The Nurse Novel

by Alice Brennan

  Agnes let out a very unladylike snort and Merry shook her head. “Who’d ever guess you were the romantic sort?”

  Merry had tied on an apron, and Tammy and Agnes were finishing setting the table when Jeff arrived.

  He gave Merry a long look. “You look very sweet and domestic in that apron,” he said.

  She said carefully, “I could take it off.”

  He shook his head. “No. I like the way you look.” He crooked an eyebrow at her. “I hope you don’t mind my coming?”

  Merry denied to herself, and very firmly, that her pulse had leaped at sight of him. She said, carefully polite, “It’s Tammy’s party; Arch supplied the steaks, and I’m only a guest the same as you are.”

  “Ouch,” he said and grinned warmly. “We’ll have to take in Olvera Street some time again…when you’re really hungry.”

  Merry shook her head. “Once you’ve been to Olvera Street, there’s no reason to return. You’ve seen it all.”

  “You’re wrong about that. Once you go, there’s an urge in you to return. And you can’t ever see it all.”

  Merry flushed. “I’d better go start the steaks, or we’ll never get around to eating.”

  “Medium rare,” Jeff told her, and then, “on second thought, I’d better come in and give you a hand. I’m a whiz on steaks and salads. Maybe one of these days I’ll open my own steak and salad house.”

  They had not yet reached the kitchen when Arch and his guest arrived.

  Harvey Miles was short and stocky, with serious eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. He was dressed in a dark suit, but Merry expected him to pull a stethoscope out of his pocket, he looked as if he belonged in a hospital and would be vaguely out of place anywhere else.

  She felt a prickling at the back of her neck and turned around to look at Agnes, whose thin face was ashen as she stared at the door.

  She had never expected to see him again. At first she’d have daydreams in which she would go up to him and fling her hate at him in front of everyone, wanting them all to know the kind of man he was. But such childish vengefulness had passed, leaving only cold hatred.

  She turned her white face to Merry and in a choked voice said, “How could you have done this to me?”

  Stunned, Merry stared at her. “Done what, Agnes?”

  But Agnes, choking back a cry, fled the room, leaving the others looking at one other in embarrassed bewilderment.

  In a dead voice, Harvey Miles said, “Agnes and I were married once. A long time ago.”

  Chapter Nine

  Tammy broke the silence. “You?” she said. “You and Agnes? Married?”

  He stared at the door through which Agnes had disappeared. “It was a real love affair,” he said, “I mean the kind you’re certain is slated to last forever. We were only kids, full of all that baloney about marriages being made in heaven, and forever binding, and all that stuff the love books toss around so easily. Agnes was just out of high school and I was in my last year of pre-med.”

  He straightened his tie with a shaking hand. “And we were married, and according to all of the love stories should have lived happily ever after. Unfortunately the love stories don’t tell all. We didn’t live happily or forever after… Because I suddenly realized the enormity of what I’d done. I’d saddled myself with a wife when all I’d ever wanted in my entire life was to become a doctor—no matter how much hard work or how many sacrifices I had to make.”

  He passed a hand over the side of his face. “I was young, and in my confusion, I blamed Agnes for everything. I accused her of deliberately wrecking my life; plotting it. I guess what I was really trying to do was to get her to walk out on me, but she held on.”

  He sucked in his breath. “I was a weakling. I couldn’t face the responsibility of a wife and a possible family, and the terrible possibility of losing out on my dreams of becoming a doctor. So I…walked out on her.”

  He drew in his breath harshly. “If I’d been mature, we could have worked something out. As it was, I panicked and ran. I don’t think any woman can ever forgive something like that.”

  He stared down at his feet. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “How could you have known?” Arch said.

  Harvey continued, as if he hadn’t heard, “After I came to my senses, I tried to locate her. But it took me six months to realize what I’d done and by that time Agnes had disappeared as completely as if she’d taken off to another planet.” He shook his head, and his voice tightened with self-hatred. “Six years ago, a lifetime ago. If I was in her place I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me either.”

