Home by Morning

by Alexis Harrington

  “Now what’s going to happen? And what about your father?”

  “Pop can cool his heels in the saloon for a while. He won’t care. I’m going to drive you home, then go back for Eddie.”

  “You see, Cole? You are a hero.” She hugged his arm, making him pull the wheel toward the right. “If you’d gone off to France, who would be here to do this good deed?”

  Yeah, a hero, he mulled sourly, straightening the wheel as they chugged down quiet Russell Street, with its rows of tidy homes and fenced yards. He didn’t feel like much of a hero.

  He pulled up in front of Mrs. Donaldson’s neat, two-story house. Through one window, he could see the woman setting the dining room table. “Looks like I got you home in time for dinner.”

  “It’s been such a busy day, I’m just going to have a little bite to eat and put my feet up.”

  He jumped out of the truck and came around to help her out. In the cool, pale twilight they walked up to Mrs. Donaldson’s porch. He saw the older woman retreat to the other side of the front door. He just knew she was standing there with her ear pressed against the panel, listening.

  “She’s spying on us again,” Cole said in a low voice.

  “Shh! I think she’s just a romantic at heart,” Amy whispered, smiling. “She’s never really gotten over losing Mr. Donaldson.”

  Cole snorted in derision. “Donaldson died twenty years ago.” He was more inclined to believe the old lady was just a nosy snoop, but he didn’t say so. He knew that Amy was fond of her. He took Amy’s gloved hands in his and gave her a chaste peck on the cheek.

  “Thank you for helping Jessica.”

  He wanted to say that he wasn’t helping her. He was helping Eddie. But that would have only created a tense moment. And he wasn’t sure it was true. He shrugged. “What else can I do? I’d like to think that someone would give me a ride if I was too sick to walk.”

  “And that’s why you’re my hero.” She gazed up at him shyly.

  He cringed at the notion of being anyone’s hero.

  She gave him a searching look, her own expression uncertain. “Cole, is everything—well, is there anything you want to talk about?”

  “Me? No, why?”

  “Lately I’ve had the feeling that something is troubling you. Something we should discuss.” She gazed at him as if she were trying to read his thoughts. The scrutiny made his throat tight, and he looked away.

  He kissed her cheek. “You worry too much.” He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, trying to squelch the hollow feeling in the pit of his soul. “Everything is fine. Or at least as fine as it can be, considering. You go in. I’ve got to get Eddie Cookson home. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Well, if you’re certain—”

  He made a shooing gesture at her.

  She smiled then, apparently reassured, and pushed open the front door. Mrs. Donaldson let out a loud squawk and Cole caught a glimpse of her holding her nose.

  “Mrs. Donaldson!” Amy exclaimed. “Oh, dear, are you all right? Here, take my handkerchief. The bleeding will stop—”

  He jumped down the stairs two at a time, and with colossal self-control, didn’t laugh until he was back in the truck.

  Jessica was waiting for Cole on the sidewalk when he pulled up in front of her office. He recognized her expression. He saw worry in her face, and she looked tired.

  “He’s ready to go?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, Cole. I’m beginning to think I should keep Eddie here in one of the patient beds. He’s doing so poorly. He has a high fever and he’s becoming delirious.”

  He shut off the engine and got out of the Ford. “Can you cure him?”

  “No. There’s no cure for influenza. The body has to heal itself.” She paced a short path, back and forth, her arms folded over her chest. She was talking to him, but it seemed as if she was outlining a course of action to herself as well. “I can make sure he gets his medication every two hours. Beyond that, there’s not much I can provide except good nursing. But I’d like to keep an eye on him. If an emergency comes up, someone would have to bring him into town again. That is, if the crisis was even recognized. I don’t think he should be shuttled around like that.” She told him about Eddie wandering for hours without ever getting home.

  Just then, a crash came from the waiting room. They ran inside and found Eddie Cookson collapsed on the floor. In the fall, he’d overturned his chair and a wrought-iron coat tree, which had cut a gash in the oak flooring.

