Breathing Room Page 6

  I decided I’d rather watch the blizzard with Sarah and Dena. But soon the wintry weather made me homesick for Abe. I bet he was already running around outside and flopping down to make snow angels without me.

  Was Dena wondering the same thing about her brothers and sisters, or was she an only child like Sarah? I’d never asked Dena about her family before. “Do you have any brothers and sisters, Dena?”

  “Two little stepsisters, April and Agnes. They probably wouldn’t know me if they walked in the door,” she said. “My brother, Michael—Mickey’s what I called him—was a year older than me. He got TB too, probably from Pops. Then, when Pops died, Mickey and I got shipped here together. We were on a kids’ ward till Mickey went home and I aged up to this room.”

  A father and brother both lost to TB!

  The book fell from my hands and closed with a fwump.

  “Hey, no need to look like a couple a ghosts, you two.” Dena gave a quick wave of her hand, as if that could erase what she’d just told us. “It’s not like you knew them or anything.”

  “But we know you,” Sarah said.

  “Yeah, but I don’t want you or anyone else around this place feeling sorry for me. I told you ’cause you asked. So now we don’t need to talk about it anymore. Anyway, I got something else to ask you two.”

  I picked up the book and put it aside to listen to Dena.

  “It’s been over a month since Beverly left,” she said, “and they haven’t tossed a new bug in her bed. TB hasn’t exactly dropped off the face of the earth, ya know.”

  “You haven’t heard about anyone coming to take Beverly’s place?” Sarah asked.

  “Nothing!” Dena said. “And I’ve been listening. Someone should be in that bed.”

  Sarah tapped her finger against her cheek. “Maybe … Maybe it’s not about having new patients at all. Maybe it’s something about Loon Lake—”

  “Have you noticed,” Dena interrupted, “how Old Eagle Eye’s been working so many double shifts?”

  “Yeah,” I groaned, annoyed that Nurse Marshall seemed to be living in our room.

  Sarah stopped tapping and looked directly at Dena, the two of them understanding something. “It’s not good, is it, Dena? It’s Nurse Gunderson. She must be sick.”

  “Maybe she went home to Winona for a visit?” I said. I didn’t want Sarah to be right this time. “Remember she talked about that?”

  “Nah, no one around here takes a vacation this long,” Dena said. “She didn’t leave, and she’s not working on another ward either. I bet she’s over in the Olson Building, sick just like us.”

  I tried piecing together what Dena and Sarah must have already realized. Loon Lake couldn’t accept new patients if they didn’t have enough nurses to take care of them. And hadn’t Dr. Keith made some comment about not losing another nurse?

  Then a new thought—a worse one—came to me. “Dena, if Nurse Gunderson got sick, was it from us?”

  “Probably not. Lots of the doctors and nurses here have TB, or did. Other hospitals don’t want to hire ’em. But they can always work at a san.”

  Sarah didn’t look convinced.

  Dena kept talking. “Haven’t you two ever heard of Dr. Trudeau?” She looked at Sarah, then me. “He’s the most famous TB doctor in the whole world. He had the bug too. That’s how he figured out rest and fresh air are good for us. He took care of loads of patients.”

  “I think my father talked about him,” Sarah said, putting her thoughts together out loud. “In the Adirondacks—in New York.”

  “Yep, that’s the guy.”

  I didn’t want a medical history lesson right now. “So it’s really not our fault she’s sick?” I asked Dena again.

  For once, she didn’t answer with a wisecrack. “Honest. I figure Nurse Gunderson was probably sick before she ever got here.”

  I remembered Nurse Gunderson falling asleep the night she brought us colas. She’d seemed tired, and even homesick too. Maybe, if she did have TB, that’s why she understood us so well.

  Then I remembered something else. “I—I think I might have seen Nurse Gunderson’s X-ray.”

  Both girls talked at once. “What?” Sarah said. “Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Dena demanded.

  “I didn’t know what I was seeing.” I told them about my first day at Loon Lake and how I overheard Dr. Keith talking to Nurse Marshall. “When Dr. Keith said something about the X-ray being ‘one of yours,’ I thought he meant it belonged to one of her patients, not to one of her nurses. That probably explains why Dr. Keith sounded so sad that day.”

