by Julie Wright
I tossed a glance to little Drake in the bed. He slept, oblivious to the newcomer in his room. Still waiting for an answer from the woman, I turned my attention back to her.
“You must be the Andra Stone I’ve heard so much about,” the woman said. She was shorter than me, which was saying something since I was considered a hobbit in most circles. But she wasn’t a lot shorter than me—a couple inches at most.
She looked to be Chinese, but her accent was so mild and unobtrusive that if I hadn’t really been paying attention to her, I might not have noticed it at all. At first glance, she appeared to be about fifty years old, but then she almost seemed to shift, even with my eyes trained on her. She might have been forty. Her black hair was done up in a messy bun at the back of her head and she seemed genuinely happy to see me, which was a little disconcerting.
“Yes. I’m Andra Stone,” I said. When she merely blinked at me with a vague sort of smile that made me feel like she knew something I didn’t know, I prodded her to speak again. “And you are?”
The woman lowered the chart. “You may call me Miss Pearl.”
I narrowed my eyes as if I could tunnel my vision enough to see her better. “Miss Pearl?” I knew the name and searched back through my memory for why. “You’re the one who recommended that Everett transfer schools.”
She took a deep gratified breath. “Ah, dear Everett. He is a lovely young man.” She tilted her head and strode closer to me until she had pressed up against, but not actually entered, my personal space bubble. “Don’t you think?”
I sidestepped her and held out my hand, indicating she should give up the chart in her hands. Miss Pearl was an actual doctor and she now worked administration, which all meant that acting impertinent could be bad for me, but the woman unsettled my nerves, which made me need to be doing something. The only thing I knew how to do was check on the patient.
Miss Pearl gave up the chart without complaint or question. She handed it off to me as if I was the greater authority regarding the medical care of little Drake Armstrong. As an actual doctor, she clearly had seniority. Her letting me take over felt like a test.
She watched me work, her scrutiny suffocating. I tugged at the collar of my shirt several times, even though it was loose.
Needing to break the silence, I asked, “So what brings you to UMASS? Are you working in our department now?”
Miss Pearl smiled, amused at something she didn’t seem likely to share with me. “Yes. I am working in your department, now. I started working in Everett’s department first, but well . . . that didn’t turn out like planned. The boy has given up entirely.”
She must have meant when she worked at Tufts before Everett transferred to UMASS. But Everett hadn’t given up. He was a great student. He would graduate with the ability to do his internship anywhere he wanted. He was just that good. Besides, it had seemed that his leaving had been all her idea.
Little Drake woke up and half-smiled at me from a face half-covered in bandages. His dark hair stuck out in fifty different crazy angles. He winced as he tried to sit up, likely from the pain of his dressings causing friction against his burned shoulder and back. I helped him up. “You okay, buddy?” I asked.
He nodded and then noticed the other person in the room. “Who’s that?” he asked.
“That’s Doctor Pearl,” I said.
Miss Pearl came close to his bed and took his hand in hers. “Just call me Miss Pearl, dear.”
He didn’t mind Doctor Miss Pearl touching him, which was nice because he didn’t let many people touch him. I was one of the few on the allowed list. Most of the nurses and other med students made him howl when they went too near, which made changing the dressings on his wounds a difficult task.
Her eyes softened as she held his hand. “I see into your heart, little one. You’re worried you look like a monster,” she told the child.
I gasped at the horror of such a naked truth, but she cast me a stern glance that shut me up.
“But I promise you that you are still quite handsome, and in a few years, when you're old enough to know real love, you will meet me again, and I will help you find a girl who will see you for the beautiful young man you are.” She leaned down so they were eye level. “Trust me, Drake. Trust a woman who knows everything about such matters. When things get dark, and you find yourself worrying, you remember that Miss Pearl has excellent plans for you.”
His big eyes had latched onto her as if she might be the only thing holding him upright. He nodded. “I trust you, Miss Pearl.”
She patted his hand. “Good boy,” she said. She finally returned her attention to me. “But now we need to help this young woman to trust me.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “I don’t have any reason not to,” I said even while thinking, although this total weirdness with my patient is freaking me out and you used the word monster to a little boy who is having major self-image drama.
Miss Pearl gave another of her knowing smiles, almost like she’d heard what I’d thought. The very idea made me blush and feel out of sorts.
“Are you okay, Doc Stone?” Drake asked. He insisted on calling me Doc even though I hadn’t graduated yet.
“I’m fine, buddy. Just fine.” A quick glance up to see that Miss Pearl eyed me like a toad might eye a fly made me feel far less than fine.
I finished with Drake and took a deep breath—sucking in oxygen as if it was determination—and headed to the room of Jeremy Burgess. Miss Pearl fell into step beside me.
Great.
As if she didn’t make me nervous enough while attending to a nice kid, having her witness the inner workings of hot-dog-water boy practically paralyzed me.
“What is that?” Jeremy asked as soon as Miss Pearl and I stepped into his room. The hot dog water aroma slammed me and made me want to vomit. What oozed from that kid’s pores?
