The Doctor's Undoing

by Allie Pleiter

  The signature, however, burned a black hole in the pit of his stomach: Dr. Terrence Bennet.

  A friend of his father’s. Or, more currently, a friend of his mother’s.

  Could Mother be behind this? She was certainly capable of such a thing, but he never thought her willing to stoop so low as to go behind his back like this. The more he considered it, however, the more certain he was that his suspicions were true. Near-perfect nursing positions combining art—and even knitting—and medical care did not appear out of nowhere. Bennet could have owed her a favor.

  The more he thought about it, remembering her words, the easier it was to believe Mother had simply decided he was wrong not to send Ida away and taken her own action. Daniel ground his teeth and fisted his hands, anger growing every second. She’d always been domineering, and he’d tolerated it out of respect for all she had accomplished and pity for all the things she had lost. This latest scheme, however, he simply could not abide. Daniel’s pulse roared in his ears. Enough. I have been as kind as my soul will allow, Mother, but we are done. If you have hurt Ida...

  Ida. Could that have been where she was this morning? Would Mother be so cruel as to ask—no, demand—that Ida leave? Scheming behind his back was one thing, but cornering Ida in the way he now believed Mother to be capable of doing? That was quite another. Ida had changed the Home. Ida had made it a “home,” not just a school or a house. That deserved praise and welcome, not orders to leave town.

  Orders to leave him.

  An icy point in his gut told him that was the true core of all this. Mother knew him well and was an uncanny judge of character. Had she sensed the growing attraction between him and Ida even before he’d fully realized it? It made sense; this was about more than the Home. This was about the possibility that he might ruffle feathers by bringing Ida into their social sphere. Or—even a more distasteful notion to Mother—bring her into the family.

  Daniel wanted to grab the letter and tear it to pieces. He wanted to throw something, hit something, but he was in Ida’s rooms and had no right to disturb anything. He would not stoop to Mother’s tactics and take the letter. He would deal with this directly, openly, and with the honor Mother currently lacked.

  But how? It would help if he confronted Mother first—he knew where to find her and he ought to confirm that she had indeed been behind this. He also needed to know if Mother had already made a demand to Ida before he did anything else. Still, the thought of Ida out there in the middle of this ridiculous battle twisted his heart. He wanted Ida to know—now and with certainty—that she belonged here, that he wanted her here, and that Mother’s manipulation held no power over him. Every patron could walk from the Home and he would simply find another way to go on. Hadn’t that been the single thought thrumming through his heart at the bathhouse? I could do anything with you beside me. For the first time in his life, Daniel cursed the Parker name as he closed Ida’s door and turned toward the front gate.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ida held back the tears all the way to Leanne’s house, but the moment she caught sight of her dear friend’s face in the hallway, they came in a flood.

  “Goodness, whatever is wrong?” Leanne took Ida’s hand and pulled her into the front parlor.

  Where to start? “I’ve...I’ve just come from a visit with Amelia Parker.” Ida sank into a couch, the tears coming freely now.

  Leanne pulled a handkerchief from her dress pocket and handed it to Ida. “Daniel’s mother?”

  “Daniel’s horrible mother, yes.” Ida wasn’t given to calling people horrible, but she felt so belittled, so dismissed, that her heart burned in pain. “I actually thought...she was...coming to like me.” It stung to realize how much she’d wanted the woman to like her. How much she’d let herself buy into the fantasy that she and Daniel could actually be together. “How could I have been so foolish?”

  Leanne had every right to look confused. “I’ll call for some tea. Take a few deep breaths while I do, and then try to tell me what happened.”

  The tea arrived, and Ida couldn’t help but notice how very warm and comforting it felt. How could this be the same beverage over which Amelia Parker had been so cruel? Slowly, Ida let the story unfurl, beginning with the kiss at the bathhouse, which she’d not even had the opportunity to relate to anyone, up until now.

  “Oh, Ida. How wonderful and awful at the same time. No wonder your head’s in a spin—how could it not?”

