Hurricane Nurse (15 page)

"I'm only going to try to make you more comfortable," Donna coaxed. "Couldn't you open your mouth and let me look at your throat?"

"You're going to stick things in me," Johnnie wailed. "I don't want no shots."

Donna put a cool hand on the child's flushed cheek. "I don't even have a needle, Johnnie. And if I had, I couldn't use it unless a doctor told me to. There isn't a doctor in the building, so you're quite safe. Now, may I look at your throat?"

The little girl didn't obey for a long moment while she studied Donna's face. Then, meek as meek, she opened her small mouth and stuck out her tongue. The throat was an angry red, much like Sammy's.

"Now we're going to take your temperature," Donna told her. "You know how to put the thermometer under your tongue and be very quiet and still until I take it away, don't you?"

Johnnie again studied the face so near her own, decided in favor of Donna and opened her mouth. Donna put the slender tube into it and Johnnie closed her mouth again.

Anna was chattering on nervously: "I always give her her shots. I'm going to see she grows up healthy if I can. I can't give her much and a woman has it hard enough anyway at best. But Johnnie's going to have everything as easy as I can make it for her. I don't want nobody sayin' I ain't a good mother. There's those that do say it, but I do the best I can. I see she gets her shots and that she eats her yellow and green vegetables and plays outside every day that it ain't rainin'. I mean right by Johnnie."

Donna listened to the outpouring from the little girl's mother with an absent ear. She was concentrating on the sound of the child's breathing. There was nothing to indicate pneumonia.

The thermometer read 103 degrees. That was high, and just as she had thought in the beginning, Donna knew no better now what the matter was than she had when she first heard that Johnnie was sick. Any more than she had when she had heard about Sammy. It might be one of the children's diseases. It might be anything. And the weather being what it was, and their being shut in the way they were, it might grow very much worse before it grew better—before she could get help.

Again she gave aspirin and said a small prayer that she was doing the right thing.

"You have any water?" she asked.

Anna got up from her place beside the baby and went to get it, chattering along with nervousness, almost oblivious as to whether she made sense or not. "They said bring stuff to put water in, and I done that. I got water. I got food. I got blankets to wrap her in and keep her warm. I even brought her baby mattress. You see it there under her. I do try to do the best for Johnnie."

She brought an aluminum pitcher of water, still talking for all she was worth. "Do you know what's the matter with her? Got any idea what's the matter with her? I don't let her play with other children because their mothers talk about me and their kids say nasty things to Johnnie. To tell the truth, their mothers don't want my Johnnie playing with their kids. I don't think she could of caught anything, do you? And she's had all her shots."

Donna spoke out of sheer desperation, to hush that flow of words. "I wish I knew, Mi—Mrs. Brinkley. Nurses aren't encouraged to diagnose things, or have opinions about things that doctors decide. And I'm not a doctor."

The girl's eyes had grown big and were filled with anxiety. "You aren't trying to tell me my Johnnie's going to die, Miss Ledbury?" She reached out and caught hold of Donna's sleeve. There was pleading in her voice.

Before Donna could answer, an unshaven man appeared in the doorway. "Anna, honey, I got a bottle. You get somebody to stay with the kid and we can—"

Anna looked at Donna's face, then at the man, then back at Donna. Her expression became sly. "You go on, Mac. My kid's sick. I'm not going anywhere. You go look up somebody else."

"But there ain't anybody else," he complained. "I want you should—"

Anna came to her feet and moved toward him. Her face was twisted with anger. "You get out of here, do you hear? My kid's sick and I don't want you hangin' around. Get out." Her voice rose almost to a scream.

The man looked surprised, then shuffled off, the bottle in his hand.

"I don't know what he wants to hang around here for. Looks like anybody could take no for an answer. I told him no. You heard me tell him no, didn't you? Now what am I supposed to do for Johnnie?"

But before Donna could answer her, Cliff's deep voice spoke softly. "Hello, Anna. Johnnie sick, too? A lot of the youngsters are. Donna, can you come and look at four or five other children? Their mothers are scared to death."

Donna straightened up. Her back was sore and ached dully. "I've given Johnnie aspirin. I hope it will help. You might keep a damp cloth on her head if you have water enough. Give her water to drink whenever she wants it. I'll be back before long. I hope it's measles, or something like that. I think it may not be serious, but I can't be sure."

