Being Mary Ro

by Ida Linehan Young

  Dr. Parker returned and thanked Mary for the break. Then he said, “I’ve been watching you. You know, Miss Rourke, you have a natural way about you with the sick. You’re good at this.”

  “Mary, please! Most folks call me Mary Ro. I like helping the sick. My mother was the nurse here for years,” she said simply.

  “Yes, I know. I’m sorry about your parents. Mr. Didham told me about the tragedy on the way here yesterday.”

  “Thank you. I did what I could, but it wasn’t enough.”

  “That happens to the best of us,” Dr. Parker said. “Things don’t always work out as we’d like. I heard you had saved many residents. Your care kept them alive until the doctor came.”

  “While that may be true, I couldn’t save them all.”

  “None of us are God, Miss Rourke . . . Mary. I know it must be hard losing your parents, especially under your care. I’m sure people are grateful for the ones you saved.”

  He stared at her for a long time, then nodded and left to check on the most serious patients.

  Mary thought about what Dr. Parker said. Were people really grateful for her efforts, or did they blame her for not doing enough? As was commonplace, nobody talked about the tragedy. They just went about the task of living. She didn’t know whether she was to be blamed or heralded—she only knew she blamed herself.

  The two nurses from Colinet returned from a rest at Mrs. Ange’s house. They had spent most of the night in the church. Ladies from the community brought food and helped those survivors who needed assistance to eat. There were more than enough volunteers. Mary, knowing she could be spared, had to get back to her own patient without calling attention to herself by leaving. She decided she was not going to say anything to anyone just yet. The man on her daybed wasn’t in much of a condition to do her any harm. She could wait a little while before she told. With forced bravado, she thought she could use her father’s twelve-gauge, if it came to that.

  Before Mary retreated from the church, Meg sought her out, offering a container of wild duck soup. The white porcelain bowl was big enough to feed five or six, its contents kept from spilling by the delicate white lid. Meg held it using two woven dishtowels to keep her hands from burning on the hot glass.

  “This is for you, Mary. My mom sent it. I was going to bring it to the house but figured I would check here first.”

  “Thank you so much, Meg. I was just going home for a rest and will be happy to have this later.”

  “I can bring it up for you if you like. It’s no trouble,” Meg said, feeling a new kinship with Mary.

  “That’s fine, Meg. As I said, I’m going home to rest,” Mary replied, trying to put the girl off.

  “Mary, you’re the town hero. Everyone appreciates what you’ve done and continue to do here. I wouldn’t have been able to go by myself, but you were willing,” Meg blurted out.

  “Meg, you did it, too. You should be proud. You give me too much credit. You’re strong and capable, and you just needed some urging.”

  Meg blushed and handed Mary the hot bowl.

  “Thanks, Mary—thanks,” she said, as she covered Mary’s hand for a moment with her own.

  Mary left the church with the pot of soup. She realized that she had not eaten anything but a few forkfuls of stew since having the mug-up at Didham’s yesterday morning. Her belly rumbled in anticipation.

  The soup would be good for the stranger, too. Maybe her being nice to him would keep him from wanting to hurt her. Then again, if she really thought he was going to hurt her, she would have told Brian. Maybe she should go back and get Brian to come along. But, shaking her head, she chose to pick her way up the lane to her house instead. Where would her choices lead her?

  The kitchen was warm and cozy as she entered cautiously, surveying the room. First thing she noticed was that the stranger on the daybed had a sheen of perspiration on his skin. He had been a bit feverish and might be brewing a temperature, Mary figured, because the room was certainly not that hot.

  She laid the soup on the back of the cast-iron stovetop, where the heat was not as strong, and quickly threw some wood in the firebox. She didn’t want the house to get cold nor attract her brother’s attention if he didn’t see smoke rising from the chimney. She draped her coat on the back of a chair and approached her patient with apprehension.

