The Forgotten Room

by Karen White

  He recovered quickly and called me back again. I paused, looking past the banister at him, and hoped he knew I could see his bald spot from my elevated position on the stairwell. “We’re short staffed tonight. Another nurse has defected to the WAVES. I’m afraid I’m going to need you to empty all the bedpans in the main ward.”

  I knew that to argue, to remind him that I was a medical doctor, same as he was, would do no good and would only set me up for even more “selective” duties. I took a slow step down.

  “And when Caroline Middleton arrives in the morning, I want you to make yourself available to her. She has all sorts of questions about New York—where to shop and where to eat; women things—and I told her you’d be happy to answer any of her questions.”

  I smiled, even though I had the flashing visual of him tumbling over the banister. “Yes, Doctor.” I flipped on lights as I made my way to the main ward. Nurse Hathaway was still there, holding the hand of a patient and humming softly. I nodded in her direction, then began checking bedpans.

  “We already took care of it, Dr. Schuyler.” The orderly I’d seen with Nurse Hathaway was at the far wall turning on the overhead lights. As if noticing them for the first time, I saw how ugly the fixtures were, how out of place against the rich wood paneling and elaborately molded ceilings. They were an abomination, I thought, glad the architect of this masterpiece wasn’t around to see the desecration.

  “Thank you,” I said, nodding to him and then the nurse. I looked down at my watch, pinned to the front of my lab coat, and realized that it was almost six o’clock. Since I was due for rounds at seven, it made no sense to toss and turn for such a short time before reporting back to work. At least I had time to wash and change clothes.

  After hesitating only a moment, I ran up the servants’ stairs to the top floor, pausing only briefly to make sure there was no sound or movement before entering the attic room. It was pitch-black inside, with only the slow, steady sound of Captain Ravenel’s breathing to let me know I was in the right place. I aimed my flashlight at the floor and quietly crept to the corner of the room. I’d found an old, empty trunk and was using it as a place to store my clothes as well as a dressing table. I’d managed to find a cracked gilt-framed mirror and hung it on the wall behind the trunk, which made me feel a lot more elegant than circumstances allowed. It must have once hung in the main house, and whenever I peered at my reflection, I couldn’t stop myself from wondering who else had sought to see themselves reflected in the old glass.

  I fiddled one-handed with the trunk’s latches and popped them open, then shone the flashlight inside to pull out clean clothing. I had just grabbed my last clean slip when I heard the switch of a lamp and found myself and the room clearly illuminated in pale yellow light.

  “Glad to see you’re not a German.” Captain Ravenel was sitting up in bed, grinning as if he were privy to a very funny joke.

  “Sorry. It’s only me. And that was just an air-raid drill. I hope you didn’t really think the Germans were coming.”

  “Would you protect me from the Germans if they came?”

  “Yes,” I said without thinking. “I mean, it’s my job. To protect my patients.”

  As if it were even possible, his grin widened. “I’m flattered, I’m sure.”

  I rolled my slip inside the dress I’d pulled from the trunk, then placed the bundle on top of a tall casement clock with no face before approaching the bed. “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “Now that you’re here, like I could run a mile. If you’d smile at me, then I could probably run three.”

  “Captain, please. You shouldn’t say things like that.”

  His grin faded, and I found myself missing it, found myself wishing I’d said nothing so that I could continue my fantasy. That was impossible, of course. His fiancée had come to him. Had come to take him home.

  “No,” he said. “I shouldn’t.” His eyes searched mine, as if he’d heard my thoughts.

  Since I was already there, I decided to help out Nurse Hathaway and take the patient’s vitals. I avoided looking at him but felt his eyes on me like I imagined a flower felt the sun. “I’ll need to examine your wound. I know you must be eager to return home, but I’m afraid I can’t discharge you until there is no sign of infection.” I raised my eyes to meet his, to let him know how serious I was. “If we do not kill all of the bacteria, the infection will return. And there will be nothing left to do except amputate.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” he said slowly, and there was no sign of sarcasm.

  I pulled back the covers just enough so I could examine the leg, then carefully removed the bandages, doing my best to concentrate on the wound and not the beautifully muscled leg. Focusing on my work, I cleaned the wound as I examined it, pleased with his progress.

  As I washed my hands in the bedside basin, I said, “It’s looking very good. I’m thinking you should be able to leave in about a week—two weeks, tops.” I smiled, wondering why the good news didn’t make me feel as happy as it should. Turning away from him, I wrote my short report on his chart, my handwriting shakier than usual. Lack of sleep.

  I replaced the chart on the bedside table, feeling the weight of the ruby necklace under my dress, the stone burning my skin. Until I could return it to Margie, I wore it to keep it safe, having convinced myself that I didn’t need to show it to Cooper. It’s just a necklace. There must be dozens, hundreds, just like it. Stop thinking of reasons to tie him to you.

  With the pretend smile I normally reserved for seriously ill patients, I said, “You’ll have company soon. We’re getting more patients, and the only room for two new beds will be up here. I’ve been instructed to clear out some of this mess.”

  He raised a dark eyebrow. “I thought you were a doctor. Surely clearing out an attic shouldn’t be part of your responsibilities.”