She left Anna still talking to her, and followed Cliff into the hall.

"Seems to me, we've got an epidemic among the younger generation," Cliff told her. "I hope it isn't something they all ate. It's too soon for them to have developed typhoid, isn't it?"

"I hope so," Donna answered wearily.

The night before, Donna had been sure that she could never feel more alone and helpless than she did with an expectant mother on her hands. Tonight, she had eleven children with high fevers, sore throats, runny noses and eyes. Those symptoms might indicate any of a dozen of diseases in the developing stage. She did not know which. She thought of diphtheria. She had never seen a case of that, although she had book knowledge of it. She checked. Only Johnnie Brinkley had had all the shots required for diphtheria. Shirley Swenson had had one, the others none. Suppose it were diphtheria?

She thought of scarlet fever, measles, everything in the book, likely and unlikely. She had run out of aspirin. The water supply grew shorter and shorter. Nothing could be sterilized. The night moved slowly on. Outside, there was the menace of the howling wind. Inside, this threat that she could not even define.

The young people stopped dancing and went off, for the most part in pairs. They sat on the steps, their arms about each other, whispering to each other. The second floor was forbidden them, had been shut off by heavy fire doors. Adults and younger children had bedded down. The darkness was complete except for prowling flashlights that went up and down the corridors. Mary had gone to the teachers' room on the second floor. Hank, Cliff, and Donna were behind three of the moving lights. The two men were almost as worried about the outbreak of sickness as she, but the responsibility was hers.

She thought wearily of going into her office and lying down on a cot there, but two more of the Worth children had come down with sore throats and runny noses. They were occupying the second cot. She went in, tiptoeing to be sure of not waking Mrs. Worth, who snored softly beside Sammy's bed. Gently she touched burning cheeks, shook her head because there was nothing she could do about them, picked up a chair and went out into the hall again. She wished she had a stool. If she could put up her feet, maybe she could get a little sleep.

Cliff came by and chatted with her a moment. She turned to him with her troubled thoughts.

"Was I the one who mentioned death—that we hadn't had any deaths?" she said despairingly.

"You don't believe that such a thing could have caused the Wards' deaths? They were well past the threescore and ten promised them. As for the children, you're nurse enough to know they run up fantastic temperatures without it meaning anything serious. The way this is developing, it could be one of the children's diseases that run through a neighborhood. You're tired, and that depresses you. And it's easy to think foolish things when you're awake in the dark, especially when you can't turn on a light. I'm going to bring you another chair to put your feet on. Maybe you can snatch forty winks before somebody else comes and wants your services."

He was as good as his word, but before she could drop off to sleep, Dusty came and spoke to her.

"Are the kids awfully sick, Miss Ledbury?"

To another boy his age, she might have said something noncommittal, but Dusty seemed seriously concerned. She told him the truth. "I don't know. I can't do anything for them, either. Maybe by tomorrow morning we'll know something. And maybe by tomorrow night we can get them to a hospital, or get a doctor here."

He dropped to the floor near her feet. "You've been pretty good to everybody, Miss Ledbury. Especially to these sick kids."

"You have brothers or sisters who are sick?" she asked, realizing for the first time that this independent young man might be a part of society, not an island to himself.

"No'm. I didn't forget what a wonderful dancer you was, and after that I sort of watched where you went and what you did. A lot of hard work it's been, and you ain't gettin' paid a penny extra for it, are you?" She couldn't see his face, but she felt that his eyes were fixed on where he thought her face might be.

Once again, he had presented a new idea to her. She laughed. "I really don't know. I hadn't thought about it."

"That's the way I thought you'd be about it," he said, his voice as serious as if the weight of the world were on his shoulders. "That's the way Mr. Warrender is, too. It ain't the money he cares about. You know what he done for me?"

"No," Donna said softly. She hadn't imagined that Cliff had done anything for Dusty.