  “The tables are turned, aren’t they?” Ida moaned. It was not that long ago that Leanne had cried to Ida about the wonderful and impossible nature of her love for John Gallows. They’d received a happy ending despite facing mortal dangers. How sad that Ida faced only societal traps, but felt much less sure she’d ever get the happy ending she desired.

  “I wish I’d known how you feel about Daniel earlier.” Leanne wrapped her hands around her teacup. “I might never have passed along the offer from Washington.”

  “No, I’m glad you did. I think it may be my saving grace.” Ida fell back against the plush cushions, grateful for their softness in a world that felt all too sharp and cruel this morning. “I couldn’t stay here now, not knowing how she despises me and all the harm I could do to the Home.”

  Leanne’s back straightened and she set down her cup. “Now, you wait just a minute. You’re not really thinking of letting Amelia Parker keep you and Daniel apart, are you?”

  “If it were just about Daniel and me, maybe not. But Ida, she is right about the donors. They could choose to withdraw their support. She could make them withdraw it. Daniel is all the family she has left, and she’ll do whatever it takes to keep his reputation unblemished.” Ida put her hand to her forehead, reliving the oh-so-civil ruthlessness in Amelia Parker’s eyes as she closed her own. “I could see it in her expression, Leanne. She’d stop at nothing to ensure I never came near Daniel again.”

  “And what of Daniel’s view on this?”

  “He loves his mother. I couldn’t possibly tell him what she’s done. He’d never speak to her again, I think. She’s a beast, yes, but she’s still his mother. If working at the Home has taught me anything, it’s how you can never replace family.”

  “You don’t think Daniel ought to know what his mother has tried to do?”

  “What would be the point? It galls me to say it, but she may be right. She’d be scandalized if Daniel and I took up together. All those other donors—the ones the Home depends on—wouldn’t they take the same view?”

  Leanne shook her head. “All those women you’ve brought into the knitting circle—do you really think they’d look down their noses at you?”

  “You brought them in, Leanne. You’re one of them.” When Leanne balked, she went on, “No, you’re not like them, I know that, but they see you differently than they see me. I know how these things work, Leanne, and I know how they almost never change. Amelia Parker said it outright—I’m fine as a nurse but definitely not one to join the family. I’d just write her off as a stodgy old lady if...” She couldn’t finish that thought.

  “If it weren’t for how you feel about Daniel,” Leanne finished for her. “It’s all over your face. I don’t know why I didn’t see it earlier.” She put her hand on Ida’s. “He’s so perfect for you. And you for him.”

  “I’m not what he needs.” Even as the words left her mouth, they echoed with sad truth in the hollow of her stomach. “I love the Home, and we’re fine partners in working there, but Daniel Parker’s wife needs to be able to move in all those fancy circles he was born to so the Home keeps its donors.”

  “I think you move just fine in those fancy circles,” Leanne declared, picking up her teacup.

  “I’m tolerated in those fancy circles. Let’s not pretend it’s anything else. And honestly, I’m fine with that. I couldn’t care what those silly old ladies think of me as long as they hel
p the Home.” Ida looked down, feeling her heart already breaking. “But to stay here and watch Daniel, to fight back against all those feelings—Leanne, I just don’t think I’ve got the spine to do it. I hate to let Amelia Parker win this one, but at least you and John have made a way for me to tuck tail and run before it hurts more.”

  Leanne set her cup down and stared into Ida’s eyes. “Do you love him, Ida?”

  There wasn’t a harder question in the world right now. “Enough to want what’s best for him.”

  “What if you’re what’s best for him?”

  Daniel’s words, “You’re an absolute gift,” sounded in her head. She’d already changed him, she’d already brought color to the Home. Perhaps that was all she’d be allowed to give. She’d finish the dining room mural as her final gift to Daniel and the children and move to Washington with John and Leanne. She’d try to be grateful God had handed her a way out and trust that He’d heal her broken heart in good time. “I’m not. Even I can see that. Can you help me write a reply to Dr. Bennet right now? I want to know it’s on its way.”

