by Michelle Cox
Henrietta turned her attention to the patients in the chairs in the center of the room atop the rug and observed that one woman, uneasily perched in one of the rocking chairs, shockingly appeared to be holding what looked to be a baby. Henrietta was stunned. Surely they wouldn’t allow children in this awful place! She wondered if the woman had given birth in the infirmary below, and her heart went out to her and this poor baby, born into such a place. It reminded her of one of Charles Dickens’s novels that Elsie had once read to her. Which one was it? Little Dorrit?
The woman looked up and caught Henrietta’s gaze. Henrietta offered her a pitying smile, but the woman did not return it. Instead she shifted herself so that her back was toward Henrietta, and she appeared to grip the baby tighter.
Henrietta felt tears well up in her eyes, though she could hardly explain why, but her attention was pulled away by Clive’s address of the apparent nurse in charge, a large tank-like woman standing behind a desk that stood to the far left of the room. It seemed less a nursing station, and more an observation station in the wild or a triage unit in a battlefield. There was nothing on it—no pens or sharp instruments of any kind that Henrietta could see, just more ledgers and a hulking black typewriter. It seemed as if it would serve no purpose except to be a seat of command for the head nurse. Several patients sat on chairs in front of the desk or to the side, as if they needed the extra reassurance of proximity to the nurses, like needy dogs. Behind the hulking nurse, who appeared to be the one in charge, crouched another nurse, this one thinner and presumably younger, if the tendrils of jet-black hair that poked out from under her trim cap were any indication. It was hard to get a good look at her, however, as her back was to them as she bent to talk to one of the patients.
“Excuse me, nurse . . . ?” Clive asked the tank-like nurse.
“Nurse Harding,” the woman growled in the lowest, deepest voice Henrietta had ever heard in a woman. In fact, she looked very much like a bulldog or at least a man, with a faint black moustache on her upper lip and several long, wiry hairs growing out of a large mole on the side of her face.
“Nurse Harding,” Clive said obligingly. “We’re looking to visit one of your patients, I believe. A Miss Liesel Klinkhammer.”
“German lady?” Nurse Harding asked, her eyes slightly squinting as she pursed her lips.
“Yes, that’s the one,” Clive said eagerly.
“She’s dead,” the tank said matter-of-factly.
Henrietta felt an immediate blow to her stomach. “Dead?” she exclaimed, stunned. “Are you sure?”
“I think I know if one of my patients dies, missy. Yeah, she’s dead. A few weeks now. Ain’t that right, Caroline?” she said, attempting to turn her head toward the young nurse behind her, but the large roll of fat around her neck prevented her from doing so completely. Instead, her tiny eyeballs shifted to the extreme corners of their sockets to make up for the lack of dexterity in her neck, making her resemble, God forgive her, Henrietta thought, a pig.
“Yes,” said the young nurse, standing up straight now and turning toward them. “I’m so sorry,” she said kindly. She had warm brown eyes and a pretty smile accompanied by a slight dimple in her right cheek. “Liesel was a lovely woman. We’ll miss her.”
“Look—I’d like to talk to whoever’s in charge,” Clive said, slowly rubbing his forehead.
“And what makes you think that ain’t me?” asked the tank.
Clive stared at her for several moments before he answered calmly, though Henrietta could see he was irritated. “All right, then. I’d like a word. In private.”
“What about?”
“About Miss Klinkhammer, of course. I’d like to know what happened, read her chart.”
“Who are you, anyway? Relative of hers? Left your visit a little late, didn’t you?”
“As it is, I’m a private detective,” Clive answered, just as a scrape of keys was heard and the door to the ward creaked open once again, Joe stepping quickly through.
“Knew it. Knew you was somethin’,” he said with a grin. “I can always tell. Would have put money on you being from the Trib. Didn’t think of detective. Anyways, here’s yer pals.”
