Benedict Hall

by Cate Campbell

  “Oh, we often get our summer in August and September.” The sandy-haired nurse laughed. “Though there are some years it never does show up!”

  She fluffed his pillows, and Frank wriggled back against the bed frame so he could sit more or less upright. “When can I get out of here?”

  She giggled. “Feeling better, are we? It’s only been three days, Major.”

  “Is Dr. Clay coming today?”

  “Someone will come.” She gave him a twinkling smile as she produced a washbasin, a cake of soap, a razor, and a comb. She set all of it in his lap, and took a folded towel from a cupboard. “I’m going to shave you,” she said brightly.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Don’t think I can manage that on my own just yet.”

  “No,” she said comfortably. “Not with all those bandages. And why not let me do something about your hair? It’s getting a bit long on the neck.”

  Frank submitted to her deft hands. She soaped his chin with a brush, and wielded the razor with efficiency. She used scissors on his hair, then brushed hair off his pillow, and emptied the basin into the sink. When she came back to the bed she stood looking down at him, hands on hips. “Very handsome, Major. I think we’re ready.”

  “Ready?” He blinked. “For what?”

  “You’ll see.” She gathered her things and piled them into the basin. “Breakfast first. Then you’ll see.”

  When his breakfast arrived, the nurse helped him out of bed and into a cane-backed wheelchair. She settled the tray on the bedside stand and pulled a chair close for herself to sit while she helped him to eat eggs and bacon and fresh biscuits. “Well,” she said. “We’re hungry today. That’s an excellent sign.”

  He swallowed the last of his breakfast, finishing everything, and savored the cup of coffee. “Thanks,” he said again, as she dabbed at his chin with a napkin, then picked up the tray. “I’d sure like to get out of these bandages.”

  “Not just yet, Major. We don’t want to risk infection, now, do we?”

  Frank felt restless and out of sorts from inaction. He had been taking less and less medication. He had had no whisky at all since coming to the hospital. What he needed now, he thought, was a good brisk walk. So far, he had not been allowed out of bed except to use the latrine, and that was a miserable experience. A man should be able to use the latrine on his own.

  The Times had been folded on his breakfast tray, and the nurse spread it on the bed for him before she left. He bent over it, smoothing out the creases as best he could with his elbow. The front-page headline screamed that the Poles had “routed the Reds.” So much for the war to end all wars. With difficulty, Frank used his bandaged fingers to scrape the front page over. On the second page he found an article about the imminent ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. He lingered over this, thinking how pleased his mother would be. And Margot.

  Because he was thinking of her, it seemed to him he was imagining the sound of her voice. It had appealed to him from their very first meeting, when he heard it from the hallway at Benedict Hall, deep, assured, crisp. Now he turned his head to listen. Who else sounded like that?

  The voice came closer, speaking to someone in the corridor, then ceasing. He sat back in the wheelchair and turned it with his feet so he was facing the doorway when she appeared in it.

  “Good morning, Frank,” she said. She wore her white coat, with her stethoscope draped around her neck. Her hair swung against her jaw as she crossed the ward to him with her characteristic strong steps.

  “Good morning.” He hardly knew how to address her. She looked dauntingly professional, and somehow polished, hair and skin and eyes clear and glowing. Her gaze assessed him, and he remembered that he was her patient. She had seen—handled, operated on—the horror that was his left arm. The thought made his breakfast churn in his stomach.

  “How do you feel?” She stood, tall and slim, beside the wheelchair.

  He felt ridiculous and vulnerable, looking up at her. “People keep asking me that.”

  Her lips curved. “And what do you answer?”

  He moved his head impatiently. “I feel fine. Like getting out of here.”

  Her lips curved a bit more. “I’m glad to hear it.” She touched his wrist, held it for a moment, nodded. She touched the bandages on his left arm, but to his great relief, she didn’t offer to peel them back. “Dr. Clay says you’re healing well.”

  “Good.” He wanted to say more, but the words wouldn’t come. He wanted to tell her how beautiful she looked, her dark hair shining in the sun. He wanted to touch her, but at the moment he had no hand to do it with. “You operated on me.”

