Breathing Room Read online

  To Hannah, Lily, and Nate,

  Who helped me make this journey—

  Step by step,

  Breath by breath

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  CHAPTER 1 - Leaving

  CHAPTER 2 - Loonless Lake

  CHAPTER 3 - Turning Into a Patient

  CHAPTER 4 - A Gray Picture

  CHAPTER 5 - The Others

  CHAPTER 6 - The Land of Rules

  CHAPTER 7 - Smelly Stuff

  CHAPTER 8 - Going Home

  CHAPTER 9 - A Different Tune

  CHAPTER 10 - The Routine

  CHAPTER 11 - The New Bug

  CHAPTER 12 - Blue Nothing

  CHAPTER 13 - Blue Something

  CHAPTER 14 - The Giant

  CHAPTER 15 - Moving Pictures

  CHAPTER 16 - Out of Breath

  CHAPTER 17 - Flying Away

  CHAPTER 18 - A Boost

  CHAPTER 19 - Numbers

  CHAPTER 20 - Discharged

  CHAPTER 21 - Looking Back

  CHAPTER 22 - A Brook

  CHAPTER 23 - Cold News

  CHAPTER 24 - Wind and Weather

  CHAPTER 25 - A Ruby

  CHAPTER 26 - A Different Current

  CHAPTER 27 - Gifts

  CHAPTER 28 - More Gifts

  CHAPTER 29 - The Plan

  CHAPTER 30 - The Lie

  CHAPTER 31 - Making Sense

  CHAPTER 32 - A Warning

  CHAPTER 33 - Finding Her

  CHAPTER 34 - Losing Her

  CHAPTER 35 - Good-bye

  CHAPTER 36 - Letting Go

  CHAPTER 37 - Bed Post

  CHAPTER 38 - Midnight Journey

  CHAPTER 39 - A Different Path

  CHAPTER 40 - Last Night

  CHAPTER 41 - Going Home

  CHAPTER 42 - Blank Pages

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  NOTES ON THE IMAGES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER 1

  Leaving

  (May 1940)

  FATHER JERKED THE CAR to the side of the road and stopped. “Are you okay, Evvy?” he asked, turning in his seat to look at me.

  I pitched my head back, gasping for air between coughs. Breathe! a voice inside me screamed. I dropped the Loon Lake brochure. A blast of heavy, moist air shot up from my lungs and exploded into the handkerchief I’d grabbed and pressed against my lips.

  But I could breathe again. “I’m okay, Father,” I said, though my voice crackled as if it had just been hatched and never used before. “Really I am.”

  He sank back down into his seat and grabbed the steering wheel. “Ya got Francy?” he asked, glancing at me in the rearview mirror, worry in his eyes.

  I lifted my stuffed bear to show him. Thirteen was too old to be holding on to a teddy bear—at least, that’s what Mother thought. I was glad Father didn’t feel that way.

  “Then get some rest, Puddlejump,” Father said, using the nickname he’d given me when I was a little girl. “And don’t worry, we’ll be there soon.” As if that could make me feel any better.

  He put the car in gear, and the two of us were off again, driving to Loon Lake—or Loony Lake, as my twin brother, Abe, had already renamed it—a sanatorium where sick and contagious people like me went to get better. At least, that was the hope.

  When I knew Father wasn’t looking, I opened my hand. The damp handkerchief unfolded just enough so I could see the streaks of blood across it. It wasn’t the first time I’d coughed up blood. But I’d never told anybody, not even Abe. I was too afraid. Did this blood mean I was going to die?

  CHAPTER 2

  Loonless Lake

  FATHER TOOK THE KEY out of the ignition and reached for his hat. “Well, here we are, Evvy.” The sanatorium loomed outside the car window, a giant version of the photo my finger had now smudged on the brochure.

  “See any loons?” I asked, as if one might fly by to welcome us.

  “No, not yet,” he said, walking around to my door.

  “How about a lake?”

  “Nope, but it’s Minnesota, Evvy. One can’t be too far away.”

  I grabbed my stuffed bear and held Father’s hand just long enough to get up on my feet. I didn’t want Father going home with my germs.