  “If you’re sure it’s what you want.”

  “It’s not what I want. But it’s what’s best, and that’ll have to be close enough.”

  * * *

  Ida could not be found anywhere on the compound. Daniel had searched every building and most of the grounds, asking after her with everyone he saw. It wasn’t like Ida to disappear—this had to be Mother’s doing. He burned at the thought of Mother skewering Ida with that demanding glare of hers. He’d been too busy to tamp out Mother’s continual meddling in the Home’s affairs, telling himself her decaying health would eventually lessen her need to interfere. But in the meantime, while he’d thought he’d been running the Home on his own, in truth he’d taken large decisions to her for approval, lying to himself that he was inviting the participation to keep her occupied.

  He wanted to know Father would have sanctioned how he ran the Home, and with Father gone, Mother’s approval was the only endorsement he had.

  But he did have another Father to guide him. He had God the Father, and God had sent him exactly what he needed in Ida. Perhaps that was why she had ruffled him so at first—she woke up his own long-dormant independence.

  She also woke up his long-numbed heart. Daniel had never felt this way about any of the social swans Mother paraded before him. Yes, many of those finely coiffed Charleston fillies would give him social access, but he already had that. Ida gave him what he desperately needed: Inspiration. Fire. The spirit to take on the world. The thoughts kept clarifying in his mind at such speed that Daniel felt he would burst if he didn’t find Ida and tell her. Only where was she?

  The final place he checked was the bathhouse. It was filled with children at this time of day, and he’d held off going there for fear his growing anger and panic would be apparent to them. Still, would she perhaps return to the place where their hearts found each other? The twin plunge pools were noisy and hectic, teeming with playing children, but no sign of Ida. He laid his hand on the spot where they had kissed up against the column, begging God to let him find her, asking Him to soothe her wounded heart until he could do so with his own words.

  Daniel was just pushing off the column when the screech filled the bathhouse. A knot of children exploded in noise and shouting. It wasn’t hard to guess that someone had slipped and fell—it happened so often that Daniel had been fighting the decision to close down the bathhouses for months. “Gitch!” someone yelled.

  Daniel hoped the child had suffered a minor mishap until he saw the fear on the faces of the children looking up at him. He dashed over, parting them to let himself through.

  Gwendolyn lay at the edge of the pool, her cheek and mouth dripping blood into the water. And worst of all, the child who never seemed to stop moving was utterly, frightfully still.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Guilt consumed Daniel even as his clinical training kicked in. The twin plunge pools had been part of the compound of buildings before they became the Parker Home for Orphans, and he’d spent too long weighing the trouble of removing them against the relief they brought from the oppressive Charleston summer heat. Now Daniel was staring straight at his greatest fear: a child badly injured from slipping and striking his or her head against the mercilessly hard concrete.

  He had known himself to be a worrier—it seemed to be a common trait among physicians—but he’d convinced himself, as his father had before him, that the good of the pools outweighed the dangers. Even the children recognized the baths to be a privilege and were uncharacteristically obedient of the stringent safety rules Daniel had in place for the pools. As such, in all his time at the Home, no one had ever been seriously hurt—before today.

  That it was now, and that it was Gwendolyn, seemed to twist his gut in half while doubling his dread.

  Her head hung at a ghastly angle over the edge of the pool so that her hair dipped into the water, its beautiful blond streaked with red that seeped from her brow down her locks. He simultaneously hated and loved that he had gained Ida’s eyes for color, even at this terrible moment.

  As fast as was sensible, he ran assessing fingers down the child’s neck and skull, checking for swelling and fractures. When it seemed safe to at least move her head to the edge, he whispered, “Come now, Lady Gwendolyn, come on back to us,” and began sliding her neck and head back up level onto the stones. Daniel kept his hands on Gitch’s good cheek—the other held a deep gash—stroking while he turned over his shoulder and said quietly yet firmly to the teaching assistant who had been serving as pool guard but now stood pale and frozen beside him, “Get the first-aid kit.

