Hurricane Nurse

by Joan Sargent

  "I got on all the clothes I own, dearie. I'll peel off until I get down to something that isn't much wet, an' I'll pull some sandals out of my shopping bag there and I'll be good as new. An' when I've had my dinner, I'll go down to the music room— your boss always lets me have the key. I can play a pretty good piano an' folks might as well sing. It lightens the heart. You show me where you want Toby an' I'll find the ladies' room an' take off some of these clothes."

  She was as good as her word. Hank evidently knew her and turned over the keys to the music room without argument. She went up and down the halls, her sandals flip-flapping loudly, inviting everybody to come and sing. "We got to pass the time some way, you know," she would call out cheerfully at each door.

  And most of those who had gathered in the safety of the school building went along with her.

  Seven-thirty came, and Donna closed the doors and latched them. She had eaten earlier, she and Mary, Cliff, and Hank and the three men teachers. She rather thought she would go down to the music room and join in the singing. As Baby LaRue had said, there wasn't much else to do. She doubted that she would be welcomed by the men who were still playing poker across from Hank's office. First, however, she would freshen up. She went into her office and closed the door behind her.

  Leisurely, she washed her hands and face, then stood before the mirror on the medicine cabinet and began to make up her face. The wind outside made banshee noises. Coconuts were blown from trees and thudded with an ominous sound against the walls outside. The sign at the filling station clanged more loudly than ever. Hank had been right. She was too excited and fearful to sleep tonight, even if such a tiring were convenient. The cots in her office were uncomfortable as such things go, but she didn't think they would induce sleep through a long night. Her muscles ached at the very thought.

  She screwed out her lipstick and was about to apply it when the light above her mirror flickered. It came on again, and she sighed with relief, finishing the job she had been about to begin. Once more, the lights flickered. Then they went out. They did not come on again.

  For a moment, she regretted that she did not smoke. Her pocketbook lay close to her hand and there would have been matches or a lighter there. As it was, she had to fumble about in the pitch-darkness until she located the boxes Cliff had brought from the Cuban grocery. She remembered that the old grocer had said there were flashlights there. The first box produced nothing feeling even faintly like a flashlight. She tried the second, and it wasn't until she had nearly reached the bottom of the big corrugated pasteboard box that she located what she sought.

  By that time, her breath was catching in her throat. The big building sounded entirely deserted now, although there had been shouts of surprise and dismay when the lights had at first failed. Outside, the noises seemed to have increased. The lost souls of the dead might wail about the corners of buildings as the wind now did. Ordinarily, Donna didn't mind being alone, but now she could hardly keep herself from running down toward the music room, where most of the others were gathered.

  When she opened the door of her office, she could hear them still singing. Sweet Adeline, it was, and the sound of all those voices, perhaps not entirely in key, yet giving their lungs enthusiastically to the tune, was the finest music she had heard in many a day. She turned away from the front door, following the circle of light that went before her.

  Chapter V

  Donna had just turned the corner when a pounding on the locked door behind her halted her. The sound was urgent, insistent. She hesitated. Seven-thirty was the hour set for closing the doors against further comers. It was now nearly eight. Still, she could not leave people out in weather like this. Reluctantly, she retraced her steps, unfastened the big lock, slipped the bolt which made safety even surer.

  Even as she cracked the door open, she heard a low moan, followed by a cry that was scarcely less agonized for being muffled. A man and woman stood there, the woman carried in the man's arms.

  Donna couldn't see them very clearly by the light of her flash, but even so, she realized that they were very young, hardly more than children. The girl gave a small animal-like moan of pain and clenched her arm chokingly about her husband's neck. Behind them, the top of a garbage can went flying down the street and hit with a great clang against the palm in front of the school.

  "Please. Oh, please," the boy said. "We're very wet, and my wife—my wife's got to have a doctor right away. She's going to have a baby."

  Donna flung the door wide. She had hesitated only a moment, stunned by the realization that there was no doctor at Flamingo and by the impact of the storm that had been partly shut out by the heavy front doors, but to all three the waiting had seemed long.

