The Prodigal Girl (33 page)

The doctor went out, and the nurse gave her something in a spoon.

“I must get up,” said Betty, trying to lift her head from the pillow.

“You’ll have to have something to eat,” said the nurse crisply. “I’ll bring it.” Betty reflected that she was faint. Perhaps that was the reason her legs felt so weak, and her arms and hands when she lifted them. It would be better to wait for breakfast. It wouldn’t take long, and she remembered that she had no money.

The nurse brought hot milk and fed it to her in a spoon. It tasted good. She wondered that she had always despised hot milk.

Memories were beginning to drift into her mind. The morning she started. The place she had left her galoshes under a seat in the station in Springfield. Would they be there when she got back?

In a minute now when the nurse went out she would put on her shoes and her coat and hat and slip out. Nobody would know. They would think she was a visitor. The nurse had put her coat and hat in that peculiar long wardrobe at the foot of the bed. It would be easy to get away. And she would go to Aunt Florence’s. Aunt Florence would help her. She wouldn’t have to tell everything. She could make up some kind of an excuse for being in New York alone. She would think about it later when she got a little rested.

She closed her eyes and took the last few spoonfuls.

“Now,” said the nurse, setting the cup and spoon down on the little stand by the bed, “you haven’t told me your name yet. We have to have your name and address to keep our records.”

Betty kept her eyes closed and breathed steadily. She didn’t want to answer that question. Perhaps the nurse would think she was asleep.

The nurse brought her pad and pencil, and said: “Now, what did you say your name was?” But Betty did not hear her. She seemed to be lying in her bed upstairs at the farm, with her father downstairs praying, and God standing out there somewhere in the room watching her.

The nurse went out in the hall.

“She dropped off to sleep before I got her address,” she said to the head nurse. “Now, what’ll I do? The doctor told me to phone her folks.”

The head nurse consulted the card the doctor had given her: “Better let her sleep,” she said. “What her folks don’t know won’t hurt them, and the doctor’s got her marked up as just needing to rest before she goes home.” So Betty slept.

From time to time the nurses flitted in and out of the little room where she had been taken for examination. They took her temperature, and they gave her medicine, and even fed her a few mouthfuls of broth, and still Betty slept.

She slept all through the long Sabbath day, while her mother was agonizing at the farm unable to get in touch with her father, while Chris kept the wires hot telephoning and telegraphing in various directions, while the children sat around disconsolately trying to amuse themselves, and Jane stood at the window and watched and grew strangely silent and mature.

It was Monday morning, bright and shining when Betty awoke.

She found that she had been undressed and put to bed properly. She stirred and found that she was able to move. She got up and stood upon her feet. They were shaky, but they would hold her. She could walk as well as ever.

She was nearly dressed when the nurse came in with her tray.

“Well!” said the nurse. She was a new one that Betty had not seen before. “Good morning. You’re up already! And ready for the day. I hear you’re to be dismissed this morning if you haven’t any temperature. The doctor comes in about ten o’clock, and he’ll look you over, and then I guess they’ll let you go if he doesn’t find any complications. I guess you’ll be glad.”

Betty smiled shyly.

“You’re fortunate!” said the nurse. “The young man that was brought in the same time as you hasn’t got conscious yet.” A horror filled Betty.

She did not feel like eating the breakfast that was spread before her, hungry as she was. She tried to ask a question, but it stuck in her throat.

“Is he—Then he isn’t—He’s—a–live yet?” she asked with blanching face.

“Oh, yes, he’s alive. But he’s got a fractured leg and arm and a fractured skull. They don’t know, but they may have to trephine. They’ve sent for his folks. They found his driver’s license and got ‘em on the phone. The doctor wouldn’t let anyone wake you. He said you’d be all right after you woke up, but you needed an unbroken rest.”

Betty tried to eat a little of the fluffy omelet, but another question was sticking in her throat. Ought she to go and see Dud? Would they let her? It wouldn’t be quite upright not to even ask about him. He had been unspeakable. It made her shudder to think of that terrible ride. She felt as if she never wanted to see him again. But she didn’t want to run away and leave him. If he was dying she couldn’t run away. Even if they thought she was the cause of his death! Even if they had her arrested for murder, she had no right to run away. It was yellow to do it. Something fine in her nature would not let her go without making some effort to help. She would have to stick by.

