Ozark Nurse (7 page)

She had stopped in to say hello to Mr. and Mrs. Lodge one evening about two weeks before. That was the first time he had met her. Subsequently there had been several accidental meetings. Two or three times she had picked him up in her car when he was walking. Once, in the evening, he had run into her in the drugstore and bought her a coke. She had driven him home afterwards, and sat for quite a while talking.

"That was the night she asked me about you. She said that she had heard around town that you and I were engaged, and asked when we were to be married. I said, 'Probably never.' "

"You said
what
?"

He went to her swiftly and caught her hands. "Oh, honey, please try to understand. I've been so mixed up about everything, so miserable. To be honest, what chance is there for us to be married?"

Why not face it?
She
kept postponing marriage because of her family responsibilities. "Now that my life is up in the air, it's more hopeless than before. I don't know what my future is to be. If I can't get back in stride—"

"Which you refuse to try to do," Nora said cuttingly.

"All right. I refuse to try. Which is to say, I'm sunk. If I don't resign here I'll be asked to get out. And what have I got to offer you? What right have I to hold you tied to a promise which has become almost meaningless?"

"Exactly what are you trying to tell me?" she asked stonily. "That you want us to break up?"

He did not speak.

"Because if that's what you want," she continued in that cold, expressionless voice, "just say so. All you have to do is to say that you've stopped loving me."

"If you would try to understand, Nora. I'm trying to do the right thing, the honest, decent thing. What right have I to—"

She had turned wearily away from him. Now she turned back in sudden anger. "You call it decent and honest to discuss our relations with Rita Lansing; to deny to her that we planned to be married?"

"I didn't deny it. I only said—"

"I heard you the first time. Please don't sicken me by repeating it. And another thing: you keep on harping on doing what's right. You call it right to decide what's best for me without asking me how
I
feel about it? Remember who I am, Paul Anderson? I'm the girl who loves you, the girl who has built all her hopes and plans for the future around you. Doesn't it occur to you that I should have a little say as to whether we break up or not?"

He shook his head hopelessly. "Please, Nora darling, don't make things any harder for me. I'm already hanging over the ropes. I'm beat, honey."

"Good. Maybe you need some more beating, or to be bashed over the head. It might cure what ails you. You're just the way I've read neurotic people get. They can't think of anyone but themselves. I've been worrying myself sick about you. And meanwhile, what have you been doing? You've been forgetting our date, forgetting to phone, running to that girl who is no friend of mine and discussing me with her. You've been pretending there was nothing more than casual friendship between us. Why? Again I ask, have you fallen in love with her?"

He stared at her. "You know better than that, honey."

"I'm not sure of anything any more." She rubbed her fist across her eyes, which felt blurred.

She was silent for a moment; then she spoke in a small, forlorn voice. "I've wanted so to find a way to help you. I thought maybe if we got married right away and went away for a little trip, it might be the answer. I was going to suggest that we do that. I came in here to talk to you about it." The eyes she raised to his were blinded with the tears she could no longer hold back.

"I didn't expect to be told that you didn't want to marry me, ever; that you no longer loved me."

"I didn't say that." He shouted it, and grabbed her in his arms. "Not love you! You're the only girl I'll ever love, but—Oh, my darling. Have a little pity, a little understanding. I've been so miserable; I feel so lost. The future seems like a dense, dark fog. I can't see my way through it. But it hasn't anything to do with my love for you."

For a moment, then, the little room was wrapped in silence while they clung to each other. Nora held him close to her heart, as a mother would hold a desperately hurt child. "I love you," she whispered. "Please forgive me if I said things to hurt you. It was because I was hurt, and so afraid of losing you."

At that point the silence was broken by wild, shouted words from Ben Sackett, who loomed enormous in the doorway. He was a man gone completely berserk, with a rusted, long-nosed pistol in his bony, dirty claws. The revolver was pointed straight at them.

"Killing helpless little children," bellowed the voice, loud enough to be heard on the far side of the Ozarks. "Now carrying on with your nurse-woman. I've caught you right dead in your tracks. Now I know for sure you're a sinner who ain't fit to live. A sinning woman like her ain't fit to live, neither. So I'm gonna put a bullet through the sinning flesh of both of you."