  I tried to imagine how I’d feel looking at the sick lungs of someone I loved. I’d never really thought of an X-ray as being a real picture of anyone before—just some hocus-pocus doctors used to prove they were smart and right about everything.

  “Do you remember any of the words he said?” Dena asked.

  I tried to re-create the scene in my mind’s eye. “Lots of medical stuff. I did hear the word cavitation. It made me think of cavities and going to the dentist.”

  “What do you think?” Sarah asked, looking over at Dena.

  Dena let her straggly hair hide her face for a moment. Then she shoved it aside and spoke. “Cavitations are like pockets—empty pockets—where healthy lung used to be. We all probably have some. I don’t think that means Nurse Gunderson is going to die. But if Dr. Keith is worried, she must be pretty darn sick.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Wind and Weather

  “WHO THINKS UP those things?” Sarah said, sounding more annoyed than curious.

  “You mean the menu?” I could see she was reading the sheet of paper that came with our food trays.

  “No, the little ‘Food for Thought’ at the top,” Sarah answered. “Like today’s: ‘To weather the weather, make your own sunshine with a smile.’”

  Dena set up a game of solitaire on her tray table. “Probably the same Pollyannas who write the Loon Lake Booster.”

  We were all cranky, and not just because of worry over Nurse Gunderson. Pearl had not come back yesterday, and if it got much later, she wouldn’t be back today either. The blizzard seemed to have upset everything, as if we were stuck upside down in an overturned snow globe.

  “And will ya both quit worrying about Pearl!” Dena said, smacking a card on the tray. “She hit the jackpot. Thanks to all this snow, she gets an extra day away from this place. And we get an extra day of peace and quiet without her.”

  Sarah rolled the top edge of her blanket back and forth under her hands. I picked my way through another awful book. I’d have to make Abe promise to send me a good book to read—the gorier the better!

  The day dragged on and on, and so did the night. It was still dark when I heard footsteps in our room and then the door swishing closed. A voice squealed, “I saw it, I saw it! Wake up! I have to tell you all about it. I got to see Gone with the Wind!”

  Pearl was back in her pajamas and gushing with excitement as she slipped into bed. I fluffed my pillow and mumbled hello. Dena pulled the covers over her head and muttered, “Just my luck.”

  “Glad you’re safe,” Sarah said with a yawn.

  “Of course I’m safe,” Pearl bragged. “I was with Edmund. The whole state is shut down—some places had twenty-five inches of snow with drifts practically up to the moon—but Edmund was prepared. He already had the knobbies on his car.”

  “Knobbies?” Sarah asked, curious even at this time of night.

  “You know, special tires for snow.” Pearl paused for a second in her own blizzard of words. “Once the plows went through, Edmund and I were the first people back on the road. But I don’t want to talk about some stupid snowstorm,” Pearl said, flapping her hands like little wings. “Gone with the Wind is such a swell movie!”

  “Ah, here we go,” Dena said with a groan, her head emerging from under the blankets. “That wind isn’t gone yet.” But then she kept quiet and let Pearl do all the talking.

  Pearl told
us about nearly every scene in the long movie. And when she finished with that, she told us about her brother, Edmund, and how he’d promised next time to take her to visit her best friend, Muriel.

  “Oh, and I’ve got presents for you,” Pearl said, still bubbling with excitement. She got out of bed, flipped on the bathroom light so we could see—not well, but enough—and handed each of us a folding paper fan. “Open them,” she said.

  Dena started to chuckle. Then we all laughed when we saw her fan had a dragon on it. “Pretty good, Pearl.”

  Mine had a fish on it. “Because you can stand to drink cod-liver oil!” Pearl said.

  I smiled, pleased that she’d noticed. “Thanks.”

  I’m not sure Pearl heard me, because she was already talking to Sarah. “Yours has a fancy scroll like a college diploma on it.”

  Sarah smiled and gave the fan a gentle wave to show it off.

  Pearl reached into a bag and pulled out others. “I didn’t know what to get for Nurse Marshall,” she said, holding another fan up to the light, “so I got an ocean scene.”

  “Probably has a crab in it somewhere,” Dena joked.