  “It probably shouldn’t.” I bit my lip, the words I wanted to call Dr. Greeley ready to pour out of my mouth. “We’re horribly short staffed, so everyone must do his—or her—part.”

  “Including Dr. Greeley, I’m sure. He doesn’t seem the type of man who thinks of women with the same credentials as equals.”

  “No. He’s not,” I said bluntly, still too angry to sugarcoat the truth.

  “I find a woman with brains enormously attractive and not threatening in the least. A pretty face is nice, too, but having somebody to converse with and share thoughts for thirty or forty years is very appealing to me.” His voice sounded wistful, as if he were still searching for that woman.

  “Your fiancée is a lucky woman, Captain, to have found a man with such progressive thinking.”

  He was silent for a moment, studying me. Quickly changing the conversation, he said, “I’ll help.” He sat up and placed his feet on the floor.

  “Absolutely not. You’re a patient here, not an orderly. I promise to be as unobtrusive as possible . . .”

  As if I hadn’t spoken, he stood, wearing only his hospital gown, and I turned my back to him. “Captain Ravenel, please . . .”

  “It’s Cooper. And if you will give me just a moment, I’ll put on my shirt and pants—I do believe they will fit over my bandages—and then you won’t have to act like you’ve never seen a naked man before.”

  “Captain . . .”

  “Cooper. You said yourself that my leg is mending. And if you don’t let me get out of that bed and do something useful, I’m afraid that I can’t be responsible for my actions.”

  I slowly let the breath out of my nose, tired of dealing with too many obstinate men in one morning. “Fine. But you are not moving heavy furniture or anything that might impede the healing of your leg.” I headed to the corner of the room, where many of the mansion’s remnants had been piled. “I’ll get an orderly to clear out most of the larger items that I can’t move myself, but first I wanted to go through the trunks and armoires and pull any
clothing out. I’m sure it’s all mostly moth-eaten, but I know the ragman will welcome any donations. It’s amazing what they’re collecting these days for the war effort—even gum wrappers and silk stockings. I’m sure if I donated my mother’s old fur, they’d be able to turn it into a parachute or bomb or something useful.” He’d moved to stand near me, making me babble like a young girl on her first date.

  “All very much appreciated, I assure you.”

  “I really don’t think you should be standing . . .”

  “Are you going to let me finish?”

  The words were spoken very close to my ear, and when I turned I found those fascinating eyes watching me closely. “Finish what?” I asked, forcing myself to remain upright instead of leaning toward him.

  “Your sketch. It’s not quite done. I’ve been working on it from memory, but I really need you to sit for me so I can finish. There’s something about your eyes . . .”

  I reached past him and yanked open the door of a towering armoire, its mahogany finish cloudy with dust, glad for the coughs the movement generated. Anything was better than continuing this conversation. He’d already sketched me while I slept. While I slept. The only thing more intimate would be for me to be aware of him as he sketched me, to allow our eyes to meet for long periods.

  I coughed again, then jerked open the second door. “I’ve been dying to see what was in here. When I first moved up to the attic, I was going to use it to store my clothes, but it was so jam-packed that I realized it would take too much time.” Blindly, I reached inside, grabbed an armful of material, and lifted the garments from the hanging rack.

  “These aren’t heavy,” I said behind a pile of crinolines and lace. “If you could just place them on the floor by the door, I’ll bring them downstairs and have the nurses sort through everything to see if there’s anything salvageable, and the rest goes to the ragman.”

  He lifted the load from my arms while I turned back for another handful until the armoire was empty. “Thanks for your help,” I said, swiping my hands together. I closed one door and, while reaching for the other, looked at the floor of the piece of furniture, where a crumpled pile of yellowed satin lay in a heap. “Hang on. We have one more.”

  I lifted the errant garment in my hand, the smell of dust and age wafting past me, and heard myself sigh. It was a ball gown of the softest cream-colored satin, with tiny handcrafted rosettes along the neckline, the skirt gathered in waves of satin into a small train at the rear, where tiny buttons lined up the back from the top to the bottom of the bodice. The waist was tiny, possibly made tinier by the strategic use of a corset, with a delicate embroidery of roses in the palest pink, almost too faint to see, splashed all over the gown.

  “What have we here?” Cooper asked, taking the gown from me and holding it up so I could get a better look at it.

  “I would say a wedding gown, except I don’t think it was ever a true white. Maybe a gown for a very special occasion.” I leaned forward, examining a dark stain of brownish red on the front bodice. It was a garish blemish on the pale satin, like a scar. “Possibly worn only once because of a wine spill. What a shame.”

  “Should I put this in a pile for you?”

  I actually thought about it for a moment before shaking my head. “No. I have no use for it, and certainly no place to put it. But it is lovely, isn’t it?”

  He’d taken two steps toward the pile before he stopped. “There’s an embroidered label inside.” He fumbled for a moment with the collar, bringing it closer to his face. “It says, ‘Made Expressly for Prunella J. Pratt.’”

  “Prunella?” I said, the name jarring.

  “Not the most attractive of names; that’s for sure. It’s a good thing she was wealthy. I’ve found that people will overlook a lot if one has money.”

