The Nurse Novel

by Alice Brennan

  She brushed a hand shakily across her mouth. “Ellen needs sunshine and fresh air and…and the ocean. I’m going to take her on vacation right beside the ocean. That’s all she needs. You’ll see.” Her lips trembled. “I’m her mother. I guess I should know more what to do than strangers.”

  She pushed her way through the room to the bedroom, slammed the door and flung herself crosswise on the bed.

  The terror ebbed and flowed in her. She felt helpless and beaten.

  She beat her two fists against the spread. Ellen. Ellen. Ellen. Don’t die. Oh, please don’t die and leave me!

  * * * *

  The lights came on early because of the smog. Traffic crawled along the street, and the sounds drifting in were faint and far away.

  Tammy looked at Merry, her face resolute. She said softly, “I don’t know much of what this is all about, and you can say it’s none of my business, but it’s quite clear that Agnes is in no mood to think straight, and what she needs right now is someone who can think straight for her.”

  Involuntarily Merry’s eyes turned towards the closed bedroom door and the unhappy and afraid woman who was behind it.

  She wet her lips and looked again at Tammy. “Harvey Miles?”

  Tammy nodded, unflinching. She said gently, “This is right, Merry. I know it’s right. If a decision on whether Agnes’ daughter lives or dies has to be made, and Agnes isn’t able to make it, then I think the child’s father should know what’s going on.” She shrugged and said wryly, “I don’t know why I’m bothering.”

  Merry said slowly, “You’re right. He should know. After all, he is Ellen’s father,” as if convincing herself that she wasn’t betraying a trust.

  Tammy went to get her coat. Merry asked, “Now?”

  “There’s no time for waiting,” Tammy said. “I’ll phone from a pay booth,” giving a quick glance at the closed bedroom door.

  Merry paced the floor, making no attempt to break into Agnes’ wanted privacy. She walked to the window to look at the eerie greenish darkness lit by the yellow glare of the fog lights as the cars moved slowly along the street.

  Pity welled up in her. But pity was a nothingness, she thought bitterly. It was something you felt but could not project. There were no words, no words at all. Tears fell steadily and silently down her cheeks. Love hurt, she thought. And no matter what garment it wore, it brought pain, and pain brought fear.

  She wiped at the tears and still they came. She wondered suddenly if she were weeping as much for Agnes as she was for herself.

  * * * *

  Hollywood is a city of fairy like splendor, of clouds, and sunshine and smog. Of hopes lifted up, and hearts torn down, of death and despair, of joy and success. It is Every Town.

  Hours later Merry Neil, awakening slowly to a wealth of sunlight that flooded the bedroom, felt her heart warm and spread out.

  She allowed the alarm to ring a few minutes before she pushed down the stem.

  Tammy stirred in the double bed beside her, and snuggled farther beneath the blanket. “Ummm,” she said, “this is too nice to leave. It can’t be morning.”

  “A sunshiny morning,” Merry said cheerfully. “Open your eyes and take a look.”

  Tammy opened first one eye and then the other. “Hey,” she said. “Hey, now, you’re right!” She jumped lightly to her feet. “I love sunshine. And California. And people. Especially people.” She turned to grin at Merry. “The kind of people who can help me, that is.”

  And then remembering, she turned to Agnes. Abruptly the laughter drained from her face.

  Agnes said sharply, “You don’t have to go around long-faced because of me. Stop it!”

  Tammy, reverting to her usual flippant self, said airily, “Anytime. Anytime.”

  She remembered last night. She’d phoned Harvey Miles, then met him for coffee. As she’d told Merry later, he had practically wept when he learned he was a father.

  She’d told Merry that she thought Agnes was wrong. “A person can make a mistake,” she’d said, “but does that mean he has to live with it for the rest of his life? That’s hardly fair.”

  Merry, dressing, was remembering, too. She could understand Agnes’s attitude towards Harvey better than Tammy could, because she’d been there. She knew how it felt, and Tammy didn’t. Pain left you afraid to reach out, afraid to show yourself. It left you vulnerable.

