The Doctor's Undoing

by Allie Pleiter

  Ida pulled her hand from his, turning her head to look out the hallway window they happened to stand beside. “It wasn’t God.” Her tone was half question, half statement.

  “Pardon?”

  She turned back to him. “You read the letter. The post at Walter Reed involved art and knitting as accepted parts of the treatment protocols. Art and knitting, Daniel—it seemed so perfect, but I didn’t think I wanted to leave. And then, when we...” She flushed. “I knew I’d never want to leave.”

  “Ida...”

  “But your mother,” Ida went on, grabbing his hand. “When she told me if I really cared about the children and the Home that I had to leave or she would ensure that the Home would lose its donors, I wondered if God hadn’t been kind enough to make a way for me to leave.” She squeezed his hand. “I couldn’t stay here and not be with you.”

  Daniel was glad his mother wasn’t anywhere nearby. The words he would speak to her right now would far overstep the bounds of a respectful son. They would overstep the bounds of any respect at all. He touched Ida’s cheek, needing to feel her skin to stem the tide of rage boiling up inside him. “There is no reason at all for you to leave. I want you to stay, and I want you to be with me.”

  Ida closed her eyes for a moment, breathing deeply. “Daniel, she’s not all wrong.” Her eyes opened again. “Oh, believe me, lots of her is dead wrong, but there are plenty of people in Charleston who think the same way she does, and plenty of those people donate to the Home.”

  “I don’t care.” Daniel wanted to defy the world, to kiss Ida right here in the hospital hallway and declare to the sterile walls that Gwendolyn Martin would not be permitted anything less than a complete recovery.

  Ida placed her hand on top of his, smiling. “You need to care. I’m not saying we need to cow to your mama’s conniving, but we need to figure out how to fight it. I know her kind. You can’t defy her without a battle plan.” Her voice softened a bit. “But Daniel, are you sure this is a war you want to wage? Think of the children. The Home. I’d hate to think your mama would use them as pawns, but—”

  “—but we both know she would. Hasn’t she already, trying to take you from them? They care for you.” He pulled her close. “I care for you. I realized I cannot build the Home the way it needs to be without you. If you really want what’s best for the children, you must stay.”

  Ida pressed her cheek into his hand, and his heart cinched as he watched a tear spill over to meet his palm. Her eyes gave him the answer no words ever could.

  “Daniel?”

  Hartwick stood in front of the doors of the operating theater, pulling the mask from his face. “We’ve finished treating your Miss Martin.”

  * * *

  Ida could barely stand how small and frail Gitch looked all bound up and braced in that enormous hospital bed. The way Daniel had described the fall, Ida said a prayer of thanksgiving that Gitch was even alive. She’d seen enough battle injuries to know the damage a neck fracture could do, seen what skull fractures could do to the fragile human brain. She’d seen grown men laid low and feeble by such falls, and Gitch was such a tiny little thing.

  Still, she breathed. She moved, reminding Ida that paralysis was not an issue. Daniel had told her that, but Ida had to keep seeing it for herself. Hardest yet happiest of all, Gitch showed signs of pain. Pain meant awareness and mental capacity, even if it meant loss of comfort. Every time Gitch moaned, Ida stroked the parts of the child’s face that she could touch, talking to her in soft tones, praying peace and comfort over the girl.

  Daniel seemed especially troubled by Gitch’s highly bandaged face, and it wasn’t hard to guess why. “Wrapped up like that, the injuries look far too much like my own, and I remember how much those hurt. They throbbed and stung miserably, and I’m a grown man.” He stroked her hair with a tenderness Ida had never seen before in him. “She’s so small, so young.”

  “She’s a fighter, though.” Ida took Daniel’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she gives you no end of grief for shutting down the pools. Once she can talk, that is.”

  Daniel leaned up against the high metal foot of the bed. “You weren’t going to tell me what my mother did to you, were you?”