  I barely heard him, my brain too busy racing. “That’s odd,” I said. “It is an unusual name, yet when I was growing up I remember having an Aunt Prunella. I don’t know what her exact relationship was—she could have been a great-aunt or something—but I called her Aunt Prunella. I don’t recall if her last name was Pratt—it wasn’t something I ever thought to ask. She seemed ancient even back then to my four-year-old self and smelled like mothballs. My parents would take me for an obligatory Sunday afternoon visit and I’d have to kiss her cheek and then sit still for a whole hour gnawing on stale cookies and listening to her talk about how wonderful her life had once been, and how many times she appeared in the society pages labeled as a ‘great beauty.’ She had a scrapbook she’d always bring out just to prove to us that she was telling the truth. And my parents usually brought her a check. She must have always been asking for money, because I remember that part very clearly.”

  I paused, the memory not wholly unwelcome. My father and mother had both been alive then, and if the weather was nice, on the way home we’d walk through the park and my father would buy me an ice-cream cone. And when I was very small, he’d lift me up on his shoulders for the last block, pretending to stagger under my weight.

  I slammed the armoire door shut. “We stopped visiting her when my father died—I always got the sense that we did so only out of my father’s sense of duty, and my mother saw no sense in extending the misery after his death. I have no idea if Aunt Prunella is even still alive.”

  “She sounds delightful,” he said, the laughter in his eyes again.

  I looked down at my watch. “I really need to get started on rounds . . .”

  “What’s this?” he asked as he pushed aside a hanging rack of more garments, these draped with an old sheet. But the object he’d focused his attention on was hiding behind it—a short and squat Chinese chest with two drawers, its ornate mother-of-pearl design nearly obliterated by what appeared to be splattered paint. Each drawer had a lock, but no key.

  “I really should go downstairs now,” I said, my voice sounding halfhearted even to me.

  “Or I could open this top drawer,” Cooper said as he tugged on the ornate drawer pull and it slid open as far as it would go.

  “It’s sketches,” I said with surprise. Of anything I anticipated being inside the drawers, that wouldn’t have been it.

  Cooper reached in and took out a small pile of various-sized papers, then began slowly flipping through them, showing them to me before moving on to the next.

  “They’re sketches of this room,” I said. “Before it became a storeroom.”

  Cooper pointed at one of the far wall where the tall blacked-out windows with fanlights sat recessed within the brick walls and under elaborate gilded keystones. “And before there were dimouts in the city.”

  Each sketch was a detailed analysis of various parts of the room—the brick fireplace with the painted medallions over the mantel, the delicate scrolls of the ornate ceiling, the domed skylight that magnified the sun, shooting prisms of light throughout the room. I stared at the last one for a long moment while I searched for my voice. “It’s exactly what I thought it would look like. Before they painted it black.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “They look . . . familiar somehow. Like I’ve seen them before, or at least the artist’s work. Look,” he said, tapping the bottom right corner of the top sketch. “They’re all signed.”

  The signature was tiny, making me squint as I tried to read it. “I think it says Harry Pratt,” I said, handing it back to Cooper.

  “Harry Pratt,” he said slowly. “I’m pretty sure I don’t know his work. Most likely some relation to Prunella Pratt, who owned the dress. He’s quite good, whoever he is. Or was.” His glance fell to the second drawer. “Would you like to do the honors?”

  With my rounds having been completely forgotten, I knelt in front of the chest and pulled, but nothing happened.

  “Is it locked?” Cooper asked.

  I shook my head. “No. It looks like something’s stuck. It might be a sketch, and I’m afraid that if I p
ull on it, it might get damaged.”

  I stood back and allowed Cooper to take a look. “I think you’re right.” He began tipping the chest forward to study its back, and then tilted it on its side to look beneath it. “If you can get me some kind of chisel, a hammer and a screwdriver, I should probably be able to take it apart without damaging anything inside.”

  I was about to remind him that he was a patient when we both heard the unmistakable clicking of high-heeled shoes in the corridor outside. Cooper limped back to his bed as quickly as possible, and I followed him, not really sure why I felt like we’d been caught doing something wrong.

  He slid beneath the sheets and as I leaned forward to tuck the blankets beneath the mattress, I felt the ruby slowly slide from its hiding place. I stood quickly, hoping to tuck it back inside my dress before he noticed. His hand grabbed my wrist, his eyes meeting mine.

  The door flew open. “Well, isn’t this cozy?” Caroline Middleton stood near the pile of discarded clothes, the light from the hallway behind her outlining her form like a halo.

  Cooper dropped his hand as I straightened, tucking the necklace back into my dress. “Good morning, Miss Middleton. I’m happy to report that Captain Ravenel is making wonderful progress. I expect that we will be able to release him in no more than two weeks.”

  I stepped away from the bed, feeling his eyes on me but knowing that looking back would mean acknowledging that he’d seen the ruby. That there was a connection between us, a connection I couldn’t begin to understand.

  I busily tidied the bedside table as I prepared to leave. “It’s a little early for visiting hours. Perhaps you’d like to come back later?”