  “Jesus,” Cole uttered. The change in Eddie’s appearance was almost unbelievable. This was not the boy-soldier who’d smiled and waved from his parade float earlier in the day. Or even the one Cole had helped carry over here earlier. This young man looked as if he’d already been through the war—and lost. His eyes were inflamed, his face was the color of one of Shaw’s old red bandanas, and he was shivering like a wet dog left out in the snow.

  Jess grasped his wrist. “His heart is galloping.”

  Eddie looked up at Jessica with bleary, unfocused eyes. “Mother? Can you make the hammer stop banging in my head? It—” His rambling was interrupted by another bout of coughing.

  “I’ve got to get him upstairs and into bed.”

  Cole nodded. This was just plain bad. “Come on, Ed. We’ll get you fixed up.” He hoisted Eddie to his feet. Between the two of them, they practically dragged him up the stairs to the patient room situated across the hall from Jess’s own apartment. Cole lowered Eddie to one of the narrow iron beds while Jessica looked in the cabinet that stood in one corner.

  “I don’t know if I have gowns or pajamas in here.” She rummaged through sheets, bedding, and other linens. “Aha! Here they are.” They managed to wrestle their patient out of his hot wool uniform and into a pair of white cotton pajamas. All the while, Eddie coughed and mumbled in a disjointed ramble, complaining about the bone-deep pain that had overtaken his body.

  Cole had never seen anything like it. Judging by the expression on Jessica’s face, he wasn’t sure she had, either.

  Once they had him in the bed, Jess forced a pill down Eddie’s throat. Her hair had come loose from its pins, and blond tendrils hung around her face. “The morphine should help the cough and aches.”

  “What else can you do for him?” Cole asked, and sat on the empty bed in the room.

  “I’ll examine him to try to figure out just which systems are involved.” She glanced up at him. “I mean how much of his body is affected. Do the Cooksons have a telephone?”

  “I don’t know. We do at the farm since we’re on a main road, but Birdeen only works days, so there’s no one to put the call through. There’s been talk about getting a night operator, but it hasn’t happened.”

  She pushed her straggling hair out of her face. “All right. If you could get word to his family that he’s here, it would be a big help.” Her words were fractured by Eddie’s hacking, Watching him, her expression took on a pale look of dawning horror.

  “What?”

  “Oh, God…” She stared at the shivering, muttering man in the bed.

  “What? What’s the matter?”

  She told him about her conversation with Leroy Fenton and the telegram she’d received. “I was going to leave for Seattle on Saturday’s train. I supposed Powell Springs would survive until Pearson gets here. But if this epidemic is as contagious as it sounds—Cole, this boy probably talked to nearly every person in town in the past two days. Who knows how many people were exposed? Who he shook hands with, breathed on? The children and the older folks around here will be coming down with it too.”

  “So all those men down at Tilly’s who didn’t want to help—”

  “They might get sick anyway, along with a lot of others.”

  “And us?”

  She sighed. “Yes, although we can try our best not to. Go downstairs to the back office right now and wash your hands with hot, soapy water, and don’t touch your face until you do. I’ve got to contact the ho
spital in Seattle and get some information. Maybe the Red Cross too.”

  He stood, making the bedsprings screech. He couldn’t help but admire her decisiveness. The same take-charge, resolute attitude that rubbed some men the wrong way—and which had drawn him to her as a strong-willed equal—was alive and well.

  She followed him down the steps and waited while he washed up, then she washed her own hands.

  “Will you need help taking care of Cookson? Should I get Granny Mae?”

  “God, no,” Jess muttered, wiping her hands on a clean towel.

  “Can you handle this alone?”

  She bent a look on him. “What do you think I’ve been doing all this time in New York, Cole?”

  New York, New York, New York. He frowned, sick of being reminded of why everything went so wrong. The tension of wartime life, compounded by Pop, compounded by so many things, came alive in him. What had Jess found there that kept her from coming home as she’d promised? What had happened that caused her to break off their courtship? The question, which he’d managed to push to the back of his mind, had come roaring to his waking thoughts since she returned to Powell Springs. “That’s what I’ve wondered for two years. What have you been doing there?”

