by Anita Shreve
She couldn't risk leaving even the torn bits in the wastebasket. But would it be so awful to tell her story to just one person? Nora, for example? Nora certainly would honor her secret. All this time Agnes had lived with her story. Must she live with it for the rest of her life? What if Agnes were to die suddenly? If no one knew about the affair, who would tell Jim?
The memories, jostled and released by the letter, bombarded Agnes now. She remembered bending her head forward and Jim kissing her all the way to the base of her spine. Opening a box two days before Christmas in a motel room in Bangor to find a ring — not an engagement ring, but a small silver band inside. Agnes had worn it every day since. She remembered the feel of Jim's muscles against her palm. And bars, dozens of them. The thrill of the first kiss of the evening. The touching of hands while the drinks were ordered. The relentless talk about themselves, their affair, as if there were nothing else in the universe that mattered. The arrival of the dusky drinks that promised a room with a bed. Agnes remembered a room in Montreal, a cavernous room with many beds. Six or seven of them anyway. Even now, she thought of it as The Room with Many Beds.
Agnes padded back to her own bed and slipped between the sheets. Her head throbbed. She turned on her side, facing the unshaded windows. Yes, perhaps she had had too much to drink last night. It was the cognac that had done it. It was foolish to accept another drink after the meal was finished, but there was Jerry, holding out the bulbous glass, and Agnes was so seldom offered a drink of any kind.
She would like to go back to sleep now. The memories hurt. She understood that they were, in some way, deeply masochistic. Perhaps it would be a good idea to go to a hypnotist to try to erase the memory of Jim entirely. Was such a thing possible? And if she did successfully obliterate Jim from her life, what would be left? A dull sphere with its radiant center missing?
She sat up suddenly and experienced again, at the periphery of her vision, the odd oily blips that seemed to rise up in cylinders at the edges of her eyes. She must absolutely make the appointment to see her ophthalmologist, she thought. Not to be able to see: Agnes could hardly imagine a worse fate. She thought of Louise, blind behind her bandages. How would one manage in the world? Should Agnes change Louise's fate?
No, Agnes thought as she found her notebook in the bedcovers. Louise would remain as she was.
Innes put new dressings on Louise's wounds. It would likely not be he, who operated on her in the morning, when a shipment of chloroform was expected.
In a supply room on the first floor, exhausted surgeons found shelter. A half dozen cots had been set up. Men who could barely stand waited for one to become free. Nursing sisters were housed upstairs. Even in calamity, one had to observe certain proprieties. Innes fell into a deep sleep, but was woken four hours later. Other physicians needed the beds.
For three days, Innes worked in the operating theater. Supplies were brought by rail from other parts of Canada. Boston sent a hospital train. Thousands of homeless sought shelter in makeshift camps from the blizzard and the cold, while others searched morgues and hospitals for the dead and injured. When Innes had a few minutes, he studied the lists of casualties in the newspapers. #221. Female about twenty-five years. Blond hair, blue eyes. French underwear. Rose-colored stockings. #574. Charred remains of adult. #371. Male. Age about five years. Face disfigured. Brown striped sweater, white underwear. Envelope found on body addressed to "Mr. William Finn, 45 Buckingham Street, Toronto." Innes read these descriptions carefully, looking for mention of a peach-colored silk blouse, a ring of small diamonds. He believed that Dr. and Mrs. Fraser were dead, though only the body of the latter had been recovered and identified. Innes did not believe in Hazels death. He thought often about where she might have been at the exact moment of the blast. Was she still at the dining table? If so, it was unlikely she would have survived the shattering glass from those four arched windows. But if shed been in an interior hallway, she might have been able to dig herself out of the wreckage.
At the hospital, Innes acquired a reputation as an excellent surgeon, rising through the ranks more quickly than he would have as an apprentice to Dr. Fraser. There were no apprenticeships now. The days and hours for Innes were a kind of exhausted blur. He lived at the hospital, sleeping and eating there because he, like many of the staff, had nowhere else to go. An entire city was homeless, bereaved.
