Ozark Nurse (9 page)

"It's all I ever hear! Give me this, get me that. Now good old Nora is supposed to latch onto a rich patient and marry him if possible, so as to cushion life for all of you."

She grabbed for breath. "Who do you think I am—Santa Claus?"

During the small shocked silence that followed, she came to her senses. Deeply ashamed of her outburst, she said quietly: "I'm sorry. I've been through a terrible day. I am deeply upset about a lot of things, and I took it out on you. Please forgive me."

Nora went back up to her room, suddenly shivering with cold and from the hours of emotional tension, which had reached the breaking point at the table. She would, she decided, go straight to bed, take a couple of sleeping tablets, and hope that by tomorrow she would feel more like a normal human being.

Sadly she pulled off the pink sweater which she had put on to please Paul. Crazily she wished she could fly to some far away place where she need never see Paul again, never hear his name mentioned. Would he miss her? Would he care? Probably not.

The phone rang.

Paul? Her heart jumped. Maybe he was calling to say he would be there after all.

But it was Andrew Fine's voice she heard, and it was Andrew Fine who said that he had heard the story of the shooting, and that he could not sleep until he made sure she was all right.

His voice was warm and filled with concern, and for some silly reason tears sprang to her eyes. It was good to know that somebody cared about her and wanted to hear her voice, to know that she was well and safe, before he slept.

He asked again if she was all right. Was there anything he could do, such as loaning her some money to take a trip? After a terrific shock, sometimes a little vacation was a good thing.

Little vacation?

What she needed was a rest and vacation from her troubled mind; not a trip to some vacation spot where her thoughts would be part of the baggage she took, along with her clothes and toilet articles.

She thanked Andy for calling, thanked him for his thoughtfulness, and said there was really nothing he could do to help her. "I'm doing just fine," she said brightly.

"How about your friend, the doctor? He okay? I'm told one of the bullets actually hit him."

She was silent, grinding her teeth before she burst out: "He's been hit, all right, twice."

"Twice? But I was told there were only two bullets, and one went wild."

"Once by Ben Sackett's bullet," Nora said, and added savagely: "and once by a redhead." Obviously she had lost all control over her tongue.

"I see." He said it gently, as if he really did see and understand the emotional hurt that lay behind those bitter words.

"What about the marriage you spoke of?" he asked after a moment. "Is that still in the cards?"

"That was never in the cards," she said in a small voice. "That was just a silly idea in my head, and my head isn't working very well these days."

She was about to hang up when he said: "Wait. I want to remind you of what I said today, girl. I'm your friend." He spoke again of wishing to help her. He had little else to do, lying there on his back, so he thought about her a great deal of the time. She did so much to make others comfortable and happy. She deserved happiness in return.

He would, he said, do anything in the world to make her happy. If that was beyond his powers, then he would like to bash in the head of any idiot who caused her a moment's unhappiness.

Nora laughed. She said that she was a fair hand at fighting her own battles, but it was very kind of him to offer to fight one for her.

Ten minutes later she was undressed, in bed and ready to pull up the covers and turn off the light when Caroline came in.

She sat on the bed and took Nora's hand. It had been a long time since Nora had seen her mother look so deeply troubled over her.

"I am disturbed about what happened downstairs," her mother began. When Nora said quickly: "Forget it," Caroline shook her head, frowning.

No. There were things which had to be said.

She had never given much thought to the way they all imposed on Nora, which of course, was no excuse. She
should
have thought about it.

"We've all depended on you too much for things we should have done for ourselves."

Her small hands, pretty hands, plucked and twisted nervously at the sheet as she spoke of how it had been ever since Nora and the others were children. She seemed ashamed.

"I've known that Jerry and Carol come to you for small loans. It started when you were children. They would spend their allowance money the minute they got their hands on it. Then they'd sneak to you for extra money for the movies, for some toy or trinket. You gave away more of your allowance to them than you spent for yourself. I always knew. I should have stopped it. But I didn't."

