The Light of Luna Park

by Addison Armstrong

  I push the thought aside and smile at Mrs. Wallace. “With that, I do believe it is about time we get you into bed.” She grumbles, but I am firm, and I assist her as she mounts the stairs and changes into her nightdress. I’ve learned this past week that her mind is sharp; she merely needs help with the physical tasks that have stretched into impossibility with age. Right now, that means standing behind her to slide her coat off her stiff shoulders and bending to retrieve her nightclothes from their drawer. “Arms up.” I slide the gown over her head and lead her gently to bed. “Your medicine.” I hand it over with a glass of water, which Mrs. Wallace accepts with gratitude. “Is there anything else you need?” I ask her, setting the glass atop a coaster so that it does not stain the late Mr. Wallace’s mahogany table.

  “No, Althea, thank you.”

  “Of course.” I exit the room, smiling softly to myself. Though I prefer the hustle and bustle of a hospital ward, I have enjoyed serving Mrs. Wallace more than I expected. I’ll be disappointed to leave her after returning Stella to the Perkinses, perhaps because spending prolonged time with a single patient cultivates a bond that is oft impossible to forge in a place like Bellevue.

  Well, I laugh to myself, prolonged time with two patients, really. I let myself into my room to find the latter breathing heavily, ready to let out her signature cry. She is hungry, and now, after Mrs. Wallace has gone to bed, I am able to feed her. “Here, sweet girl,” I coo as I tilt the bottle to her lips. “Is that better?” She drinks greedily, and I close my own eyes as I lean back against the bed’s headboard. Between feeding Stella every three hours at night and attending to Mrs. Wallace as she rises to use the bathroom, I get very little sleep.

  As if on cue, a thump sounds from the direction of Mrs. Wallace’s bedroom. Oh, dear. Has she tried to get up on her own? With her joints, the task of climbing out of bed is a daunting one.

  I place Stella in her bassinet. “Mrs. Wallace,” I call, “do wait for me!”

  But she is already on the floor when I appear in her doorway. The lamp beside her bed is on, casting a garish light across her empty bed. Her face is enshrouded in shadow, and I go closer. “Mrs. Wallace?” Her eyes are closed. “Mrs. Wallace?”

  I reach out and place a hand on her forehead. It is cool, nearly clammy, and I pull back in alarm. I remember her history of heart attacks and clench my toes. Could she have gone into cardiac arrest?

  I put my ear to her chest. No. Her heart is beating, and quickly. But she will not wake up when I call her name.

  I run downstairs and pick up the telephone receiver. “Operator,” I gasp, “I need to be connected with Dr. Gregory Shelton.” Mrs. Wallace has coached me carefully on her physician’s name. The operator puts me through to his line, and I keep my voice as measured as I can. “Dr. Shelton, I am Mrs. Wallace’s new caretaker.” I recite the address. “It’s quite urgent.”

  “I’m so sorry.” A sleepy woman’s voice surprises me at the other end of the line. “But he is out. A patient called half an hour ago.”

  My voice threatens to spiral into panic, but I pull it in. “Does he have a colleague I can call? It is rather an emergency.”

  “One moment.”

  I flinch at the click as the doctor’s wife sets the phone down. Moments later, she returns. “Dr. Charles Morrison. Much younger, but highly recommended.”

  “Operator . . .” But the line has already clicked. The operator has been listening in to our conversation, but I cannot fault her when efficiency is so critical to Mrs. Wallace’s well-being. She connects me quickly to Dr. Morrison’s line, and I launch again into my request. “Dr. Morrison. I was referred to you by Dr. Shelton.” Again, I recite Mrs. Wallace’s address and the nature of the call. “How quickly can you be here?”

  After arranging the doctor, I run back upstairs to find Mrs. Wallace’s condition unchanged. “Circulatory shock,” I mutter to myself. But what caused it? People don’t just keel over with shock for no reason, and I don’t see any blood loss. I flick the ceiling light and kneel beside Mrs. Wallace. There it is, nearly imperceptible on her knobby skin. A small lump above her left shoulder signifies a fractured clavicle.

