by Michelle Cox
“You’ve got to get to the hospital, lad,” the guard said grimly. “I’ll hafta drive you down to Ravenswood,” he said, feeling for his keys in the front trouser pockets of his thick navy uniform pants. “Here, little lady,” he said, spotting Gunther’s handkerchief hanging out of his shirt pocket and pulling it out. Swiftly, he stuffed it on the wound, causing Gunther to cry out in pain. “Put your hand here,” he said to her, ignoring Gunther. “Hold it tight.”
“No hospital,” Gunther said weakly.
“Sorry, lad, but this is a bad one. It’s deep, and you’re losing a lot of blood,” he said over his shoulder, walking briskly back toward his office, the elevator girl following him like a stray dog. “Be back in a minute.”
“Elsie, I do not want to go to hospital,” Gunther said, leaning his head back against the wall. “Please . . . I cannot go. Help me.”
“Gunther, you have to. It’s pretty bad,” she said, keeping her eyes on the wound and pressing tight on the handkerchief. The blood was beginning to slow a fraction, but it was seeping through to her fingers now. “If it’s your mother you’re worried about, I can check in on her,” Elsie offered, careful to keep up the pressure.
“No,” he said, almost in a panic. “Do . . . do not disturb her. She will be asleep,” he said, wincing his eyes closed, as if against the pain. Suddenly he opened them and looked at her. “You go,” he said. “You go on to your vigil. I will be fine. The guard will help me. Please, this is my fault.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m coming with you,” she said, before she had even thought it through.
“But what about this vigil?” he asked.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” she said hurriedly. “It was just a way for me to get out of having to dance.”
“A girl who does not like dancing?” he said, closing his eyes again, as his lips curled into a smile. “This is very strange.”
The guard reappeared then and, removing the bloody handkerchief and handing it to Elsie to hold, managed to bandage Gunther’s wrist with a bit of flimsy gauze. It seemed adequate enough for the moment, but Elsie thought she might have been able to do a better job.
“We need to go now,” the guard mumbled, surveying his work. “You might get lucky. It’s still early, so it won’t be full of New Year’s Eve drunks yet. You comin’, too?” he asked of Elsie as she crumpled the bloody handkerchief still in her hand and stuffed it into her pocket.
“Yes, of course I’m coming.”
“Let’s go, then,” he said, indicating with his head that she should stand on the other side of Gunther, and together they helped him to stand up.
The drive to Ravenswood Hospital was miraculously short, the guard escorting them into the main lobby, where he deposited the two of them. Elsie was shocked when he almost immediately turned to go, saying that he wasn’t really supposed to leave his post and that, anyway, Elsie seemed to have her wits about her enough to handle the situation, didn’t she? Elsie could only nod and swallowed hard at being made responsible for this bleeding man.
Gunther sat with his eyes closed, and Elsie wasn’t sure he was even conscious. Before long, a harried nurse appeared and pulled back the bandages, saying that he would need stitches right away. Two orderlies appeared, then, and helped him to walk back through a set of doors. Elsie stood up to follow, but the harried nurse held out her hand to stop her.
“Who are you?” she asked crisply, though her eyes looked tired. A large mole sat near the corner of her upper lip, and Elsie tried not to stare at it.
“I’m . . . I’m his friend . . .” Elsie faltered, not knowing what else to call him.
“You wait here. Shouldn’t take long,” she said, pointing back toward the chairs lined up against the wall.
Her knees shaking a little, Elsie sat down and tried to sort out her many thoughts. Desperately she prayed that Gunther would be okay. Surely, he hadn’t lost too much blood, had he? And what would Sr. Bernard think when she didn’t turn up at the vigil? She hoped she wouldn’t think that she had frivolously changed her mind and gone to some party . . .
