More Than a Dream (22 page)
‘‘We don’t know, but a neighbor found her crumpled at the foot of the stairway, and all the superficial wounds had already stopped bleeding. They thought she was in a faint, but when she didn’t respond, they brought her here, four women carrying her on a door.
‘‘I tried to tell her to leave him.’’
‘‘I know. So did I before you, and we both heard the same thing. ‘He’s a good man . . .’ ’’
‘‘ ‘. . . when he’s not drinking.’ Are the Irish really the worst when it comes to liquor?’’
‘‘I don’t know. I heard someone once say, ‘You can always tell an Irishman, but you can’t tell him much.’ I add, especially when he’s in his cups. But then, Patrick is Irish, and so is Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, head of the operating room. And finer people I don’t know. So you cannot class all by one or two.’’
Having washed off all the signs of the operating room, they donned fresh aprons and made their way down to the dining room, where the coffee was hot and the cook fixed whatever they wanted in double-quick time. They were sitting at the table enjoying their coffee when Patrick came looking for them.
‘‘He’s back.’’
‘‘Fine, tell him to take a chair in the waiting room, and I’ll be right with him.’’
‘‘You want me to go with you?’’ Elizabeth asked.
‘‘No, you take a moment to enjoy your breakfast. We have an hour or so before we begin rounds. I want you to spend some time with the children today. They enjoy it so much when you come.’’
Just then the door blew open, and Ian Flannery burst in with Patrick tucked underneath his arm. He flung the older man to the floor and advanced on Dr. Morganstein, who stood to receive him.
‘‘I was on my way to see you.’’ Althea nodded to Elizabeth to see to Patrick, who was picking himself up, looking none too steady on his pins.
‘‘Don’t move!’’ The man pointed a finger at Elizabeth.
Dr. Morganstein stepped in front of Elizabeth. ‘‘It is I you want to talk with, not she.’’
‘‘Where’s my wife?’’
‘‘Where did you leave her?’’
He paused. ‘‘None of your business. That’s what happens with you doctors. You think you know everyone’s business.’’ He paused again, his eyes roaming as if looking for something but not sure what. ‘‘I ask you for the last time. Where is me woman?’’
‘‘And I need not ask you where you left her, because I already know. You threw her down the stairs in a drunken rage and left her there!’’
‘‘No, no! I did no such thing.’’ But he stopped again, eyes searching to the right and then the left. ‘‘No, I couldn’ta done such a thing. I love me girl.’’
‘‘Well, I wish you had shown her that love, but because you beat her instead, she died not long after the women brought her here. She never regained consciousness.’’
‘‘And the bairn?’’
‘‘We tried to save him, but we were too late.’’
‘‘Him? How do ye know that?’’
‘‘He was stillborn.’’
Elizabeth listened as Dr. Morganstein sidestepped telling him about the emergency surgery. What would he do when he found out? What could he do? She glanced at the huge hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. He could do a lot of damage, that was for sure. He had, in fact, sent more than one man to their hospital. Ian had a fierce reputation, especially when he’d been drinking.
‘‘She really is gone?’’ He covered his eyes with his hands and rocked back and forth on wide-spread feet.
Patrick eased back and slipped out the door to see if the police had arrived.
‘‘I want to take her home.’’
‘‘We will notify you when we’ve—’’
‘‘You will notify me when I can take my dead wife home so we can be having a funeral?’’
‘‘Yes. If you go talk with Father O’Henry, we can fix up a coffin for her.’’
Elizabeth knew this was not hospital policy, but then she realized it was to save face. This man had no money for even the pine box that Patrick would nail together, and perhaps if they prepared the body and put it in the box, they could keep him from discovering what had gone on.
‘‘If you bring me the clothes you want her buried in, we will take care of the rest.’’
He studied her through slit eyes. ‘‘Why?’’
‘‘Why what?’’
‘‘Why are ye doin’ this? No one ever does something good for the Irish without wanting a pound of flesh in return.’’ His voice had softened.