“Would they—” she paused to gather words—“could I go in and see him?”

“Oh, yes, I guess you could,” said the nurse. “I could ask the head nurse. It couldn’t do him a mite of harm I shouldn’t think. He isn’t conscious. Of course his folks aren’t here yet—”

But Betty had to get to the bottom of this. She must know just how far she ought to be expected to go.

“Would I be allowed to—to—help him—any?” The nurse gave her a keen look.

“What relation are you to him?” she asked curiously. “You ain’t his sister, are you? You don’t happen to be married to him, do you? You look awful young for that.”

“Oh, no!” said Betty quickly, her cheeks growing scarlet. “I’m just a—just a—just an acquaintance. We were out taking a—a—ride together!”

“Mercy goodness!” said the nurse, aghast. “An’ you were out at that time in the morning!”

Betty’s cheeks flamed hotter.

“Oh, no,” she said quickly, “it was early evening when we started,” and then she realized that she was only making things worse.

“Good night!” said the nurse. “Then you musta lain on the roadside pretty near all night before anyone found you.”

Betty looked down at her tray and poured cream on the dish of oatmeal.

“It was—pretty awful—I guess—” she tried. “I don’t really remember much about it after the car began to go down the hill.”

“Well, don’t talk about it,” said the nurse. “You best forget it as soon as you can. You’ve got to live, and you can’t keep yourself upset remembering things like that. I guess you could go in and look at him, but they won’t let you stay. He’s too sick. They won’t let even his mother stay in the room when she comes. She’ll mebbe take a room near here, but they don’t let folks stay in the room much when a patient is so bad.” Betty brightened.

“You don’t think I—that is, perhaps it would be polite for me to stay around till he was better. It doesn’t seem just right to go off and leave him alone.”

“Oh, my land, child! He ain’t alone. His folks phoned for him to have a special nurse, two if necessary, and they’re coming on this morning, too. They’ll be here by noon or a little after. And even if you wanted, there wouldn’t be any place for you to stay except the little sun parlor down the hall, and that’s always full with visitors. This room is engaged for today. A girl. Operation. Appendicitis! She’ll be in about three o’clock. The hospital’s awful full now. You’d a been put in the ward if you’d been a regular case, but they had two women dying there last night, and one was hollering to beat the band. The doctor thought it would be better for you to rest in here, being as this wasn’t occupied till today.”

Betty shivered and drew a deep breath of thanksgiving. She had never realized before what depths of horrors there were that one might escape. She took another bite of the oatmeal and cream.

“I ought to pay something for all you’ve done for me here,” she said, thinking aloud. “But I haven’t got my pocketbook with me. I guess it got lost in the snow.”

Betty remembered the meager two cents left in her pocketbook and wondered if that had been a lie. “I’ll have to send something back when I get home.”

“Oh, that’ll be all right, I’m sure,” said the nurse, smiling. “But don’t your folks know about your accident? Aren’t they coming to see you?”

“Why—my family”—Betty hesitated—“my family are out of town,” she finished glibly, “and it wasn’t worthwhile to worry them, you know. I—am—going to my aunt’s. She didn’t know just what day I was coming, so of course she won’t worry.”

“Well, that’s fortunate, now isn’t it? I always feel so sorry for the folks that have to worry. What pretty hair you have. It’s naturally curly, isn’t it? I always say that people that have naturally curly hair have the advantage of everybody else. Now, if you’ve finished your breakfast, I’ll see if they will let you look at your friend.”

She went out with the tray, and Betty felt suddenly cold and frightened and very young. Oh, if she only didn’t ever have to see Dudley Weston again looking that way! It was too horrible! Why did people have to die anyway? What an awful world it was!

The nurse came back with permission for Betty to go to Dudley’s room, and in fear and trembling she followed the nurse.

“He won’t know you, you know,” the nurse whispered as she opened the door, and Betty took a deep breath and stepped within the threshold casting frightened eyes at the bed.