  It was Tammy who said, “Oh, come off it, Harvey. Nothing lasts forever. People get married and divorced every day. Look around you. What lasts these days?”

  He moaned, “It’s my fault it didn’t last.”

  Tammy shrugged. “How do you know? Maybe in time it would have been Agnes who wanted out.”

  Merry rose, and her voice faltered. “I guess I’d better get going on those steaks… Maybe after we all have something to eat…”

  Jeff’s voice cut in quickly, “I think I promised I’d help you.” He put his hands on her shoulders and headed her towards the kitchen, turning to the others to say, in a falsely light voice, “I’ll do my best to see she doesn’t burn them.”

  Harvey said quietly, “I think I’d better go.” He turned to look at Arch Heller. “You don’t need to drive me,” he said. “I can walk. I really want to walk.”

  They all shook their heads at him…nonsense, of course he wasn’t going, not until after he’d eaten…

  Tammy chided him, “Do you want us to have to waste a perfectly good porterhouse steak?”

  The dinner was a miserable failure in spite of everyone’s attempts; even the champagne did nothing to raise anyone’s spirits.

  Merry had knocked on the bedroom door, urging Agnes to come out, but the answer had been only a cold, uncompromising, “Let me alone.”

  She’d fixed a tray then and taken it to the room. “Please, Agnes,” she said, “unlock the door. You don’t want me to have to throw this steak out, do you? It’s paid for you know, so you might as well enjoy it.” In the end she had finally persuaded Agnes to open the door. She had taken the tray from Merry in silence.

  Merry looked at her unhappily. “I didn’t know,” she said. “Neither Tammy nor I knew about your marriage.” She pulled in her underlip and held it for a second. “You have no right to blame any of us for what happened tonight. And besides…”

  Agnes took the word as if she’d been waiting for it to be said, “And…besides…” she said, her voice as fierce as Merry’s, “besides, no one should go around hating someone for what happened so many years ago. Isn’t that what you were going to say, Merry?” She set the tray down abruptly.

  Merry faced her squarely. “Well,” she said, “isn’t that true?”

  Agnes said coldly, “Don’t try to interfere in what’s none of your business. Stay out of my life, Merry, if you value our friendship at all.”

  Her eyes held Merry’s and Merry was the first to turn away. She said carefully, “You’d better eat your steak while it’s hot, and I’d…better get out to mine.”

  * * * *

  Agnes sat on the edge of the bed, balancing the tray on her knees. The tears streamed down her cheeks as she cut the steak, and the meat stuck in her throat, tasteless and unappetizing.

  Why did he have to show up now, after all these years? Now, when she was sick with worry over Ellen?

  She cut a piece of meat and forced it into her mouth. “There’s nothing for me to worry about,” she whispered hoarsely, “not where Ellen is concerned. Haven’t I convinced even Mother of that?”

  She had difficulty in swallowing the steak. She washed it down with some of the champagne. The hospital had promised her time off next month. She
’d written Ellen about it in her last letter. “We’ll swim and lie in the warm sand and picnic and visit Disneyland,” she’d written. “We’ll have the most wonderful two weeks any little girl ever had. You’ll see.”

  She brushed at the tears that blurred her eyes and set the tray away from her. “If I force myself to eat any more I’m going to throw up.”

  Her thrifty nature was appalled at the meat she’d left on the plate, but she turned abruptly away from it and walked to the window to stare out at the darkness and the lights on the crawling cars all heading for someplace, a haven, excitement, release. She turned away and flung herself face down across the bed. “Please, God,” she moaned. “Please, God,” not knowing exactly what it was she was asking. She could hear the clatter of silverware against china in the other room, a false laugh, someone coughing, an occasional attempt at humor at which the others laughed politely and without amusement.

  She thought, “I did this. I spoiled it for all of them.” And then, fiercely, “That isn’t true. It wasn’t me. I wasn’t the one who thought I should have a date for tonight; I didn’t bring Harvey here.”