  “Doris,” he repeated, snapping his fingers impatiently in front of the young woman’s face when she failed to move, “get the first-aid kit in the cabinet over there!” She blinked, and finally obeyed.

  Daniel held out his hand for bathing towels from two of the children standing nearby, tucking one under Gwendolyn’s head while pressing the other against the wound on her cheek and jaw. “You’re going to be just fine, Miss Martin. You’ve just given yourself a good bump. Open your eyes for me now, okay, dear?”

  When she failed to do so, one of the girls who had handed him a towel began to cry.

  “Gitch?” Daniel tried the favorite nickname in the hopes of getting the girl to reply. He checked her pulse, glad to feel a solid, if skittish rhythm, as a second girl began to cry, as well. “Now, now, girls, she’s not dead.” He tried to imitate Ida’s gift for warm tones in a crisis, wishing to Heaven the sweet nurse were beside him right now. Gwendolyn did indeed look alarmingly limp and still on the concrete, not to mention how bloody the whole scene appeared. “She’s just knocked herself out.” He prayed he’d kept the alarm from his voice, for in truth his own pulse had begun to thunder in his ears. He’d had little choice but to move Gwen’s head, but in fact he did not know if a fracture was present. The unnatural angle of the child’s swelling jaw could mean any number of things. Father God, have mercy on this dear child. This may be beyond my skill. Spare her.

  The towel under his hand was rapidly turning red as someone pushed the white tin first aid box against his leg, now wet as he knelt on the poolside concrete. Daniel pressed harder, infinitely relieved to see the child’s face register pain. Pain meant life and consciousness. Thank You, Lord. She wasn’t out of the woods by a long shot, but if she could feel, she hadn’t broken her neck in the fall.

  The sound of boys’ voices began to fill the room—the boys had evidently come in from their pool next door. “Donna?” Daniel called without taking his eyes from Gwendolyn, hoping the older girl was nearby.

  “Yes, Dr. Parker?”

  “Find Matt and clear the pools. Help Doris get the children out of here. Send someone to Mr. Grimshaw to call the ambulance. Have him tell them to come to the service entrance at the back gate. Tel
l the cook to send some ice. Can you do all that?” Donna didn’t have Ida’s experience—and where on earth was Ida right now?—but she was the best he had at the moment.

  Daniel didn’t even look up, but he could hear the tears in Donna’s voice, hear her attempts to stay calm. “Yes, Dr. Parker.” Donna had a soft spot for Gwendolyn. Everyone had a soft spot for the gutsy little girl.

  “That’s my girl,” Daniel said as much to Gwendolyn as to Donna. “Off you go. Everything will be all right. It looks worse than it is.” Please, Lord, let that be true.

  “Where’s Nurse Ida?” one child cried behind Daniel as Donna, Doris and Matt herded the frightened children from the area. “Gitch needs Nurse Ida.”

  I need Nurse Ida. Why did this have to happen now? How could Daniel possibly hope to get word to Ida if he didn’t know where she was?

  It seemed forever before the bleeding began to slow, draining Gwendolyn’s already pale complexion to a further pallidness that grew knots in Daniel’s stomach. He found one of the older children to hold the towel firmly in place while he checked her neck and shoulders again for signs of fractures, grateful to find none and only minimal swelling. The cheek and jaw, however, were another story. He rolled her head to her good side to keep the blood from pooling in her mouth. She was still unconscious, but perhaps that was a blessing given that movement wasn’t yet wise. Daniel opened her eyelids to check her pupils. She was breathing unsteadily, but she was breathing.

  In the best case, she had a concussion and would sport a scar that might rival his own. In the worst case, she’d fractured her skull or jaw, or had bleeding on her brain that would require dangerous surgery. Daniel knew her treatment went beyond his skills, but he hated the thought of relinquishing her care to someone else. These were his children.

  Mrs. Smiley’s voice came over his shoulder. “In here, gentlemen.” A pair of ambulance orderlies rushed to his side. Daniel told them all he’d been able to assess and stepped back, not wanting to retreat but knowing they needed to do their jobs.