  The stranger’s skin was indeed hot. His eyes struggled to open. For the first time she noticed his eyes were the colour of blueberries—blueberries in the fall of the year after the first frost—deep, dark blue.

  Eyes glassy! Full of fever! Mary panicked for a moment. Images flashed before her of her parents’ sickness and how it had consumed them. She couldn’t go through that again. She quickly fetched the water bucket from the porch and dipped the dishtowels that she had used only moments before to carry in the soup. When she wrung out the cooled towels, she placed one of them on the stranger’s forehead and used the other to dab along his cheeks and neck.

  Maybe she should fetch Dr. Parker. Then she remembered he was using juniper tea in the church. She, too, would make juniper tea, which meant a trip to the edge of the woods for some small boughs. She left the house through the pantry as a precaution so the neighbours wouldn’t see. The nearest juniper tree was just beyond the fence on the back meadow. Mary cracked off some smaller branches before quickly retracing her steps.

  She filled a small pot with hot water from the kettle and laid it on the stove to start the tea. The tiny pieces of branches would have to simmer and soften before the brew was ready. She covered the pot before turning her attention to the needs of the stranger.

  He was really hot to her touch and mumbled words that Mary couldn’t make out. If he started thrashing around on the daybed, he could fall off and break open his wound. Mary set two chairs so that the seat was up against the daybed. She folded two quilts on the seats to make the board softer. At least this way she could keep the man from going on the floor.

  Mary stood between the two chairs, dabbing his head with the cloth. She wondered if he had a wife somewhere who was worried about him or if he was a woman-in-every-port type of man. She didn’t want him to be the latter, as she believed that it made him less respectable, although she wasn’t quite sure what it even meant. Feeling drawn to this man, to his story, it felt like the universe had put him in her path. Maybe she was reading too many books, as she fleetingly thought of Sinbad’s adventures and the shooting star. Maybe Peter wasn’t her Sinbad after all.

  Mary pushed the bottom sash of the window up just enough to let a draft blow in. She had to keep the fire going to boil the tea, but the heat wasn’t good for her patient at this point.

  His shirt was drenched in sweat. Mary undid the buttons to place cool cloths on his torso. She unbuttoned it to his waist and proceeded to haul up the tails that were tucked into his pants to give her more room to work. As the tail of his shirt came loose, Mary saw a flash of black and heard a decisive thud on the wall beside the daybed. Whatever it was had been tucked into his pants and had dislodged when Mary pulled the clothing out.

  Though it felt intrusive, she had to see what he had. Tentatively, she reached her hand beneath his shirt, touching a warm metal object. Her hand jerked back as if she had been stung by a hornet. Instinctively she knew it was a gun. What had she done? She was alone in the house with a possible killer.

  “Get hold of yourself girl,” she whispered. “Don’t let your imagination get the better of your common sense.” Common sense be damned. If she had any, she would fetch Brian.

  Looking at his face, she thought that there was no way this man could be a killer: he looked too . . . kind and, with that dimple, mischievous. He looked genuinely surprised when she asked if he would hurt her. There must be another explanation for the firearm. Stretching over the body of the stranger to pull out the small black pistol, she was startled when he grabbed her around the waist and pulled
her down on top of him. Caught off guard, she fell helplessly across his chest, her head landing between his and the wall and her heart pounding with both the fright and . . . awareness. She was mortified at the position in which she found herself.

  She tried to recover her balance. She lifted her head at the same time as he turned his toward her, and his lips caressed her cheek. She splayed her two hands across his chest and tried to push herself clear of the stranger as quickly as possible. Her body tingled for the first time in too many years to count. What just happened? she wondered.

  She tried to calm her breathing. She believed her patient didn’t realize she had fallen across him because he seemed to be sleeping now. Her hand trembled as she reached over one more time and grabbed the butt of the gun, slowly pulling it back. She was scared that it would fire accidentally. She had handled her father’s shotgun but had never seen anything like this.

