Alice At The Home Front

by Mardiyah A. Tarantino

  Finally, one afternoon, Mother opened the door to her room without knocking.

  “Alice, we’ve received some news. Now that the weather has cleared up, the search planes have gone out, and land parties have begun to comb the shoreline. Say a little prayer they’ll find Jimmy.”

  The knot in Alice’s tummy and the sand-like feeling in her mouth began to go away. “Thanks, Mother,” she whispered.

  After a few days, Alice got stronger. Now she wanted so much to do something. She thought about leaving some flowers on Mrs. Brownell’s doorstep without telling her. It would be a nice surprise. Suddenly, the idea shocked her. Flowers were what you gave when somebody died! How could she have thought of such a thing?

  Squeezing her fist, she said out loud, “Oh God, Jimmy, don’t you dare be dead!”

  * * *

  When Alice was able to walk and move around the room, she discovered that her logbook had been put away, and the binoculars were nowhere to be seen. She had an awful feeling—why would anybody move them? No one had been in her room besides the doctor, and Mother, of course. Mother? She immediately went downstairs and asked her about it.

  “Where’s my logbook and my binoculars?”

  Mother looked away as if avoiding the question. “Your spotting days are over, I’m afraid, Alice.” Mother straightened her back and took a breath. “In fact I forbid you—and your grandfather agrees—not to ever open any window in this house for that purpose. You can see for yourself the result of that foolishness. You were very, very sick, young lady, whether you know it or not, and we were all worried. I will not let you risk your health again. I’m sorry.”

  She took Alice’s hand, but Alice snatched it away. “How could you?” she screamed. “How can you do that to me?”

  Up in her room, Alice lay on her bed and sobbed little hicuppy sobs. She felt so tired. So terribly tired. She felt like never getting up again. She’d had enough of it all. It was too much.

  Bagheera jumped up on the bed, kneaded the blanket with his paws a little, and settled in beside her, when she finally fell asleep.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Spar Island

  Alice hadn’t talked to Mother since that night Mother had taken her binoculars, except to nod yes or no. She was torn, because it really wasn’t natural for her not to answer someone, but she wanted Mother to know how upset she was. She could hear Mother talking with Mr. Hopkins downstairs, which meant she’d have to talk to Mother and ask her about news. She had to find out what they were saying.

  “Thanks for stopping by, Ed,” Mother said.

  Alice heard him leave. She could tell from the tones of their voices down the stairwell that it sounded bad. Why didn’t Mother call her right away? Sure that it was news about Jimmy, she flew down the stairs three at a time, twisting her ankle on the way, which forced her to sit down on the last step. She called in a loud voice, “Mother! Tell me what’s going on. It’s about Jimmy, isn’t it?”

  “What’s the matter with your foot?” she said, coming over.

  “Never mind that, tell me what he said!”

  “Well, Alice, they did find Jimmy.”

  “Oh! Thank God! He’s alive?”

  “Yes, he’s alive, but in very bad condition.”

  Alice rubbed her ankle. “How do you mean, bad?”

  “He’s terribly dehydrated … and suffering from severe hypothermia—the cold. They aren’t sure of his chances to survive, is the truth of the matter,” she sighed.

  “When can I see him?”

  “Alice, you’re just going to have to be patient. His condition is very serious. He’ll need to stay in the hospital for a very long time and then rest at home. Just pray they found him in time.”

  Gramp helped her up on a chair and began rubbing her ankle. He tried to explain. “Ye know when ye stay out in the snow too long, like that time ye built the igloo and wanted to spend the night in it? Then we couldn’t find you for dinner, ’cause you’d fallen asleep in there and didn’t know what time it was? And then your leg hurt from being so cold you almost had frostbite?”

  “Yeah. I remember.”

  “Well that’s how it is for Jimmy, only much worse.”

  Alice frowned. How could it be much worse? What did that mean? She wanted to find out just what was happening to Jimmy and went to look up the words dehydration and hypothermia in Gramp’s medical dictionary. At first she couldn’t spell them right, and then when she figured out the spelling, she didn’t understand at all what they were explaining. “I give up,” she finally said and shut the book.

