Hurricane Nurse

by Joan Sargent

  The supplies the school offered were scarce enough. As Donna had said, there were bandages and aspirin. She found too, a large jar of Ungentine for burns, a bottle of a hundred aspirin. Almost any family medicine cabinet would be more plentifully filled. She felt helpless, thinking of the things that might happen. What would she do in case of a heart attack, or a diabetic coma? Until she came to Flamingo, she had never done anything except under a doctor's direct order. Here, she wasn't allowed to give so much as an aspirin to a child. Only to put on temporary dressings, to check eyes and ears, heights and weights, and report to mothers and fathers. Whom would she turn to in a real emergency? Her training hadn't taught her independence.

  She didn't have long to mull over her plight. Hank came in looking as pleased as punch. "Mrs. Saunders never stays during a hurricane. She has children and is a widow. But she's prepared lunch for those who are here. You and Mrs. Saunders will be the only ladies. However, Mary Hendley phoned that she would be along in midafternoon."

  Mary Hendley was a first-grade teacher who looked at Hank as if she were a hungry child at a bakery window. Donna wondered if Hank had gone with her before she herself was added to the staff, or whether it had always been a hopeless crush.

  The covered passageway went along one of the five inside patios about which the school was built. Again, she noticed the uncanny silence of the out-of-doors. Not a palm frond stirred. The fountain which the class of '37 had given had been shut off. The scarlet blossoms on the ixora hedge that ran about the four sides seemed to exude a heat of their own. The footsteps of the faculty members echoed hollowly on the tiled floor.

  "There's nothing quite so empty as a school when the pupils aren't there," Hank said, and his words echoed hollowly from the opposite wall.

  They were arranging two desks at the entrance, placing paper and pencils to keep records there, when on the dot of twelve-thirty as Hank had expected, Dr. and Mrs. Ward arrived. Both old people were cobweb-frail, with white hair, faded blue eyes, and thin, liver-spotted hands. As often happens when people live together for great lengths of time, the old professor and his wife had grown to look alike. Mrs. Ward sat in an ancient wheel chair, an afghan bright with every conceivable color spread over her knees. The beauty of good bones and kindly, optimistic thinking was hers. Donna looked up at the man who pushed the chair and found humor and contentment there.

  She pulled up a desk chair, took a piece of paper from the folder the Red Cross had furnished and began to take down the answers to questions, their names, their address. There was no next of kin.

  "We've usually had room one-oh-six," the old lady told Donna.

  It was then that the idea struck the nurse. One hundred six was a classroom. But the teachers' room was a fairly large place, with chairs and two couches. It even had toilets and a shower in an adjoining room, which would be like a private bath for the old couple.

  She excused herself and went to seek the principal, explaining her plan. He scratched his head, smiling. "We've always kept that room locked on the principle that to allow anyone to use it would be showing favoritism. But if anyone deserves having favoritism shown them, it's the Wards. They'll keep the place clean, too. Surely, give it to them. It's a fine idea."

  The Wards were embarrassed by the special attention when Donna explained it to them. "We wouldn't want anything special," the little old lady deprecated.

  Donna patted the thin shoulder. "Nor would I want to make a special case of you, but you're the early bird who is supposed to get the fattest worm, and Mr. Fincher tells me that you are the most regular patrons we have. That ought to give you some privileges. We both want you to have it. You won't disappoint us, will you?"

  Mrs. Ward squeezed Donna's hand and Dr. Ward beamed on her as if she had been one of his brightest pupils. "Nobody could turn down an offer so graciously made," he assured her.

  While Donna was busy settling the old people, Cliff returned. He, like Hank, had remembered that she had missed lunch and had brought the biggest hamburger she had ever seen, with additions such as cheese, tomatoes, onions, lettuce, French fries, and a large Coke in a covered cup. "Sorry I didn't know whether mayonnaise or tomato sauce," he reported. "There's pickle relish in that little envelope, in case you like that. I don't, myself."