  With great care, she turned the gun over in her palm and inspected the object. The stranger’s hand reached out and feebly tried to grab her wrist. Mary squealed, dropping the gun on the chair back before it landed on the floor. A cannon could have fired and the noise wouldn’t have been louder than the sound of the gun clattering by her feet.

  “What are you doing?” the stranger slurred.

  She jumped as if she had been scalded. “Trying to save your life. I hope it will be worth it,” she said. Once again her heart exploded in her chest.

  He winced as he moved, and Mary grabbed his arm, telling him to be still or he would burst the stitches. She applied gentle pressure to get his arm back by his side.

  “Be careful with that thing,” he whispered hoarsely.

  “I’m used to guns,” Mary lied. “I know how to protect myself.” She straightened her back to present a confidence she didn’t feel.

  The stranger attempted a grin and closed his eyes again, as if the effort to move had drained his energy.

  Still and alert, she regarded him, waiting to see the even rise and fall of his naked chest. With her eye still on him, Mary picked up the gun. She held it in both hands and away from her body, as if it the thing were poisonous. She brought it to the pantry, looking around for a hiding spot. She settled on the flour barrel. A soft thud and a haze of white dust rose and then settled as the gun was swallowed up. Mary replaced the lid and went back to the kitchen.

  She should feel scared, but she didn’t; she felt exhilarated—but she was also no fool. Helping this man somehow felt important. She continued to place cold cloths on him until the water in the pan was tepid. Mary figured the well water would be better suited.

  She left by way of the pantry door and scurried to the wellhouse on the river, dipped up a bucket of cool water, returned, and filled the pan. She laid the bucket of fresh water back in the porch out of the heat.

  As she put more wet cloths on the man, her thoughts drifted to her parents and how she had worked so hard to save them. As irrational as she knew it was, maybe if she could save this man, she could forgive herself for not having made a difference to Mom and Da.

  The smell of soup and juniper tea on the stove stirred her hunger. Deciding to take a spell, Mary scooped a bowl of soup. It would give her strength to minister. She placed the last of her loose tea in the strainer and poured hot water through the leaves into the teapot. She let it steep before pouring a cup of black tea to calm her nerves.

  The soup was delicious and reminded her of the comfort of her mother’s soup when Mary was sick as a child.

  “God bless you and your mother, Meg, for thinking of me,” Mary whispered, looking upward. Once she ate, she felt better, and with renewed effort, she kept cool cloths on her patient.

  Chores were next; the house wouldn’t run itself, and they would keep her from thinking. In between the moments spent caring for the stranger, Mary filled the water tank on the stove, as well as the woodbox. His skin seemed to be cooling, and although he was moving some and mumbling a bit at times, he quieted down and fell into a solid sleep. She fetched more water from the well, continuing to cool the man. She almost gave him a name—Peter—instead of thinking of him as “the man” but decided he would just be “patient” to her. That would do, and he could be “Pat” for short.

  By late afternoon, Mary felt exhausted but vowed to stay at it all night if it helped. She talked to Pat and sang him soothing songs when he became fidgety. She wasn’t going to give up on him and wouldn’t leave again until she was sure he was out of the woods. If he got worse, she would have to fetch the doctor.

  Worn out and at the brink of collapsing, she sometimes saw Mom or Da on the daybed, thinking it was them she was trying to save. She laid her head against the back of the chair, closed her eyes, and prayed to God her efforts would be rewarded.

  6

  Peter Nolan thought himself a coward—no two ways about that. Although he had gotten himself out of many challenging situations that might have made others quake in fear, when it came to facing Mary Rourke, he was definitely a yellow-belly.

  This was the second time in almost ten years that he’d returned to the place where he was fostered. He had been so happy to leave here as a young lad with hopes and dreams of making a future with Mary. That had all changed because of poor choices and bloody honour.

  Peter had planned on marrying Mary and taking her to St. John’s as his wife—to leave the place that he had held in such disdain as a boy. He’d loved her so much—the only thing about here that he’d loved at the time. His Mary! He thought about her now, as he gazed upon the shore, the houses coming into view. The wound was still raw even after all these years.