Innes was appalled by the suffering of the city. He began to conceive the notion of a malevolent God. How else to explain the capricious deaths of children, the suffering of the mothers? Intact families were rare, worthy of comment. Innes could make sense of small moments only — of this moment, he could say, yes, this happened, or no, that did not happen — but he could not comprehend the whole. He no longer thought about music or art or even the war in Europe. Life was reduced to work and food and sleep. He operated by day and read the casualty lists at night. He told himself he was doing it for Louise. Day after day, he checked the lists. #83. Female. About twenty-five years old. Brown hair. Ivory linen blouse. Insole of boot reads parts. Wedding ring was found upon the body and may be claimed at Camp Hill Hospital. Previous pitting and scarring on right side of face. Cesarean scar on abdomen.
During his breaks, Innes visited Louise, who had been moved to the third floor with the most improved of the wounded.
Louise cried and reached out for him. Though she had been told that her mother had died, she still called out for her. She repeatedly panicked at the thought of her future. How would she survive if she was blind? She begged Innes for a cure, believing that medicine would save her. The irony was brutal: the daughter of a famous eye surgeon blinded.
Louise had no memory of the blast. Innes quizzed her, asking where shed been at the moment of the explosion. Louise couldn't answer him. She couldn't say, either, where Hazel had been, whether she was still in the dining room or elsewhere. Innes learned it was the same for many of the wounded. The few moments leading up to the blast had been obliterated from their minds.
On the fifth day, Innes arrived at the ward to find Louise in an agitated state. She had knocked over her water pitcher, and an orderly was cleaning up the mess.
"Louise," Innes said when he had reached her. "What's wrong?"
"She was here!" Louise cried. "And I told her that now she had everything. I told her that I was the more beautiful, but now I have nothing. No home. No husband. No children."
"Who was here, Louise?" Innes asked, sitting on the bed. He rubbed her arm to try to soothe her.
"I told her, she can see, she can walk. It is too unfair. She can see, she can walk, and I can't. I will never get a husband now. Who will love a blind woman? Who will marry a woman who cannot see his children?"
"Louise," Innes said once again. "Who was here? Who were you talking to?"
Louise raised her head from the pillow. "Hazel," she said. "Hazel was here, and now she has gone away."
Though expected, the name, when said aloud, was a blow. "Did she say where she was going?" Innes asked.
"No," Louise said.
"Did she say where she was living now?"
"No," Louise answered curtly, perhaps having heard too inquisitive a tone in Innes's voice.
"Was she hurt?" Innes asked. "Did she suffer any wounds in the blast?"
"She did not say," Louise answered with a distinct note of pique.
"And her father. Your father. Did she have word of him?"
"He is dead," Louise said.
Louise began to wail, and Innes rubbed her arm again. He wanted to comfort her, but it was all he could do to remain at her bedside. If Hazel had left Louise just moments earlier, she might still be in the building. He watched as the orderly finished cleaning up the mess. Innes had Louise sit up and take a drink when a new pitcher of water was brought. He told her, as he had several times before, that many blind women had full, rewarding lives. They had husbands, and they had children. There were schools where domestic skills could be learned and practice
d.
Louise would have none of it.
After a time, Innes told Louise that he had to leave. He bartered for his freedom, saying that he would return in the evening and that he would read the newspaper to her. Both the pilot and the master of the SS Mont Blanc had been arrested and would go to trial. This fact captured Louise's attention. "If you promise," she said.
Innes searched every room and corridor in the building. He ran out onto the street, believing he had just missed Hazel, that he would see her slender form moving away from the building. He described Hazel to the nursing staff. Each sister shook her head. During his dinner break, Innes walked the streets near the hospital. Logic dictated that he would not find Hazel in his wanderings, but now that he knew she was alive, he couldn't help himself. Reluctantly, he returned to the hospital in the evening to read to Louise as he had promised. He wanted to ask her more questions, but he knew they would upset her.