  Her eyes widened. "I don't, either. But nearly everybody does."

  He grinned at her. "I've heard that there's nothing to draw two people together like a common dislike."

  She looked unhappily at the box of food. "It was wonderful to think about me and my being hungry," she said, "but I had lunch in the cafeteria just a few minutes ago. I honestly couldn't eat a bite now. Midafternoon I may be starved, so I'll put it up until then."

  He was surprisingly dejected at this. "It will be cold and not worth eating."

  She shook her head. "I'll heat it up on my hot plate in the first-aid room. You're all wet. I hadn't realized that it was raining."

  "Just a drizzle," he reported. "Still, a pretty steady one. It won't be long before we have real rain. The wind's rising, too. We may be getting Camilla right on the nose."

  Donna shivered a little at the thought of the unknown terror. "Isn't it getting cooler?"

  "A little," he agreed. "I hope you brought a sweater."

  She nodded. "It's in my overnight case. I'll get it."

  The other teachers were arriving when she came back. She went to the desk where she had already begun to take registrations and where a line was beginning to form. There were people of all ages and conditions—babies, small, whining children, nonchalant adolescents, harried parents. Nearly everyone was loaded down with bundles, canvas cots, blankets, bags of food, an occasional battery-operated radio. To her, most of them were only shadows, faceless and impersonal. They came too fast to separate one from the other, except for the especially flamboyant.

  It was about five that the boys came, six of them, in jeans so tight that she wondered if they could sit down, and scarlet sweat shirts. The one who was obviously the leader was possessed of a head of bushy hair, brown with sunburned streaks on top. The look in his eyes was intimate and challenging.

  "So you're the kind of teachers they got now. Maybe I would have gone in for education if they'd been like you when I went to school. They used to be old sisters with faces like vinegar," he insinuated.

  Donna didn't even look up. "Your name, please? And your address?"

  The voice was even bolder. "Wouldn't you like my telephone number, too, honey? A lot of girls do call me. They think I ain't so bad."

  "And your next of kin," Donna went on evenly. "Hurry, please. There are others waiting."

  He glanced over his shoulder, giving his friends a knowing look. "They're my friends, little lady. They ain't in no particular hurry. They'll wait for you and me to get acquainted like, honey."

  Donna looked up then, her eyes flashing with anger. For the first time, the strong odor of whiskey came to her nostrils. In a hospital, there was always someone in authority she could call. She looked about her nervously. Who in the crowd would come to her rescue if she needed help?

  They were all strangers. She didn't see Hank or Cliff, or even Tom Carter. Mary Hendley, at the other desk, was writing busily, unnoticing.

  She swallowed and spoke firmly. "I asked for your name."

  The young man with the sideburns leaned on her desk, his face not far from her own. "Tell you what, baby. I'll swap my name for yours and your telephone number."

  His satellites guffawed admiringly behind him.

  Donna pushed back her chair. She didn't know what she was going to do, but she was going to put this smart alec in his place.

  But before she could do anything at all a muscular arm reached out and a big hand fastened on the boy's thin shoulder. "Hello, Dusty," a soft voice that was strangely full of menace said.

  She jerked her head about and looked squarely into the eyes of Cliff Warrender for a moment. Then he was meeting the look of the younger man, staring him down. "You
were about to give the young lady your name and address, Dusty," the silky voice went on. "Your right name. Anything else she wants to know."

  "Okay. Okay. The name's Karl Hosey. And the address—" She took down the information on all the boys, who gave it meekly enough and drifted away, and all the time she was deeply conscious of Cliff Warrender standing there at her shoulder. When the last of the group had gone, she looked up at him almost shyly. "Thanks, Cliff." They both realized that she had not called him by his given name before. He grinned. "Think nothing of it. It all comes under the heading of cherishing. You need me, I'll be there."