  She tugged on the ends of her stethoscope, looking suddenly less confident. “Yes. I know you said—you didn’t want me to treat you, but—” She dropped her hands, and thrust them into the pockets of her white coat. “The thing is—it looked so—”

  “Hideous,” he said, and dropped his gaze. “I told you that.”

  “No!” She crouched beside him, so he had to look into her eyes. “No, Frank. Not hideous. Painful. You had an amputational neuroma, and it must have been a nightmare to live with. I don’t know how you’ve managed.”

  To his horror, his eyes suddenly stung with tears. He cleared his throat, and said roughly, “Didn’t have a choice.” He felt her hand on his shoulder, but he set his jaw, and stared at the blurred blue sky beyond the window.

  She took her hand from his shoulder. “You’re angry with me.”

  He didn’t dare speak, for fear he would sob. That would be more than he could bear.

  “Very well,” she said. Her voice changed, a little rough like his own. There was a rustle of fabric as she stood up, and the whisper of her shoes on the linoleum as she took a step back. “I knew you might be, but I—I had to do what I thought was right.”

  Frank swallowed hard, and took a shaky breath. He turned his head, able to face her again. “Margot,” he began.

  She shook her head. “You don’t have to explain. I took a chance.” The pitch of her voice rose, as if her throat, too, was constricted.

  “Margot—”

  She scowled, and thrust out her chin. “Just so you know, the surgery went very well. You should have no more pain, once the incisions have healed.”

  “Margot, stop! Listen to me!” Frank made a helpless gesture with his bandaged hand. He knew he was making a mess of it. “Please.”

  Her chin dropped, just the tiniest bit. “Yes?”

  “I’m lousy with words. You know that.”

  Her chin relaxed a bit more. “Yes?”

  “I want to explain to you why—I thought if you saw my arm—”

  She said with asperity, “You underestimate me.”

  “I’m sorry. But I could hardly bear looking at it myself, and—I didn’t want you to have to look at it. To—to think of me that way.”

  Her face softened. “That would never make a difference to me. It’s just flesh. Broken flesh. And you’re going to find it looks much better now.”

  He looked up into the face of Margot Benedict, her clear dark eyes, the firm set of her mouth. Suddenly, it was hard to remember Elizabeth’s face. Hers belonged to the past, and this one—strong and fine and dear—belonged to the present.

  She said, “You’re not angry, are you, Frank?”

  “It’s more than I can take in.”

  “Take your time.”

  “I seem to have plenty of that.”

  “I’m afraid so. We can’t release you just yet.” She stood up, smoothing her coat, smiling. “I’d better go now. I have patients to see.”

  She was already out the door before it struck him that she must have had her privileges restored. He hadn’t even asked her about that. And he hadn’t thanked her.

  “Goddamn it, Parrish,” he muttered, kicking his wheelchair toward the window. “You really are a cowboy.”

  Margot was not Frank’s only surprise of the day. In the middle of the afternoon, a new nurse bustled in, with an
other visitor in tow. She opened the door for him, nodded to Frank, and said, “Here he is, sir. Not too long, now. Dr. Clay wants Major Parrish to rest.”

  Frank was in bed again, and he struggled upright against the pillows, awkwardly, using his elbow. “Mr. Boeing! Sir, I didn’t expect—I—” He started to hold out his hand, then dropped it as he remembered. “Sorry.”

  “Not at all, Frank, not at all.” Bill Boeing reversed the chair beside the bed, and straddled it. He held his hat in one hand, and in the other he held out a little bunch of flowers wrapped in a cone of paper. “I saw these at the Public Market. I thought they might brighten this place.”

  “Thanks,” Frank said. “I sure didn’t expect to see you.”

  Boeing laid the flowers on the nightstand. “I’m so damned sorry, Parrish, about—well, everything. Now you’re a hero—again—and I don’t even get credit as your boss!”

  “Hero?”

  “Sure, hero. Didn’t you see the paper? The Times?”