Elsie promptly scolded herself, then, for only being worried about herself! What about Gunther’s poor mother? she thought, and envisioned the undelivered sandwiches sitting lonely on the counter. His mother would be terribly worried! If only she could telephone someone—but who? She was pretty sure that there would be nobody at the Mundelein switchboard at this point. Henrietta was already out, she was sure, so who else? For a moment, she considered telephoning home. Maybe Karl could come over, but to do what? More than likely he would bungle it anyway. Her only consolation was that the security guard would eventually have to let one of the sisters know what had happened, and then hopefully they would have the wherewithal to let Gunther’s mother know where he was.
Relieved a bit now that there was some sort of plan in place, even if it was only in her mind, she spent first some time looking around her at the plain white walls and then at the staff as they hurried to and fro. As time ticked on, more and more people were brought in, either by friends and relatives or by ambulance—some of them, it seemed, quite severe. Elsie moved to the chair farthest away from the doors and tried to close her eyes to pray, but it was terribly hard to concentrate.
After what seemed to be hours, she felt a tap on the arm. It was the same nurse from before. Quickly Elsie opened her eyes wide, realizing that she must have fallen asleep. “Yes?” she asked, sitting up straight and trying to discreetly rub her eyes.
“Are you with Mr. Stockel?” the nurse asked.
Mr. Stockel? “You mean Gunther?” Elsie asked, embarrassed that she didn’t even know his last name.
“The German guy with the slit wrist?”
“Yes!” Elsie said hurriedly. “Is he all right?”
“Yeah, he’s all right. But we’re going to keep him in. He’s lost a lot of blood, and he has a small fever. You want to see him?”
Elsie’s stomach clenched. A fever? Keep him overnight? “Yes . . . yes, I want to see him.”
“Come on, then,” she said, gesturing with her hand. They passed through the main doorway, the doors swinging closed behind them, and Elsie was hit with the strong smell of antiseptic. The nurse turned immediately to her right and began climbing the stairs that were there. “Elevator’s broke,” she said. Elsie furrowed her brow at how odd a coincidence this was. She felt like she was in a dream.
The nurse stopped on the third floor and began walking quickly down the darkened hallway, Elsie struggling to keep up. “Any idea why he did it?” the nurse asked routinely, not even looking at Elsie.
“Did what?”
“Slit his wrist.”
Slit his wrist? Elsie pondered. Slit his wrist! “Oh, no!” she said, realizing what the nurse meant. “No, I was there when it happened,” she went on in a rush, bending toward the nurse as they hurriedly walked, trying to get the nurse to look at her. The nurse did not oblige but kept her eyes focused on the end of the hallway. “No, he . . . he pulled on the elevator grate,” Elsie went on. “It was stuck, you see, and when he pulled, it came loose, and something cut him. It was terrible!” Elsie said.
The nurse did not respond but stopped outside a door behind which Gunther apparently was. Only now did she turn and look at Elsie, her eyes quickly assessing her.
“That’s what he said too. Stories seem to match. Didn’t really look like a suicide, but we have to ask.” Elsie didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry. The nurse nodded her head toward the door. “He’s a little daffy; we gave him something for the pain. He was asleep when I left him, but you can go in if you want.” With that, she turned on her heel and made her way back down the hallway, stopping halfway to enter a different room.
Elsie stood outside the room for a moment and took a deep breath before rapping gently on the door with her knuckles. There was no answer from within, and she had no wish to wake him by knocking louder, so she quietly pushed open the door. She gasped a little when she saw him, lyin
g in the hospital bed, his arm thickly bandaged. The room was dark except for the warm glow given off by a small bedside lamp. His eyes were closed, and he lay so perfectly still that he looked to be dead. Still standing in the doorway, Elsie could not help but peer through the darkness to see if his chest was indeed rising and falling. When she saw that it was, she breathed a sigh of relief and made her way closer to the bed. As she approached, he opened his eyes, then, and looked at her. He seemed surprised, almost alarmed, by the sight of her and stirred restlessly.
“Gunther,” Elsie said quietly, wanting to calm him. “It’s just me, Elsie. Elsie Von Harmon.”