But there was nothing of Dudley Weston there on the bed to recognize save the tip of his chin with the cleft in it, the cleft that used to make him so good looking. His hair had been cut away, and his head and face were swathed in bandages. Some of them were soaked in blood. His hands were bound up in gauze also, and one arm was in splints. There was a weight hanging at the foot of the bed from under the sheets, which the nurse explained was put there to keep the broken bone in place and stretch it so that if he got well one leg would not be shorter than the other.
If
he got well!

She shivered at the thought of Dudley, bound up that way, with all those terrible possibilities hovering over him. Dudley the lithe, the athletic, the best dancer and tennis player in high school. Dudley, who was planning to be a polo player! Dudley whose pride was his grace of movement, his incessant activity! What if he should never walk again! What if one leg should be shorter than the other, like the Boyd boy who had to walk with a crutch! She could not picture Dudley a cripple.

Dudley was turning his head monotonously from side to side and babbling strange sentences that were utterly unintelligible. He frightened her and made her feel as if she were back in the car going down that steep incline while he shouted awful curses at the brakes! She began to cry softly and hid her face in her handkerchief, her little, crumpled, dirty handkerchief that had done overduty for the last forty-eight hours.

The nurse put her arm about her and led her from the room.

“I wouldn’t feel so bad,” she said comfortingly. “He might get well after all. The doctor said he had a chance.”

A chance! Only a chance!

“If I only hadn’t gone with him!” Betty sobbed, unaware that she was revealing herself.

“Well, now I wouldn’t blame myself,” soothed the nurse. “You know we can’t help these things. What was to happen has to happen, I always say, and no good comes of blaming anybody. Like as not some other girl woulda gone if you hadn’t uv.”

Betty thought of the loud, coarse, common creature at Springfield and admitted to herself that this was probably true. Dudley Weston would always find a girl, of some kind. Yet she felt herself judged guilty by some finer moral judgment.

“You’d better lie down awhile now,” said the nurse. “I’ll just spread up the bed, and you can take a nice nap. You need it after going in there. It’s kind of a strain, and you’re sort of shaken up. You’ll have plenty of time for a good rest before the doctor makes his rounds, and like as not he’ll dismiss you.”

Betty submitted to having her shoes taken off and being put to rest under a blanket. But as soon as the nurse’s footsteps had died away down the hall she slipped up again and put on her shoes and her hat and coat. She did not want to wait for that doctor and more questions. She wanted to get away without having her name taken. She was fairly in a panic about it. It seemed as if her full senses had just come back to her. Also, she wanted to get away from Dudley in the room down the hall, moaning and turning his head from side to side. If she could do nothing she must get away. She could telephone afterward and find out how he was, but she must go quickly. If his father and mother were coming they would look after him.

She stole to the door and listened. There seemed to be nobody in the immediate vicinity of her room just then. There were two nurses down at the end of the hall walking, but their backs were turned. There was only an old woman with a mop and pail just going into the room next to hers.

She glanced down the hall in the other direction. The stairs were only a few feet away, with the elevator next to them, and the incessant bell sounding mysteriously in the passage. It seemed a propitious time to make an escape.

With another quick look around she opened the door, crossed the hall like a wraith, and slid into the stairway.

The stairs were white marble, a few steps and then a turn to a landing, then a few more steps and another turn. She was out of sight from the floor above in a moment.

Her knees felt shaky yet, but her fear of being held up and made to tell her name and address gave her strength to go on, down and around, turn after turn, floor after floor. She had no idea she had been brought up so far in that wheelchair in the elevator.

But at last she came to a hall that had a great arched doorway to the street and a row of patients sitting in line waiting to see the doctors.

She gave them one quick wild glance and hurried past them out through the door, into the noise and bustle of the street. No one had seemed to notice her; no one had tried to detain her or seemed to realize that she was a patient escaping before she had been dismissed, but she felt as if an army with banners were pursuing her.

At the first corner she turned and walked rapidly, feeling a little easier. Then suddenly she stopped, realizing that she did not know the name of that hospital. She could not send them money for what they had done for her, and she could not find out how Dudley was unless she knew where he was.