  Ida ran one hand across the bed railing, feeling it cool under her fingers even in the early-evening heat. The day felt ten years long. “No. I didn’t see what it would help.”

  “You would just have left?” Hurt singed Daniel’s words.

  “Never. I would have said goodbye to the children.” She swallowed hard. “And to you.” But it would have torn my heart into a million pieces, she added silently.

  “You would have let her win?”

  Ida laid her chin on the high metal frame. “I would not have let the children become her battlefield.”

  Daniel moved his hand to cover hers as it sat perched on the railing. “You are an astounding woman, Ida Lee Landway. You are worth more to me than every dollar every donor could give. The donors who see your worth are the donors I want to keep. Those Mother could sway, well, they’re not worth keeping.”

  Gitch moaned.

  “Shh,” Ida said. “None of that now. Right now our thoughts are with dear Lady Gwendolyn here. I think she’s waking up, and we’re going to have to do all the talking for a while. I expect she won’t take kindly to that, so we’d best be ready.” Ida stepped over to lean close to Gitch’s puffy, pale face, taking the child’s hand in hers. She was grateful her army hospital training gave her skills for this situation. “Gitch, honey, can you hear me? If you can, you just squeeze my hand once.”

  Tiny fingers gave her hand a small squeeze, and Ida felt relief flood her chest. She looked up and nodded at Daniel, watching his own shoulders lose the tension they’d held since she’d arrived.

  “You’ve been hurt badly, but you’re going to be just fine after you’ve had a bit of a rest. You won’t be able to open your mouth for a while, so no trying to talk, okay? You just answer yes or no by squeezing my hand and we’ll get along just fine. Do you hurt?”

  Squeeze.

  “One squeeze for lots, two for only a little.”

  One squeeze.

  Ida felt her heart twist as she held up one finger, and Daniel sucked in a breath. “I know it hurts now, but we’re going to do our best to make it better real soon. Dr. Parker is right here.”

  At the mention of Daniel’s name, Gitch’s eyes fluttered and opened for a moment. She began looking drowsily around the room for Daniel, and he immediately stooped and shifted his face into her view. His expression when he caught her gaze raised such a lump in Ida’s throat that she thought she might start sobbing and never stop. How could she have ever thought this man rigid and uncaring? His heart was so full of care for these children—and she hoped for her—that it would have been the worst of mistakes to leave him.

  “I’m right here, Gitch,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. She noticed he used her nickname—the first time she’d heard him say it. “I’ll always be here for you. You’re going to be okay. I know it hurts now, but just close your eyes and go to sleep.” He glanced over to Ida with glistening eyes. “Remember Nurse Ida’s trick? We’ll do it together—I’ll say the words for you, you think them in your head. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua...” He pressed his fingers to his forehead, his memory failing him in the emotion of the moment. He knew it now—she’d helped him to learn the entire list during his own recovery.

  “Judges, Ruth, First and Second Samuel,” she said, feeling Gitch’s fingers relax against her hand. Daniel stroked Gitch’s shoulder, and she heard the girl’s breathing lengthen out from the pained gasps she had made earlier. “First and Second Kings, First and Second Chronicles.” She nodded to Daniel to continue.

  “Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, I love you.”

 
Ida blinked and looked up, startled by the declaration at the end of Daniel’s list. His hand slipped over Gitch to take hers, making a perfect circle of caring hands—hers to Gitch to Daniel and back to her. Of course he loved her. She loved him. It ought to be shocking, but it wasn’t at all. She’d been fighting the truth that she loved him for days, maybe weeks now. Why wasn’t now the perfect time to admit it?

  “I love you.” She smiled as she whispered, feeling as if her skin could not contain the swells of care and hope surging inside. Surely, she would break open in sparkling happy colors any second, turning the pristine white hospital into a riotous rainbow. “Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon...” She stopped the list, and instead quoted from that last book, “I found him whom my soul loveth.”