"It was only right that I share with them," Nora said in a small voice. "After all, I was only an adopted child."

"Don't say that!" Caroline's usually mild eyes flamed. "Don't ever say that again! I never thought of you as adopted. I took you when you were a tiny baby. You were
my
baby, in every sense except the physical sense, and that has little to do with maternal love."

Nora stared at her wonderingly and was pervaded by a deep, comforting warmth. Never before had Caroline opened her heart to show the measure of her feelings.

"No." Her voice quieted. "That had nothing to do with anything, Nora honey. The whole trouble has been that you're the strong one."

"Strong? Me?"

Caroline nodded.

She supposed there was someone like Nora in almost every family; someone who was able and willing to shoulder responsibility.

"The rest of us," she smiled a small, bitter smile, "are clinging vines. I'm one. When John was alive, I let him do the worrying and the deciding. About all I ever did was complain because he didn't make enough money to suit me."

"He loved you dearly, Mother."

"Yes. That he did. Which isn't to say that I deserved all his loving and pampering." She shook her head sadly. "Maybe I'd have been a better wife if he hadn't spoiled me the way he did."

Most certainly Jerry and Carol would be better off if she had not spoiled them.

She grabbed a tissue to dry her eyes, which had filled with tears. "I worry about them all the time, Nora. That's the reason I'm sharp and short-tempered with you. We all want a whipping boy, I guess. Oh, Nora, what's going to happen to those two? Howie is a good husband; he does all he can to please Carol. But one of these days his patience will give out. And as for Jerry—"

"Things will work out, Mother. Just give them time." Nora didn't believe that herself, but it was a comforting thing to say.

"No." Caroline was crying again. "The way things are going, from bad to worse, how can they work out?"

Jerry should be working to support his wife and son. Instead, he seemed perfectly willing to settle down here at home, fritter his life away, let his mother supply the bed and Nora the food; and he had probably expected Ethel to go back to work as soon as Bobby was big enough.

"Did you know Ethel is pregnant again?"

Nora's eyes widened. "No!"

"Yes! So what happens now? I haven't the strength to look after two babies, if Ethel gets a job. And
you
can't be expected to support his family. Oh, Nora, I worry so. I get so frightened. I feel so guilty about raising two children who can't cope with life the way grown people should. I know it's my fault. If I'd been a good mother, I would have disciplined them, helped them to grow up to have a sense of responsibility."

Nora felt sick with pity. Her mother looked suddenly so frail, so lost, as if, in a matter of moments, she had become a frightened little old lady.

"And now I feel twice as guilty, because I see what we've been doing to you."

"Now you stop that sort of talk!" Impulsively Nora's arms reached out to draw her mother to her. "If I'm the strong one, let me be strong. If I'm a natural-born burden carrier, let me do what comes naturally."

She held Caroline close, petting and comforting her as if she were the mother, Caroline her child.

It had been a long time since they had been this close in love and understanding. It gave Nora a good feeling. She wept a little, and thought about Paul and his new habit of breaking a date every time Rita Lansing wagged a finger.

Somehow that didn't seem to matter as much as it had an hour before.

"You need your sleep," Caroline said, and left the room.

The Lansing house on the hill, completely modernized five years before by an architect imported from New York, was too elegant for Paul's taste. He felt ill at ease in all that grandeur: deep-piled carpets which muffled footsteps; luxurious, down-cushioned white divans; a white lace cloth on the beautifully appointed table in the dining area of the enormous living room.

Suppose he were to spill something, or topple over one of those fragile crystal glasses which the Negro maid in a tiny starched apron and cap kept refilling with wine?

"You aren't eating your frogs' legs, honey," chirped Rita, who had changed into a dinner dress after they reached the house. It was white lace, lined with yellow silk. A yellow ribbon was fastened in the fabulous hair, which now spilled loose to her shoulders. "Don't you like them?"