  Cole moved closer to Jess. His face, suddenly flushed and almost angry, was nearly in hers as he stood there. For a moment, she thought he might either shake her or kiss her. But apparently he expected an answer. The tension between them was like an electric current, snapping and dangerous. Unprepared for the sudden turn of the conversation, or the feeling that hot honey was running in her veins, she backed away, highly annoyed that he would raise the subject at this moment. She turned and with nervous, brittle energy began cleaning up the table she’d used to compound Eddie’s pills.

  “I’ve got a very sick patient upstairs, and you’re supposed to go tell his family where he is. Why in the world are we talking about this now?”

  “You keep bringing it up, Jess. You keep telling me how swell it was in New York. In your letters you told me you had too much important work to do to leave. I just want to know what was so damned special about it that you gave up everything here.”

  She spun around to look at him. “I never said it was ‘swell.’ But, yes, the work was important. You can’t know—I can’t explain how much—how desperately—” She stumbled to a stop and took up her chore again. Her heart seemed to be pounding as hard and fast as Eddie’s had when she’d listened to his chest.

  “Then why didn’t you stay there if it meant so much? Why did you leave it for a different job?”

  “Why should you care?” she countered. “You’ll marry Amy and have a happy home. What difference does it make now?”

  For an instant, she thought he would pound his fist on the table, but instead he put up his hands and took a deep breath. His face fell into the unpleasant, stony expression she was growing accustomed to. “It doesn’t make any difference. I’ll go talk to Horace.” He walked away then, his boot heels resonating on the pine flooring. That was followed by the sound of the front door closing.

  A moment later, she heard the truck engine turn over, and Cole drove away.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Jessica spent a very long night taking care of Eddie. She dosed him with the pills every two hours. Some of them even stayed down. But if they were of any help, it was minimal. She didn’t go to bed, but instead sat up in a chair in her apartment with both doors open so that she could hear him. Not that it would have been difficult—his cough was so harsh, it sounded as if it could lift the roof off the second floor. During those moments when she sat in her kitchenette, drinking coffee and trying to think of some treatment, she composed wires to Dr. Martin at Seattle General and to the Red Cross office, which had opened the year before in Portland. Although she had to explain to Dr. Martin why she would not be coming to Washington as soon as he’d asked, she also asked for some up-to-date information from him regarding the influenza that stood poised on her hometown’s doorstep.

  At least it gave her something else to think about besides Cole and the effect he still had on her.

  She drank her coffee bitter and black. Sugar and cream were hard-to-get luxuries these days; in fact, it was considered a badge of honor to do without, and a mark of shame to consume anything that should be going to the troops. Her hands shook with fatigue and caffeine as she worked to stem the tide of self-reproach that kept trying to engulf her.

  How could she have cocooned herself so tightly that she’d been out of touch with the events taking place around her? How had she not heard about this sickness invading the civilian population?

  She knew the answer, but it was no comfort, and it was not an excuse she could accept.

  Yes, thoughts of those helpless people in the tenements still haunted her. But her fate had been decided years ago. By becoming a physician, she’d also made a tacit agreement to accept the good with the bad. Dealing with human suffering was part of her profession. Not every life could be saved. And even for those that could be, not every outcome was positive.

  Only—only there had been so many that weren’t…

  Still, kicking herself would do no good. She had to take up her calling where she’d left it and do her best to learn all she could about this epidemic.

  The pale streaks of dawn seemed to come late due to the heavy, lead-gray sky that threatened rain. At about seven o’clock, Jess heard sharp knocking on the front door. Not knowing what to expect, she ran down to answer it. She recognized Helen Cookson, Eddie’s mother, standing on the other side of the glass.

  Helen’s fine-boned face looked drawn and wilted. Her hair, shot with silver threads, was pulled into a bun, and Jessica imagined she’d had no more sleep than she herself.

  “I came as soon as could,” Helen said, her voice quavery. Out front, Horace Cookson was wrapping the reins around the brake of their farm wagon. “How is my boy?”

