Breathing Room

by Marsha Hayles

  Under the bludgeonings of chance

  My head is bloody, but unbowed.

  Beyond this place of wrath and tears

  Looms but the horror of the shade,

  And yet the menace of the years

  Finds and shall find me unafraid.

  It matters not how strait the gate,

  How charged with punishments the scroll,

  I am the master of my fate;

  I am the captain of my soul.

  My eyes opened as I said the last lines, hoping to find Dena awake, ready to bark at me about sneaking off again.

  But she remained pale and still.

  The night sounds of coughs and cries circled around us, but we listened only for the silence.

  Then it came. Dena had gone home.

  CHAPTER 39

  A Different Path

  “LET’S WALK HERE today, Sarah, instead of going to the concert.” I guided the wheelchair down a paved path that wandered alongside a wooded area and away from the other patients.

  In the weeks since Dena’s death, Sarah and I had spent as much time as we could outdoors, as if the summer sun could ease the memory of that dark night.

  Sarah looked over her shoulder. “You’re thinking about Dena, aren’t you?”

  I looked away to avoid meeting Sarah’s eyes. I was thinking about Dena, but about something else too. About what Dr. Keith had told me after my last X-ray.

  “I was wondering,” I said, remembering something else, “if we should send a letter to tell Beverly—like we did after Pearl.”

  “We’ll do it later today, Evvy. I’ve got that new stationery my mother sent. We’ll tell Beverly you’re getting better too.”

  Does Sarah already know? No, she couldn’t. Dr. Keith had made a point of talking to me privately in an examination room, away from Sarah and the other girls.

  I kept pushing the wheelchair, glad the path moved from the shade of the woods into the warm sunshine of a green lawn. “I’m not the only one getting better, Sarah. You can write that in the letter too.”

  Sarah pointed to the grassy side of the path. “Let’s go sit over there.”

  I hesitated an instant. Face-to-face, I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep anything from Sarah. I slowed down and eased the wheelchair to a stop, then spread out a small blanket. With my help, Sarah soon rested comfortably on the ground. I sat beside her and braided stems of clover into a long chain.

  She turned her face to the sun and closed her eyes. “You know, Evvy, now that you’re leaving Loon Lake, I promise to be okay even without you here.”

  The clover necklace dropped from my hands. “Sarah, how did you—I mean, when did you—”

  She’d solved yet another mystery.

  Sarah opened her eyes and smiled at me. “I’ve been seeing it coming for a while, Evvy. You look healthier than most of the staff these days. Then this morning, when you came back to the room, you looked like you’d been crying. I figured there was only one thing that could make you cry like that”—she paused and took a deep, clear breath—“knowing you were going to see Abe soon.”

  I felt a wave of tears rising inside me. “Nope, Sarah,” I said. “For once, you’re wrong.” I lifted my clover chain and placed it on her head like a summer crown. “It was knowing I’d have to say good-bye to you.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Last Night

  (July 8, 1941)

  DURING MY LAST NIGHT at Loon Lake, I broke its biggest rule: I didn’t rest, or at least not much. At first I thought about the Bed Post Sarah had tossed me.

  I hadn’t written a poem about our friendship. Not yet. I had started lots of times but hadn’t finished any, though I had been working hard on one piece. Had Sarah known? Is that why she asked?

  Then, as if one worrisome thought nudged another loose, an alarm went off inside me.

  I was leaving Sarah.

  Leaving her.

  Alone.

  And maybe forever.

  Yes, she was doing better. To reassure myself, I listened to her steady breaths. The scratchy sounds that used to remind me of static on a distant radio station were almost gone now.

  But we’d thought Pearl was getting better, and Dena too. If something terrible happened to Sarah, I wouldn’t be here even to hold her hand. How could I leave?

