitte to step out from behind the next palm tree; or maybe Bela Lugosi, or Peter Lorre in some weird and ghastly make-up. Thanks, no!”

  Lindsay asked curiously, “Then why are you staying?”

  Alden shot her a swift, wary glance.

  “I told you—for background material for some articles,” he reminded her. “Don’t you remember?”

  “Well, yes, I remember,” Lindsay told him frankly. “But I’m not a bit sure I believe you.”

  “You’re a trusting little soul, aren’t you?” he complained, and grinned at her forgivingly. “But you’re such a beautiful gal I can’t find it in my heart to quarrel with you. I save my irritability and quarrelling for homely dames!”

  They were entering the precincts of the Village now, and in the early morning, for it was not yet ten o’clock, it lay quiet and serene. The children had gone to school, an hour or more before. The men were out with the fishing fleet. The women were busy with their housework, and the Tavern had not yet opened for the day.

  “It certainly looks peaceful now, doesn’t it?” Alden commented as they drove on down the narrow, winding street and away from the Village. “But with late afternoon will come drink and ructions.”

  “No doubt,” Lindsay agreed.

  Alden shot her a swift glance, then turned back to guide his car along a road that was half a creek bed, sloping sharply toward the river.

  “Thus putting more money in Miss Jennifer’s pockets,” he drawled. “You’d think
the old girl would pull up her sox and demand that the county put a bridge across here, wouldn’t you, instead of that cockeyed ferry?”

  “She doesn’t want a bridge here,” Lindsay reminded him. “She wants to make it hard for strangers to get to the Bayou, and she wants to make it as nearly impossible as she can for the people who live in the Bayou to get away.”

  The big, flat-bottomed one-man ferry was across the river, and Alden blew his horn vigorously until he saw the ferryboat man emerge from his little shack and signal to them that he had heard.

  “In fact,” Alden went on as the ferry swung out from the opposite bank and began its approach, “your aunt wants things just as they have been since she was a young girl, and she has every intention of seeing to it that they stay that way.”

  Lindsay nodded. “That’s about it. And I don’t know of anything anybody can do to persuade her to change her mind.”

  Alden was scowling straight ahead. After a moment he said so softly that she wasn’t sure he was speaking to her, that he wasn’t just speaking his thoughts aloud, “Now I wouldn’t be too sure about that!”

  The old flat-bottomed ferry scraped against the bank, and the boatman held it in place with a huge pole sunk into the soft mud of the bank, while he signaled Alden to drive carefully on the ferry. Once the car was in place, the boatman went back of it, dropped two long tree-trunks under the wheels, came to the front and repeated the task. Then, quite sure that everything was in order, he shoved against the pole sunk in the deep black mud, reached for the overhanging cable and pulled lustily. The big, awkward-looking old ferry moved sluggishly away from the bank, was caught in the swift flow of the river’s current and moved more smartly, on a slanting course that made the river current the actual moving force.

  The bank opposite the Village was higher than the one they had just left, but a close pattern of logs had been sunk halfway down in the black ooze. Alden’s car crawled from the ferry cautiously, got a grip on the corduroy road and went valiantly up the bank and to a wide, sandy, unpaved road.

  Alden relaxed visibly and grinned happily at Lindsay.

  “I can understand why the people at the Bayou don’t cross the river often, in view of that ferry.”

  “And even now it’s twelve miles to town, and few of the Village people have cars,” she reminded him. “Of course, they can get the bus. It crosses at a bridge about five miles above the ferry crossing, and that adds about ten miles to the trip to town.”

  “And a trip like that could age a man,” Alden admitted.

  Lindsay’s eyes danced as she answered demurely, “Or a woman. Even a child.”

  But Alden refused to be diverted.

  “What happens when there is an accident? How do you get a person to the hospital in town?”

  Lindsay answered soberly, “Either the way we have come, or over the bridge five miles above where we crossed.”

  “That’s barbarous!” Alden protested. “Why isn’t there at least a first aid clinic in the Village? Or am I being naive?”

  “I’m afraid you are,” Lindsay confessed. “Uncle Doc has been trying for years to get Aunt Jennifer to establish one, but she says it would be a waste of money, with the hospital so close.”

  Alden nodded grimly. “I’m beginning to suspect that dear Aunt Jennifer doesn’t care any more for a dollar than she does for her right eye.”

  “I’m afraid that’s about it,” Lindsay answered miserably.

  Alden spared her a friendly grin before he turned his eyes once more to the sandy road ahead of them, which wound through tall trees, sun-splashed between the shadows cast by the trees.

  “Well, cheer up,” he advised her. “It’s not your fault. And if what Corbett said at the Tavern was true, you won’t have to be here much longer. Not if the replacement works out. You can check up on her at the hospital and see what you think of her. I’ll drop you off there and pick you up again in a couple of hours. O.K.?”

  “Very much O.K., and thanks!”

  “It is my pleasure, ma’am,” Alden told her handsomely.

  The hospital was a neat red brick building, set in the midst of ample parking space. With a smiling wave of goodbye, Lindsay stepped from the car on the steps of the hospital and went briskly inside.