Nora said afterwards that she was sure she didn't have a chance as she felt the first bullet fan the air against her cheek. The second bullet caught Paul in his shoulder, not his heart. But it was a close thing.

At first, when she saw the blood, Nora was sure it was a fatal wound. When she found that it was not, she was able to breathe again.

An hour later Nora sat on the cot in Margaret Thorpe's office, wondering if she was going to shake to pieces. Margaret had just given her an injection, a mild sedative to quiet her nerves. Now Margaret brought her a cup of strong, hot coffee, spoke into the phone when it rang, and turned back to say that was a call from Surgery. Paul's wound had been dressed and bandaged. He was doing fine.

"And I," said Nora, "am probably going to have hysterics." She gulped the burning hot coffee and said how ashamed she felt to be losing control of herself like this.

At first she had done beautifully, marveling at her own calm. She had been the poised, helpful nurse when the intern rushed in with a chair to wheel Paul over to Surgery. She had even tried to help the two orderlies get control of that fighting, howling maniac before they hustled him off to get him locked safely away until the police came. She was perfectly calm when the police officer came and took her statement as to what had occurred.

The young officer, with whom she had gone to school when they were teen-agers, had called her a "mighty brave little gal."

"That nut might have killed you."
He
was telling
her
.

The orderlies seemed to admire her self-possession, too. One of them said she "sure had guts."

"Gutsy me, Maggie! And look at me now!" After it was all over and quiet restored, she had gone to pieces.

"Reaction setting in," said Margaret calmly, and brought her more coffee. "As soon as you feel up to driving, go home. Stay home tomorrow. Rest. Put your troubles out of your mind. Nobody can live on her nerves forever, the way you've been doing."

"I'll be seeing the wild look in that creature's eyes as long as I live." Nora shuddered, and looked up as the door opened.

It was Paul. "Thank goodness you're all right," Nora exclaimed, coffee spilling as her shaky hand put down the paper cup. He looked a little shaky himself, and pale. But he was able to smile, and somehow he seemed more like himself than he had in a long time as he walked over to sit down beside Nora.

"Does it hurt much, Paul?" Curiously, she suddenly felt a burning stab in her own shoulder, as if she were taking his pain into herself.

"Nips a bit." His worried eyes roamed her face, sending sudden warmth all through her. "Nothing to worry about."

"Nothing to worry about!" Nora gasped, finishing the coffee, which really had helped. Now her hands had stopped trembling like those of an old woman with palsy. "That crazy creature might have killed you! When I think—"

A distracted look crossed the man's face. "How do you suppose I feel when I think he might have killed
you
?"

"For heaven's sake," Margaret said, bringing coffee to Paul, "stop fussing over each other, you two. In my book, you've had a very interesting experience. When you're an old lady, Nora, you can boast to your grandchildren about the time you were used for target practice by a bearded mountaineer."

With a deep sigh, she added: "Things like that never happen to me."

Nora laughed, announced that she felt ever so much better, and that maybe she'd better go see how Andrew Fine was doing.

"You are to go home," Margaret ordered firmly. She personally would check on Andy Fine. Nora was not to show her face in the hospital tomorrow. If she took two or three days off, that would be even better.

"I'll drive you home," Paul suggested, only to be told by Nora that he would do no such thing. After a short but heated argument, they compromised. Nora would drive home by herself. Paul would drive over to see her after dinner. Maybe they could take a short drive. "We have a lot to talk about, honey."

Their eyes met, and again Nora felt a comforting warmth pervade her. Things were going to be all right between them. His loving smile told her so.

"Hmmmm," said Margaret. "I've heard tell there's nothing like a bit of shooting from the hip to settle worrisome problems."

Nora burst out laughing, a little amazed that she was now able to laugh. "You've got the locale wrong, Maggie. I'll always believe that crazy loon had his gun stashed away in his beard."