  In a firm, authoritative voice, Donna said, "Bring her in here and put her on the cot for the present. There isn't a doctor, but—"

  The young husband's eyes seemed to have sunk back into his head. He followed Donna into her office and laid the girl on the cot the circle of light pointed out. His wife continued to cling. She was sobbing now and trembling. Gently, he unfastened the thin hands, but continued to hold them. "You—you mean there isn't a doctor here? It's too late now to go to a hospital. I was sure— What are we going to do? My wife's about to have a baby, I tell you." He was shouting and his face was pale and strained.

  Donna was as frightened as either of them. She had never expected to have to deliver a baby by herself. Assisting in a well-equipped hospital was a far different thing from carrying the whole responsibility in a place where no such thing had ever been expected. And it was dark—eerily dark. She realized that the hand which held the light was trembling. It wouldn't do to frighten these young people more than they already were. She steadied the flash with her left hand and spoke with a great deal more assurance than she felt. "I'm a nurse. I can take care of things. Suppose you— What's your name, Father?"

  The boy's grin was a grimace which admitted her attempt at humor but found no humor in it. "Jack," he told her. "Jack Hartson."

  She spoke more briskly than she might have if she hadn't been nervous. "Go down the hall to the room where they are singing and ask for Cliff Warrender. He'll know what—" She hadn't thought of Henry Fincher, who certainly knew the school better than anyone else, besides having authority for the use of it. Nor did she now wonder why Cliff's name had been the one that came to her.

  It was Cliff's deep voice that interrupted. "Are you all right, Donna? What can I help with?"

  Now that she had somebody to back her up, her voice trembled a little. "We're probably going to have to deliver a baby here before morning, I think. These cots are too low and—" She drew a long, jagged breath.

  "One of the long tables in a science laboratory?" he suggested.

  She thought of that for a second, then shook her head. "You're thinking of high school. But one of the tables in the cafeteria will be—fine." She hoped it would. She had a sudden picture of the girl dying because she was inept, because she was ignorant, because it was dark. How on earth could she deliver a baby under such circumstances? Once more, she breathed deep to still her inward trembling.

  Cliff's voice sounded assured and calm. "That's just the place. There's hot water there, I'm sure. I'll go get the keys from Fincher and we'll be on our way."

  His way of taking the impending birth for granted, as if a baby were born every day in a dark schoolhouse, had eased her tension. The girl on the cot sneezed, and Donna remembered that both of the newcomers were dripping wet. She kept a smock and clean sheets in her locker.

  "You get her clothes off, Jack," she commanded firmly. "I'm going to get something to put on her in place of those wet things."

  The circle of light moved about the room, picking out her desk, a bookcase filled with books and magazines, a record file, and finally the gray steel locker. Sheets, two olive-drab Army blankets, and the two smocks which she kept for cleaning this office and her quarters in the gym, stared back at her. She took out a pile of sheets and put them on
her desk, then hurried with her smock to her patient. The wandering light that went always before her made her think of murder films she had seen. There was a weirdness about the whole incident that made it seem unreal.

  Once she and Jack had the girl in the white smock, Donna set about timing her pains. According to the textbooks, there was still time before the birth of the baby—time for her to grow more nervous, to feel more helpless, she thought. She had rather hoped there wouldn't be much time.

  Cliff and Hank were back then, Hank rattling the school keys as they came.

  "This is a crisis I hadn't exactly counted on," Hank said, nervous too, if one could judge by the sound of his voice.

  "I don't remember a hurricane since I was old enough to notice such things when a baby wasn't born under rather unconventional circumstances," Cliff chuckled, "but I never expected to be one of those officiating."

  All the talking, the moving about, had wakened the bird in the closet. He squawked angrily and commented, "Curtain, Miss LaRue. Three minutes."

  Hank looked up, startled. "What on earth's that?"