  She stopped just inside the doorway. A small, neatly tiled hall was before her; doors opened off it on either side. There were no stairs, since it was all on one floor, and the half-dozen anxious relatives of patients who hovered on the edges of benches and seats along the hall eyed her with an apathy that bespoke great anxiety and more than a shred of impatience.

  They had been talking desultorily in low tones, drawn together by their common bond of anxiety. Their talk broke off as Lindsay came in, and they studied her for a moment before they dismissed her from their thoughts and went back to their low-voiced talk.

  Down at the far end of the hall, Lindsay saw a short, stout man in hospital garb emerging from a room, accompanied by a nurse and a taller younger man. The three stood for a moment in sober consultation, then moved across the hall and vanished into another room.

  Lindsay walked down the hall, alert for the moment when the three would once more return to the hall, and a nurse, emerging from a room with a covered medication tray in her hands, stopped her sternly.

  “You’ll have to wait in the lobby until visiting hours,” the nurse said sharply. “Whom have you come to visit?”

  “Dr. Potter,” Lindsay answered, and smiled. “I’m Lindsay Mallory. Nurse Lindsay Mallory,” she added, and smiled.

  The nurse looked startled.

  “Oh, yes, Dr. Potter has told us about you,” she said, as though slightly discomfited by her former brusqueness. “Dr. Potter and Dr. Corbett are completing their rounds. They will be free in half an hour or so. Would you like some coffee while you wait?”

  “Could I possibly see Amalie? She was my aunt’s housekeeper-companion, and I’d love to see her if I could.”

  “Well, as I said, visiting hours haven’t started yet, but Amalie is in the solarium and has had her lunch. So I see no reason why you can’t pay her a visit. Around that corner there and through the swinging door.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Lindsay said gratefully, and followed the direction until she came out into a long, narrow, glass-sided room overlooking an ambitious attempt at a garden. But Lindsay had no eyes for the garden. She was standing in the doorway, looking at the ample figure that drooped forlornly over crutches, the injured leg held so stiffly that she knew it was in a cast and that even carrying that weight must be a difficult burden for the woman. For a moment, the figure drooped helplessly, and the wide shoulders shook with sobs. And then they straightened, the head beneath the neat bandanna came up, and once more the slow, painful progress began.

  Quick tears sprang to Lindsay’s eyes as she walked forward. The painfully moving figure stopped and turned awkwardly at the sound of her steps. For a moment Amalie stared with wide, incredulous eyes as Lindsay came swiftly toward her and caught her in her arms.

  “Oh, bless Jesus, it’s my baby!” Amalie cried joyously, and tears slipped down her face. “My baby girl! My Miss Lindsay. Oh, honey, this is a proud day for old Amalie, to hold you like this again.”

  “And it’s a proud day for me, too, Amalie! I’m so glad to see you!” Lindsay’s own voice was far from steady, and there were tears on her own cheeks.

  “I got to keep walking, Miss Lindsay. Doc says I got to if I ever want to go home again. And, honey, I wants to go home so bad it hurts worse than this old leg of mine!” Amalie wept as she clung to Lindsay.

  “Well, you keep right on walking, Amalie, and let me help you!” Lindsay encouraged her tenderly, moving slowly beside her, an arm about her as they paced the length of the solarium and back again.

  “That gal of mine, Lucy-Mae, she behaving herself, Miss Lindsay?” Amalie asked when the f
irst transports of her joyous greeting were over.

  “She’s splendid, Amalie. A very good cook and a very good housekeeper.”

  “Onliest thing wrong with that gal, she’s scared to death of my Miss Jennifer. Ain’t that just about the silliest thing you ever heard of, Miss Lindsay?”

  Lindsay laughed and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

  “I’ll let you in on a little secret, Amalie. Aunt Jennifer likes people to be afraid of her! She wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Amalie looked mildly scandalized, and then she chuckled.

  “Miss Lindsay, I knows that. I just didn’t think anybody else did,” she confessed. “Miss Jennifer, she wants folks to be afraid of her account of me and her, we’re alone there, and folks know she keeps a heap o’ money around. I try to tell her it’s dangerous, but she won’t listen. She feels if people are afraid of her and think she’s a witch, they ain’t likely to try to rob her.”

  “So she explained to me,” Lindsay replied. “I tried to persuade her to let me bring her money to the bank, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “No’m,” Amalie agreed, and sank gratefully into a wheel chair, having completed the necessary walking. “She say she likes to have her money where can’t nobody but her get their hands on it. She don’t know I know where it’s hid. Reckon, though, she knows I’d never touch a penny of it even if it was right in bed with her.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t, Amalie, and she knows it.”

  A voice from the doorway demanded, “Here, here, what’s all this? Visiting hours haven’t begun yet.”

  Lindsay turned to see a big, hearty-looking woman, in the green pinafore of a nurse’s aide, coming into the room with an air of authority. Amalie chuckled and said, “Don’t get your hackles up, Miz’ Bates. This is my Miss Lindsay, and she’s an R.N. herself.”

  Clara Bates eyed Lindsay sharply, even while she accepted the hand Lindsay extended and met the friendly smile in Lindsay’s eyes.

  “Well, do tell!” she exclaimed. “I’m right pleased to meet you, Lindsay. Wonder why Doc didn’t tell me you’d be here today.”