  But Alice never gave up. After a few minutes puzzling about it, she got an idea.

  * * *

  The following day after school, the first aid nurse was sitting in her office, and luckily, she wasn’t too busy. Alice walked in with her pad and pencil ready to write. Up on the wall was the nurse’s diploma, like a school diploma, except it was stained on one corner. She wished she’d borrowed Jody’s glasses so she would look more serious. You could never really look serious without glasses like the ones Miss Sitwell had on. Hers were gray metal and sat on the tip of her beaky nose. She was skinny and tall and jerked her head a little from side to side like a hawk.

  “Now, Alice, what-can-I-do-for-you?” she asked, stringing her words together with little jerks.

  “I have to write this paper for science,” lied Alice, “and it’s about extreme hypo-hypothermia and dee-hy-dration. I couldn’t understand the definition they gave in the dictionary. Could you please explain what it means?”

  “Why certainly.” She stared down through her glasses at Alice, as if examining a small mouse. Then she sat back in her chair.

  “The two are often linked,” Miss Sitwell said, “when the patient has been exposed to the, uh, bad weather or abandoned somewhere. In dehydration, the patient has lost most of his weight from not drinking anything for too long a time. He often must be fed intravenously—through his veins—because he is no longer able to swallow. A person cannot live without water for long.”

  Alice stared at that stain on the diploma. “Can he die from it?”

  “Most certainly. In severe cases, he does.”

  Alice sat very still and stopped writing.

  “In extreme hypothermia—that is, if the patient has been out in bad weather too long”—Miss Sitwell wiped her beak—“there is little chance of the patient living. He is confused or has seizures and passes out, resulting in brain damage and kidney failure, and, uh, he dies. The extremities—his lips and fingers turn blue and swollen, and he loses weight from the shivering.” She jerked her head from side to side. “It is a horrible, painful death.”

  Alice’s stomach dropped, and her heart squeezed in her chest.

  “Curiously, before the end comes, the patient, well, you could say he goes crazy and feels heat—a false heat, of course—through his body. He tries to peel off his clothes, but this only makes matters worse. The cold takes over completely, and then … Alice? Aren’t you taking notes?”

  Alice wasn’t listening to the rambling any more. “I … I’ll remember,” she said, her own fingers refusing to work.

  “Because the cold takes over, he will die all the more quickly. Nothing can be done at that stage … Alice? I hope you can remember what I’m saying.”

  “Stop! I don’t want to hear it!” Alice screamed. She blocked her ears and ran out of the room, barely saying thank you and dropping her pad and pencil on the floor as she went. She had to run and keep running to get away from the images of fingers turning blue, of brain damage and craziness, of the awful pain Jimmy must be feeling. She ran across the field, strands of hair plastered against her face by tears. She reached the road and ran across as a car swerved, honking angrily and barely missing her, but she didn’t care. Why should she care, if Jimmy wasn’t going to live?
Wasn’t going to speak or think again or look at her anymore?

  She walked through the next few weeks, feeling like the Tin Man. She dragged her feet along, trudging through the day, forgetting to feed Bagheera, and making bandages as if she were sleepwalking. Jimmy’s condition had been unchanged for so long.

  Yesterday Mother had finally given in, probably thanks to Gramp, who was missing Alice’s smiles. They promised her that when the weather was warmer in the spring, she might be able to start spotting again. She might. Still, she had a long time to wait.

  Gladys was the only one who could make her laugh when they saw each other at school. She kept asking, “What’s the matter with you? Is it about Jimmy? You’ve got to believe he’ll be okay. Don’t you believe in stuff, like God? Have you got a crush on him or something?”

  Alice would feel herself blushing, and Gloria would sing-song, “Hah! Hah! See? You’re blushing.” And they’d both laugh. But then she’d feel sad again, because suppose he really did die, or what’s worse, become a zombie who didn’t know where he was or … who she was?