Gunther and Elsie stepped through then, looking utterly disquieted. Elsie looked as though she might cry, and upon seeing Henrietta, she nearly ran to her. “Henrietta!” she said with relief as she embraced her. “I . . . I’m sorry we’re late, we . . . we had some problems with Anna at the home,” she said, releasing her sister and looking back at Gunther, who had taken a few steps into the room and was looking around nervously.
Henrietta took a deep breath, dreading the thought of having to tell them the horrible news. “We’ve just heard some bad news, I’m afraid,” she said softly, looking at each of them in turn. “I . . . I’m afraid Liesel is dead, Gunther. I’m so sorry.”
Henrietta saw him grip the hat in his hands as he bowed his head, his eyes shut tight.
“Dead? Oh, no!” Elsie cried out. “She can’t be!”
“Are you sure?” Gunther asked hoarsely. “Sure it is her and . . . and not another maybe?”
Before Henrietta could answer him, Elsie spoke again.
“Henrietta, what happened?” she asked, her eyes darting to the nurses for the first time.
“We don’t know any of the details,” Henrietta tried to say calmly. “We just found out ourselves.” She looked over at Clive and then back at Gunther.
“I knew it,” Gunther said quietly, putting his hand over his eyes. “I think always I have known this.”
“Oh, Gunther,” Elsie said, going to him and putting a hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”
Gunther put his hand on top of hers and gripped it tightly, his face contorted as he sought to control his emotion.
Clive approached them and held out his hand to Gunther. “Mr. Stockel? Clive Howard,” he said. “Sorry to meet under such sad circumstances. You’ve my sincere condolences. My wife tells me she was a friend.”
“A friend of sorts. Yes.” Gunther removed his hand from Elsie’s to shake Clive’s. “What am I going to do now?” he asked Elsie as he turned back toward her.
“Not to worry,” Clive said to him. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. I understand there’s a child, is this correct? And I understand that she might be afflicted with the same condition which Liesel suffered from?”
Gunther looked up at him and seemed grateful that Clive had clearly grasped the situation and nodded. “Yes, that is so,” he said.
“Nurse Harding, I really must insist that we speak to someone about this woman’s condition,” Clive demanded. “She’s left behind a child, and any records would be of great help to us.”
“You her husband?” the tank asked Gunther.
“No,” Gunther answered.
“The father, then? Of the child?”
“No,” Gunther answered again. Henrietta could tell by the way Clive was looking at Gunther during this exchange that he was attempting to assess the truthfulness of his words.
“Don’t know how much I can say,” the tank said with a shrug. “Confidential, you see.” She moved her heavy arm to rest on top of one of the ledgers.
“Well, you can at least tell us the cause of death,” Clive said, irritably.
“I think it was heart failure, wasn’t it, Nurse Harding?” the thin nurse said faintly from behind her.
“I think you might be right, there, Nurse Collins. I believe it was, now that I think about it.”
“Look, I demand we speak to the physician in charge—that or I’ll have to seek out the administrator,” Clive said sternly.
“All right, all right,” the tank said with a harrumph and stood up heavily. “Follow me.” She picked up the ledger and held it to her chest as she came from around the desk.
“Perhaps you’d like to stay and collect her things?” Nurse Collins suggested kindly, looking at Henrietta and Elsie. “Not that there were very many.”
Henrietta looked to Clive
for direction, who in turn gave her a slight nod and ever so slightly inclined his head toward Nurse Collins. Understanding, she hoped, his meaning, and thrilled that he was giving her an assignment, she nodded her answer to the young nurse. “Yes, that’s a good idea, thank you.”
“Mr. Stockel, why don’t you come with me?” Clive suggested, and the two of them followed the tank toward the door.
“Nurse Collins, you have the floor,” the tank growled without looking back.
“Want me to stay and help mind them?” Joe asked Nurse Collins with a tiny wink.
“No, I should be okay, Joe, but thanks,” she answered. “She won’t be long.”