Had Dr. Morganstein’s gentleness conquered his fury? Was she seeing ‘a soft answer turneth away wrath’ in action? If she had approached Reverend Mueller with the same calm, would she have been able to make a point too, instead of creating an enemy?
‘‘I want to see her.’’ All the agony he’d been yelling around spilled out of his face.
Dr. Morganstein drew in a quiet breath. ‘‘Give me a few minutes, and we will have her in a private room. If you will be seated, I will have coffee brought out for you.’’ When he started to sit she beckoned to Elizabeth with one hand. ‘‘Come with me.’’
Seeing the despair on his face, Elizabeth felt a pang in her heart. True, what he had done was despicable, but sorrow was sorrow, and he was grieving.
Grateful that the nurses had already cleaned up the body, they wrapped her in a sheet and moved the stretcher into an empty room.
‘‘I’ll comb her hair,’’ one of the younger nurses said. ‘‘She was a beautiful woman.’’
One of the other nurses brought in the baby, also wrapped in sheeting, and laid him in his mother’s arm. She stepped back. ‘‘Such a waste.’’
‘‘We did our best, and for us right now that is the most important part. Show Mr. Flannery up and have Patrick wait outside the door to show him out. I don’t want him wandering the halls.’’
He’ll most likely head right back to the saloon to drown his sorrows,
Elizabeth thought, then flinched at the hardness of her reactions. But not much. ‘‘Who will raise those two sweet children of hers?’’
‘‘He’ll most likely remarry very quickly and then beat up that wife.’’ The older nurse took Elizabeth by the arm. ‘‘And I don’t apologize for my words either. I’ve seen this too often. He was most likely born a bully, and he’ll die one. God protect those around him in the meantime.’’
After Ian left, Elizabeth watched as Patrick and two of the nurses readied the pine box and laid Moira and the babe in it. Since Mr. Flannery hadn’t returned with a dress for his dead wife, they made the gown they had look as nice as they could. The old man tacked the lid in place and oversaw the delivery to St. Mary’s Catholic Church a few blocks from the hospital.
‘‘I’m certainly glad that is over,’’ Elizabeth said to one of the nurses as they turned back to work that had been pushed aside. ‘‘Doctor wants me to spend some time in the clinic, so if someone needs me, that’s where I will be.’’ She climbed the stairs to the second floor where the noise of the waiting room slapped her on both sides of her head. She passed by the open doorway and continued down the hall to a door that said No Admittance. Pulling it open, she made her way down the corridor with small examining rooms on either side. Babies crying, children whining, mothers at their wits’ end either pleading or threatening permanent impairment if their children didn’t cease and desist. The heat of the rooms pressed against her, sucking out her sweat like rapacious bloodsuckers. She could feel herself wilting. The basement had been so cool. If only they could move everyone and everything down there.
‘‘Ah, there you are. Doctor said you would be joining us.’’ Nurse Korsheski stuck a pencil in the bun she wore at the top of her head. It joined another, giving her the appearance of a strange kind of fairy with wooden antennae.
‘‘What would you like me to do first?’’
‘‘Take that room. There are two very sick babies in there— twins. I’m thinking typhoid, but I’m hesitant to even mention it. How would we quarantine an entire tenement? She brought them here as a last resort. Shame they don’t do that as a first resort.’’
‘‘Will we admit them?’’
‘‘That is up to you and if Doctor will concur. Running at both ends they are.’’
Trying to remember what she had read about dysentery-type diseases, Elizabeth opened the door.
The stench made her gag and hesitate. A young woman sat leaning against the wall, one emaciated child on her lap, the other on a pallet at her feet.
‘‘Ma’am?’’ Elizabeth spoke once, then louder. ‘‘Ma’am.’’
‘‘Yes, sorry.’’ The woman raised her despair-laden eyes. ‘‘Can you please help us? Me neighbor said if anyone could, you would here.’’
‘‘How long have they been ill?’’
‘‘Three, four days. I used the last silver I had to pay a doctor to come, but all ’e did was give me a bottle of some kind of medicine and collect his money. Sign in the window said ’e could cure anything.’’