  Donna was glad he couldn't see her guilt-reddened face. "It's a parrot, Hank. I'm sorry, but that woman who's been leading the singing down in the music room brought him in just as we were closing up. I couldn't send her out in all that wind and rain to take him back. I know it was against the rules."

  Hank's voice sounded sheepish. "I know. She pulls that trick every time. I hid the beastly thing for her myself last hurricane. He's foul smelling and always seems to be molting, but somehow it's hard to resist Baby LaRue. Listen. She's got that crowd singing along like Mitch."

  Jack Hartson broke in on these bits of chitchat. "Isn't anybody going to do something about my wife? Couldn't we call a doctor and wouldn't he come to the school? She ought to have a doctor when she has a baby." He sounded desperate, miserable and very young.

  Donna wondered why she hadn't thought of so simple a thing. She didn't know whether a doctor could come out in such weather. The wind had seemed already of hurricane force when she had had the door open just a bit ago.

  "The storm's—isn't it just about as bad as it's going to be?" she asked Cliff. "Can a doctor come out in it?" But she was reaching for the telephone book with every intention of following Jack's suggestion. "Who's your doctor?"

  "Grant. Doc Phillip Grant. He doesn't live far, but when we went to his office he wasn't there, and his house didn't answer. We thought maybe he had gone to the hospital, and we knew we'd never make it. We have no car and the taxis wouldn't promise to come." He sat with his hands rubbing nervously together between his knees in the light of the electric lantern Hank had brought with him.

  The girl cried out, turned her head to muffle the end of the sound in her pillow, and her husband went to her, both lips caught between his teeth as if he, too, choked back a cry.

  With the help of her flashlight, Donna found Dr. Grant's number in the thick book and reached out for the telephone on her desk. That part of the room was almost in darkness and she fumbled a little before she took it up. At her ear, it gave no murmur of aliveness. She wiggled the button with the beginning of anxiety and listened again. Still, the buzz that usually came over the wire did not sound. Again, she jiggled the button, then shook her head with irritation.

  Everyone had waited with eyes fixed on her face. It was Cliff who voiced the thought of them all. "No answer? The wires must be down."

  Donna shivered. "It's sort of like being on a desert island, isn't it?"

  The girl whimpered once more and the boy cradled her head against his shoulder and rocked her a little.

  "I'm so scared, Jack," she whispered, loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear. "There isn't any doctor. There isn't going to be any doctor. And I'm going to die. The baby and I are both going to die."

  Donna crossed to the opposite side of the cot from where Jack Hartson sat and took one of the girl's birdlike hands in her own. "No, you aren't, honey. We're going to take care of you. It's going to be tough, not having a hospital and all the modern conveniences. There's going to be a lot of pain. But women have been having babies by themselves in fields ever since Eve. I'm a nurse and I'll see you through. Having a baby is a natural thing. You relax as much as you can and we'll have the young man here before you know it. You are looking for a boy, aren't you?" She was forcing herself to relax, to speak with utter confidence. The girl on the cot would feel fear in her if she didn't get rid of it.

  The girl moved her bitten lips slowly, as if she didn't have entire control of them. She whispered again, breathing noisily between each word. "It—doesn't—matter. A—boy—like— Jack. Or—a girl—named—Jacqueline. For Jack —not—for—the—first—lady."

  Donna smiled and spoke with an unnatural ease. "The way I've heard it, the boys take after their mothers. It's the girls who are like their dads."

  The girl bit her lip against fresh pain. The sweat ran down her cheeks, dampening her blonde hair until it looked almost black.

  "There's one nice thing about all this," Donna went on encouragingly. "I haven't had a baby myself, but I've heard more mothers than I can count say that afterward they couldn't remember the pain. And they have the baby. It's like being a partner with God in creation. Mothers all have a special sort of shine in the morning when the baby's here. You'll see. You are going to be a brave girl tonight and help all you can. I know you are."

  The girl clutched Donna's hand with her own wet, feverish one. "I'll try," the pale lips promised.

  Hank rattled his keys again. "I'll go along and open the cafeteria. You fellows bring the cot. It'll make a very good stretcher, I should think."