  She finished dressing first and hurried into the kitchen to put on the coffee and pour the orange juice. Breakfast was always a disordered affair. This morning it was more so. Tammy doodled until she could only gulp her juice and half finish her coffee, and Agnes sat at the table and took all of her time sipping at one cup of coffee which she never did finish.

  She was very careful to keep all conversation away from what she had revealed last night. It was as if she were saying, “I talked when I shouldn’t have. I want you to forget it.”

  Merry thought, with a little sigh, that it couldn’t be forgotten. Because Harvey Miles knew. She licked her lips and hurried ahead, boarding the bus first. She felt a sense of having betrayed. Her hands locked tightly in her lap.

  The smell of citrus blossoms was sweet in the air as she got off the bus and walked the block to the hospital. She was anxious to get into uniform. This was her work, her life, her refuge.

  * * * *

  When she walked down the hospital steps at five and saw the slender, dark-haired girl in huge sunglasses waiting behind the wheel of the flamboyant scarlet car, she was taken aback. She had truly forgotten the promise she’d made Natalie Pries.

  Natalie indicated the seat next to her. “Hop in, sweetie.”

  She waved a tanned hand at the sunglasses. “I’m not really trying to avoid being recognized; the glasses are kind of a status symbol, you know? I love being recognized. I think I’d die if no one recognized me.”

  Merry got in the car and drew the door closed. She said, “I forgot I said we’d have dinner, Natalie. I’m sorry.”

  Natalie turned to stare at her. “Sweetie,” she said, “you certainly are honest, aren’t you? But that’s okay. I’m not going to create a scene about it or anything.”

  “Let’s make it just coffee,” Merry said. “I didn’t tell Tammy I wouldn’t be home. She’s doing the cooking this week, and she’ll cook extra for me and she’ll wait dinner.”

  Natalie said, with sudden wistfulness, “It sounds like fun, you know? Cooking and everything like that.” She sighed. “Okay, coffee.”

  Merry turned to smile at her. “I know a place,” she said, “but they don’t serve champagne.”

  Natalie laughed in childish delight. She said, “You remembered. Oh, gosh, don’t let it ever get out. About the milk, I mean.”

  “No,” Merry said.

  Later, when they sat across a booth from one another and sipped coffee, Merry waited for the other girl to say what it was she wanted her to know.

  But Natalie seemed in no hurry. She chattered aimlessly about Hollywood and dropped names one after another. She talked about her earlier life and the drugstore where she’d been working when Pierson Webb had discovered her.

  “It was one of those crazy little drugstores where they don’t sell anything except drugs. I mean, it wasn’t one of those big elaborate drugstores at all. And who’d expect someone like Pierson to wander in there. I mean it was like fate, wasn’t it?”

  She swirled her coffee around in her cup, staring down at it. She laughed suddenly. “When I told them at home about going the next day for a screen test, my pop, he was drunk at the time, offered to beat me black and blue for telling a bare-faced lie.”

  She took a gulp of the coffee, made a face and set the cup down. “Cold,” she said. She laughed. “But when Pop found out it wasn’t a lie and all the money started coming in, and I started being someone, why he was different.” She looked down at her
hands, slender and pink-tipped, and delicately tanned. “Pop always liked to drink,” she told Merry, “and now he drinks the best. You’d think he’d never tasted anything but the best, to hear him tell it now.”

  She frowned at Merry’s look. “I don’t mind,” she said quickly. “It could have been worse. I mean, Pop really did like me, I mean even before the money started coming in, I was important to him.”

  Merry felt pity begin in her throat. She said gently, “Of course you were.”

  Natalie said slowly, “I’m not sure I like the way you said that. You know? I mean, if you’re thinking of being sorry for me, don’t. I’ve got everything. Everything.”

  She turned her hands around on the table. “I’ve got my next husband picked out,” she said. “I’ve even picked out the ring.”

  Merry suddenly felt cold. She forced herself to look at Natalie and ask calmly, “Why do you keep marrying them, Natalie?”

