“His name is Henry Harper. He comes every evening.”
“Every evening? How long have I been here? This is a hospital, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s a hospital. You’ve been here three days. This is the third day.”
“I should like to see Henry.”
“You may see him soon.”
“How soon?”
“The doctor will decide. Perhaps for a little while in a day or so.”
“I want very much to see him.”
“I know. I understand. But now you mustn’t talk any more. You must go to sleep if you can.”
The nurse meant well. She was trying to do the right thing. Obediently, Ivy closed her eyes again and listened to the nurse move quietly away, and then she opened her eyes one more time before sleeping and looked out through a window at a black branch covered with ice, and the ice was like cold white fire in the sunlight, the black branch aflame against a patch of pale sky.
Later that day the doctor came. He was an elderly man with gray and white hair brushed smoothly across his skull from a low side part. He also had a ragged gray and white mustache that needed trimming and had grown so far down over his upper lip that he could hold the ends of the hairs between his upper lip and his lower lip, and he did this abstractedly while thinking. His face and voice had the gentleness that comes from the kind of tiredness that is a final estate. He said his name was Dr. Larson. He told her that she had received a severe concussion and a simple fracture of the right arm, which she had guessed from the cast that was on it, and was lucky that she had, besides these, only bruises and lacerations. She was lucky, indeed, to be alive. He came that day, and the next day, and the third day, in the evening, she was allowed to see Henry. He came into the room looking awkward and shy and sit down in a chair beside the bed.
“How are you feeling?” he said.
“Much better,” she said. “I hurt much less than I did. How is the book coming?”
“All right. For some reason I feel confident now that it will be a good book.”
“It’s very generous of you to come to see me.”
“I haven’t come out of generosity. I’ve come because I wanted to.”
“It was cowardly of me to run away and leave you when you were in danger because of me. I’m grateful to you for saving me, however.”
“It’s all right. It came out all right.”
“I didn’t dream that you were so brave.”
“Oh, nonsense. Anyone will fight if it’s necessary, I paid your bill at the hotel and took your things home.”
“Did you? Thank you very much. I’m sorry that I’ve caused you so much trouble.”
“I also talked to the police about the accident. You’ll have to talk to them yourself, when you feel like it, but it will be only a formality.”
“It was Lila who did it, wasn’t it?”
‘Yes.”
“She did it on purpose. First she gave me too much sedative, and then she ran me down.”
“Listen to me. I doubt seriously that she gave you too much sedative, and she certainly didn’t deliberately run you down. There were witnesses to the accident, and they testified that you walked right in front of the car. She couldn’t have stopped or missed you.”
“It seems to me a great coincidence that it should have been Lila.”
“That’s what it was. You must believe it.”
“Why was she there? That’s something I’ve been unable to understand. She couldn’t have known where I had gone.”
“I’d arranged to meet her. We were going to look for you together. I’ll tell you all about it when you are better.”
“Well, I’ll believe that she’s innocent if you tell me to, but I don’t want to see her again. Not ever again.”
“That’s good.”
“If she comes here to see me, I’ll have them send her away.”
“She won’t come. I’ve told her it would be better if she didn’t.”
“Do you really want me to come back to you?”
“If you want to.”
“I want to, but I don’t know if it would be wise. How will it end?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think it will end well. I think so.”
“We’ll see.”
“How is George?”
“George is fine. He sends his regards. He’ll come to see you when you’re stronger.”
“I’ll be glad to see him. I would be glad to see Mr. Brennan too, if he cares to come.”
“Perhaps I can bring him one time.”
“Did you have any trouble over the fight in the hotel room?”
“No. No trouble. It didn’t last long. I knocked the man out, whoever he was, and when he came to, he went away. I took your things, as I said, and paid your bill. I had heard the ambulance in the street, but I didn’t know what it was for. When I got outside, they were just putting you into it.”
“I’ll tell you about the man sometime.”
“You don’t have to. I don’t care about him.”
“I’ve caused you a great deal of trouble, haven’t I?”
“Never mind that.”
“I can’t understand why you bother with me.”
“Maybe it’s because you remind me, for some reason, of someone else I once knew.”
“The girl you told me about that you were in love with?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad I remind you of her. She must have been very nice if you were in love with her. I hope that you get to be in love with me too, and I with you. I’ll try to make it come out so.”
“You tried once. Remember? It didn’t work.”
“I’ll try again.”
“It’s a good thing to keep trying.”
The hand of her unbroken arm was lying near him on the bed, and he took the hand in his and held it. They sat silently for a long time as the room grew dark in the short and sudden winter dusk.
“I’d better be going,” he said at last.
“I don’t want you to go.”
“I’d better. I was told to stay only a little while.”
“I wish you could stay longer.”
“Perhaps I can stay longer tomorrow.”
“Would you be willing to kiss me before you go?”
“Yes.”
He leaned forward and kissed her on the lips and then stood up. She looked very small and frail, he thought, with her head in bandages and her right arm in a plaster cast. The cast gave her a kind of comic touch, an incitement at once to laughter and tears.
“Good-by,” he said.
“Until tomorrow,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, “Until tomorrow.”
He went out and she lay quietly in the dark room. She thought for a while that she would surely cry, but she didn’t because she couldn’t, and pretty soon she went to sleep and wakened only once for a few minutes in the night, and in the morning, when she turned her head on her pillow and looked out the window, she could see the black branch aflame in the sunlight.
Take Me Home Page 18