  “And for Nurse Gunderson I got one with a white horse.” We all oohed and ahhed as we admired the perfect gift for our favorite nurse. “I had Edmund mail one with chickens on it to Beverly—you know, because she lives on a farm—and he sent one with a beautiful lady in a fancy gown to Muriel. I just know she’ll love it.”

  “Thank you,” I said again, this time so Pearl heard me.

  “You’re welcome—all of you.” Pearl looked over at Dena. “Don’t you want to know what fan I got for myself?”

  “They put movie stars on those things?” Dena asked.

  Pearl smiled. “Not exactly.” She opened up the last fan. A beautiful peacock spread its tail across the rippling folds of the white paper.

  “Now, that’s swell, Pearl. Real swell,” Dena said.

  Sarah and I had to agree. We all closed up our fans and put them away in our bedside drawers. Then Pearl leaned back onto her bed and sighed in her dramatic way.

  Dena got up and shut off the bathroom light. By the time she was back in bed, Pearl was already fast asleep, the soft huffs and puffs of her breathing as familiar to me now as my own.

  CHAPTER 25

  A Ruby

  I’D JUST LEFT the bathroom, taking advantage of my latest and best privilege, when I heard a scream—or really, felt it—coming from out in the hallway. I looked back at Sarah, whose frantic eyes pushed me out the door to see what had happened.

  I’d never actually stood in the corridor before. My view had always been from a wheelchair, so my sense of size and distance felt muddled and dizzying.

  Then Nurse Marshall swept by me, ordering another nurse to call Dr. Tollerud immediately. People clogged the long hallway.

  Another scream seemed to peel off into words.

  “Help! Someone, help!”

  I recognized Dena’s voice; my eyes searched for her in the confusion. Please God, not Dena, not her too, not after her father and brother.

  “Get a stretcher,” another voice yelled.

  “It’s a hemorrhage!” More voices all talking at once.

  I slid along the wall, pulled by a current of fear into darker waters.

  Up ahead a young nurse stopped moving and looked down.

  My eyes followed hers. Was that Dena’s dark hair I saw? Was someone else there too?

  Dr. Tollerud rushed by, sputtering commands. The still-frozen nurse blocked me from seeing more.

  I heard a faint gurgling sound. The nurse seemed to wake to Dr. Tollerud’s orders and step aside.

  Then I could see. Dena was on the floor clutching Pearl.

  Pearl—but not Pearl.

  Bright red blood covered her body. It ran like ribbons through her brown curls. It trailed in thin streams down her arms and onto her robe. It bubbled a too-brilliant red at her mouth.

  “Fight, Pearl, fight,” Dena pleaded.

  Patients from other rooms crowded around, stepping closer, whispering, pointing.

  Dena looked up and snarled, “Give her some breathing room!”

  I pushed to get through, but others pushed back harder. I leaned around a bystander’s arm and saw Pearl’s head drop forward, then hinge back.

  An orderly with a gurney scattered the crowd. Dr. Tollerud and Nurse Marshall dragged Pearl’s limp, bloodied body from Dena’s arms and up onto the gurney’s pad.

  Then they raced down the hall. Dr. Keith appeared and ran alongside as they turned into an examining room.

  “Looks like she threw a ruby,” another person said.

  “She’s a goner,” someone mumbled.

  “Get back to your beds. Show’s over,” a staff member instructed.

  People scuttled away. Had someone said she’d hemorrhaged? Thrown a ruby?

  Somehow Sarah appeared at my side, her featherlight body pressed against mine, her large eyes gathering in the scene.

  Dena, still holding on to Pearl’s bloody robe, crouched on the floor in front of us.

  “Dena,” I said, “I’m here—we’re here.”

  Dena raised her head, then took my arm and stood up. The three of us, accompanied by a nurse, made our way like tired soldiers back to our room.

  As I crawled into bed, I turned to ask the nurse about Pearl, but the weary look on her face already told me all I needed to know.

  We’d lost Pearl.

  I didn’t try to hold back my tears; Sarah didn’t either.

  And the nurse didn’t tell us to stop crying. She tucked the blanket around my shaking shoulders, and did the same for Sarah. Then she tended to Dena, washing away Pearl’s blood and hanging up both robes. When the nurse finished, she looked at each of us a moment before lowering her head and leaving the room.