  Father hesitated at the bottom of the stairs leading to the main building. “Maybe I should carry you, Evvy.”

  “I’m okay, Father, really.” I then climbed the first three steps just to show him.

  “Hey, wait for me, Puddlejump,” he said, as if I’d set off on a race. He paused every few steps to point at flowers in the gardens so I could lean on the railing and rest.

  At last, Father opened the building’s tall door. What is that hospital smell? Sick people? Lysol? Bleach? I felt like my face was being slapped by a damp washcloth.

  A young man in a white uniform plunked me into a wheelchair and delivered us to a tall marble counter. We waited a moment, Father’s hand on my shoulder, my stuffed bear tucked under my arm. A woman started speaking. I couldn’t see the lady’s face, just her starched white cap bobbing up and down as she quizzed Father about my “health and family history.”

  The nurse didn’t ask me any questions, and when Father asked her some, I didn’t like any of her answers, especially, “Visitors are not allowed at Loon Lake until authorized by Dr. Tollerud. Your daughter needs to rest, Mr. Hoffmeister. We will decide what is best for her.”

  The nurse then came out from behind the tall desk. She stood stiff and straight in her white cap and uniform. “I am Nurse Marshall,” she said, speaking only to Father. “Dr. Keith and I will be in charge of your daughter’s immediate medical care.”

  At the sight of me, she lifted and tied a white mask to cover her mouth and nose, looking like a robber, not a nurse.

  Please don’t let her steal me from you, Father!

  He tugged at the hat in his hands but couldn’t seem to make himself turn toward the door. “Could I have a moment alone with my daughter?”

  Nurse Marshall stood up even straighter, answering his request with an icy stare.

  “Well, then, thank you, Nurse Marshall.” Father nodded politely. “I guess it’s time for us to say good-bye, Evvy.”

  Nurse Marshall took control of my wheelchair and started pushing me away.

  “Your mother will miss you,” he called. “We all will!” Father was always trying to let me know my mother loved me. I didn’t need to be reminded how Abe and Father felt.

  I wanted to cry, but not with the nurse so close behind me. Droplets of moisture seemed to weep through my skin—on my hands and chest, even behind my knees—as if everything but my eyes could show how I was really feeling.

  Then Nurse Marshall turned a corner and Father was gone. I never did get the chance to tell him good-bye.

  CHAPTER 3

  Turning Into a Patient

  NURSE MARSHALL pushed me down a series of corridors, from one building to the next. My legs, which had felt fine in the car, now felt heavy, as if I had thick cough syrup instead of blood running through my veins. I was wheeled past patients resting outside in the fresh air. A few gave me half-hearted smiles as I rolled by, but somehow that just made me feel worse.

  One man waved. He was leaning out a window, his lopsided chest crisscrossed with what looked like one of Grandma Hoffmeister’s undergarments. A brassiere? No, a bandage! A fancy one made of straps that circled under each arm, over his shoulders, and even around his stomach—more like a gun holster than a brassiere. But why did he need it? Would he fall to pieces without it? Would I need one too?

  Back inside, hacking, spitting, sputtering coughs rocketed at me from all directions. Doctors and nurses rushed past. With masks over their mouths an
d noses, they didn’t have to try to smile at me.

  Then Nurse Marshall rolled me into a large tiled room to be bathed—boiled, actually. I felt like one of Grandma Hoffmeister’s cabbages bouncing around in a pot of steaming water. My hair got scrubbed with a smelly green shampoo, my skin was scraped with a bar of soap as big as a brick, and then all of me got dried off with a towel that seemed determined to rub away half my skin and leave the other half red and raw.

  I was put in Loon Lake pajamas—white baggy pants and a loose button-up top. “Raising your arms to dress might strain your lungs,” Nurse Marshall said in a wooden voice, like someone reading from a manual.

  Wait until I tell Abe. Even pajamas can kill you at Loon Lake!

  As she cinched me into a white bathrobe, put slippers on my feet, and seated me back in the wheelchair, she continued telling me in the same practiced tone how talking could also damage the lungs and was therefore not allowed at Loon Lake.

