The Moon by Night (14 page)

But Mrs. Carteret, at the moment, cared nothing for all the sumptuousness. Her face was set in lines of displeasure, with her faint silver eyebrows drawn together and her mouth fixed in a taut line. “So this is shingles. Well, I tell you I don't think much of them.”

Dev leafed through Mrs. Carteret's hospital file, then looked up and said to Nurse Kitty Kalm, standing quietly on the other side of Mrs. Carteret's bed, “I see no notes in here of initial indications, yet the vesicles already encircle the trunk completely.”

“Sir, the only other doctor who examines Mrs. Carteret is Dr. Pettijohn, and I don't believe he has done a thorough physical since she has been here,” Kitty answered evenly.

“Please stop talking across me as if I were a log,” Mrs. Carteret said irritably. “Dr. Buchanan, I don't want any of those female doctors nagging me, and I certainly don't want a young mooncow like Dr. Pettijohn going over me with a jeweler's loupe looking for
vesicles
. I bathe every day. Kitty helps me, and she can tell you I haven't had these detestable sores until today. They just appeared.”

Dev nodded, listening to her closely. “I see. I do apologize, Mrs. Carteret. It is rude to talk over a patient. I'm going to give Nurse Kalm some instructions for your nursing, but you are going to be obliged to let the staff physicians check the rash twice each day.”

“I will only allow
you
to do such an abominable thing,” she said stubbornly. “You are my physician. If I wanted the mooncow, I would retain him. As for Dr. Duvall, she is less offensive than many females, but I doubt that her looking at this rash a-tsk-tsking about it will cure me any quicker than if you look at it and tsk-tsk about it whenever you chance to be here. So that is settled. All I require of you at the moment is for you to tell me how I became infected with this and what you propose to do about it.”

His dark eyes alight with amusement—Kitty Kalm saw with a small secret sigh that his deep dimples were visible just to each side of his dashing mustache even though he was not actually smiling—he answered, “It is thought that shingles is an infectious disease much along the lines of varicella and rubella, though we are not completely certain that it is, in point of fact, infectious in the sense of—”

“Devlin Buchanan, you are not to stand there and spout all that physical blatherese to me,” she interrupted imperiously. “Very well. You don't know what shingles are. Do you have a cure? And keep it succinct and to the point, I beg you. I am old and don't wish to die before you answer my question.”

“I'm afraid I don't,” Dev admitted.

“Will they go away, or is this repulsive rash a lifelong misery?”

“It will go away eventually,” Dev answered, now soberly. “Are you in very great pain?”

“No, I wouldn't say that,” Mrs. Carteret answered. “But I am uncomfortable. The rash is sensitive, yes, and I do have a sort of burning sensation underneath the skin.”

Dev nodded, making quick notes in the file. “That's usual. Unfortunately many times the pain worsens at night. And I think you will find that the type of material you wear next to the skin sometimes adds to the discomfort. Do you by chance have any satin nightdresses?”

“No, it's been many, many,
many
years since I wore satin to bed,” she said tartly, her faded blue eyes sparkling. “You're a resourceful young man-about-town—perhaps you might buy me one?”

Without looking up from his scribbling and without change in expression Dev answered, “Certainly, ma'am. Scarlet, I presume?”

Cassandra Croly Carteret cackled. “If I were thirty—well, perhaps forty years younger I would have given Victoria Steen a run for her money. I would have married you just for the fun of it.”

“Most of my patients would not characterize me as
fun,
” Dev said, now very stern, “but from you I take it as a compliment. I'll be back tomorrow, Mrs. Carteret. I've prescribed a sedative for you in case you need it to sleep. Good evening, ma'am.” He motioned for Kitty to follow him. When they were out in the hallway and Kitty had closed the door, Dev said in a low voice, “She was upset. What happened today?” Slowly they walked down the quiet ward to the nurses' station.

Kitty sighed. “Mrs. Hambelin, Mr. Hambelin, the nursemaid, and all four of the children were here for
hours
this morning. I almost broke out in hives myself. I mean, it was very tiring for Mrs. Carteret, sir.”

Dev nodded. “All right, Nurse Kalm, from now on I would like for you to either make notes in her file yourself, or if Dr. Pettijohn prefers, he might make the report each day. This file is rather spotty. Because Mrs. Carteret's family is, I believe, such a part of her symptomatology I think we should carefully note each time they are here and how the visit went so that we may see if there are any following symptoms.”