  Wincing, I lift Mrs. Wallace’s feet gently and place a stack of pillows beneath them. Pulling the blankets from her bed and tucking them under her sides to keep her warm, I am reminded of Stella in her incubator, the temperature set at a perpetual ninety degrees. “You will survive, too,” I promise Mrs. Wallace. “Just as Stella did.”

  I have done all I can for the shock, but I can begin treatment of Mrs. Wallace’s clavicle while waiting for the doctor to arrive. I grab the copy of Pride and Prejudice Mrs. Wallace and I read from just half an hour earlier and place it solidly on her shoulder. The book is not heavy enough to truly do its job, but it is better than nothing. I press her arm to her side and pray the doctor hurries. I do not have the necessary materials to treat her injury myself, but this will help it set when the doctor arrives with the bandages she needs.

  I release Mrs. Wallace’s arm as an urgent knock at the door sends me dashing back down the stairs. I am grateful that I remain in my jacket and skirt; I have not yet changed into my nightdress.

  “Dr. Morrison.” I pull open the door and mask the shock of looking up at such a young face. The other doctor’s wife warned me the man would be youthful, of course, but I didn’t expect someone practically my own age. Dr. Morrison’s hair is nearly as dark as mine, and it frames thick brows and deep gray eyes. I have to step back to take him in, as he’s at least a head taller than me.

  “Thank you for coming. I am Mrs. Anderson.” I nearly say Miss in my preoccupation but stop myself. “Mrs. Wallace is upstairs. Shock and a fractured clavicle. I hope you have a Velpeau bandage? Or a Sayre’s dressing?”

  As I lead him up to the woman’s room, I recount the care I’ve given. “I have lifted her feet and covered her in blankets for the shock. There was little I could do for the collarbone, but I’ve weighted her arm.”

  The doctor throws an astonished glance back at me as he slips past into Mrs. Wallace’s room.

  He then crouches at the side of Mrs. Wallace’s bed where I stood just moments before, his own dark hair and gray suit the mirror image of my own. After a moment’s study, he turns to me. “You are exactly right.” His lips twist into a smile. “But how on earth did you know?”

  I stiffen. This is what I do not miss from Bellevue: the doctors’ continued disbelief that a woman can grasp the medical profession as they do. “I am trained as a nurse.” I provide no further explanation, waiting for the disdain to flit poorly disguised across his face.

  Instead, he smiles again, the movement casting off the shadows the lamp had projected onto him. “Come, then. Help me with the bandage.”

  I mask my shock and hold the arm in place as he rolls the muslin around Mrs. Wallace’s left shoulder. He loops it under her elbow as I pull the skin back gently to make room; deftly, he crosses it back up her arm, over her chest, under her right axilla, and back to the left shoulder. When he has repeated the pattern six times, he leans back. “You know how to do that on your own, I trust?”

  I nod.

  “Excellent. She will need it replaced every five to six days, the skin cleaned with alcohol between each resetting. I’ll leave you the muslin.”

  He does not ask again whether I am capable, and for that I am grateful. “Of course.”

  My words are accompanied by Stella’s rising wail. “Oh.” I straighten. “My daughter.” The lie, however temporary, feels more and more natural with each passing day. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  Dr. Morrison nods. “Of course.”

  I am not one to share personal information unbidden, but I rush to clarify. I do not want to lose the respect of the one man who does not seem distrustful of my knowledge. Do not want him to think me a loose woman. “Her father was consumptive.”

  I gesture
down at my stiff gray dress to signify my state of mourning. Though the untruth leaves me hot with shame, I have little choice. And I have grown accustomed to guilt.

  “My condolences.”

  “Thank you.” I smile slightly and retrieve Stella. When I return with her to Mrs. Wallace’s bedroom, the woman’s eyes are open.

  “She is beginning to regain consciousness.” Dr. Morrison grins widely.

  “And her blood pressure?”

  “Better.”

  I slip to my knees beside her. “Mrs. Wallace.” I put my hand to her cheek. “You’re safe.” I talk to her until she herself can speak, though I know not what I say. I slide easily into the litany of comfort giving and soothing; my voice, supervisors used to tell me, is like a lullaby.