  Chapter IV

  By early dark, the wind was whining in continual shrill complaint. The rain came in silvery gusts, thickening and thinning against a murky sky. The refugees came in gusts, too, a crowd, then no one for a while. Between times, Donna would go and stand outside, protected by the porchlike entrance of the building, and watch. Once she saw a tin can rattle down the center of the street as if an invisible team of small boys were playing shinny with it. Dead branches of trees were driven through at a surprising rate. The sign at the filling station across the street clanged like a buoy bell. It wasn't exactly that she was cold, but she stood with shoulders hunched and arms hugging herself as she watched.

  Cliff came and found her there. "I'm sorry those young hoodlums were fresh with you," he said. "There isn't really much harm in them. Dusty's considered a lady-killer in his own circles, and that's about all he has to give him status, that and his gang. He has to show off before them now and then."

  She nodded. "I've met Dusty's sort before. Sometimes a perfectly respectable husband and father will get fresh with a nurse when he's getting better in the hospital. I think it was the strange surroundings that confused me. I've always managed pretty well by myself." She smiled at him shyly.

  He grinned. "I was satisfied. Dusty showed off for his gang and I showed off for you. Sort of 'Look ma, no hands.' It's the male prerogative."

  A ramshackle car stopped before the school and people began to pour out from a two-seater until Cliff and Donna were sure that they couldn't all have come from the interior. They looked at each other and laughed, then turned toward the door. This lot would have to be registered, too.

  Mary Hendley had gathered the young fry about her and they were singing shrilly and playing Drop the Handkerchief. Grownups stood in little knots, watching. From down the hall, good-natured argument of men playing poker added its clamor. Donna had not realized how cold and depressing the street scene had been. The warmth and good humor of the big hall was more than welcome.

  Three more refugees among the number who arrived that night, Donna was always to remember. The first was a small, insignificant man with strange eyes and trembling hands. He was dark and exceedingly shabby, and Donna would normally have felt a very real sympathy for him. Young enough to work, he certainly looked too ill. Something about him made her feel a revulsion that she could not explain. She took the information she was required to get as quickly as possible and let him go. He was Frank Eustace and he lived in a men's rooming house, hardly better than a flophouse, not far from the school. He said he had no next of kin and Donna suspected that if he had he would not want them notified in case of illness or death. He disappeared down the hall, and she sighed, glad that he was out of her sight.

  Still, there lingered an odor that was familiar, a strange, acrid odor that she might have placed in a moment had she not needed to return at once to her registering.

  It was dark when the next of the three arrived, although it lacked more than an hour of being time to close up. There had been no one to register for some time. The families who were camping in rooms on the first floor were preparing or eating supper. The men of the faculty and Cliff, who represented the Red Cross, were patrolling up and down to see that no sterno stove caused a fire. Mary had gone into Donna's office to lie down briefly on one of the two cots there. Donna was alone at her desk, the inside entrance entirely deserted. Two trophy cases flanked the entrance and though she had seen them a hundred times before she was studying them again.

  The doors were closed, but somebody knocked importunately upon them and a voice that sounded like a small child's came through the thickness. "Let me in! Oh, please, let me in!"

  The big doors were not latched and the slightest pressure upon them would have swung them open, but whoever was there sounded so frightened and helpless that Donna went and opened the one on the right.

  A little woman stood there, a woman possibly five feet tall. Her hair was an incredible shade of blonde, her dress would have been becoming to a petite sixteen-year-old. Her heels were at least three inches tall and needle-thin. Instead of wearing a coat, she carried it on her arm, and she was loaded down with bundles. Her face gave her age as something above seventy. And she was dripping wet and breathing as if she had run every step of the way from wherever she had come.

  "Come in. Hurry," Donna urged. "You'll get even wetter standing there."

  And indeed the rain was sweeping into the entrance porch in sheets so that Donna, half-protected by the door, got a spray of it.

  The tiny, heavily laden woman scuttled in, raised her old monkey's face and grinned as if everything were better than good. "Ooh! I thought I'd never get here in time. There's so much to do. You weren't here registering last year."

  Donna could no more have kept from returning that smile than she could have flown. "I was in nurse's training last year," she explained.