Dev sat down at the nurses' station with his patient files and busily made notes in them as Nurse Kalm stood quietly by and filed them as he finished.

Cassandra Carteret's only daughter, Edith Hambelin, had insisted on admitting her mother. Mrs. Hambelin and her family had moved into her widowed mother's six-story mansion on Fifth Avenue; in fact, she lived only a block down from Victoria and Dev. But the Croly mansion was much older than Victoria's newly built home. It had belonged to Mrs. Carteret's first husband, John William Croly, who was a very wealthy dry goods importer-exporter. He had died after they had been married twelve years. Then Cassandra had married Edith's father, Louis Carteret. Cassandra had miscarried two children and had finally given birth to Edith but never conceived again. Louis had died two years ago. Edith's husband was a successful attorney in New Jersey, and Cassandra had been astonished—and horrified—when the entire family just picked up and moved to Manhattan into her home, with apparently no desire to find a house of their own.

One day Cassandra had stumbled over one of the children's wooden toys—they littered the entire floor of the family rooms—and fell, although she merely sat heavily and awkwardly down on an armchair. Edith had made such a scene that Cassandra wearily allowed her to take her to St. Luke's and check her in for overnight observation.

That had been three weeks ago. Two days after Cassandra had checked in, she began to evidence senility. That is, she seemed bewildered sometimes and could not recall why she was in the hospital. Sometimes she forgot simple things, as when she asked Kitty for her breakfast after she had already eaten breakfast. But the symptoms were peculiar by their very erratic nature. Most of the time Cassandra was as sharp as any needle. The entire staff and physicians strongly suspected that Mrs. Carteret was faking most, if not all, of her mental weakness. But to them it wasn't a matter for impatience. It showed that the patient must be very unhappy at home, when she would obviously rather stay in a hospital.

Now Dev was finishing his notes in Mrs. Carteret's file. “How has her state of mind been generally?”

Kitty answered knowingly, “Just fine until this morning. Then we had a little scene because she insisted that there was a cat under the bed.”

Dev murmured, “That's very amateurish for Cassandra.”

“Not really. Mrs. Hambelin is deathly afraid of cats. It upset her something awful every time Mrs. Carteret looked on the other side of her bed and said, ‘Kitty, kitty.' Mrs. Hambelin would give this little jump and scream. I was having a hard time keeping quiet and dignified, like, because it's a joke between us, you see….” Her voice faltered, then died out as Dev stopped writing and looked up at Kitty. “But there, I'm noodling on about things you couldn't possibly be interested in, Dr. Buchanan. I beg your pardon.”

“Not at all,” he said gravely. “Mrs. Carteret is my patient, and I'm interested in everything that concerns her health, either mental or physical. What were you saying about a joke between you?”

“Well,” Kitty went on reluctantly, “we make jokes about our names. All the
k
sounds, you see—Kitty Kalm, Cassandra Carteret. Mrs. Carteret says we both have silly names, so sometimes she teases me by calling me Kitty-Kitty, and I call her Cassie-Cart. So when she was bending over the bed, calling Kitty-Kitty and looking up at me and winking, I had a hard time not spoiling the joke and laughing.”

“I see,” Dev said, his dark eyes twinkling and the dimples showing again. “Perhaps we might get Mrs. Carteret a cat. For Christmas. Good job, Nurse Kalm. You're extremely good with an admittedly difficult patient.” He scribbled a little more.

Cheney joined Dev and Kitty at the nurses' station. Worriedly Cheney said, “Dev, Mrs. de Sille still has influenza, and the ipecac did not work at all in breaking up that awful thick mucous. I've never known it not to have any effect at all, and I did prescribe the maximum dosage for inducing coughing. Anyway, I'm going to try that hot chocolate with cayenne pepper that we used for that poor tiny little girl in the orphanage—Olivia, that was her name. Can you think of anything that might be better?”

“No. If that doesn't break it up, then nothing will,” Dev answered. “Listen, Cheney, Mrs. Carteret has shingles, so I'm going to isolate her and place a carbolic acid washstand by the door. Don't let Mevrouw de Sille visit her. Mrs. de Sille doesn't need shingles, and Mrs. Carteret doesn't need influenza.”