  But how could I stay? I sat up in bed and hugged my legs close, letting tears dampen the knees of my pajamas. Father was coming to get me. I was going home. This was what I’d been hoping for ever since my first awful night at Loon Lake. I knew Sarah understood that, even if she felt jealous or scared about being left behind. If Sarah had been the first to go home, I would have been happy for her. Plus, she’d been strong enough to handle being alone before. She would tell me she could do it again, and she knew more than anyone else how much I wanted to see Abe. So how could I stay?

  My thoughts tumbled and turned. I knew I had to do something. I rummaged through a bag that now held all the things from my drawer. I found what I wanted, then set to work, glad for the light of a full moon.

  When I finished, I must have dozed off. I woke to the sounds of the sanatorium coughing back into motion like an old engine starting up. Sarah was already awake. Our morning smiles were interrupted by an orderly wheeling a chair into our room with a blue dress folded over its back and a pair of slip-on shoes on the seat. Nurse Marshall came in and told me to put on the clothes, then went about her morning task of taking temperatures.

  I changed in the bathroom, wondering if Nurse Marshall might give Sarah and me a chance to say our good-byes. But if not, Sarah would find what I’d left and understand.

  The dress buttoned up the front and fitted at my waist with a matching belt. I brushed my hair and put on the shoes, then I glanced in the mirror. I looked healthier already just being out of hospital clothes, but stranger too. I stepped back into the room, feeling out of place now with the others.

  Dr. Keith was there, standing by the wheelchair and waiting for me. I hurried to sit down, embarrassed by the carefree swoosh of the dress. Then I noticed a second wheelchair. He took it to Sarah’s bed and helped her into it, then wheeled us one at a time out the door and to a corner at the end of the hall.

  “I can only give you a moment alone together,” he said, lining us up side by side. Then he leaned in toward us, his stethoscope falling forward like a floppy necktie, and said in a quieter tone, “I’ve also been instructed by a certain nurse, who is doing better, to tell you she’s your fan too.” He straightened back up, smiled at us both, and then was off.

  “Do you think he knows?” I asked.

  “You mean, about you and Dena sneaking in to see Nurse Gunderson?” Sarah said, then answered with a laugh. “Of course he does, Ev!” She reached over and squeezed my arm. “Where do you think he got the idea for taking us to see Dena?”

  I nodded, afraid if I tried to speak right now, tears would follow.

  “I’m glad we were there,” Sarah said, still holding my arm. “Together.”

  “Me too,” I whispered, then took a deep breath, as if to clear the way for the words still inside me. “Listen, Sarah, I finished a poem and left it in your drawer. I wrote it about Dena. But it’s really for you—for us—about going on. Like Dena told me.”

  “Then let’s promise to do that, Ev.”

  Nurse Marshall made her way down the hallway toward us.

  “Here comes Old Eagle Eye,” I said, putting my hand on Sarah’s, wishing I wouldn’t have to let go.

  Sarah lowered her voice. “You’d better not write me that you’re missing her!”

  Before I could answer, Nurse Marshall was there and wheeling her away.

  Sarah turned her head and looked back at me with a smile. I waved good-bye with a hand still warm from holding hers.

  CHAPTER 41

  Going Home

  I SAT IN A WHEELCHAIR and waited for Father to arrive. Would he be alone? Would the whole family come?

  I thought about what Dr. Keith had
told me yesterday morning. How my guinea pig had lived—a sign that my body had built walls around the disease in my lungs. How my sputum had been clear of tuberculosis for months. How my lungs looked and sounded good and how I’d gained weight and strength. And how, as long as I took care of myself and let those walls stand, I could lead a full life.

  Nurse Marshall had still worn a mask over her mouth when she wheeled me to the visitor’s lobby: I would never be cured in her eyes. She’d left a large bag by my side and said “Good luck” in such an awkward way that she’d made me feel like my chances of even making it out the door were slim.

  I held the other, smaller bag on my lap with my letters and things from my bedside table. When I’d emptied the drawer, I’d found something else—Dena’s envelope stuffed with the bottle caps from our cola party. She must have put it in my drawer before she’d left our room. I didn’t say anything to Sarah. Instead, in the night, I tucked it deep into her drawer to find, maybe on the day she was discharged too.