On the following day, when Innes had two hours to himself, he made his way first to the Camp Hill Hospital and then to the surgical train from Boston. He searched through rooms and cars but saw no one who resembled Hazel. He made inquiries and received no answers. Had Hazel already left the city? Had she gone inland? Or was she simply staying with friends in a part of Halifax not damaged?
Innes made a plan. He would search each quadrant of the city until he had satisfied himself that Hazel was not in Halifax. The task seemed as imperative to him as breathing.
Innes returned to the hospital for his afternoon shift. He hung his overcoat in the cloakroom. Just the day before, Innes had found, buried deep in the pocket of the coat, a receipt for a lighting fixture made out to a M. Jean LeBlanc. Innes imagined it was M. LeBlanc's coat that he wore now. He wondered whose shoes he owned? Whose suit coat?
The need for surgeries did not abate. Lately, these had been second surgeries, the first meant merely to save a life. Innes repaired crude work, some of it his own. He visited his patients, most housed on the second floor. The hospital no longer smelled of ash and death as it had when Innes had arrived on the first day. There were no patients lying on the floor between the cots. On the upper floors, the hospital was keeping patients longer than was necessary, simply because the wounded, like him, had no place to go. Hundreds of children had been orphaned.
Occasionally, there were moments of joy as when family members were reunited. Happy cries, rare enough, caused the staff to look up from their work for the source of the jubilation. Just that morning, a father had found his daughter whom he had thought lost, ecstasy turning to sorrow when the father had to tell the daughter that the mother had died.
Innes thought about his brother, Martin, who was still in France. He imagined all the soldiers who would arrive home on transport ships only to find most of Halifax destroyed. Another brutal irony: the soldiers returned safely, but the families waiting at home had been killed.
Innes, reading a chart on his way to the second floor, noted through a double door a woman standing next to a cot. He stopped short and took a closer look. Innes had, in the past two days, mistaken other women for Hazel, once running ahead and accosting a woman who looked very like Hazel from behind but turned out not to resemble her at all. Such scenes, he reflected at the time, must be happening all over the city.
With the folder under his arm, Innes entered the ward. The woman couldn't see Innes, and he fought the urge to call out. He might disturb her. She was in conversation with a female patient. The patient, sitting up in the bed, had an eye patch on her left eye. The woman who looked like Hazel, in a gray wool dress over which she had on the customary white pinafore, lifted a spoon to the patient's mouth. Innes looked for signs of bandages on the patient's hands and found them. Perhaps the woman had been burned in the blast.
Innes waited, pretending to read the chart. He saw nothing but the name Ferguson. A nursing sister asked him if he needed assistance. He shook his head. Finally, he could wait no longer. He moved toward Hazel and cleared his throat. "Miss Fraser?" he asked.
Hazel turned, spoon in hand. "Mr. Finch," she said, and he could see that she was much surprised.
"I am happy to see you," Innes said with great feeling. "I heard only yesterday from Louise that you were alive."
Hazel looked tired about the eyes, and her hair had not recently been washed. She had a bad bruise on her forehead and healed lacerations on her cheek.
"I was sorry to hear about your father and mother," Innes said.
"Thank you."
"I don't wish to keep you from your task. Perhaps when you are finished, we could have a word?"
"Yes," she said. "Of course."
Innes stood just outside the double doors. He checked his watch, aware that he was late to his rounds. None of his patients would die in the next ten minutes. From time to time, he glanced through the window in the door. Nursing sisters were folding blankets. Hazel had settled herself upon the patient's bed. Something she said made the patient laugh. After a time, Innes watched as Hazel got up from the bed and carried the bowl and spoon to a tray near the nursing station.
Innes waited for her, expectant.
"Innes," Hazel said, as she emerged from the double doors, elating him by using his first name. "It's very good to see you. I've wondered what happened to you."