  For so long he had tried to escape; but now he couldn’t remember why. John’s Pond was not his birthplace. His Great-aunt Johannah Linehan had taken him and his brother Ed in when they were five and three respectively.

  He barely remembered his raven-haired mother, who died in childbirth with a sister he’d never seen. Hannorah—she’d lived only a few days. Both his sister and mother were buried at the cemetery in Mount Carmel, and he wouldn’t even be able to say where.

  With the death of their mother, his father was advised to put both sons into an orphanage, as was the custom for children so young. However, his mother’s Aunt Johannah had agreed to take the boys to help manage her household—the wood, the hay, and the gardens.

  But Great-aunt Johannah was a nasty woman. Peter and Ed were fed and clothed, but, being a stern spinster in her late sixties, Aunt Johannah was not entirely sure how to take care of the needs of two growing boys. Their father had visited for two Christmases before he was lost at sea in the spring of Peter’s seventh year. This was a catalyst to wild behaviours, which their aged aunt had tried to beat out of them.

  When he was twelve, he’d had enough of the beatings. Poor Ed was so small that Peter was sure his aunt was going to kill him with the belt if he didn’t do something. One evening after supper when his aunt thought they were in bed, he took his brother and left. They got out through an upstairs window onto the porch and hid in Rourke’s barn.

  Rourke’s was farthest away from his aunt’s house. In his young mind, if she saw they were missing, it would take her forever to find them. His plan was to rob Dalton’s store. He’d take the money and run away with Ed as far as he could get from the hell they were living. That would be in Colinet. He smiled now at his naïveté.

  They both fell asleep in the hay and didn’t wake until Mr. Rourke came to milk the cow. He heard them rustling in the loft and investigated. Ed began to cry, but Peter stood his ground, his defiance evident before Mr. Rourke even spoke.

  “We’ll not go back. You can’t make us,” Peter said with all the boldness he could muster. With his arms crossed and Ed bawling behind him, he stood sullen-faced before the mountain of a man.

  Mr. Rourke sized him up. “Well now, lads, you must be hungry. Do you want to come in for something to eat?”

  Pet
er deflated as if he had been stuck with a pin. He was expecting cruelty but received kindness. However, he was wary of the invitation. Ed was not and came around him to take Mr. Rourke by the hand. The man turned to go down the ladder and looked back at Peter. “You’re welcome to join us.”

  Peter had felt foolish to stand there alone, but he didn’t want to seem like a coot either. Hunger won over stubbornness, and he quickly followed. He figured he’d have to pay with his hide when Aunt Johannah finished with him that day. But he could suffer that on a full belly.

  Mrs. Rourke saw them coming and didn’t say a word. You wouldn’t know but they’d been expected. They sat at the table, and she served up tea and toast. Ed was on his fourth slice when Mary came down the stairs. She had heard them talking.

  “Well, boys, what brings you here so early?” Mrs. Rourke asked.

  Ed picked that moment to tell all about their plans to run away. Thank God he didn’t know about Peter’s plan to rob the store. Mr. and Mrs. Rourke locked eyes above the boys’ heads. When Mr. Rourke came behind him and laid his hand on Peter’s shoulder, Peter cringed. He figured the beating his aunt had in store for them was nothing compared to what he was going to get now.

  “What’s the matter, boy?” Mr. Rourke said. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He must have noticed that neither of the boys had sat back on the chairs. “Stand up.”

  Peter stood, preparing himself for what was coming next. He wouldn’t cower—he’d take it like a man. Mr. Rourke lifted his shirt and saw the angry red marks from Aunt Johannah’s belt.

  He heard Mary gasp from across the kitchen. Now, along with a beating, he was full sure that she’d tell the other kids when they got to school. They’d be teased mercilessly for the rest of their lives. But she hadn’t. She’d smiled at him with kindness in her eyes, and he never forgot that.