  “Oh, sweetie,” Natalie giggled, seeming to regain her good humor, “anything else is immoral and against the law.”

  Merry laughed in spite of herself. “I didn’t mean that.”

  Natalie watched Merry’s face. She said, “This one is going to be for keeps. This is the absolute end. We both feel it. No more anythings. I may even decide to have a baby.” She shook her head. “Can you imagine me with a baby?”

  Merry said, with careful lightness, “Your liking for milk will come in handy if you’re going to have a baby.”

  “Oh, sweetie, I didn’t say I was going to. I said maybe I might. Of course if that’s what Jeffie wants I’ll go along with him. I mean I’ve really got this thing for him. A big, big, thing.”

  Merry started to get up. She said, “That’s what you wanted to tell me, wasn’t it, Natalie? That you’re going to marry Jeff Morrow?”

  “Well, sweetie, like I said, if things were different, I could like you quite a lot. And I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else and be hurt. I mean, I don’t really want you to be hurt at all.”

  Merry said stiffly, “Don’t worry about me, Natalie. I was hurt once, a long time ago, and I’m inoculated against it. Besides, there was never anything serious between me and Jeff Morrow.”

  “Well, sweetie,” Natalie told her, “I’m really glad. I mean, for your sake.”

  “Liar,” she told herself as she climbed the stairs to the apartment. “Liar. Liar. How much pain did you have to have before you were inoculated against it? How much? How much?”

  When she walked into the apartment, Harvey Miles was there.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Agnes turned a tortured face towards Merry and said, her voice broken, “You had no right…no right.”

  Harvey didn’t look around. He suddenly looked much taller than he really was. He took Agnes by the shoulders, forced her to sit down and then stood over her, his posture almost menacing.

  “You’re going to listen to what I have to tell you,” he said. “Don’t try and get out of that chair, and don’t interrupt me.”

  Tammy came in, closing the door behind her. Still Harvey didn’t turn around, didn’t acknowledge that anyone was in the room but Agnes and himself.

  “I made it a point to talk to Dr. Bronley,” he said, his voice clipped and measured as if he were talking to an uncooperative patient. “He told me Ellen’s is definitely a congenital malformation of the heart. Technically speaking, there is pronounced stenosis of the pulmonary artery where it leaves the right ventricle, and also displacement of the aorta towards the right, defect at a high point in the cardiac septum and hypertrophy of the right side of the heart. As a result insufficient blood reaches the lungs and the right ventricle pumps part of the venous blood through the defective part of the septum into the aorra instead of into the lungs.”

  Agnes said scornfully, “You sound so big, doctor. What are you? A resident, hardly even a working doctor!”

  Only a faint reddening of his face told Merry Harvey had heard her.

  “Ellen would never have lived until now except that she has an opening into the septum as well as the stenosis in the pulmonary artery. In plain layman’s language, Agnes, our little girl is going to die unless something is done immediately.”

  “Stop it! Stop it! She’s not ‘our’ little girl,” she cried, choking on the words. “She’s mine. You walked out on her. And now you think you can walk back into my life, just like that, and take over as if you belonged. Well, you can’t. Ellen’s mine! Let us alone!”

  Harvey’s face was suddenly ruthless. “If you force me,” he said, “I’ll go into court, as Ellen’s father, and get a court order to compel you to agree to that operation. I don’t care what you think of me. Ellen is the one to consider now. Ellen’s life.”

  He began to shake her. “She’s going to die,” he said. “Can’t you get that through your head? Unless you open your mind and see what’s happening, she’s going to die. Do you want that?” He shook her until her teeth chattered. “Is that what you want?”

  She stopped fighting all at once, and went limp. Her mouth worked frantically in her tortured face. “I don’t want her to die. Oh, God, I don’t want her to die. She’s all I have!”

  Harvey told her gently, “We’ll see that she lives.”

  Merry saw his hand touch Agnes’ shoulder for a brief second in a comforting gesture, before Agnes seemed to realize. Then she pulled herself free, aloof and out of reach. She turned and went into the bedroom, closing the door behind her, and leaned trembling against it.