  Daniel squeezed her hand—once for yes. Gitch’s slow, even breaths signaled the girl had lapsed back into sleep, and Ida gave a prayer of thanks. Daniel was right—what obstacle of small-minded judgment could overcome the power of the love in this room at the moment? She and Daniel were capable of so much more together than they were apart.

  They sat in two chairs next to Gitch’s bed for the next pair of hours, holding hands, holding vigil over Gitch’s sleeping form, stringing tougher the bonds that would hold them through the struggle to come. Ida felt as if the hours were holy, healing to all three of them in particular ways. As they talked and sat and prayed, Daniel shed some of his guilt over the bathing pools. He still insisted they be closed, but he came to understand Gitch’s fall for the accident it was. Ida’s sting over Amelia’s judgment softened, and while she never would agree with the tactic, she saw it for what it was: a mother who thought she was protecting her son. Gitch received pain medicine, and while she repeatedly reached out for Ida’s or Daniel’s hand, she managed a fitful rest.

  By seven o’clock, Daniel rose. “I’m going to go back to the Home for a short bit. I’ll return with some dinner for you. I want the children to know Gitch will be okay, and I want a few words with Mrs. Smiley.” His tone brooked no argument, nor did Ida wish to give him one.

  “Of course. I’ll be praying for you, Daniel.”

  He took her hand and kissed it. “Thank you.”

  He leaned over and left a light kiss on the part of Gitch’s brow that was exposed. His sigh was sweet and piercing. “She loves you,” Ida said softly. “We both do.”

  She watched Daniel fix that truth strongly against his heart in the moments before he walked from the room. The Daniel Parker who returned to the Home tonight would be a different man from the one who left the institution this afternoon. Ida looked after the door where Daniel had departed and prayed. You’ve begun such a good work in him, Lord, now stay with him—and us—until it is completed.

  She hadn’t even realized she had nodded off until Daniel’s hand on her shoulder gently prodded her awake what seemed only moments later. The clock on the ward wall and the full dark outside told her that more than an hour had passed. Gitch was still sound asleep, even though Ida noticed ugly bruises had begun to darken at her surgery sites and her bandages had begun to stain. The crisis of injury was for the most part over, giving way now to the long, steep road of healing.

  Daniel’s eyes looked raw and tired, his face lined with weary creases. He held two bags. “Supper,” he said, lifting one, “and knitting,” he added, and Ida wondered why she hadn’t even been awake enough to recognize her own knitting bag. His thoughtfulness stole her heart all over again, making her sniff back a teary smile. “If I didn’t already love you...”

  He managed a grin. “Had I only known...”

  It was the closest to a joke she’d seen from him in days. He really was a changed man. She waited for him to sit down, but he remained standing. It took her only a moment to work out why.

  “You’re going to see her, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to wait until morning?”

  His voice was iced with determination when he said, “No.”

  “You’ll come back here?”

  “I think I’ll need to.” She heard the I’ll need you in his voice, and was glad for the hundredth time she was not on a train to Washington.

  “I’ll be here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Amelia Parker swept into her front parlor. “Daniel, whatever are you doing here at so late an hour?”

  Daniel saw no point in pleasantries. “You arranged for Ida Landway to leave.”

  She sat down carefully in her accustomed chair, barely even flinching at his direct statement. He’d almost forgotten how very good she was at this brand of civilized warfare. “I suggested she ought to be removed, yes.”

  “That’s not what I said. You arranged for her to go. Even before you spoke to me, you had Bennet suggest the post to John Gallows.”

  She opened her mouth to deny it, but he held up a hand. “Save the denials, Mother. I saw Bennet’s letter. And I saw the date on the letter. Tell me, did the post actually exist, or did you have to call in extra favors to have one made up?”

  Her eyes burned at him. “Mind your tongue, Daniel Parker,” she snapped. “I am still your mother.”

  “Oh, I have held my tongue for years, Mother. Out of respect for all you do for the Home and for who you are, I have let you play queen and be your grand self. I have listened to your lectures and your endless opinions. I have swallowed my fill of arguments for the good of the Home and for Father’s sake—even for the sake of his memory. But I am done.”