  “Only today.”

  “Preston Benedict was their employee, and the report says you tried to save him from the fire. At risk to your—your hand,” he added, a little shamefacedly.

  “My only hand, you mean.” Frank gave him a lopsided grin. “Not news to me, sir.”

  “No, of course not. But still, now you’re a hero in Seattle. Young Benedict didn’t make it, they say. Not that they could find his remains, but—well, you probably know that.”

  “A shame,” Frank said cautiously.

  “Yes.” Boeing turned his hat in his hands, and cleared his throat. “Look, Frank. I need your skills. Douglas has this new airplane—”

  Frank sat up straighter. “The Cloudster. I read about that. It’s going to carry a load that exceeds the airplane’s weight. That should be interesting—if it works.”

  A light kindled in Boeing’s eyes. He leaned forward, as if they were back in his office in the Hoge Building. His fingers curled, and Frank had the impression they yearned for a pencil, and paper to sketch on. “That’s the one,” he said eagerly. “I want to get ahead of Douglas. We’re in a tough spot since the army cut its order in half. We need to look ahead, innovate.”

  “What about the BB-1s?”

  “The market isn’t big enough.” Boeing spread both his hands in an expansive gesture. “It’s going to be the military that keeps us going. And for that I need men like you, men who have seen service, who know how the military does things.”

  “Are you offering me my job back?”

  Boeing grinned, managing to look boyish despite his owlish spectacles and graying temples. “More or less begging you to come back. When you’ve recuperated, of course.” He pointed to Frank’s bandaged hand. “You’ll need that.”

  Frank held up his heavily wrapped stump. “I’ve had surgery on this, too, sir. I’m going to need a bit of time.”

  “As much as you need, son. As much as you need.”

  Later, Frank couldn’t remember for certain if he had actually agreed to go back to work for Boeing. He stared at the flowers the nurse had put in a pottery vase, and went over the conversation a dozen times. He had a job again! He hoped he had said yes, in so many words. He hoped if he hadn’t that Bill Boeing would understand. And would ask him again!

  He lay back against his pillows, and waited impatiently for Margot to return.

  It felt strange to Margot to go home again, to step out of the hot afternoon light and into the coolness of the foyer of Benedict Hall. She had only been away a few days, but the world had changed in that time. Changed, and changed again.

  Leona met her at the door, and took her valise to carry it upstairs. Loena went to draw her a bath. No one else seemed to be around, and Margot supposed her mother and Hattie were still in seclusion with their grief.

  While she was waiting for the bath to fill, Margot drew the curtains against the afternoon heat, and opened the valise on her bed to sort soiled clothes from clean ones. A smell of smoke rose from the pile, and she picked the pleated skirt and shirtwaist from the other things, thinking they should probably be washed separately. As she shook them out, the sapphire fell from the skirt pocket and tumbled toward the floor. Its chain caught on the clasp of the valise, and the sapphire in its nest of blackened silver chain hung over the edge of the bed, glowing.

  She had forgotten all about it. She found herself, now, reluctant to touch it. She remembered Preston holding it in his hand as he bent over Loena in the hospital, and pressing his palm over it as he convinced everyone he hadn’t meant to lose his temper, that awful night in the parlor. He had had it with him when he set fire to her clinic, and she had picked it up from the ground, despite the chaos around her and her fears for Frank.

  It had been in her pocket as she operated.

  Loena knocked on her door, and put her head around. Her freckled face was solemn, but her eyes were bright, her cheeks rosy. “Your bath’s ready, Miss Margot.”

  “Coming. Thank you.”

  “Is this your laundry?” Loena reached for the skirt and shirtwaist flung over the chair.

  “Yes.”

  Loena turned toward the valise on the bed. “Is there more?”

  “There is, but I haven’t unpacked it yet.”

  Loena made a maternal shooing motion with one hand. “You go and have your bath while it’s hot. I’ll sort through your things.”

  “Thanks.” Margot took her dressing gown from the wardrobe. As Loena crossed to the bed and the open valise, Margot thought she should make it clear she had finally learned how to tell the twins apart. “Thank you, Loena,” she said.