"I'm crazy about cars, see?" he began his tale. "Cars and all sorts of machinery, but mostly cars. Well, last year I was walkin' along and wantin' to just drive a car once. I never had, but I'd watched other people drivin' and I was sure I could do it. And then I seen, parked at a curb, a car with the keys in. And I went ridin'. At first, I thought I'd only go around the block, but it was just great, ridin' along like that, and I kept going on and on. Even that first time, I was pretty good. Only, I run out of gas and the State Patrol took me up. I was done for, for sure. My old man was pretty fed up with me, anyhow, and Mom had all the other kids to think about. They're divorced, you know, and married to other people, an' it looks like I don't belong anywhere, an' the police—sometimes it looks like they're just down on a guy like me."

He had paused, and Donna nudged him on with a softly spoken, "Yes?"

"So I was at Youth Hall, and who come along, 'specially to see me, but Mr. Warrender. 'Course I knowed him by sight before that, but he never knowed me. And he sat down and started in by askin' me what it was all about. I wasn't goin' to tell him. I figured he was a big guy an' he wouldn't believe how it was. And then he started in to tell me how he got in with a crowd when he was about my age and was about to be sent up when a lawyer had him paroled to him and give him advice and sort of looked out after him, and so he decided to be a lawyer like this other fellow, even if he did have to work his way through an' all. He used to live around here. Did you know that?"

"He told me," Donna answered.

"Me, if I ever get shut of a place like this, I ain't goin' to tell nobody I ever been here, even. But he ain't ashamed. Anyhow, he made me think he'd see it my way some, an' I told him how it was. So he got me a suspended sentence an' had me paroled to him. An' he got me a motorcycle on credit and a job so's I could pay for it. I got only two more payments to make and she's mine."

He heaved a deep sigh and sat silent for a moment, then went on: "Danged if he ain't pretty near talked me into goin' back to school again. Me, that hated ever' day I ever went. He says I can study about engines an' things. Not that I really need it, understand. I can take pretty near any engine apart and put it back together again right now, but, like he says, folks keep askin' how much schoolin' you got, an' I might as well be able to hold my head up with the best an' tell them I got a high-school diploma. He says that high-school graduates make more money an' that someday I might want to quit racketin' around and marry a girl and have some kids. If I do, I'm goin' to stay married to one girl an' see that them kids walk a chalk, you can bet on that. Say, are you Mr. Warrender's girl friend?"

"I— No. I've never had a date with him. He brought me out here yesterday. I don't have a car," she explained.

Her mind was in chaos. This was a new picture of Cliff, who seemed to have as many facets as a fine diamond. The newspapers spoke of him as a lawyer who was clever to get the guilty off. She had considered him some sort of a shyster, in spite of her apartment mate's partisanship. Then he had seemed good company, gay. She had found a certain hardness in him. She had realized that, deep down, there was a sensitivity to an unhappy boyhood when he had spoken of his parents and quickly changed the subject. To Karl (Dusty) Hosey, he was a saint. This was a complex man with whom she had fallen so precipitately in love. There would be that desirable quality Shakespeare had spoken of as "infinite variety" in him. You'd never know exactly what to expect. You'd never be bored.

Dusty was speaking again. "He likes you, all right. I see him watching you when you don't know he's lookin'. Maybe he don't know it, neither. But he goes after you with his eyes ever' time you walk away."

Was this true? And if it were, did it mean anything? Dusty was a worldly-wise child. He might know a great deal more about such things than she. And it was true that Cliff hadn't seemed to be especially interested in Mary this afternoon.

"I hoped you was his girl," Dusty went on wistfully. "He's a really great guy, and you're so great. Seemed like you'd ought to fit together."

Donna laughed self-consciously. "I'm sure you've paid me the greatest of compliments, Dusty, and I do appreciate it, but maybe Mr. Warrender and I might see things a little differently. I have to go attend to my sick babies now. Thanks for talking to me."

And surprisingly, though she had not slept, she felt refreshed. Her step was buoyant as she started down the hall.

The only room where a bright light shone was the one where the card game still went on. Donna wondered if they were the same men, or if the personnel changed from time to time. As she glanced in, she realized that the game was less noisy now. Even these indefatigable players must be slowing up. Everywhere else there was silence except for the bereft cry of the wind outside, and here and there the fretful cry of a child. She made her rounds—seven children scattered up and down the hall, the three bedded down in her own office. She found nothing among her patients to encourage her. Their temperatures were, if anything, higher still. She did not use her thermometer. It didn't seem worth while to worry their parents or herself by discovering the exact degree when she could do nothing to help.