  * * *

  Jimmy did recover. After three long weeks, he recovered enough to be out of the ICU and have his own room in the hospital and for his parents and family to visit him. But he was still terribly weak and spent hours sleeping. They told Alice, “Little girls aren’t allowed in hospitals.”

  Along with Jimmy, Alice had recovered too—enough to feel her old self again. Now that the really dangerous stuff was over, she could visit Jimmy and find out exactly how much he was still like he used to be.

  It was time to act. She looked at herself in the mirror and pursed her lips to show how serious she was about it. They wouldn’t allow kids? She’d see about that. She felt the old adventure rising up in her, that tickly feeling, the challenge of following her own way. Did they think she was just going to sit around at home waiting for him to get well?

  What could she bring him? Certainly not flowers. A thermos of hot tea was the only sensible thing for somebody with hypothermia. Again Mother had told her they wouldn’t allow children who aren’t sick in the hospital. Not even to visit a new baby brother. Well then, she’d go after the other visitors had left. She’d go at night.

  The following Monday evening, Alice took her terrycloth bathrobe and slippers and tucked them in an overnight bag, along with some bandages she snitched from Mother’s supply. Then she found a hot water bottle and a thermos, which she planned to fill just before leaving.

  It was an extra cold evening. She dressed herself warmly with a wool hat (thinking about Jimmy’s being cold made her feel cold too), ski pants, and Gramp’s furry jacket and snuck quietly out the front door after dinner, while Mother and Gramp listened to the news. She didn’t remember seeing furry jackets in movies about hospitals, so she decided she’d bring Gramp’s along. She could wear it and then leave it to cover Jimmy. She wished she had a little fudge to go along with it.

  It turned out that all those things were a lot to carry as she got on the trolley, because now the thermos and hot water bottle seemed to weigh a ton. She tried wearing Gramp’s furry jacket on top of her own coat. It was easier to carry that way, but it made people stare. The trolley would take her as far as the stop in front of the hospital.

  When she got there, she pushed open the heavy doors and looked for the ladies’ room. It said “Women,” but never mind. There, she changed into her PJs, robe, and slippers and attached a strip of bandage adhesive around her wrist. She’d printed Ophelia Shakespeare on it for identification. She then wound the long bandage around her head like a turban. When she walked, she dragged her left foot a little to show she wasn’t in very good shape.

  She knew which floor Jimmy was on, but it wasn’t easy to peer in and see who was in each bed. She was trying to do this, when a nurse came up.

  “May I help you?” The nurse glanced down at Alice’s wrist. “Ophelia! That’s a lovely name!”

  “Uh huh,” mumbled Alice. “Do you know which room Jimmy Brownell’s in? I’m his sister, and we were in the same crash,” she said with her fingers crossed.

  “Oh! I see.” The nurse consulted her chart. “Yes, here he is, but he’s not supposed to have visitors yet, and besides, it’s late.”

  “I just need to leave this for him,” showing her the overnight bag.

  “At the desk would be fine.”

  Alice scrunched up her face to look pitiful. “I promised I’d get it to him now, tonight.”

  “We-e-ell,” said the nurse.

  Good, she’s taking pity, thought Alice.

  “No more than two minutes. Room 255. And you need to get back to your room, Miss Ophelia.”

  Alice found the door and crept in on tiptoe.

  “Psssst! Jimmy!” She said, pulling aside the curtains. “Are you really alive?”

  Jimmy slowly raised his head. He seemed to have trouble seeing. Then he focused on Alice in her bathrobe and head bandage. She was holding a thermos in one hand and reaching for a hot water bottle with the other.

  “Oh!” she said as she almost dropped it on his feet. Slowly, a smile crept over Jimmy’s face, and he started to laugh. He began laughing and laughing and then winced, because something must have hurt. Alice didn’t see what was so funny.

  “You could thank me for the hot water bottle, at least,” she said, “and all the trouble I went to.”

  “Oh, thanks, Alice,” he said, but his voice sounded rusty and then became a whisper, “Thanks a billion, ol’ thing.”