“Of course,” Cheney agreed and asked innocently, “Does this isolation include Mrs. Carteret's daughter and grandchildren?”

“Most definitely,” Dev said evenly.

“Then you'd better tell Mrs. Flagg for the morning shift, sir,” Kitty said apologetically. “I tried to suggest to Mrs. Hambelin today that Mrs. Carteret needed her rest, but Mrs. Hambelin just shooed me away and told me that she knew best how to care for her own mother. I did have my duties, sir, and I did them, but Mrs. Hambelin wouldn't let me sit and visit with Mrs. Carteret during her lunch, as I know she likes. Mrs. Hambelin was going on and
on
about how expensive the daily rate on the suite was and asking Mrs. Carteret, ‘Wouldn't you be so much happier in one of the private rooms, Mother, or perhaps even in one of the beds on the ward? They do have such nice walnut partitions, such a lovely wood, walnut,'” Kitty said in a grating high coy voice, then catching herself, lamely added, “Dr. Buchanan, sir.”

One of Dev's eyebrows twitched up. “Thank you for the insightful information into the patient's state of mind, Nurse Kalm.”

Thoughtfully Cheney said, “Nurse Kalm, you've been Mrs. Carteret's most favored companion these weeks. What do you think of Mrs. Carteret's attitude concerning the suite? Could you gauge her reaction to Mrs. Hambelin's suggestions at all?”

“Well…no, ma'am. I mean, Mrs. Carteret was first making such a fuss about the cat under her bed, but then she seemed to give up and lay back and just suffered through the rest of the visit without hardly moving or saying anything.”

Cheney said to Dev, “You know, it might not be such a bad idea, after all. I suspect she might even like it. Changing to a private room, I mean. Not the ward.”

“Oh?” Dev said with interest. “Why is that?”

“Well,” Cheney said slowly, “the private rooms are smaller. And Mrs. Carteret is proud, but it doesn't seem to me to be the greedy grasping kind of pride that she has to have only the most expensive everything all the time. In the private rooms there's only the straight chair, one armchair, and a hassock. So naturally there would be less room for visitors. But when you need to know something personal about the patient, ask the nurse. What do you think, Kitty?”

“I think you're absolutely right, Dr. Duvall,” Kitty responded forcefully. “I should have thought of it.”

Dev nodded. “Excellent, Cheney—and Nurse Kalm. I think that it would be better if you broached the subject with her. Just don't pressure her either way; let her make the decision. You understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Kitty said, glowing. “I'll go talk to her about it right now.” She bustled off down the hall.

Cheney pulled out a new hospital file and started writing in it. “Good, then that's settled,” she said briskly. “I'll be able to give my patient the suite.”

Dev narrowed his eyes. “Your patient? So you're telling me that you fiddled my patient out of the suite so that your patient could have it?”

“No, no—well, perhaps I did,” Cheney admitted with a mischievous smile. Dev didn't smile back. He rarely did. She went on, “It's Annabeth Forbes, Dev. She's checking in tonight, just as soon as she can get her household in order.”

“Annabeth? Not Annalea?” Dev asked. “Is it the pregnancy?”

Annabeth Forbes was Annalea Forbes's mother. Annalea was now seven years old. When she was four, Cheney and Shiloh had saved her from drowning at a Vanderbilt party on their clipper ship. Since then, Mason Brackett Forbes, a powerful, wealthy investment banker and a giant on the Exchange, and his wife Annabeth, had been Cheney's staunchest patrons. Aside from the recognition the incident had brought her—many members of Manhattan's most prominent families had witnessed it—the Forbes family had recommended Cheney to anyone who ever mentioned needing a physician.

Annabeth was now twenty-five, while Mason was forty-nine. They had been hoping for more children—they both positively doted on Annalea—but this was the first time Annabeth had conceived in the last eight years.

“Only partly, but that is, of course, the main concern,” Cheney answered. “She's had a healthy, untroubled pregnancy until last month. Then she started to experience much discomfort. In the last trimester she quickly gained twelve pounds, and that's a lot for Annabeth's small frame. She's been depressed and teary, as some women get, you know. But the real problem is that I'm afraid Annalea might have rubella.” Rubella, or German measles, as it was commonly known, could be fatal to a fetus if a pregnant woman caught the highly communicable disease.