  The sound of chairs being pushed back from the table, the clatter of dishes being gathered up and carried to the kitchen, the rushing sound of water running, came through the wall.

  She rolled over onto her back and lay staring up at the ceiling. It wasn’t their fault either. Fate just liked to kick people in the teeth when they were least expecting it. She’d left Harvey in Ohio, and who would ever think that six years later she’d meet him in California?

  She gave a weary, choking sigh, trying to put things in the proper perspective. So, she’d seen Harvey again. It wasn’t going to change her life. She had no further desire for revenge. All she asked was that he stay out of her life.

  A thought hit her, shocking in its enormity: she’d never bothered to divorce Harvey. She’d been so sure she’d never want to marry again that she’d let it go. He was Ellen’s father. According to the law he’d have certain rights. Her stomach cramped so tightly that the pain was almost unendurable.

  He had no rights with Ellen, she told herself. “He walked out on me, leaving me stranded and alone and pregnant in a town where I knew no one. I had to make it on my own without him. Any judge would agree he’d never been either a father or a husband.”

  She smoothed her hair, and then warmth ran through her as she suddenly realized that Harvey didn’t even know about Ellen: he’d walked out before she’d told him she was pregnant.

  * * * *

  Jeff looked around the small kitchen and said, with the false brightness everyone was trying to maintain, “I think we’ve washed every pot and pan and dish in this apartment.”

  Tammy flashed him a grin. “It’s good for a man to work once in a while.”

  Merry, wiping off the sink and hanging up the dish-towels, said nothing. She was worried about Agnes.

  When the telephone rang shrilly from the other room, she expected Agnes to come dashing from the bedroom to answer it, but the door remained closed.

  Tammy answered it then handed it to Merry. “For you.”

  Surprised, she took the phone, and Mai Hinge’s voice grated in her ears. “I hear you turned down an offer to be Pierson Webb’s private nurse,” she said. “If he’s as well as everyone says why does he need a nurse?” She gave an impatient sigh. “Not that I really expect you to tell me anything but there’s always the chance you’ll change.”

  Merry said curtly, “I don’t think Mr. Webb does need a private nurse, Miss Hinge, which is why I refused.”

  It wasn’t exactly the truth, but it would do.

  Mai’s cold laughter rang across the wires. “You sound as if I’d interrupted something, sweetie,” she said. “Did I now?”

  “Yes, in a way, you did.”

  “My, my,” Mai oozed, “I do hope it wasn’t Jeff Morrow.”

  Merry hung up abruptly. Jeff said slowly, “Mai doesn’t give up, does she?”

  Merry looked at him and shook her head. “No…she doesn’t.” Somehow the knowledge frightened her.

  Harvey glanced quickly at the door behind which Agnes had barricaded herself. “I have to be leaving. I go on duty at midnight.” His voice was apologetic. “Thanks for the dinner. I’m sorry… I…spoiled things for everyone.”

  They protested vigorously that he hadn’t spoiled anything. Arch said if Tammy promised to behave herself, he’d let her go with him when he took Harvey back to the hospital, and afterwards he might even drive her to Mulholland Drive to see the view.

  Tammy clapped her hands in mock ecstasy. “Oh, goody,” she said, “I can’t think of anything I’d like better. I’ve never been to Mulholland Drive.”

  Arch laughed at her. “Methinks the little girl is stretching the truth a bit.”

  “No, really!” Tammy insisted, making a face at him.

  Jeff turned to look at Merry after the door had closed behind the others. “How about a relaxing drive?” he asked her. “It was…rather tense here tonight.”

  Merry hesitated; she wasn’t happy about going off and leaving Agnes alone in the apartment. “I’m not going to want to talk about it,” Jeff said slowly.

  She flushed. “It wasn’t that; it’s Agnes, she’s unhappy and upset. I’m not sure I want to leave her here all alone.”

  He said gently, “She’s alone, even if you stay.”