  Alice beamed.

  He collapsed back on his pillow, and Alice could see he was exhausted.

  “Okay,” she said, placing the thermos on his bedside table and then covering his legs with Gramp’s furry old jacket. “That should warm you up.” She looked around. “They haven’t given you a thing for the cold! Not even a hot water bottle!” she sniffed. “Want some tea?”

  Alice sat beside him for a few minutes, and then when he didn’t answer, she said, “Guess I’ll be on my way.” She suddenly remembered that Mother would find her missing if she didn’t get back lickety-split.

  Jimmy opened his eyes, pointed to the bandage on her head, and cracked a grin.

  “I’ll take it off before getting on the trolley,” she said. “Don’t worry,”

  He smiled, but his eyes were closing.

  She tiptoed out of the room down to the nearest restroom, changed quickly, and caught the next trolley home. When she got there, she snuck in the back door, and there was Bagheera waiting for her. Better Bagheera than Mother. She had to clasp her hand over his mouth so he wouldn’t meow.

  When Alice came back from school on Wednesday, Mother was holding Gramp’s furry jacket up by the collar.

  “Guess what Mrs. Brownell found in Jimmy’s room, along with my thermos and Gramp’s hot-water bottle.”

  Alice saw Mother struggling to keep from smiling, which told her she’d get through this one without a screaming session.

  “She brought all that over here? Nice of her to return it,” said Alice.

  “I won’t ask you how it got there. I’ll just remind you once more in clear and emphatic terms: do not bother Jimmy. I was so embarrassed when Mrs. Brownell came with these things.”

  That’s it, thought Alice, that’s what’s bothering her—being embarrassed. “Okay, Mother, I’ll call her up and apologize. I know she’ll forgive me.”

  “Well, at least you made him laugh. He told his mother all about it—how you came in your bathrobe. Alice, do apologize. But do not approach him again until he is well, do you hear me?”

  Gramp, who had been reading the paper through all this, looked up. “It was an old jacket, Maddy. You didn’t have to make a fuss.”

  Two weeks later, when Jimmy came home from the hospital, Mother told Alice that Mrs. Brownell wanted to have a meetin
g at the house with Jimmy and the CAP people to find out exactly what had happened. According to CAP reports, he should not have made it through after having been exposed to the elements for that long. Mother and Gramp were going along too, because, as a yachtsman, Gramp could help explain the conditions. Mr. Parker and Mr. Hopkins would be there to report back to CAP, and Alice could join them so long as she did not to speak out of turn.

  Alice couldn’t wait and barely slept all the night before, dreaming of rescues at sea. For the occasion, Alice had brought sugar and butter down to Elsie’s, so she would make some fudge for Alice to take to the meeting.

  “I’ll give you my month’s allowance if you can get it made by five o’clock this afternoon.”

  “You should have given me more notice. I have my violin lesson at three.”

  “I didn’t know about it until today,” said Alice. “How about one and a half months’ allowance?”

  “It’s not polite to bribe people,” said Elsie.

  “It is if it’s really important. Like telling a lie—it turns white if it’s really important. Then it’s called a white lie.”

  “It turns white?”

  Elsie was skeptical but finally agreed, and Alice rode her bike lickety-split down to get the fudge at five o’clock and back in time for the meeting.

  At the door, Alice presented the fudge to Mrs. Brownell, who thanked her, surprised.

  Mother mumbled to her on the side, “So that’s where the butter went. I hope you like corn oil on your toast.”

  Everyone was already seated around the living room, with Jimmy lying flat on the couch, four gigantic pillows propping him up. He’d lost a lot of weight, thought Alice. She found an ottoman and sat on that (better than a footstool, she thought). Mr. Hopkins sat in the wing-back chair and took charge.

  “Welcome everyone to Jimmy’s recovery and to this meeting.” (There was clapping all around.) “We are here to determine, with Jimmy’s help, what happened to him and how he survived. Jimmy, why don’t you start us off by telling us what you remember?”