  Mother’s fingers wrapped their way around the ends of her chair arms. “How dare you! Don’t tell me you’re going to let that no-good army nurse sway your—”

  Daniel stormed over to her. “Do you know where I have been today?”

  “Of course I don’t know where you’ve been.” She said it as if she had no interest in keeping tabs on his whereabouts—a ridiculous argument given the nature of their current conflict. There were times Mother knew about Home events even before he did.

  “I’ve been at Roper watching an eight-year-old girl get her broken jaw pinned shut. I’ve been washing her blood off my shirt and hoping she wouldn’t bear the scars of her accident the rest of her life. I’ve been sitting at that girl’s bedside with a woman who loves that girl and all the children not as a cause, but as children. She cares for them in marvelous, creative ways that change their lives, Mother. That ‘no-good army nurse’ is the best thing to happen to the Home since Father founded it, and not only won’t you see it, you’ve tried to send her away.”

  “Because she is after you!”

  Did Mother really see love only in terms of acquisition? Could a woman who had done so much in the name of charity be that blind to the selfless nature of real love? “She was ready to get on a train to Washington not because she wanted to go or because she was afraid of you—although I’m sure you tried your best to intimidate her—but because she couldn’t bear to see the children hurt by what you’d do in retaliation if she stayed. Now, tell me, Mother, who is the villain here?”

  “She’s twisted your mind, has her hooks already into you. The Parker Home exists on the reputation of our family, a reputation you are about to sully for...for a backwoods hussy. This is exactly what I feared would happen if I let this infatuation go any longer,” she hissed, rising out of the chair. The graceful exterior had peeled away, leaving a woman Daniel cringed to see. His anger boiled just barely under his control. If he ever learned that she’d called Ida “hussy” to her face, Daniel was sure he couldn’t be held responsible for what he’d do.

  Dear, sweet Ida. Her only crime was to care. With all her heart, with exactly who she was. And the children had—as children do—responded to her authenticity with deep affection and emotional growth. Not ever, for as long as she lived, would she even be capable of the cold cruelty he saw in his mother now. Daniel p
ictured Mother threatening Ida with the vicious eyes he saw before him, and his gut seared. People often said he had his mother’s eyes, but at this moment he wished that nothing was further from the truth. He found himself glad his father had not lived to see such ugliness.

  The more Mother glared at him—her eyes silently shouting “See? See what she’s done?”—the more Daniel’s rage hardened and settled into an icy, immovable determination. It was almost sad—she could not see that the strength of her protest merely doubled his resolve. She went on talking, but Daniel didn’t hear the words. In her desperate attempt to manipulate him, she’d removed the last hold of any sense of duty or loyalty she’d had over him. Some oddly detached part of him wondered why it had taken this long.

  Daniel let her stalk angrily around the room, waiting until he could speak with absolute calm. In a moment of surprise, he realized that his stance—feet slightly apart, shoulders square, hands clasped behind his back—was that of his father’s. He’d aged a decade since this morning, but the years settled on him with confidence rather than with weariness. He spoke slowly, very clearly and without raising his voice. “I am of my own mind on this. Ida stays.”

  Mother wheeled on him, hands flying in the air. “Is she ‘Ida’ to you now? Oh, if only Jane Smiley had come to me earlier.” She was half panicked mother, half cordial predator as she grappled with the realization that her usual tactics would not work here. She moved toward him and put a hand on his lapel. It was all he could do not to flinch from the contact. “This can still be fixed, Daniel. You would not be the first man to have his head turned by a pretty conniver. The position for her in Washington is genuine and...”

  He took his mother’s hand by the wrist and removed it from his chest. Her eyes showed a mixture of hurt, anger and confusion. “Ida stays,” he repeated, giving the words more force this time. “It is Jane Smiley who will be leaving. I’ll not have staff going behind my back, especially to collude with you.”

  “You can’t run the Home without Jane Smiley.”