A Fall of Marigolds

by Meissner, Susan

  After his discharge, I would never see Andrew Gwynn again, Lord willing. Surely after he opened the scarf, he would wish never again to see me.

  Over the next hour, Mr. Charles and I took turns with the men who were well enough to step outside for a breath of air. As it happened, I was not the one to assist Andrew Gwynn with his few minutes outside; Mr. Charles helped him.

  When I returned to the ward with the last patient, Dr. Randall had arrived to make his rounds. All the other men were either back in their beds or sitting on the edges, waiting for their turn to be examined. Dr. Randall greeted me as the last patient and I made our way into the room. When I returned to the nurses’ station, he was bent over the night nurse’s notes.

  “And how was the rest of your evening?” he asked.

  “Fine.” I didn’t elaborate. “And yours? Did you find Dr. Treaver in the dining room?”

  “I did. He’s a better player than I. Dr. Treaver had a great evening. He won every hand.”

  I smiled politely and gathered what I needed for my cart for rounds. Tongue depressors, clean cloths, a cleansing basin, an otoscope.

  We began to move around the room, Dr. Randall making his examinations, and I meticulously recording his findings on the patients’ records.

  At the end of the first rows of beds, as he washed his hands at the basin in my cart, he leaned in toward me. “Fancy a stroll outside tonight after the evening meal?”

  I handed him a drying towel. “A stroll?” I said, though I had heard him perfectly.

  “Yes. A stroll. A walk.” He took the towel from me.

  “I don’t think—”

  “I’m not asking to court you, Miss Wood. I just want to take a walk after dinner. Unless you’d like to come with me on the ferry tomorrow instead. It’s your day off, too, isn’t it? We can take a walk in Central Park.” He handed the towel back to me.

  I took it from him. “No.”

  “Just a walk in the park.”

  I folded the towel slowly. “No, thank you.”

  He moved in a bit closer. “You know, I’m only trying to help.”

  I could hear the genuine compassion in his voice, and the ardor all good doctors have for curing what ails someone. When I looked at his eyes, however, I couldn’t tell whether the fascination I saw there was for my pathetic state or my being a woman he might actually find attractive.

  “It’s not right that no one has stepped in to help you with this, Miss Wood,” he whispered, mindful—and I was glad of it—that some of the patients in the room understood English. “If you were my sister or friend or my beloved—”

  “Let’s finish the rounds, shall we?” I yanked the cart from in between us and spun it around, as much to end the conversation as to point the cart in the opposite direction.

  “Think about it,” Dr. Randall said as he fell in step with me and we moved across the polished floor toward Andrew Gwynn’s bed.

  “And how are you this morning, Mr. Gwynn?” Dr. Randall said as he reached for Andrew’s record at the foot of his bed.

  “Fine, Doctor. Thank you,” Andrew answered.

  “You’re looking much better today after the scrubbing bath. Any lingering pain?”

  “No, Doctor.”

  Dr. Randall handed me the patient record to examine Andrew’s scalp and neck. But as he moved closer to the bed I saw the doctor’s gaze linger on the bedside table. The poetry book lay near the base of the lamp, as if Andrew had placed it there after reading it last night.

  Ethan Randall opened his mouth to say something but abruptly shut it. My breath caught in my throat. He turned to me with questioning eyes. I looked away.

  “Now then, Mr. Gwynn,” I heard him say. I lifted my eyes and saw that Ethan Randall was examining Andrew’s skin. And Andrew seemed to know something odd had just occurred between the doctor and me. His gaze traveled to the book on his bedside table.

  The awkward silence surrounding the three of us was palpable. I busied myself at my cart, as if the book hadn’t caught Dr. Randall’s attention. As if there were no book.

  But when Dr. Randall turned from Andrew to wash his hands at my cart, his eyes sought mine. I met his gaze because I knew I must.

  “Change your mind about that walk tonight?”