His face relaxed into a smile, then, and he closed his eyes. “That is not a just,” he said, which did not make sense to Elsie. Maybe he really was delirious.
“How are you?” she asked. “Are you in pain?”
He looked awful, she thought, as she peered at him close up. His face was flushed, and his breathing was shallow. Why did he seem so ill? It was just a cut, after all. Maybe he had already been sick with something else?
He opened his eyes. “Not much. You should go now,” he said. “You do not have to stay here with me.”
“No, I’ll sit with you,” she said and tried to smile, laying her coat on the end of his bed.
“But what about vigil?” he asked.
“We’ve already been through this,” she reminded him. “It doesn’t matter. It was just a silly thing for me to escape from my ridiculous aunt.”
Gunther opened his eyes wide then and tried to sit up. “I must go now,” he said, looking around the room wildly. “Please. I must go back.”
“Gunther, no. You’re not well,” she said eagerly. “You have to stay, the nurse said. You have a fever.”
“Ach. No. I must go!” he said, swinging his legs off the bed as he sat up.
“Gunther, no!” Elsie said. “The nurse will be back, and you’ll be in trouble. You can’t leave like this!”
“I cannot leave her there. She does not know where I am!”
“I’ll go and tell them in a little bit. Anyway, I’m sure the security guard will have told the sisters by now,” Elsie said calmly, hoping this were true. “They’ll make sure she is okay.” She saw that he was hesitating. He was beginning to sway, and she ventured to press on his shoulders, trying to do so by only using two fingers from each hand. “That’s it,” she said. “Just lie back.” He relaxed his body and allowed himself to lie back down.
“You will make sure, yes?” he asked, his voice raspy. “That the Sisters go to her?”
“Yes, of course I will,” she said, gingerly pulling up the blanket for him and trying not to look at his chest as she did so. His eyes followed hers for a moment before he closed them in what seemed to be exhaustion.
Relieved that she had gotten him back into bed and further wanting him to drift into a deeper sleep, she looked around for a chair that she could sit on. She saw one on the other side of the bed, but that part of the room was dark. Quietly, she made her way around and bent to pick it up to carry it around to the other side where there was more light. As she did so, however, she saw that someone, probably one of the nurses, had set his coat there. Elsie picked it up to move it, and his little notebook fell to the ground. She bent to retrieve it, looking over at him, but his eyes were still closed. She set the coat on top of hers at the end of the bed and then carried the chair around. She sat down on it, the notebook still in her hands, and wondered what to do next.
Elsie took the opportunity to study his face. It was a fine, angular face with a high forehead. She hadn’t noticed how long his eyelashes were and that they were almost blond. His mustache and beard were neatly trimmed. He looked a lot younger with his eyes closed and his spectacles removed. Someone had removed them and folded them neatly on his bedside table.
Unexpectedly, he opened his eyes again, startling her, as he turned to look at her. “Tell me something about yourself,” he said.
Elsie didn’t know what to say. Did he think she was someone else? “I . . . I don’t know what you want to know.”
“Anything,” he said. “It will help me to be going back to sleep. I am restless,” he said, looking up at the ceiling. “Bitte. Please.”
“Well . . . what do you want to know?” she asked tentatively.
“Anything. Tell me about your life as a little girl.”
She furrowed her brow, studying him, as if trying to decide whether she should really share any of her childhood memories with him . . . if she trusted him enough. He looked at her again, his sky-blue eyes patient and waiting. She sighed deeply and slowly began by telling him a story about her father and how he once rescued a cat for her. It was her earliest memory; she was probably no more than four, she said. Gunther listened, a small smile on his face as he closed his eyes again. She could see that he was drifting in and out, so she kept going, telling him all about their miserable poverty and how her father had eventually killed himself and what Ma was like now. As she said this last bit, she looked down at her hands and realized she was still holding his notebook.
She looked back at him to see if he were yet sleeping, but he was not. He was looking at her, his eyes heavy and kind. “What else?” he asked, and she felt oddly encouraged to go on. She had never really told anyone her whole story before, and she found she was enjoying it in some strange way. She went on, then, to talk about how Henrietta had met Clive and how they had been reunited with her mother’s wealthy family and how things were finally so much better for them.