  Now, with no sign of Father, I reached down into the larger bag to make sure my belongings were all there, especially my green book of poems from Mother and the little dictionary from Abe. My fingers instead bumped into something cushiony soft and familiar. Francy, my stuffed bear! Nurse Marshall hadn’t thrown her away after all. I started to lift her out, but decided to wait until later. I wanted Father to see how much I’d grown up.

  I looked out the window again, this time at the flowerbeds full of pink and white and red petunias lining the long drive. Then, off in the distance, I saw a Lincoln Zephyr making its way up the road and toward the building.

  “He’s here,” I said, bouncing up in my seat, though no one heard or seemed interested in my announcement.

  “He’s here,” I said again, this time just for myself.

  I stood and held my bags, then took slow steps—careful not to attract attention by running—to the giant door.

  I walked into the bright sunshine and started down the stairs on my own.

  Father was waving his handkerchief from his car window to greet me.

  Before the car even came to a full stop, a back door winged open and someone flew out and up the steps to me. Someone so tall I almost called him Father, but instead I cried out, “Abe!”

  CHAPTER 42

  Blank Pages

  MOTHER AND I had the house to ourselves—the first time since I’d returned a week ago. Father and Abe had driven Grandma Hoffmeister back home, agreeing to repair her wobbly porch railing in exchange for a dinner of ribs and sauerkraut. I rested, my cheek pressed against an old lace doily on the sofa’s arm, while Mother worked.

  “Sometimes at Loon Lake I pretended you were singing to me,” I told her as she sorted through stacks of music in preparation for her new job as choir director at our church.

  She looked up. “Any piece in particular?”

  “You know those poems Father used to read to us from A Child’s Garden of Verses—the song versions?”

  “Mmm,” she said, her voice holding the note in her musical way. “I’m pleased you remember.”

  “I do. I told the girls how you’d sing to us and how Father used to threaten Abe and me that if we didn’t sit still, he’d plant us in some dirt to see if we’d grow a verse or two.”

  Mother arched an eyebrow and laughed. “Yes, I do seem to recall your father saying something along those lines.”

  “Did you know that Robert Louis Stevenson also had tuberculosis?” I asked.

  She bent down to check for something in a box of music on the floor and didn’t seem to hear me. Or maybe she just didn’t want me ever to say that dreaded word again.

  “Stevenson wrote A Child’s Garden of Verses,” I reminded her.

  She walked over to the piano and thumbed through some music. “Like the one you always liked best, ‘The Land of Counterpane’?” She flattened the music open with the palm of her hand, then played and sang along.

  Her hands seemed to float across the piano, as if she didn’t actually have to touch the keys, only signal them with her fingertips, the music happening by magic. As she sang her face softened, turning the words into a lullaby until a happy sleepiness came over me.

  The music ended, and I opened my eyes. Had I drifted off for a moment? I must have, because Mother had gone back to sorting her music again.

  “One of his poems was in the book you sent me,” I told her in a dreamy sort of way, aware that a light blanket now covered me and felt good tucked around my shoulders. “I read that book over and over—”

  “Oh, you just reminded me,” Mother said, putting her finger to her lips as if to think for a moment, then leaving the room. I could hear her heels click up the stairs, then across the floor in the bedroom.

  I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds outside the open window.

  I heard cats—maybe Sweetie or one of her grown kittens—hissing and quarreling. I listened to a truck off in the distance as it slowed down to turn a corner, something clanging and clunking against the walls of the truck’s bed. I thought of the metal carts rattling down the hallway at Loon Lake.

  Over everything else, I heard the zeet-zeet-zeet of the crickets. Once I started paying attention, that noise seemed as relentless as all the coughing at Loon Lake. I wished I could tell Mother about nights there and about Sarah and Dena—the other girls too—and Nurse Gunderson and Dr. Keith.