  “She is lucky to have you.” Dr. Morrison’s voice is low and cool, and I push aside the guilt that I won’t be with Mrs. Wallace for much longer now. It’s just a matter of time.

  The doctor continues. “You could be working in any hospital in the city.”

  I should be. But I cannot, not anymore. “I am not registered,” I confess. “I left school early to marry and then my husband fell ill.” I manage to get the lie past the lump in my throat.

  “And now?”

  I dip my chin to draw his attention to the infant in my arms. “I cannot. Not with Stella.”

  “Forgive me.” Color spreads across the man’s cheeks like a port wine stain.

  I smile. “No need.” I smooth Stella’s wispy hair and say what I imagine a mother would say. “My daughter is enough.”

  “Is she?”

  I look up, startled.

  “I mean no offense.” He looks unsure of himself for the first time. “I have overstepped.”

  “No, no.” I ought to be offended. For myself and for Stella. But this doctor has seen something in me that even those who know me have not: that in leaving the medical profession, I have lost something of my very self. “You are quite nearly right. She is enough. But only.” I find that, though I am not her mother, my words are true. Saving Stella makes this all worth it, whatever the outcome. But I will never stop missing nursing.

  He nods. “You always wanted to be a nurse?”

  “I always wanted to deliver babies,” I confess as we lift Mrs. Wallace back into her bed. She is asleep now, rather than unconscious; her heartbeat is regular, and her skin is warm and alive.

  “And now you have your own.”

  “And now I have my own.” I look at Stella. Though she isn’t mine forever.

  “Well.” Dr. Morrison wipes his palms on the front of his pants. “I am glad that I will be leaving the lovely Mrs. Wallace in good hands.”

  “Thank you,” I gasp as Stella appears to smile at the man. “Her first smile!” I want to freeze the moment, watch Stella beam forever—even if, as a nurse, I know Stella is too young to smile intentionally.

  To my surprise, the doctor grasps Stella’s fingers between his own. “Are you going to help your mother?” he asks. “Surely you’re old enough to have some medical training,” he jokes.

  I chuckle. “She’s just past two months.” I regret the words as soon as they’re out of my mouth.

  But it’s too late. Dr. Morrison blinks. “She can’t be more than six pounds.”

  “Close to. She was born two months early,” I admit, unable to lie anymore to the doctor. “Two and a half pounds.”

  His eyes widen. “Yet she survived?”

  I should just nod and move on. I should smile and pat Stella’s head and let the doctor marvel over her strength. But for more than two months, I have kept the entire world of Luna Park hidden inside me. I am desperate to share it, and whom better to tell? I will never see this doctor again.

  So I tell him. “She’s a fighter. The Luna Park nurses saved her, and Dr. Couney. Out on Coney Island.”

  “The showman. The one with the incubators.”

  I nod. “More than a showman.”

  “Thank the Lord. How terrifying it must have been, to risk losing the one piece of your husband that remained.”

  I cannot help but shake my head as I think of Michael Perkins. “I do not love the girl for her father. I love her because she is my Stella. My star.”

  I gaze into her gemstone eyes as I say it. It’s a dangerous thing, to love this girl. But the danger doesn’t make it any less real.

  “Well, she is lucky to have such a qualified, devoted mother.” Dr. Morrison smiles. “Good-bye, Stella.” He bows. “Good-bye, Nurse Anderson.”

  I bite my lip, pleased to be addressed again as the nurse I wish to be. “Good-bye, Dr. Morrison. Thank you for your assistance.”

  Only when he is gone do I question my manners. Should I have offered him coffee, tea? What is the etiquette for engaging with a man who has made a doctor’s house call in the dark of the city’s cavernous night? And worse, what had possessed me to tell the doctor about Luna Park? My natural reserve has always suited me, and here I am blurting out things that would better stay secret. I sigh, reassuring myself that Dr. Morrison will forget about us. He won’t see us again, this almost-nurse and almost-daughter. We’ll fade into the back of his mind; we’ll disappear. If he ever returns to Mrs. Wallace’s, Stella and I will surely be gone.

  “Well,” I murmur to Stella. “I suppose there’s nothing to do for it now. The next time we need a doctor it will be Dr. Shelton.” I put Stella down and change into my nightdress. “We won’t see Dr. Morrison again.”