  "It wasn't much of a storm. And they didn't even threaten us with one the year before," the old lady said disgustedly. "It's sort of the top of the year, the excitement of a storm when we all come here and have a grand old time together."

  A hurricane wasn't exactly Donna's idea of the top of the year, but the gaiety of the old lady in spite of her dripping condition lifted her own spirits.

  "Now you'll be wanting my name and address," the tiny woman went on without a pause, and not putting down any of her bundles. "I'm Baby LaRue. You'll be much too young to remember me, but I used to be a right well-known stripper in the old days and there were a lot who knew the name then. Not that it's my real one. That's Bertha Hodges. Ugly, isn't it? I dropped it in a hurry. Then I've been married five times and I reckon you could call my last husband's name my legal one. But it was Driggs, and I never liked that, either. Baby LaRue was the name I made for myself, and it's the one I'll stick with."

  "Baby" might be incongruous with her age, but the voice fitted. The woman had the piping voice of a three-year-old. "I live down there in the trailer camp. You know? My next of kin? Something happens to me, you get in touch with Father McConehay at St. Mathias. He's got my burial insurance and my hospitalization. My kin folks— They musta forgotten me long ago." But it was as if she spoke of her first-grade teacher. There was no pathos in her statement. "Usually I entertain when we get together like this."

  Donna had a quick picture of this elderly showwoman doing a strip tease in the hall while all the others who had fled the storm looked on. That would be something to put in her next letter home.

  "I'm pretty good at leadin' singing," Baby chirped on. "An' now an' again I sing an old song myself. One of the real old ones." She winked, comradely fashion.

  It was at that moment that a cracked old voice several notes deeper than Miss LaRue's sang out, "Home, home on the range." Donna could not be sure where it had come from. Not from the old stripper herself for she had been looking into the withered face and there had been no lip movement.

  There was no more of the song, but the question remained in Donna's eye and when there was no answer, she voiced it orally. "What was that, Miss LaRue? A parrot?"

  Miss LaRue had looked more and more guilty as the seconds passed. She ducked her head, dropped two of her bundles and the coat she had not worn, and there was the most ancient and scrubby parrot Donna had ever seen. His almost featherless head was held on one side and he winked at Donna with a leer that tempted her to laugh aloud. />
  Now that the worst was known, Baby rushed into speech. "Me an' Toby been together ever since I can remember, seems like. He's like my kin, my nearest of kin. We talk together times when both of us would be lonesome if we didn't have one another. The wind blew over my trailer one year. Toby might have been killed. I just can't leave him there. That's why I was so late getting here. I thought if I got here just before closing time, and after it was raining cats and dogs, you wouldn't make me go back to the trailer and nobody could turn poor old Toby out loose in this weather. You wouldn't, would you?"

  The childlike old face was hardly lowered at all to be on a level with Donna's. Her faded eyes beseeched.

  Donna felt as if she were two people. One knew that she should obey the rules. The other considered the scheming innocence of the old showwoman, and was touched.

  The old woman continued. "I took Toby on tours. Wherever I lived, Toby was there. He's like a mother, or a friend. A woman doesn't have many true friends when she's my age."

  Donna shook her head. "It's against the rules, Miss LaRue. You know it is. No one is allowed to bring pets into the shelter."

  The little woman seemed to grow smaller. "But Toby—I'd just have to go out in all that weather. And that trailer of mine really isn't safe."

  Donna looked at the molted bird. Its bright color had faded. She knew that parrots lived to incredible ages, but by his looks Toby was nearing the end of his allotted span. The old woman was looking at her as if she alone held the key to the gates of paradise.

  "Maybe I could put him in my closet. Then you could come in and feed and talk to him," Donna agreed weakly. "Now you—you're soaked through. What are we going to do about you? You could come down with pneumonia if you sit about in those wet things."

  Nothing could dampen the spirits of the old lady now that Donna had agreed to keep the bird. The girl wondered how many others had been beguiled just so.