"Very much," said Paul, adding with a grin: "Only I didn't know what they were." Back in Minnesota on the farm where he had grown up, he said, plain eating and high thinking were the rule. Hospitals didn't go in for such delicacies, either.

Nelson Lansing threw back his head, laughing heartily. "You and I belong to the same league, son. I was raised on pork, corn pone and chitlins. This fancy grub is all Rita's idea. Don't know what I'm eating half the time."

He was a small man, a quite ordinary-looking man except for his eyes, which were dark and brilliant and never seemed to miss a trick. Why he should remind Paul of his father, a tall, gaunt, bald man, he did not know. There was no similarity in appearance.

It must be, Paul thought, an inner quality of forcefulness.

During the dinner, Paul tried to hold up his end of the conversation. But it was difficult for him to make small talk at any time, and he had never been more inarticulate than tonight.

His mind was clouded with personal worries, and it was impossible to put them out of his mind. Not the least of his worries was Nora. She was the one girl in the world for him. If they broke up, what would be left for him to hold to?

After they had finished desert, Rita jumped up and asked to be excused. There was a little something she had to attend to upstairs, she said gaily, and vanished.

Lansing asked the maid to bring more coffee, lit a cigar, and said without preamble: "Let's get down to brass tacks, son. How soon can you start to work for me?"

"But I haven't said that I would," Paul began. "For one thing, I'm still on the hospital staff."

"But you won't be for long." Lansing waved him to silence. "The way I understand it, you haven't been much good there recently. And when the story is published about that backwoods idiot running loose over there today—"

He interrupted himself to ask: "I suppose you realize there'll be a hint that you were guilty of some kind of criminal negligence when you operated on that Sackett kid, don't you?"

"There'd be no truth in that, sir."

Lansing smiled, not nicely. "Who's talking about truth?" The main purpose of a newspaper was to supply juicy reading that would interest the dopes. When a crazy old coot attempted violence on a doctor and a nurse, that was pretty good. But it was a lot better if the story was slanted to make it appear that maybe the old coot wasn't so crazy after all; that maybe the doctor in question had been at fault and should be kicked out.

Paul was silent for a moment, clenching and unclenching his hand while he tried to digest what he was being told. He didn't get it.

"But you own the paper, sir."

"Oh, sure." That smile again. "But I make it a rule never to interfere with the editorial policy."

"Are you saying you would not kill a story you knew to be unfair, damaging, and without justification?"

"I make it a hard and fast rule never to interfere with the editorial policy, son."

"I see." Paul sat silent, shocked.

He had the sickening feeling that he was being sucked into something which threatened what little hope he had left of getting his affairs back on an even keel. But when he tried to come to grips with that something, it was like trying to clutch a handful of fog.

Lansing laughed. "But you haven't a thing to worry about," he went on smoothly. "In fact, I'd say you were a mighty lucky fellow. Best thing that could happen to you would be to get out of that one-horse hospital. There's no future there, no money in it."

"Money has never been very important to me, sir." The remark did not meet with great favor from his host.

"The way I understand it, son, the average young fellow who goes in for medicine figures it is the best possible way to achieve social status, and at the same time line his pockets with plenty of the good old green stuff."

Paul begged to disagree. "I've known very few men who studied medicine for that reason, Mr. Lansing. A few, perhaps. But they were in the minority."

Lansing laughed, truly amused. "You're a nice young fellow, Anderson. I like you, and Rita likes you." He coughed, and lit a fresh cigar. "I might say that Rita likes you very much indeed. Trust that girl to spot a good guy when she sees one. As for me—well, let me put it this way. You're the kind of fellow I'd trust with my one and only daughter or my last buck. And by golly, I can count on one hand the men I'd ever say that to."

With a deep sigh, he regretted the fact that no one was perfect. "Your trouble, my boy, is that you haven't learned what makes the world go round."

Paul smiled thinly. "Because I don't believe money is the prime concern of the average doctor?"

"Partly that, yes. But mainly because you don't see that it should be his prime concern!"