  As soon as the door closed, Dena pushed off the blankets and sat up. “TB didn’t kill her. Muriel’s mother did!”

  “What? Wait—don’t, Dena,” I said. “Not right now.”

  She ignored me. I turned to look at Sarah, afraid she’d have her hands over her ears, afraid she couldn’t take any more, afraid I couldn’t either.

  But Sarah wasn’t looking at me. She lifted her head, wiped her eyes on a corner of her blanket, and spoke to Dena. “She had a hemoptysis, Dena—a hemorrhage. Maybe the trip with Edmund was too much for her, or the cold, or the—”

  “Yeah, the doctors and nurses are gonna tell us that. They got lots of answers, but big words aren’t the same as truth.”

  “But the bloo—”

  “Look, Sarah, tuberculosis can kill ya a hundred—no, a thousand—different ways. Rot out your lungs, go into your bones, eat through your guts, turn your brain to oatmeal. Consume you.”

  Dena waved her hand in the air, then went on. “I know Pearl threw a ruby, knew it as soon as it happened. I didn’t see Pops die, but they say he hemorrhaged that way too. TB ate right through his lung and into an artery. But it’s not just the bug that kills ya.”

  My head hurt and my heart ached. “Dena, can’t this wait?”

  “Let her talk,” Sarah said. “She knows more.”

  New tears filled my eyes. I could almost hear the rest of Sarah’s thought: than you do, Evvy. Didn’t Sarah understand that nothing Dena could say would bring Pearl back?

  Dena grumbled as she dropped her head into her hands. “I’ll tell you what killed her. All her dreaming to be something—anything—but a lunger.”

  Dena kept talking without looking up at either of us. “On the way back from class, Pearl saw some mail—a letter to her, right on top. No one was looking, so she grabbed it, all excited ’cause she could tell it was from Muriel’s mother.

  “‘I’m just sure she wants to invite me to their holiday party or maybe to their lake house next summer, ’ Pearl squealed while she opened that stupid envelope. I wished I’d yanked it right out of her hands.”

  “What did it say?” Sarah asked, now with a tremble in her voice. />
  Dena got out of bed and went to Pearl’s robe. She pulled a fancy note card out of the robe’s pocket and handed it to Sarah.

  “Just enough to break that foolish girl’s heart.”

  CHAPTER 26

  A Different Current

  PEARL DIED November 20, the day before Thanksgiving. No one felt like celebrating. The turkey and stuffing we’d all been looking forward to eating together went untouched on our plates. Dena pointed out that it wasn’t really Thanksgiving anyway. “Just because President Roosevelt made the holiday a week earlier doesn’t make it right.” I remembered Father explaining to Abe and me last year how the president was trying to help businesses by giving people an extra week between Thanksgiving and Christmas to shop. But I had to agree with Dena—the holiday just didn’t feel right. Especially now.

  Then, a few days after Thanksgiving, a letter arrived from Beverly. Nurse Marshall brought it to our room but said nothing as she handed it to Dena. We all thought it was about what happened, but it wasn’t. It was a thank-you note to Pearl for the fan she’d sent.

  “I’d better write and tell Beverly,” Dena told us.

  “Not alone, Dena,” I said. “We’ll do it together.”

  And the three of us did. Even though I liked playing with words, and Sarah was a crackerjack student, I think Dena said it best:

  The last week of November brought other changes to our room—some small, some important.

  Dena started sleeping more, even during the Cure Hour. She joked that the bright light hurt her eyes, but I didn’t buy that; she was tired and worn out by what had happened, and so were we. As for Sarah, she asked Dena fewer questions now. At first I thought this was good, but then I wasn’t so sure. Sarah seemed happier when she was curious, and sadder now that she wasn’t. Her dark eyes brightened only when we talked. I told her stories about Abe or sometimes Grandma Hoffmeister. “Your family is such fun,” she said with envy in her voice. “My parents are such worriers—and all they worry about is me!” Maybe being an only child and getting all the attention wasn’t so great after all. As for me, I had restless dreams, as if someone had screamed “Emergency!” just before I woke up. I’d rub my eyes and feel like I was supposed to be doing something. But there was nothing to be done.