  I couldn’t read the emotion behind Dr. Randall’s simple question except to know that he was at the very least concerned that I’d had in my possession last night something that belonged to a patient in my care.

  What could I do but nod my head?

  Twenty

  THE rest of the day dragged as though it were weighted with irons.

  Before he left the ward, Dr. Randall gave instructions for the second scrubbing to take place after supper, before the men retired for the night and after my shift was over. I wasn’t sure of his rationale but I didn’t care. It meant I wouldn’t be giving Andrew Gwynn another bath that day. I didn’t think I could handle another one. He was starting to remind me too much of Edward in too many ways.

  In the early afternoon, two more new patients were sent to us from the main building, a lad of fourteen as slender as a birch tree, and an older man with a mustache and beard that reached to his waist. After I had both men resting comfortably in their beds, I made my own afternoon rounds: temperature taking, filling water pitchers, administering aspirin to those with fevers and chills.

  When I approached Andrew’s bed to fill his water pitcher, he pointed to the book beside it. “Did the doctor recognize that book? I mean, I couldn’t help but notice.”

  Heat rose to my cheeks. “I think maybe he did.”

  “You had it with you last night when you met with him?”

  I winced at the way those words sounded together. But I nodded my head.

  “Does he think it’s yours and he’s wondering what I’m doing with it now?”

  I grabbed his pitcher and began to pour from my larger one. “He knows it’s not mine. I told him it belonged to a friend. I’m sure he’s wondering what I was doing with it.”

  A drip of water fell onto my polished shoe, splattering like a raindrop on pavement.

  “Are you in trouble, then?”

  “I don’t know. It was a stupid thing to do. It wasn’t my book and I didn’t even have your permission. Now Dr. Randall probably thinks . . .” But I let my voice trail away as I realized I had been thinking out loud.

  “He thinks what?”

  I set my own pitcher back on my cart. “Nothing.” But as I exchanged Andrew’s water glass for a clean one, I stole a glance at him. I could see he knew what Dr. Randall probably thought.

  “You’ve done nothing wrong,” Andrew said. “You’ve shown me nothing but compassion.”

  I nearly knocked over the glass as I backed away from both the table and the compliment. “Don’t say that.”

  “But it’s true. I shouldn’t have asked you to get the pattern book. I knew it was asking too much of you. But you did it anyway. And because you did, you saved my mother’s poetry book. You found Lily’s scarf too, and brought it back to me. You’ve made sure my every need has been met here. I’ll tell him myself if you want me to.”

  “No need, I assure you. But thank you. You should rest now.”

  I eased myself away from him and his gratitude, to tend to the rest of the ward’s needs and to wait for the long, awkward afternoon to end.

  As the day slogged on, I missed Edward more than I had in weeks. I missed where I would have been had life dealt us both a different hand. Perhaps after these last six months Edward would have asked me to marry him and I’d be choosing a dress and planning my wedding, not hiding away on this spill of earth, latched onto the grief of another.

  When the day finally ended and the evening shift began, I left the ward without a backward glance. I headed to the dining room to take my meal at a corner table, where I coul
d enjoy the solitude of not having to answer any questions about my personal choices.

  The dining hall was stuffy from the day’s humidity, and I hadn’t much appetite. The stewed chicken was sinewy and tasteless. After eating a few bites of overcooked potato and creamed peas, I was finished. As I prepared to leave, Dr. Randall entered the dining room with Dr. Treaver and two other nurses. Dr. Randall excused himself and walked over to my table and set his tray down.

  “I think we need to talk,” he said, politely but assertively. He took the chair opposite mine.

  “There really is nothing to talk about, Doctor. I borrowed Mr. Gwynn’s book and then I gave it back. Ask him yourself.”

  “You said that book belonged to a friend.”

  “No. You asked me if it belonged to a friend and I said, ‘You could say that.’”

  “Is that what Mr. Gwynn is? Is he more than a patient to you?”