  “You’re wel—wait. Where did this come from?” Loena lifted the sapphire on its chain. Bits of ash drifted from it to the rug beside the bed. Loena’s eyes went wide, and she gazed at the stone, openmouthed.

  “It was—in the fire.” Margot saw again the empty stretcher where her brother should have been, and a wave of sadness surprised her. “You’ve seen that before?”

  “Mr. Preston never took it off. Not even when . . .”

  “Yes,” Margot said. She meant merely to imply that she understood, but Loena’s cheeks blazed with two sudden spots of red. She dropped the sapphire onto the bed as if it were still hot from the fire, and put her fingertips into her mouth.

  “Loena, it’s just a stone. It’s a sapphire.”

  The color staining Loena’s cheeks drained away abruptly, and her pupils expanded. “No! It ain’t just a jewel, miss. It has—when he was wearing it, he—”

  Margot dropped her hand from the doorknob. “He what?” she snapped.

  Loena took a step back, and Margot regretted her peremptory tone. She remembered her mother’s admonishment. “I’m sorry, Loena,” she said more gently. “It’s all been a shock.”

  “I know, miss,” Loena faltered. “We’re awful sorry about your clinic.”

  Margot took a breath. “Thank you. I am, too. Now, could you explain what you mean about the stone?”

  Loena twisted her freckled hands in her apron, and stared at her shoes. “It’s just that—well, I knew better, but he—”

  “I know my brother seduced you, Loena. That happens with girls and men.”

  Loena’s eyes flashed up at her, then down again. “Everything he said—when I was with him, it seemed real, with that necklace shining at me. But when I was alone, I knew it couldn’t be. The likes of me don’t end up with men like Mr. Preston.”

  “No. I’m afraid that’s true. But my brother often got his way.”

  “Not before he had that necklace,” Loena said. This time she brought her gaze to Margot’s, and held it. Her voice firmed. “He tried his tricks on me and Leona before he went off to the war, miss, and we wasn’t having none of it. We knew Mrs. Edith would turn us out if we did! But when he came back—with that—” She gestured to it, but she didn’t touch it again.

  Margot didn’t want to touch it, either. She put her hand on the door again. “Just leave it there, Loena. I’ll think what to
do with it later.”

  “Yes, miss.” Loena began to sort through the clothes in the valise, laying the clean ones aside, piling the soiled ones with the others. Margot watched her for a moment, thinking how practical the girl was. She wouldn’t have thought her the sort to suffer fancies.

  But as she went to have her bath, she reflected that the sapphire seemed to have that effect on people. It was big, and it was obviously old. Maybe that made it mysterious.

  Margot lay in the bath for a long time, letting the hot water soak the tension from her muscles. She washed her hair. When the bath water began to cool, she climbed out, and wrapped herself in a thick cotton dressing gown. As she left the bathroom, she tousled her hair with her fingers to dry it.

  Her fingers still tangled in her wet hair, she pushed open the door to her bedroom with one bare foot, then stopped.

  Her mother was standing by the bed, holding the sapphire in her fingers. The chain dangled past her wrists, glistening in the afternoon light. Edith was staring at the stone, white-faced and very still.

  “Mother?”

  Edith lifted her head, slowly, as if in a trance. Her gaze seemed to rest on Margot, or to go right through her. It was hard to tell. Her eyes were glazed, their lids red and swollen.

  Alarmed, Margot took a careful step toward her. “Mother? Are you all right?”

  Edith’s lips parted, but for a moment it seemed she wouldn’t speak. When she did, Margot could barely hear her. “What is this?”

  “It was Preston’s.”

  Edith caressed the stone with her hand. “I saw it once,” she said. “Preston showed it to me.”

  Margot moved closer, frowning as she assessed her mother’s waxy complexion and contracted pupils. “Mother, how much laudanum are you taking? You seem a bit—”

  “Preston died,” Edith breathed. Her eyes filled. “In a fire.”