“Suit yerself,” Joe said with a shrug and sauntered toward the still-open door. He stepped through and shut it without another word, and they could hear the key grinding the metal gears closed. It seemed uneasily loud to Henrietta, and she fought down her own sense of panic at being locked in, reminding herself that surely Nurse Collins had her own keys.
Nurse Collins turned to Henrietta and Elsie then and spoke. “Her bed’s already been taken by another patient, I’m afraid, but I’ll go and get her things. They’re just in here,” she called out as she walked away. “Won’t be a moment.”
Henrietta watched her disappear into what looked like a storage or a stock room, situated behind the desk, slightly to the left of it. From where she stood, Henrietta could see wooden shelves with various linens stacked upon them, but she could see nothing beyond, as the door was only slightly ajar.
“Henrietta, what’s happening?” Elsie whined quietly now that they were alone. “How could Liesel be dead?” Small tears formed in the corners of her eyes. “This is terrible for poor Gunther.”
“I know, Elsie. I don’t understand it either. We’ll try to get to the bottom of it, though,” she said, protectively wrapping her arms around her. It felt good to hug her sister, and they stood this way for several moments until they heard a loud cough behind them. Henrietta released Elsie and turned. The woman with the baby sat calmly, looking at them, gently rocking. Suddenly, an urge came upon Henrietta to look at this baby, to face something inside of her that had been welling up all afternoon. She let go of Elsie’s hand and took a step toward the woman.
“May I see your baby?” Henrietta asked gently, bending toward her.
Up close, the woman looked older than Henrietta had first surmised. She peered back at Henrietta, as if she hadn’t heard or understood her, but then gave a tiny nod and held up her bundle. Henrietta bent closer and pulled back a part of the blanket and gasped. It wasn’t a baby at all, but a doll!—the face of which was smeared with dirt and whose lifeless eyes stared blankly at the ceiling.
Elsie, who had crept up behind Henrietta and now peered over her shoulder, let out a scream.
Nurse Collins burst forth immediately from the depths of the storage room. “What is it?” she asked worriedly, rushing toward them. But as she observed the scene, she slowed her pace. “Oh, you’ve met Mrs. Wojcik,” she said calmly.
“I’m sorry!” Elsie stammered. “I . . . I didn’t mean to scream. I just . . .”
Mrs. Wojcik’s face held a look of deep disgust as she pressed the doll close to her chest and quickly turned her body away from them as if to protect her “baby.”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Wojcik,” Nurse Collins said soothingly as she gave the woman a soft pat on the back. “They didn’t mean to scare you.”
She looked disapprovingly at Henrietta and Elsie and nodded toward the desk. “This way,” she said, then in a lowered voice. “It disturbs them if we talk in front of them.”
“I’m sorry,” Elsie mumbled again.
“Why is that woman holding a doll?” Henrietta asked in a low voice once they reached the desk.
“Her baby died in childbirth three years ago, and she apparently became deranged in her grief. Now she’s here. She came in with the doll. We’ve tried to get it from her, but it makes things worse. She screams and becomes violent, so we let her have it. There’s no harm in it, and it calms her.”
“But surely that’s not helping her to get well, to . . . to . . . well, to face it? To get better?” Henrietta asked uneasily.
“I think she’s beyond curing,” Nurse Collins smiled sadly. “Anyway, here are Liesel’s things.” She gave the thin stack of clothes on the desk in front of them a little pat, thereby changing the subject. “I’m very sorry. She wasn’t with us long, I’m afraid. A sad case.”
“Forgive me, but how . . . how did she end up here? We believe she may have suffered from epilepsy, but this . . .” she said gesturing around the room. “I think there might have been some mistake.”
“Yes, she was severely epileptic; she was having at least one fit a day. We were treating her, but nothing was working.”
“But isn’t this ward for schizophrenics?” Henrietta asked. “She wasn’t schizophrenic, was she?”
“I don’t know that. But she did seem to have visions, see things that weren’t there.”
“How do you know that? I’m fairly certain she only spoke German,” said Henrietta, following Clive’s ingenious lead at the hospital.