  His words felt like a reprimand and I instinctively drew back in my chair. “You presume too much. May I remind you Mr. Gwynn just lost his wife. He is in mourning.”

  Ethan Randall regarded me for a moment. Then he spoke, calmly but with purpose. “I’ve seen the way you look at him, Nurse Wood. I’ve seen the way you care for him. I thought it was admirable at first. You don’t treat the other patients the way you treat him. You favor him. I presume only what I see evidence of.”

  At first I could summon no words. Fury rose up within me and tied my tongue in a knot that loosened only as I pressed down my anger.

  I leaned over the table and spoke softly so that no one else would hear and so that it would appear I was perfectly calm, which I most assuredly was not.

  “I treat that man differently because he lost his bride of a week on the ship that brought him here. His bride of a week! She practically died in his arms!”

  He seemed taken aback by my response, but only for a moment. “What has that got to do with you having his book?”

  “I was merely borrowing it. What is the harm in that?”

  “You make it a habit of borrowing things from your patients?”

  “Of course not. Why are you making so much of this?”

  “Because I have seen the way you are with him. And the way he is with you.”

  What Dr. Randall was intimating was ludicrous. “You don’t know what you are talking about,” I murmured as low as I could and yet with vehemence. “If you are insinuating that I am in love with Mr. Gwynn, then you are indeed greatly mistaken. And Mr. Gwynn is not in love with me. He loved his wife. And I . . . I loved someone else. It’s our grief that binds us!”

  Ethan Randall’s earlier disapproval thinned to something more like surprise. “You loved someone else?”

  I cleared my throat to sweep away the ache of having said so much in such a small number of words. “I lost someone I loved in the fire, if you must know. Someone I’d just met, but who meant a great deal to me.”

  “I . . . I truly am very sorry to hear that.”

  I knew my eyes were shimmering with emotion but I held it in check, even as Dr. Randall suddenly put it together. It all made sense to him.

  “That’s the real reason you haven’t gone to Manhattan, isn’t it?” he said. “It’s not what the fire did; it’s what the fire did to you.”

  I shifted in my chair at his bluntness. “I haven’t gone because I’ve had no desire to go.” I blinked back the last of the threatening tears and pointed to his tray. “Your food’s getting cold.”

  “I am, as I said, so very sorry for your loss, but I think you haven’t left here because you haven’t given yourself any reason to.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’ve been here nearly half a year? You haven’t left the island—even once—in all that time. And you think your grief is as fresh as Mr. Gwynn’s? Can’t you see? It’s your grief you are concentrating on, not his. You’re keeping it alive by staying here.”

  It took me a moment to fully realize what he was saying. That I was in love with my grief.

  That my in-between island was a place where my loss could stay evergreen and a bereaved man like Andrew Gwynn would seem like a soul mate.

  I rose from my chair. “I think we are finished talking.”

  “And Mr. Gwynn?”

  “What about him?”

  “You can’t be treating him differently, Nurse Wood. He’s your patient. You’re his nurse.”

  “I know exactly what I am!” I replied hotly. “And you’re telling me you treat all your patients the same, even though their needs are vastly different?”

  “Yes, I do,” he said, as gentle as I had been angry. “Each one gets the best care I can give them, all that I can give them, regardless of what they suffer from.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, and shut it just as quickly. Despite Dr. Randall’s flair for frankness, he was right. In my zeal to administer healing and hope to the grieving Andrew Gwynn, I had neglected to some extent every other man on the ward.

  “It won’t happen again. Good night, Doctor.” I took a step away from the table.

  He reached for my arm. “Please don’t leave angry with me.”

  I wriggled my arm free of his grasp. “I’m not angry with you.”

  “I really do want to help you.”

  I looked past Dr. Randall’s clean-shaven face, past the spectacles, to his blue eyes. “Why?”

  “I like you. Is that so terrible?”