  But some part of me realized that what happened at Loon Lake would always be background noise for her. She could not hear it as music, and I could not sing it to her.

  “I got this for you,” she said, coming back into the room and walking to the sofa. In her outstretched hand was a present. I sat up, the blanket tumbling off me. She handed me the gift, then, with the elegant poise of someone about to face an audience, seated herself in a nearby chair.

  She waved her hand toward the package, conducting me to open it.

  My fingers tugged at the ribbons and wrapping. I could feel that a book rested inside, and I glanced up, wanting again to say how much I’d loved the other book she’d given me, how much those poems had meant to us all.

  But Mother looked down at the gift—eager or impatient, I couldn’t quite tell—so I hurried to reveal this book’s cover.

  When I did, I was surprised to see that nothing was written across the red leather on the front or on its binding either. Inside, there were no words: the pages were as white as the walls at Loon Lake.

  This was not a regular book, it was a journal.

  The cover felt buttery soft in my hands, and already ideas were coming to me about what I would include in the book—maybe a poem about Sarah, and, oh, a dedication, and I’d have to decide how I wanted to sign my name … .

  I looked up and smiled. “Thank you,” I said, and squeezed my journal as if it were her hand. “It’s perfect.”

  “You’re welcome, Evvy.” She stood to return to her work, then paused and said, “I could tell from your letters that you’re a writer.”

  “I’m a writer,” I whispered, as if repeating a refrain—maybe from one of her songs or from one of my poems.

  I smiled, knowing we each had our own way—and we both had each other.

  I fluttered the blank pages of my journal between my fingers. Little puffs of air blew against my cheek, as if my soon-to-be-written words had already taken their first breath.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Evidence of tuberculosis has been found in Egyptian mummies; its symptoms are described in ancient Greek and Hindu texts as well as in the Bible. For centuries, people called it “consumption” because of the way the disease seemed to consume the body. After 1882, when Robert Koch discovered the germ that causes the disease and named it the tubercle bacillus, the illness became known as tuberculosis.

  Tuberculosis is a contagious disease, spread most commonly by coughing. Fortunately, most people who are exposed to the germ never actually become ill. But many people do, and up until the mid-1940s, there was little effective
treatment. At that time, armed with a new drug called streptomycin, doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, successfully treated a woman who would have otherwise died of the disease. She recovered and went on to lead a full and active life. In the years following, doctors found that with the right combination of medicines, patients could be treated successfully. Many thought the White Plague—as tuberculosis was sometimes called—had been conquered. In recent years, however, new strains have proven resistant to these drugs, and an estimated two million people still die of tuberculosis worldwide each year.

  Different types of tuberculosis can affect all parts of the body, including the bones, skin, throat, brain, and internal organs. In Breathing Room, the girls have pulmonary tuberculosis, the most common form affecting the lungs. If the body cannot resist the invading bacteria, the healthy tissue in the lungs dies and dissolves away, leaving behind a cavity. Dead tissue and the active bacteria get coughed up in sputum, a mix of saliva and mucous. Eventually more and more of these cavities form until, in some cases, the inside of the lung is dotted with holes, like a slice of Swiss cheese. Over time, the erosive process may also damage a large blood vessel. When this happens, the blood vessel can rupture and the patient experiences excessive bleeding, called a hemorrhage. Because the blood is fresh with oxygen from the lungs, it is bright red and foamy from the coughing. Some patients die from a hemorrhage, while others recover over time.

  Tuberculosis affects each patient differently, though common symptoms include fever, exhaustion, vomiting, weight loss, rapid heartbeat, and—most notably—a lingering bad cough. But there is no set course for the disease. In one patient, the illness remains in check and causes little damage. Some patients don’t even know they have tuberculosis—the illness is not discovered until an autopsy. (This was the case with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt; after her death, an autopsy revealed she had died of tuberculosis.) In another patient, the disease overwhelms the body so quickly that the patient dies within weeks or months of the diagnosis.