  Tears came silently down her cheeks. She wasn’t ready to admit it, but there was almost a feeling of relief in her: she was almost grateful to Harvey for taking the decision out of her hands.

  She wiped her eyes as Harvey’s voice rang out behind the door. “I’m going to make the arrangements, Agnes, with you or without you. Bronley said the sooner surgery could be arranged, the better.”

  Agnes opened the door and came out. She stood, small and slender and white-faced, looking up at him. “He’s different,” she thought. “He looks like a doctor. He looks like a man. Not like that frightened boy who turned and ran when the going got tough.”

  She drew an unsteady breath. But she would not let him get close to her again. Never. She nodded. “Make the arrangements and…let me know.” It was incredible, she thought, how terribly tired she was suddenly. She wiped a hand vaguely across her face. She asked, “Have you seen Ellen?”

  He shook his head and she told him her mother’s address, repeating it twice for him. “Go see her, my mother will be delighted.”

  “And Ellen?” he asked.

  She looked at him, her lips quivering, and her voice broke again. “Be gentle with her,” she said. “Ellen doesn’t know you exist.”

  He looked at her with sudden gentleness, and for a very brief moment, it was as if the years between had not occurred, as if they were once again the young man and the girl so madly, unheedingly in love with one another.

  But then Agnes jerked her head to one side, breaking the spell. Too many years had passed between them; too many unpleasant things had happened.

  Harvey backed towards the door. “Thanks,” he said, “for allowing me to see Ellen.”

  Her eyebrows raised in mockery. With the hardness she’d acquired through the years she replied, “Don’t thank me. Not for being forced. As you…mentioned…you are Ellen’s father.” She wiped a hand along one side of her face. “I lost. You won.” She didn’t look at either Tammy or Merry.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Agnes.”

  She shrugged. “Should I feel differently?”

  She turned her face away and didn’t look at him again. He let himself out of the apartment and Merry heard the quick racing of his footsteps going down the stairs.

  Agnes turned then to look, first at Merry, then at Tammy. “What a girl needs these days,” she said, “are
friends.”

  Merry said, “Friends are for helping, Agnes.”

  Agnes gave a low, harsh laugh. “Friends,” she said, “are for snooping and breaking promises and putting their noses in places where they have no right to put them.”

  She turned and strode out of the apartment, letting the door slam behind her. Outside, she felt limp, spent, as if she had run too long, too fast, and now the reaction had set in; she was only tired.

  * * * *

  Tammy was impatient with Merry, and she let the impatience show. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, “I feel like shaking you. We did the right thing, and if Agnes would admit it, she’d say she was glad, because now it’s taken out of her hands. The decision isn’t hers alone to make.”

  Merry nodded. “Still,” she said, “it was betrayal.”

  Tammy shrugged. “White isn’t always white,” she said. “And black isn’t always black. Sometimes there’s a need for betrayal. Well, that’s the end of that lecture. What do we eat? And when?”

  Merry shook her head. “I’ll have to look first. I’m really not too hungry.”

  “Neither am I,” Tammy said. “All I need is something to fill the gap.”

  “A sandwich and coffee?” Merry asked.

  “Suits me.”

  As Merry washed lettuce and opened a package of meat to make sandwiches she asked worriedly, “I wonder where Agnes went.”

  Tammy said cheerfully, “To walk it off. She’ll be back.” She got out bread and began spreading the slices with salad dressing. “I’ve got news,” she said. “Maybe I’m selfish to be glad about it, since Agnes…” She shrugged. “Oh, the heck with it, why be hypocritical? I matter to me more than anybody.”

  “Don’t be so modest,” Merry said.

  Tammy replaced the lid on the jar of salad dressing and licked the side of her finger. She said, “Pierson Webb wants to see me day after tomorrow. At his place. Arch told me tonight.”

  Merry picked out three lettuce leaves and put them on two slices of bread. She said slowly, “Tammy, don’t trust him.”