  “You mean my pathetic state interests you.”

  He drew back a bit in his chair. “I don’t mean that at all. And I do not think you are in a pathetic state. Do you think you are?”

  Truly, in that moment I didn’t know what I thought. The breach now was so wide I could not feel solid ground beneath me. It was as if the island were sinking into the water and taking me with it.

  I was sure of only one thing.

  Everything had been under control until Andrew Gwynn had arrived. The sooner he left, the sooner I could repair what had been broken. In the morning I would request an early rotation to a different ward. It would be easy enough to ask Mrs. Crowley. Surely there was a nurse in reception who could take my place in the scarlet fever ward. When the day came for Andrew Gwynn to be discharged, I would see to it that everything I had that belonged to him was returned. Dr. Randall, who would continue to see Andrew every day, could be convinced to return the pattern book and scarf to Andrew upon his discharge. He would be only slightly aghast to learn I had kept other items that belonged to Andrew Gwynn, and if he was truly eager to help me he would do it. In the morning I would send a note to Andrew via Dr. Randall that I had been moved to another ward. I would tell him that his belongings would be safely returned to him before he left. I would wish him well, and in my heart I would pray that he would bear up under the weight of what he would soon learn. And that would be the end of it.

  “Miss Wood?”

  “No. I do not think that I am in a pathetic state.”

  “Will you let me help you then?”

  “Yes.”

  I turned from his surprised but pleased face. And I left the dining room without telling him what I had in mind by way of help; he would find out soon enough. I hurried to my quarters to finish what I needed to do. I found a long piece of tissue paper in the trunk I kept at the foot of my bed and spread it out on my coverlet. The scarf, draped across a chair back, was dry and smelled faintly floral and yet sterile. The little key was snug under the hem. I laid the scarf out on the tissue and then reached under my pillow for the letter and the certificate. I placed them at one end of the scarf and began to fold it over, again and again, until the fabric was a tight rectangle bearing no hint of what it held inside. Then I wrapped it in the tissue and tied it closed with a bit of ribbon. It looked like a gift.

  I heard voices on the other side of the door. Dolly’s and others’. She was sayi
ng good night to another nurse.

  I grabbed the package and tossed it under my bed.

  Twenty-One

  WHEN Dolly returned to our room we finally had a chance to talk alone. She wanted a full report on how my evening with Dr. Randall had gone, and I wanted to know what she had told Nellie and Ivy about what they had overheard before they boarded the ferry.

  We changed into our nightgowns and sat on our beds eating caramel popcorn she had bought from a sidewalk vendor in Central Park.

  Dolly said she had told Nellie and Ivy the simple truth that I had lost a good friend in the fire and it pained me to speak of him, so they were to hush up about it.

  “And they were satisfied with that?” I asked.

  “Who cares?” Dolly popped a golden clump into her mouth. “It isn’t any of their affair. I told them they’d be unkind to bring it up. They’re gossips, but they aren’t cruel, Clara.”

  I told her everything that had transpired over the weekend, deciding to leave nothing out. I recounted fully the returned scarf, the hidden key, the poetry book, and finally Dr. Randall’s bold assertion that I had overstepped my responsibilities regarding Mr. Gwynn, but that he was anxious to help me brave my first trip off the island. And all the while, Dolly said nothing, which was strange for her. She usually had a comment for everything.

  Her silence unnerved me. “Why haven’t you said anything?” I asked when I finished by telling her I was going to rotate early out of the scarlet fever ward.

  “I hardly know what to ask,” she answered. “So, are you saying you have feelings for Mr. Gwynn?”

  “I said nothing of the kind!” I sputtered. “I merely said I think it would be best if I got out of that ward. Everything became far too complicated for me when Mr. Gwynn showed up.”

  Dolly cocked her head. “Complicated?”

  “Yes, complicated. His losing his wife the way he did and then asking me to get that pattern book, and my doing it and finding that awful letter—”