Driving home, Nora decided that she would say nothing to the family about her near-brush with death. While she felt considerably better, she was still shaky, certainly not up to spending the dinner hour rehashing what had happened, or to listening to her mother's critical remarks about Paul.

From the start, Caroline had taken a dim view of her romance with a doctor who seemed content to settle down in a small town where he could "never make much of himself."

"Paul reminds me a lot of your father, Nora. Now I'm not saying John wasn't one of the best men who ever lived. But he lacked drive. He was perfectly satisfied to spend his life doctoring poor folks, and when they didn't pay the first bill he sent, John figured he shouldn't pester them by sending any more bills. I used to tell him that charity should begin at home, but he couldn't seem to see why I wasn't satisfied with a comfortable home and sufficient good, nourishing food."

A man who looked at things that way, according to Caroline, could be very irritating. "No matter how much you love him, you can't help wishing he'd bother a little more about giving you the nice things every woman wants."

Nora was less than two blocks from home when she saw a child running along the pavement, sobbing.

It was Bobby, Jerry's four-year-old son.

She braked the car and got out.

"Where do you think you're going, honey?" The child had orders never to leave the front yard by himself.

She caught up with him, stopping his headlong dash in the direction of downtown.

He tried to wrench free of her hands. "I'm going to look for my daddy. He went off to get some ice cream, and he ain't come back, and Mummy says maybe he's gone away and left us and ain't ever coming back. And I've got to find him."

Leaning down, Nora drew the little boy close. "Your daddy wouldn't go away and leave you, darling."

Bobby was a high-strung, nervous child with curly yellow hair and the face of an angel. She loved him as dearly as if he were her own son, and it made Nora sick all through to watch him growing into a highly neurotic child in a constant state of anxiety. It was his mother's fault.

"He would so go away and leave us." Bobby was still sobbing, but now clinging to Nora for comfort. "He did. Out there in that ole California, he went away a lot of times."

"Only twice, honey, and only to hunt for a job. He always came back, didn't he?"

She got the little boy in the car and drove on home.

In the kitchen, Bobby's mother, who did most of the cooking, was taking an apple pie out of the oven. She said hello to Nora, scolded Bobby for running off, and immediately cut a small wedge of the pie to taste. Ethel was a compulsive eater, forever nibbling and tasting.

Nora stood for a moment, chatting, watching Ethel, and wondered, as she often wondered, why Jerry's wife didn't take drastic measures to cut down her weight. Five years before, when they were married, Ethel had been a slim blonde girl with a very pretty face. Now she was a fat blonde girl, the prettiness fast disappearing.

Surely she must realize that all that fat might become repulsive to a man, especially a man like Jerry who was a very attractive hombre. Yet Ethel was so madly in love with Jerry that it was pathetic. Her jealousy of him was a kind of sickness which seemed to be growing worse all the time. She nagged at him, accusing him of being interested in other girls, although Nora was certain he was not.

Then when Jerry got fed up, made a few biting remarks of his own and went out to get a beer and have a little peace, Ethel went through agony, wondering if he had left her forever. Then she would eat, to comfort herself.

It was all wrong. Nora wished there were something she could do about it, particularly on Bobby's account. His mother's dread and insecurity were communicating themselves to the child. He adored his daddy, literally adored him. And, like Ethel, he was beginning to live in constant terror that Jerry wasn't coming back. Today wasn't the first time Bobby had taken off on his own to hunt for his daddy and bring him home.

Just as Ethel was beginning a harrowing, blow-by-blow account of that day's quarrel, they heard the front door open, then bang shut. "Hi, everybody! Where are all my sweethearts?" And into the kitchen walked Jerry, with Bobby in his arms. Bobby was squealing and laughing, hugging his father tight. His fears were gone now.

Jerry gave Ethel a warm kiss exactly as if nothing had happened, then embraced Nora, who never ceased to puzzle over the conflicting feelings she had about him. In money matters, he was as irresponsible as little Bobby, and at times it drove her wild. Yet she loved him dearly, not only because he was her brother and as children they had been very close, but also because, as she sometimes put it to herself, He was the kind of guy you just couldn't help loving.