  My other outfit—the one Mother had carefully chosen and ironed so I would make a good first impression—had been flopped over a metal chair and looked as limp as I felt. Nurse Marshall balled up the clothing, then grabbed Francy by one ear and dropped everything into a metal bin, letting the lid snap shut. “Full of germs,” she said.

  I couldn’t leave Francy behind, not in that cold bin all alone. “Please!” I begged.

  “I am not here to coddle you,” Nurse Marshall said, pushing my wheelchair out the door. “Kindness will not cure you or anyone at Loon Lake.”

  Before we’d left Northfield, Father had made me promise not to cry, saying how we’d both have to buck up and be good soldiers. I wondered if he was being a good soldier now too.

  One thing I did know for certain: Mother didn’t cry this morning. She gave a faint wave, then pulled Abe close as they watched the car back out of the driveway. Was she worried more about me leaving or about Abe getting sick next?

  Maybe if Abe had been with me now, I’d have been brave and held back my tears. But I was at Loon Lake all by myself—just Evvy, not half of the Abe and Evvy duo. I felt more lopsided than the man in the window. So when the nurse parked me in a corner and said, “Wait here”—as if I had any choice—I cried, burying my face in the sleeve of a strange, stiff bathrobe instead of the soft, familiar fur of my stuffed bear.

  CHAPTER 4

  A Gray Picture

  NURSE MARSHALL might have noticed my tears had she taken a moment to look at me. Instead, as I wiped my eyes, she backed the wheelchair around and pushed me into an X-ray room. She left, pulling the door closed behind her.

  The room looked pretty much the same as where I’d had my X-ray taken back in Northfield. I looked at all the equipment—the metal knobs and gauges and a tall piece of dark glass. I was glad I didn’t need a brassiere yet and would have nothing much to flatten when it came time to press my chest against the glass.

  A doctor hurried in, took my X-ray, wheeled me into another room, and zipped a white curtain around me before rushing away. Was I supposed to stay here? Had Nurse Marshall forgotten me already? Had everybody?

  I waited. No one came. I kicked at the curtain until my slipper fell off, and I had to scoot out of the chair to retrieve it. I snuck a look at my medical chart—just a bunch of papers stuck between two metal plates. Only one page had any writing on it. I was patient number 22781—that was printed in bigger type than my name. Then I inched my chair over to look out the slender crack between the curtains and saw several screens for viewing X-rays. Dr. Harris’s office only had one.

  Five minutes passed, if I could believe the clock on the wall. Then the door swished open and footsteps scuffed along the shiny floor.

  I peeked around the curtain. A doctor stood across the room—not the older one who took my X-ray but a younger one with a pair of glasses on his nose and another pair sticking out of the pocket of his white coat. His brown hair puffed out in all directions, and his face seemed as tired and rumpled as his clothes—like he’d slept with the chickens, Father would say.

  He lifted a big sheet of floppy paper and clipped it to a screen. A grayish white picture appeared.

  Could that be my X-ray, the one they just took?

  Probably not, unless they could develop film much faster here than Dr. Harris could back home.

  I tilted my head the way the doctor did, then tapped my own chest to match what I felt with what I was seeing. The T across the top must be the collarbones, the white blob at the bottom the stomach.

  But what about the lungs? Had they disappeared? Could tuberculosis do that? I blinked. This time I saw shadows in and around the ribs. Those must be the lungs—just full of air and hard to see, like gray ghosts floating around inside a cage.

  The door opened again. At the sight of Nurse Marshall I shut my eyes, but I still listened.

  “Dr. Keith, excuse me. I didn’t know you were using this room. I believe my patient—”

  “Nurse Marshall, look at this.”

  Did she say Dr. Keith? Wasn’t that the name of my new doctor?

  The two started speaking in what sounded like a foreign language. I recognized only a few words—“cavitation” and “lobe”—words I’d heard Dr. Harris use before.

  A cough prickled loose in my chest and started to scratch its way up my throat. Not now! I pressed my face into my sleeve—still damp from my tears. My shoulders twitched forward, and I coughed into my thick robe.

  Had they heard me? I waited. No one came. They kept right on talking. Coughs must be as common here as snowflakes in winter: hardly worth noticing.