  Jess stepped aside and let her in. “His fever is higher than I would like, and he has moments of…confusion.”

  “Confusion?”

  “Delirium,” Jess conceded. “I’m giving him medication, but I’m not sure how much it’s helping. Mostly what he needs is good nursing and rest.”

  “Cole said it’s the influenza.” Helen’s tone gave it grave importance.

  The influenza.

  “Yes.” At least she hadn’t said plague.

  Horace, dressed haphazardly in overalls and a blue-striped work shirt, walked in. These clothes seemed more suited to him than the boiled shirt and crooked tie that went with his mayoral duties. “Had to milk the cows first. The cows can’t wait.”

  Helen gave her husband a tight-lipped look. “Can I see him?”

  “Yes, of course. Eddie’s upstairs.”

  After she was out of earshot, Horace turned to Jess and dropped his voice to a confidential tone. “Helen’s got herself in a downright conniption over this. I sure appreciate you looking after the boy for us. Even though it’s only influenza, I knew he’d be in good hands with you.”

  “I’m sorry I had to send Cole Braddock out to your place last night, but I thought you should know about the situation.”

  “It’s just the grippe, though,” he reiterated. “That’s not such a bad thing, is it? Not for a young man like Ed. We’ve all had it at one time or another. Had it myself last spring. In fact, so did Cole, now that I think about it. I remember because Susannah had to practically tie him to his bed to keep him from working. She said the sooner he got well, the better off they’d all be. Most of us did get better.” He hitched his brows, then added, “Well, Doctor Vandermeer didn’t, and Eph Jacobsen, but they were getting on.”

  “Except this might be worse than the usual illness.”

  “Bah, I heard they’ve had an outbreak of some kind of Spanish flu on the East Coast, but they’re all jammed together back there with machines and smoky factories and such. Well, you know that better than the rest of us.” He gestured vaguely with his big farmer
’s hand. “This is God’s country out here—clean air, simple living, wide-open spaces.”

  From the second floor came the bark of Eddie’s wretched, gurgling cough, an unnerving, hopeless sound. It had continued most of the night, preventing him from getting much rest. Horace turned his gaze to the top of the stairs, and a shadow of concern crossed his eyes. “Ed’s strong, he’ll be back on his feet in no time.” But his tone had lost some of its conviction.

  Jess squared her shoulders, as much to ease the tension and fatigue in them as to give him courage. “I certainly hope so, Mr. Cookson. I’m doing everything I can for him.”

  “Helen made up a bed in the back of the wagon so we can take him home.”

  “We probably don’t want to move him just yet,” she said, using the calm tone she saved for delivering dire news. “I’d intended to have Cole give Eddie a ride home last night. But after he collapsed here in the waiting room—well, I think it would be best for him to stay here for a while, at least until his fever breaks. In the meantime, you’ll want to contact his cantonment at Camp Lewis to let them know where he is.” She was careful not to add that she didn’t believe Eddie had reached the crisis point yet, but she sensed that Horace at last understood the seriousness of his son’s illness.

  Keeping his eyes on the stairs, he said, “I…oh…sure…I believe I’ll go up and visit with him for a moment.” He shuffled off toward the steps.

  Jess nodded and sat down in a nearby chair, fatigue weighing on her shoulders. She knew that Horace would be in for a rude surprise.

  Eddie, so vital and healthy yesterday, now had a dusky-blue tint to his nose, ears, and lips. And chances were good that he might not recognize his own father this morning.

  “Then next year, I could plant nasturtiums and climbing roses so they trail over the porch railing.” Amy moved back and forth across the front yard of Cole’s not-quite-finished house, explaining to him her plans for the landscape. She had already taken him on a tour of the interior, showing him her finishing touches on the painting, which she’d generously offered to undertake, despite the fact that they had no formal engagement between them yet. She’d started with bare walls and floors and transformed them into a real home. It had stood unfinished for nearly two years, waiting for its originally-intended mistress to see it completed. “I can get all the cuttings I need from the ladies on my committees. Won’t that be pretty?”