  Donna shook her head. "She ought to walk. It might hurry things along. It isn't far, dear. Try?"

  The girl nodded. "If you and Jack—will go on each side. I'll try to make it." She sat up and pushed back the wet hair with both hands, the bright nails catching a faint glitter from the electric lantern, the taut muscles of the hands making shadows in the hollows between the leaders.

  Donna helped the girl to her feet, placed the slender childish arm about her waist. "We're going to be good friends before this night is done. I'm Donna. Donna Ledbury. You haven't told me your name."

  The girl crouched over in quick agony, then, as it passed, straightened and took an uncertain step. "Melissa. Jack calls me Missy."

  "Melissa," Donna said softly. "It's a lovely name. I used to have a very beautiful doll named Melissa. She had red hair, and dimples. Cliff, will you bring that mattress? It will make things a little easier. And there's a rubber sheet in the locker. I'd like that, too."

  They made a strange procession down the short hall to a double doorway opposite the front door. The noise from the card players was more boisterous—drunken sounding, Donna thought. Hank fumbled the key into the lock and lifted the iron bar that controlled the latch. Wind rushed in, and a damp mist. The roar that it made filled their ears. Hank went first with the lantern. Jack and Donna followed, with Melissa between them. Cliff, carrying the mattress and the rubber sheet, came last, an electric lantern in his hand. Rain came in under the roof that covered the colonnade along the patio. Driven sharply, it bit into their faces, stinging and making little rivulets. The tall palms that rose above the low one-story part of the building writhed under its force, bending as if they sought the protection of the school building. Twice, Melissa had to stop and wait for the pain that twisted her to have its way and depart. Then Hank was unlocking the door to the cafeteria and leading the way in.

  The two lanterns drove back only a little of the darkness of that huge room. The counter where lines of students formed at mealtime was covered with white cloths which looked ghostly along the side opposite the entrance. The long windows on their left showed shadows of trees which seemed about to be twisted from the earth. Donna was freshly afraid. The storm beyond the windows sent a cold terror into her marrow. The dark room was something she had not really considered. She didn't see how she could delive
r a baby in the half-light which the lanterns gave.

  Silently she upbraided herself. Two lives depended on her. She had to see that they did not depend in vain. She pulled out a chair and helped Melissa to sink onto it.

  Donna pointed out the table beside which they stood. "Put the mattress there, Cliff. Jack, we didn't bring the sheets. Take one of the lanterns and go back for them. There are two blankets in the locker. It seems to me that it's cold in here. Bring them, too."

  Jack looked down at his wife as if he might be going to refuse.

  "You go, like she says, Jack. You get those things," she whispered.

  When he had closed the big doors behind him, she gasped out a fresh fear. "You—can't see— in here. I can't have my baby in the dark. I can't."

  Donna tried a laugh and was astounded that it sounded as natural as it did. "Babies don't care whether it's dark or light, Missy. We'll put both lanterns up close to welcome the little stranger. We have light enough. You'll see."

  Hank offered his lantern to Donna. "I have an idea. I'll be back in a bit. You keep a stiff upper lip, Mrs. Hartson. We're going to see you through."

  Melissa bent over and covered her face with her hands. She seemed not to be conscious of either of those who remained. The groan that broke from her became a scream that tore at her throat.

  "There isn't any ether, is there?" Cliff asked in a shaken voice.

  Donna shook her head. "I'd be scared to use it, even if we had it. I've given ether under direction, but I'm certainly not an anesthetist, and I don't know anything about her heart or—or anything. We're just going to have to stick it out, no matter how hard it gets."

  His long hands were fists. "I'm not going to 'just stick it out.'" he said. "I'm going to do something. I'll be back as quickly as I can. Jack will be along any minute. You'll be all right?"

  Donna nodded, fighting off the desire to cling to his arm, to beg him not to leave her alone with the responsibility that was hers. He went out, and she put her whole weight against the door and fastened it. She felt utterly bereft.