  She sighed and nodded. “Of course you’re right.”

  * * * *

  Jeff drove leisurely, not talking. Merry leaned her head against the upholstery and closed her eyes.

  The night air blew in, cooled by the rush of wind from the ocean. She felt the car stop, and a sensation running up and down her arms told her that Jeff was looking at her. Opening her eyes slowly, she tried to look away from him, but he put his hand on her chin and held her so that she couldn’t. “You’re sweet,” he told her huskily, and kissed her with such fierce passion that Merry found herself responding.

  She was trembling when he released her and frightened.

  He shook her gently. “Stop looking like that. I’m not going to proposition you. I don’t think you’re the kind of girl who is open to a proposition…so I’m just going to kiss you again,” which he did, very adequately, “take you home, and say good-night at your door.”

  He dropped a kiss on top of her head when he left her. He said lightly, “You didn’t think of this Tom person when I kissed you tonight, did you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He said urgently, “Was he very important to you?”

  “Important?” Merry found her voice. “Yes, at the time. I…thought I loved him very much. I was very young.”

  Jeff caught at one word in her sentence, and thrust it at her. “‘Thought’ you loved him?” he asked. “Only ‘thought’?”

  Merry turned abruptly and went inside the apartment. She closed the door and leaned against it, the tears running silently down her cheeks. “Never, never, never again,” she told herself fiercely. “I promised myself!”

  She sat for a while in the darkness and then finally went to bed. Tammy hadn’t come in yet.

  She lay awake, hearing Agnes toss in the next bed. She didn’t try to talk to her.

  Chapter Ten

  It was her afternoon away from the hospital. Merry stretched out on the sofa, kicked off her shoes and gazed disconsolately out the window. Rain, flinging itself furiously against the pane, obscured the view.

  It would have to rain today, she thought. The room looked as gloomy as she felt.

  She resolutely forced herself to her feet. Her mother had always preached that complaining changed nothing; only action accomplished. “Well, if action is what is needed…” She slipped into her shoes and decided that the room could well use a good cleaning.

  She dragged out the vacuum cleaner and left it stan
ding in the middle of the room while she walked over to the window to stare out at the wet street and the glistening buildings. The leaves on the trees lining the street had the limp, bedraggled look of a washing battered about on the line.

  She ran a hand vaguely through her hair. The first thing to do was to change her dress and tie something about her head. She’d washed her hair only yesterday and had no desire to wash and set it again today.

  She let out her breath slowly. There was a rushing inside her, an intense impatience to work and work and work, and tire herself so completely that she wouldn’t want to think, that she’d crave only to sink into bed when night came, and sleep and sleep and sleep.

  She turned abruptly from the window and went into the bedroom to change her dress, but stopped in front of the dresser to stare at herself in the mirror. She leaned forward. There were purple smudges under her blue eyes and a tired droop to her mouth. “Well, girl,” she muttered crossly, “in spite of your going to bed at eleven-thirty last night, you look as if you haven’t slept in a week. You’ll have to do something about that.”

  There was a slight tremor at the corners of her mouth. The very first thing to do was to get Jeff Morrow out of her thoughts!

  She’d let him talk her into going to a movie last night. When she’d protested that she needed eight hours of sleep and wasn’t getting it, he’d promised that he’d have her home by eleven; and he’d kept his promise.

  She turned impatiently from her reflection. He’d pulled her out of the theatre the minute the picture was over, making his way through the crowd with polite apologies. On the way home he’d bought her an orange juice at a drive-in. “The very best nightcap in the world,” he’d assured her. His voice had been tinged with amusement. He’d walked her up the three flights of stairs, kissed her lightly on the forehead and said, “Orange juice and a kiss to dream on. Sleep well.”

  Merry flung herself across the bed. He was playing a game with her. She was sure of it. The innocent dates they had, the kisses, the long, easy drives, even Olvera Street: he was much too sophisticated for such pleasures. He was laughing at her.