"And I you. I've worried about you rather a great deal in fact."
"Have you?" she asked. She untied the pinafore and slipped it over her head.
"Where were you when the ship exploded?" Innes asked.
She bit her lips together, repressing a smile. "Actually, in the WC."
Innes laughed, the first laugh he had had since the blast. "Saved your life," he said.
"Apparently, it did." Hazel unrolled the cuffs of her blouse.
Innes minded. He had liked the sight of her wrists. "And you?" she asked. "Where were you?"
"In my room, standing in front of the window. It's a miracle, really, that I wasn't killed."
She studied him. "You seem intact," she said.
"A small wound in the back."
Hazel gazed down the corridor. "I imagine you have had quite a time of it."
"Haven't we all?"
"No, I meant with the surgeries."
"It's been hectic."
"Yes."
Innes shifted the folder from his right hand to his left. "Your sister is healing well."
"Was it you who operated?"
"No. No, I didn't."
A frown appeared on Hazel's brow. "It was awful. She became so upset when I visited, I haven't dared to go back. She was screaming at me."
"A certain amount of hysteria is to be expected," Innes said.
"Yes, of course," Hazel said.
"You didn't know that she was here?" he asked.
"I was told she had perished in the fire with my parents."
And now it was Innes's turn to be surprised. "There was a fire?"
Hazel was silent.
"I'm so sorry," Innes said, imagining the horror of burning to death. "One hopes your parents perished at once from the blast. It's very likely they did."
Hazel's chin began to quiver, and she turned away from him. He could see that she was overcome. He waited.
She took a handkerchief from her sleeve and blew her nose.
When she had tucked the handkerchief away, she turned back to him. "Yesterday morning, my aunt received a message from a friend who had seen Louise here. My sister is very fragile."
"She was fragile before this," Innes said, and Hazel looked at him curiously.
"I shall have to find a place for her," Hazel said.
"I'll help you with that," Innes said, though he did not, at the moment, know of any schools for the blind that had survived in Halifax. Schools would be built, however. That much was inevitable. "It may be that she will be able to leave the hospital in a few days," he added. "Is there a temporary place for her?"
"I am staying with an aunt. Their house was not bothered." Hazel tucked a tendril of h
air behind her ear. "Of course, there's room for Louise."
"It will be at first a great burden to care for such a patient."
"Yes, I imagine," Hazel said. "It's a kind of hell out there, isn't it? At least Louise has been spared that."
"She will be spared the sight of it forever."
"I never thought such a blast possible," Hazel said.
"None of us could have imagined this."
"And the irony of all those people at the windows."
"A cruel irony," Innes said, reluctantly checking his watch again. "I must go. I have patients waiting for me. "When will you be leaving hospital?"
"I have been asked to stay until six o'clock," she said.
"Will you walk with me then?" he asked. "I cannot go far, since I am to be on duty this evening. But I should have at least a half hour."
She hesitated. "Yes," she said finally. "I will walk with you."
Innes was at the front door of the hospital just before six o'clock. He had arranged a thirty-minute dinner break. He waited impatiently, aware that each moment that passed was one he would not have with Hazel.
She came through the double doors wearing an oddly festive blue velvet and fur-trimmed coat with large silver buttons on a diagonal. She had on a black hat with a brim and a short veil. Innes imagined that the coat and hat were borrowed. He hoped they were from the living. Hazel drew on her gloves as she approached him.
Without a word, Innes opened the door for her, and they stepped out into the evening. An effort to remove the debris from the streets immediately surrounding the hospital had largely been successful. Horses and buggies passed by. There was still very little fuel for automobiles. Innes was impressed, as he had been every night he had taken his walks, by how quiet the city was. There were few motors, very little traffic in the harbor. Voices carried for long distances.
"Do you mind where we walk?" he asked.
"Not at all," she said. "I am glad for the fresh air."
"How far is it to your aunt's house?" he asked.