  “Dr. Keith, certainly you are far more qualified than I am to make such an assessment.”

  “Yes, but I thought since she’s one of yours, Nurse Marshall, you might be able to—to talk to her.” Dr. Keith’s voice sagged with each word. “Encourage her to rest more. She works too hard.”

  “Unfortunately, Doctor,” Nurse Marshall said with an impatient firmness, “her nature is as stubborn as her disease.”

  I heard a single click—the doctor must have been turning off the screen for viewing the X-ray—and then a sigh.

  Who are they talking about? And why does the doctor sound so sad? I’d never thought about a doctor being worried. Dr. Harris always acted like he’d seen everything—from Abe’s bad case of the chicken pox to the oozing boil Grandma once got on her wrist. I wondered why this doctor asked Nurse Marshall what she thought. Wasn’t he the doctor?

  My head hurt with questions. Really, all of me hurt. Worse than ever before. I had to close my eyes. Trying to stay alive at Loon Lake felt like it was killing me already.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Others

  “WAKE UP.”

  I opened my eyes, confused for a moment until I realized I must have fallen asleep after the X-ray. Abe would rib me if he knew I could doze off like that while sitting straight up. Next I’d probably start snoring.

  Nurse Marshall said nothing else as she propped open a door with her hip, then swung my chair around and into what felt like a wall of sunshine. I squinted, my head still hurting, until I could make out the large opened windows and a door ahead of me. My eyes adjusted more, and I saw beds—two empty ones on my left and three with girls in them on my right. This must be my room—our room, I guessed.

  “Your bed, Evelyn,” Nurse Marshall told me, saying my name for the first time. But she pronounced it all wrong, like she was saying Evil-in. “At the present time, Evil-in, you will share this room with three others.” She prepared the bed and nodded in the direction of each girl as she said their names.

  “Pearl” was sitting up. She patted her curled, light brown hair, then waved a movie magazine in my direction to say hello. “Beverly” was next. She had long blond braids flanking a face as round and pale as a sugar cookie. She lifted her head off the pillow to smile at me. The third girl, “Dena,” started coughing, so all I could see was a shake of dark, straggly hair and a fist covering a mouth.

  “Control your cough, Dena,” N
urse Marshall said, pausing at the empty bed next to mine. She lifted me up onto a bed sheet that was stiff as paper, then folded the cover of a heavy blanket over me. I felt like I was being pressed inside a book.

  “My name’s Evvy,” I said to the ceiling. “It rhymes with Chevy, the car.”

  “No talking!”

  I didn’t care if Nurse Marshall yelled at me or not. I couldn’t have these girls calling me by the wrong name.

  “Evvy and her Chevy,” the girl with straggly hair said from across the room. She dropped her hand from her mouth to point at me, then at the wheelchair.

  “Enough, Dena!” Nurse Marshall said, the heels of her oxfords pecking at the floor as she moved about the room. Did she have to yell all the time? We weren’t talking that much, just a few words.

  I stared at the dull ceiling. Not even a crack or splotch for my mind to pick at like a scab—just plain white. White above me, white below me, white on all sides. I tipped my head to look to my left: the empty bed. To the right: two doors—one I’d just come through, and the other? Maybe a closet or a bathroom. I didn’t want to find out—not yet. A little mystery was better than a lot of boring.

  I discovered that my body seemed to have a secret life of its own. My fingers and toes stretched and twitched without my command. Tiny bubbles of sweat squeezed out all over me. My ribs seemed to grind and tighten just before a stormy cough blew up and out of my chest. Then a more familiar feeling demanded my attention. I needed to go to the bathroom. Now. But if I couldn’t talk, how could I ask to get up? And would I even be allowed?

  Abe had overheard Grandma Hoffmeister say I would probably be using a bedpan. “Maybe it’ll look like one of Grandma’s cake pans!” he’d said. I’d laughed along with him, too embarrassed even to ask what a bedpan looked like or how it worked. Now I wished I had.

  I tried raising my hand like we did at school. Nurse Marshall was too busy to notice, shaking down a thermometer, then jamming it in my mouth. I’d have to wait ten minutes, unless temperatures got taken faster here than in Dr. Harris’s office.