“Nurse Harding speaks German.”
“She does?” Henrietta asked, surprised.
“She served in the war. Picked it up there, I understand. Well, enough to get by, so she says.” Nurse Collins gave them a small smile.
“So she was able to speak to Liesel? What did she say?”
“I’m not really sure . . . gibberish, mostly.”
“Did she ever say the name Anna?” Elsie asked timidly.
Nurse Collins paused to think. “She may have,” she said, nodding slowly. “It was very sad. She only ever had the one visitor.”
“A visitor? Who was it?” Henrietta asked eagerly.
“I can’t say,” Nurse Collins said with a slow shake of her head.
“Was it a man or a woman?”
“A man, I think.”
“Can you remember his name?” pressed Henrietta. “Was it Heinrich?”
Nurse Collins paused to think again. “It may have been. I’m not sure. I’m sorry. There are so many patients,” she said wearily, and Henrietta noticed the deep grooves at the corners of her eyes and the purple patches under them. “We can’t save them all, I’m afraid,” Nurse Collins went on. “And sometimes it’s better if they go. For them that is. Your friend is in a better place now, don’t you think?”
“Yes, but—” Henrietta began but was interrupted by a loud crash that came from somewhere down the corridor, which caused even the staid Nurse Collins to jump.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” she said distractedly and before either Henrietta or Elsie could say anything, she hurried off.
Henrietta watched her go, trying to take in all of this new information. What were any of them to do now? And what was to be done with Anna? Remembering, then, what Elsie had said about she and Gunther having trouble with Anna just this morning, she turned to ask her about it—but then nearly screamed when she felt a cold hand grasp hers. She spun to her right to see a patient standing very close to her. She was just a wisp of a woman and was clothed in a dull, gray housedress that practically hung on her skeletal frame. Henrietta wasn’t sure if the fabric of it was originally gray or if it was instead the victim of too many launderings, or perhaps not enough. The woman was much shorter than even Henrietta and had glasses that were so smudged, it was hard to tell how the woman could properly see out of them. They were much too big for her face, making her resemble a type of owl. Her face was deeply wrinkled, and her skin was as loose and baggy as her dress and deeply veined. The woman swayed slightly as she stood there peering at her, giving Henrietta the impression that she might collapse at any moment.
“That one is an angel,” she said, mysteriously, nodding toward the hallway where Nurse Collins had just disappeared down. “Not like the big one. She’s a mean devil, she is.”
“Is she?” Henrietta said as gently as she could,
not wanting to disturb yet another patient.
“I’ve been here almost twenty years, I have. Seen lots of things.”
“Yes, I’m sure you have,” Henrietta said. She wanted to pull her hand away, but the woman gripped it tightly as she swayed. She said nothing further, but merely stared absently at the wall beyond. Desperately, Henrietta tried to think of something to say.
“Do you . . . do you like it here?” she finally managed.
“No, I don’t,” the woman said, looking at her now. “But I can’t get out, you see. I tried, but they always catch me.”
“Oh . . .”
Henrietta did not like the sound of this and wondered if it were true. “What happens then?” she asked tentatively, her curiosity getting the better of her.
“Bread and water, water and bread for one half of a full moon,” the woman answered in a raspy voice. “That’s what happens. The bread has creepy crawlies in it, though. Weevils and other creatures. You have to eat it fast so’s you don’t feel them squirming.”
At this image, Henrietta felt her breakfast rise to her throat and fought down an urge to retch. Likewise, she heard Elsie gasp behind her.
“Did you . . . did you know a Miss Klinkhammer?” Henrietta managed to ask after a moment. “Liesel was her name. She was a patient here a few weeks ago. She was a German lady.”
“Oh, yes, I knew her. Frightened she was. And sad.”
“What was she frightened of?” Henrietta asked.
“She was possessed by an evil spirit.”
Henrietta let out a deep breath, her hopes of any useful information dashed. Not this again, she thought, but the way the woman was staring at her now caused a shiver to run up her spine.