“Are they?” he asked tiredly. She could see that he was struggling to stay awake, but she was eager to tell the rest of her story, though she felt horribly selfish at wanting to go on. The whole point had been to put him to sleep! Perhaps if she sat quietly, he would drift off. . .
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a few moments before opening them again. “Are they?” he asked, looking at her again.
“Are they what?” she asked.
“Ist es jetzt besser für dich?”
She did not understand him. He kept lapsing into German; perhaps he was delirious.
“Are you happy?” he asked.
“Yes, of course I’m happy,” she said, startled by this question.
“Then why do you wish to flucht? Escape?” he asked, his eyes closing again.
Elsie was stunned by this. How did he know? But then she remembered the very first conversation she had had with him in which he had told her that she must learn to play the game better than they and that through books lay her escape. How had she forgotten this?
She paused, trying to think how to answer. Should she tell him her secret? What would it matter? she finally decided. He probably wouldn’t remember any of this tomorrow anyway. “I . . . I don’t want to get married,” she said hesitantly. “Not to any of them,” she said.
“No?” he said, turning toward her now and watching her with his pale blue eyes.
“No,” she said, leaning toward him a little, conspiratorially. “I . . . I’m going to become a sister.”
“You are already a sister,” he said, blinking slowly.
“No, a nun, I mean. I’m going to enter the convent,” she tried to say proudly, but it came out sounding hollow and dry. He was the first person she had told, besides Sr. Bernard, of course, and it again wasn’t unfolding the way she had imagined it would.
He turned his head away and closed his eyes. “Es tut mir leid—I am sorry,” he said, his voice cracking. He drifted off then, leaving Elsie to wonder if his apology was for succumbing to sleep or regret for her announcement. Well, she reasoned, if it was regret, what had she expected? He was a Lutheran, she remembered, so he wouldn’t understand. Not many would, she knew. It was just something she was going to have to get used to. Well, at least she would be pleasing God, and that was all that mattered, she told herself.
She could hear Gunther’s deep breathing now, and she sensed that he was finally asleep. She shifted in the hard chair and felt uneasy
that she had revealed so much about herself. Well, she thought, pulling at her blouse to adjust it, hopefully he really wouldn’t remember anything of what she had said. Her eyes traveled to the notebook still in her hands. She was pretty sure this was the same notebook she had often seen him writing in in the kitchen of Philomena.
She looked over at him, still asleep, and then back at the notebook. She knew she shouldn’t read it, but she longed to see what he kept in it. Besides, she reasoned, she had just told him so much about her life. Wasn’t it fair for her to have a little look?
Carefully, holding the book on its side, she flipped the pages quickly through her fingers to see if anything interesting revealed itself, at least in the margins. Nothing surprising jumped out at her, however, so she gave herself permission to open it a little more . . .
It looked like it was just notes.
She glanced over at Gunther. Would it be terrible if she read some of it? she wondered. Well, what would it matter? And what else was she to do? She supposed she should eventually go back to the college, but she did not wish to leave just yet and not without saying goodbye. And, honestly, there was nothing for her to do back at Mundelein except go to bed, and it wasn’t even yet ten o’clock. She supposed she could sit here and say the rosary as a way of still fulfilling the vigil, albeit remotely. The more she pondered it, the more she thought that it was a wonderful idea, actually. But the notebook lay hot in her hands. She compromised with herself, finally, that she would read a little of Gunther’s writings and then say the rosary.
Happy with her decision, she opened it up to the first page, holding her breath, but let it quickly out when she disappointingly saw that most of it was written in German. She could make out the date on the first page, which was 12, April 1930. It looked like a journal entry maybe, just a few lines of writing. She flipped to the next pages, all in German as well, with various dates, until about a quarter into the book, where she caught something in English: I must write more in English. To learn.