“We do not refer to other humans as that,” I told him for the millionth time. “She is someone you need to respect.” With his helicopter crazy mom not in the room, lecturing the hot dog water boy liberated me from all the times I hadn’t said anything because I worried what his mom would say about it.
“What does it do?” he asked, steamrolling right over the top of my lecture.
“SHE is a doctor.” I wanted to add that if he made her mad, she’d take out his spleen while he slept, but even with his mom gone, Miss Pearl still observed as a witness. I’d never get away with it.
“I hate doctors,” he said with a petulance that only someone who lived his whole life with a sullen, sour disposition could manage.
Miss Pearl stabbed a fierce glare in the child’s direction. The intensity was enough that if Jeremy’s leg hadn’t been mangled, he’d have made a break for it and likely never stopped running. “I have not been referred to as an inanimate object for many, many, many years—more years than you can even imagine. I remember a time when uncles and men in our village would say to my parents that the stones in the garden were worth more than a daughter. They would tsk at my parents and say that a girl was like lice in the rice. I remember the shame of such words, but it has been a long time since anyone spoke with such vinegar on their tongues to me. And I am no longer the girl who will tolerate such treatment. You will apologize.” She folded her arms and stared him down.
I glanced at the door, wondering when the helicopter mom would return and whether or not she would file a complaint against the hospital for the staff strong-arming her kid into some sort of humanity.
The doorway remained empty.
When I looked back to Jeremy, I found that he had also been staring at the door, probably wondering where his mom was as well.
“I don’t have to apologize,” Jeremy finally said, straightening himself in his bed to make himself look as tall and as important as possible.
Miss Pearl considered for a long time before she answered. I shot another glance at the door, waiting for the moment when his mom exploded into the middle of our power struggle.
“You’re right,” Miss Pearl said finally.
I frowned. “What?”
Jeremy frowned too. “Come again?”
“You do not have to apologize. But I promise a boy who does not apologize for anything, finds himself with much debt in his heart. That debt is heavy and unattractive. Do you know what I am, boy?” She leaned in close. I almost gagged to see her lean in so close, knowing what kind of odors that kid could waft into the air with just a movement of his arm.
He shook his head slowly.
“I am the one who repairs hearts. I am the one who fills in the cracks and sews up the jagged tears of life. Do you really want to come to a day when you need your heart mended and find me unwilling to do that service for you because I cannot in good conscience allow you to go into further debt when I know you have no means of repayment? Do you really want to gamble on whether or not I will have mercy and do you the service for free?”
I swear five whole minutes passed without either of them speaking or blinking. The questions she asked hung in the air between them.
“I . . . I’m sorry,” Jeremy said.
I moved back in case lightning decided to strike to celebrate the moment. The Burgess kid said sorry. Wonders never ceased.
Miss Pearl worked a miracle in the hospital. She might not have directly saved the kid’s life, but I was willing to bet she indirectly saved it. If he could manage an apology every now and again, it might save him from being strangled in his future.
And wow! Miss Pearl knew how to put the theatrics on what we did. She made being a heart surgeon sound like a superpower. I wanted to remember how she phrased it: fills in the cracks and sews up the jagged tears of life . . . beautiful.
But Miss Pearl wasn’t quite through with Jeremy. “You would do well to remember that no woman worthy of having would ever align herself with a man who does not respect other humans. Calling a person this or that or it not only robs them of their humanity, it robs you of yours.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jeremy said, his eyes wide with wonder at his own words.
The boy who smelled like hot dog water had agreed with another person.
“And this talk,” Miss Pearl went on, “of you hating doctors is absurd. Who do you think is fixing your leg? Who do you think is making it so you can walk without being lame and run without a shamble? It is the men and women who are caring for you. You do not say that you hate them when they’ve done no ill to you. Gratitude is one of the finest qualities in a person. If you can manage to show some gratitude to your doctors and then to any other person who does you a kindness, there might come a time when you see me again in your life, and I will give you a kindness unlike any you could ever imagine. But it must be earned, and I will know if it is not.”
Jeremy nodded and finally looked away from her and fixed his attention on me. To have him look at me directly with such an abashed expression on his face startled me.
“I’m sorry,” he told me.
I about needed a doctor myself because the kid nearly gave me a heart attack.
Not too long after that, Jeremy’s mother returned to his bedside. “I had your teachers bring me your schoolwork so you could do it while you sit here, if you feel like it. You don’t have to.” She hurried to add on that last bit before he could give his typical snarky retort of how much he hated school and hated homework and would rather eat slugs than do something so tedious and absurd. “I want you to focus on getting better. If not doing your work helps, then that's fine with me.” She gave him a fretful smile and a loving pat on his hand.
His gaze slid to Miss Pearl and then back to his mother, who hovered over him with more skill than the most practiced helicopter pilot. “Thanks, Mom. This will help me not get behind.”
Miss Pearl beamed at him. I was pretty sure my bottom jaw hit the floor. His mother gasped and asked him if he was feeling all right. She even double checked with me to see if he had a fever of some sort. Even more amazing, the smell had shifted, and not just because I’d grown used to it, but because the room actually smelled different.