Elizabeth, breathing through her mouth, bent over to examine the boy sitting on the woman’s lap. She lifted an eyelid to peer into his eye. Yellowed, jaundiced. ‘‘Can he keep anything down? Water, milk?’’
The woman shook her head. ‘‘And if it does stay down, it runs right out the other end. I drag water up from the pump down the street, but I can’t keep up with the changing and washing.’’
Shivers shook the child on the floor in spite of the furnace-like heat emanating from his body.
Elizabeth tried to think of where she could put these poor babies and who would care for them.
‘‘I will stay and care for them if’n you tell me what to do. No one to home who needs me.’’
‘‘Did you bring the medicine along that the doctor gave you?’’
She pulled a brown bottle out of her reticule.
Elizabeth pulled out the cork and sniffed it. Moonshine for sure, and if there were any curatives in it, she’d be surprised.
‘‘I already lost a baby.’’
‘‘Follow me.’’ Elizabeth picked up both sides of the pallet, cradling the child in the fold, and led the way to a room at the back of the floor. It was barely larger than the single bed that waited for them.
‘‘We will wash the babies first in the water closet and then lay a sheet across that bed. If we put diapers on them, that will help too.’’ She showed the young mother into a bathroom that, simple as it was, made her eyes grow round. ‘‘If you will start washing them up, I’ll prepare the room.’’
Elizabeth ignored the thought that she should clear this with Dr. Morganstein as she set a pitcher of water on the stand. Hot as it was, the boys needed nothing more than diapers.
‘‘Oh, Doctor, I canna begin to thank ye. . . .’’
‘‘You are most welcome. Your job is to sponge them off to help keep them cool and dribble water into their mouths every half hour or so. I’m going down to see if we have some broth ready.’’
And to ask if anyone knows of something else to do
.
She saw two more patients, one with boils she was able to poultice and lance, the other with the wheezing she feared to be consumption.
Lord, how many of these people would not be sick were it not for
their terrible living conditions?
But she didn’t bother to voice her plea. Everyone else already knew that was what was wrong.
She’d just returned from checking her hidden family and for an instant had laid her head down on a tabletop when she felt a gentle hand on her head.
‘‘Is there something I can do?’’ Dr. Morganstein handed her a glass of lemonade. ‘‘This is a treat for all of us, so enjoy.’’
‘‘At home we drink ours out on the verandah under the shade of an oak tree that might be a hundred years old.’’ Elizabeth took a sip. ‘‘Ah, good.’’
‘‘Now we must talk. I learned that you admitted two very ill little boys.’’
‘‘I gave them one of the back rooms. Their mother plans to stay with them. She washed them up, and they are sleeping right now. I gave her orders to dribble water in their mouths, alternating with the beef broth I took up there. I was coming to ask if there was anything else we can do.’’
‘‘If it is typhoid fever, they are highly contagious.’’
‘‘That is why I put them way back there.’’
‘‘Are they beyond saving?’’
Elizabeth stared at the woman across the table from her. ‘‘I hope not.’’ Elizabeth shrugged. ‘‘Children have amazing powers of recuperation.’’ She waited for an answer, but when Dr. Morganstein continued to stare at her clasped hands, Elizabeth set her glass aside and leaned forward. ‘‘Did you want me to send them on their way? Some man with the unlikely title of doctor visited them and took her money for a bottle of nothing. Here we are dedicated to saving lives, and you want me to just shove them out in the street? At least here they are in a clean bed, with clean water. If they have a chance anywhere, it is here.’’
‘‘Elizabeth, you are right, but if others die because of trying to save those two boys, what have we accomplished?’’
Elizabeth tried to force her mind to come up with an answer, but instead she heard someone yelling. The male voice came closer, louder with a drunken slur. ‘‘ ’Tis all her fault. She told me Moira I was no good!’’ He pounded on the wall, the echo of the thud chilling her blood. ‘‘Ye butchered me wife!’’
Elizabeth felt as if someone had grabbed her by the neck and shaken her. Ian Flannery was back in the building.
Northfield, Minnesota
End of July