  But I am wrong. The doctor calls in the morning, and I assure him that Mrs. Wallace is doing better. When I mention the pain in her collarbone, however, Dr. Morrison reacts as if I have told him she has had a heart attack. “I’ll be over this afternoon,” he promises. “Can you wait that long?”

  “Surely some pain is natural?”

  “Oh, yes,” he apologizes. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. But don’t you think she would like to take something for it?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Unless”—a laugh rises in his throat—“Mrs. Wallace has some bootleg whiskey tucked away in those cabinets of hers.”

  I smile, though he cannot see me. “We will see you later, then. Thank you.”

  When I hang up, Mrs. Wallace clucks her tongue. “That doctor,” she sighs, “acting just like my daughter-in-law.”

  “Pardon?”

  “All aflutter. Charlotte is sweet as honey and about as sensible, too. Not a calm bone in that girl’s body.”

  I stifle a laugh as I gaze upon Mrs. Wallace’s indignant face.

  “You,” she specifies, “are not like that. You told me what happened last night as if we were taking a stroll through the park.”

  This time, I do laugh. “Perhaps. But not every woman has had the training that I have.” I shrug lightly. “I am merely fortunate.”

  Mrs. Wallace waves her hand as if to dismiss my claims. She grimaces, and I place my hand on her good shoulder.

  “Aflutter or not, Dr. Morrison will be your favorite when he brings that medication.” I grin.

  And he is. He’s Stella’s favorite, too; she doesn’t take her eyes off him the entire time he’s here.

  “Good afternoon, little star.” He thumbs her forehead gently. Few men would be anything other than wary around my daughter, and I smile at Dr. Morrison.

  “Are you in obstetrics?”

  “No,” he admits, “though perhaps I should be.”

  “It was my favorite ward.”

  “Remind me where you trained?”

  I hesitate, loath to give more clues to my past, but his warm eyes disarm me. “Bellevue.”

  “I’m sorry you couldn’t graduate,” he says.

  I open my mouth to thank him and then shut it again, suddenly uncertain I’ve heard him correctly. “Pardon?”

  “The hospital. I’m sorry you
weren’t able to finish your training. It must have been hard, to get so close and then to leave. Whether it was your choice or not.”

  “I . . . yes. Yes, it was.” Of course it was. The doctor’s words should not come as a shock after our conversation last night, but I know of no other person who would say the same. God knows the other women who dropped out to marry or raise children were looked at with a faint modicum of relief, as if they were only finally fulfilling their true and natural purposes. To the rest of the world, the only tragedy is the death of my supposed husband; the thought that I might miss nursing is impossible to fathom.

  Except, apparently, for this man. This strange Dr. Morrison, who seems less like the doctors I know and more like—well, I don’t know who. The doctor is not sad enough to remind me of my late father. He is passionate, not bitter and disappointed to be teaching women like the professors at Linden Hall. I look away from Stella and up at the man. “It was very hard. Thank you for your sympathy.” The words sound trite and generic, but I mean them. Thank you, I am saying, for seeing me. “Would you ever leave it? The medical profession, I mean?”

  He shakes his head. “Never. So many people are sick, so many people are dying . . .” He breaks off. “How horrible that sounds.” He smiles wryly. “But I only mean that there are so many reasons for this job.”

  “To save people.”

  “To save people,” he agrees. “I think I would like delivering babies, too. Serving someone so vulnerable and dependent.”

  His words remind me of Hattie. Stella’s—Margaret’s—delivery, Hattie’s vulnerability in the face of her husband’s control.

  Stella falls into crying as if she can sense the change in my mood. “Oh.” I pat her tiny nose. “She’s hungry.” We are upstairs outside Mrs. Wallace’s bedroom, and I nod to the stairs. “Her bottle is in the kitchen.”

  I readjust Stella in my arms as I near the staircase. “Here.” Dr. Morrison reaches out. “Let me.”

  I hesitate only a moment. “Thank you,” I say as I carefully pass Stella over and then run downstairs. I’m back quickly, and return to find Stella humming happily in the doctor’s arms. “Hmm.” I squint at Stella. “Maybe you weren’t so hungry after all!”