It smelled like a lotion Janette used to have in our apartment all those years ago—a lotion with cherry blossoms. It smelled like Drake’s room had when I’d first entered. Miss Pearl must wear the same kind of lotion as Janette used to.
“So what are you?” I asked Miss Pearl as we walked toward the nurse’s station “The child whisperer?”
She laughed. “No, I merely have a talent for seeing people in all the ways they are.”
“People are more than one way?” I moved to keep from getting run over by Janice, a nurse who was excessively efficient and speedy at her job and didn’t have a problem mowing people over if they were in her way when she had a task to do.
“Of course they are,” Miss Pearl said. “A person has as much variety to them as a field of wild flowers. They have pasts and presents and futures. They are part of the past, they are the person that is in the present and they have a million and two options for who they can be in the future based on the past and the present. I see the options they have, the paths in front of them.”
“You see the future?” I was starting to wonder if Miss Pearl needed a visit to the psyche ward.
“I see possibility. I am a pretty good guess at the sort of paths a person wants to take. Sometimes the real struggle is convincing them to take it.” She narrowed her eyes at me and smiled as if some deeper meaning hid under her words and she expected me to understand what the meaning might be. It had been too long since I’d had a decent night’s sleep. As it was, I felt like I'd just witnessed some sort of voodoo in Jeremy Burgess’s room.
“Huh,” was the only reply I could think to give.
“Hmph,” was her reply.
She fell silent, which worried me that somehow I’d offended her. I tried at a different conversation. “So you’re a heart doctor, right? That’s your specialty, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Matters of the heart are my specialty.”
“Are you here permanently, Doc—” I caught myself before realizing she’d never given a last name. “Doctor Pearl?”
Was it Doctor Pearl? Was Pearl her last name or her first? How was I to know when she kept telling everyone to call her Miss Pearl?
We finally arrived at the nurses’ station, but no one manned it. Strange. Usually someone sat watch over the station at all times. I pulled out my notebook and used the counter to jot some quick notes about both the boys I'd visited, but I felt Pearl’s gaze sear a hole through the side of my head.
“I will be here as long as I need to be.” She’d waited so long to answer my question, I almost forgot I asked one. “My purpose is to check on the behavior of a few staff members and the way they handled my student when I transferred him to this location. He’s a bright boy with much to offer. I don’t feel he has been treated as well as he deserves.”
She had to mean Everett. But how could she say he wasn’t being treated well? All the staff loved him and were more loyal to him than they were to half of the actual staff. Everett enriched the working environment for everyone. He built others up, he kept up on his own studies so he always had a correct and smart answer. I half felt like telling Miss Pearl that she could go home because Everett had found success without her help, and he would likely be mortified if he knew she was here drumming up favors for him.
I put down my pen and notebook so I could face her square on. “Everett is totally capable. You do know that, right? He doesn’t need special treatment. He’s smart and is great with the patients. Everyone loves him.”
“I see. Everyone loves him. But do you love him, Andra Stone?”
I shot a panicked look to the station, which was empty, and to the halls, which were also empty and wondered where everyone had disappeared to, all while being incredibly grateful they were gone. Relief flooded me at the same time confusion slammed into me. No one heard the question. No rumors could come from this moment.
But the questio
n itself caused the confusion. It stirred up memories of Everett smiling at me, of the way it felt when he kissed me all those years ago; it made me wish he stood in front of me right that moment so I could kiss him again.
“Of course I do,” I said, then shook myself, wondering why I had said such a thing. “I mean I don’t. I mean I do care about him a great deal. I care about everyone here.”
Miss Pearl watched me sputter for an answer and then said, “It must be a terribly strange thing to want to be a heart surgeon.”
This statement confused me more than anything. I straightened hard as if pressed flat against a wall. Who was she to say such a thing? Did she view me as Everett’s competition? “It’s all I ever wanted to be, and I’m good at it.”
“Yet you know so little of your own heart.”
“There you are!” Graham, one of the other students, exclaimed from down the hall. “Dr. Lentz has been looking for you!”
I pointed in Miss Pearl’s direction with the intention of using the new admin as my alibi, but she no longer stood next to the counter with me. I looked to my other side and then did a circle to see if she’d sneaked around behind me, but no, she wasn’t anywhere.
“Well?” Graham said. “Are you coming?”
“Right away,” I murmured and hurried to follow him, even while I searched the halls for any sign of the mysterious Chinese doctor who asked impossible questions and said terrible things.
But she’d gone.
I shook my head hard and glanced behind me again. Had I imagined her? Part of me hoped I really had just imagined the formidable woman, because the one question she asked bothered me more than anything anyone had ever said to me.
Do you love him?
But if I had imagined it, why would my imagination want me to answer a question that made me so acutely uncomfortable?
Chapter Twelve
Nope. I hadn’t imagined Miss Pearl. She seemed like my personal shadow. I never saw her bothering any of the other students, but she trailed after me as if someone had stitched her to my heels.
