The Saint Louisans (4 page)

I paused in my tale, took a sip of tea, and Margot nodded to urge me on. I should be learning more about
her
family, not telling tales about
my
past, I thought. But she waited, and so I continued. I told her how I had dubbed Polly, Nurse Cape, and it stuck. She made rounds beside me and watched in frigid silence. After two days of this with the staff, the critique fell from heaven: charts were being read incorrectly. The floor needed to be cleaned. LPNs supervised more closely. One of them had been sarcastic to a patient who had been on bedpan for two weeks and was still using it. I admitted these faults, but still took offense at a new dog in the pack. There was bad blood between staff and administration. Talk of closing the
hospital and rumors of pay cuts were a constant source of gossip and tension.

One night, Polly came swooping down the hall, and said, “Lee, how is the debridgement coming for the patient in 405?”

Debridgement is where dead tissue is cut away from the edges of an incision so the wound heals faster.

“It's improving,” I answered.

She nodded and looked at the chart. “Any improvement on 414?”

I motioned to the doctor asleep in the corner, his head on a blanket, the desktop typewriter pushed away. Normally, the younger residents would sack out in the call room one floor down, but Mrs. Wyntowski was not responding to medication, and her doctor expected to be called sometime during shift. It wasn't good.

Polly lowered her voice as the med cart rolled by. “I want to talk to you about the patient in 411.”

“You mean Simone?” I disliked Polly's impersonality.

“Yes. You're neglecting the other patients when you look after her. Spread out your time for everyone.”

I leaned back in my chair remembering that rebuke. Even after so many years, it felt as if she'd slapped me across the face. Simone Keller was a young teacher who had just returned from a year in Rome. She was going places in her field, and her liver infection was responding to treatment. I was determined to save her. Her youth, life of travel and promise was what I wanted. Simone became a sister in my own struggle. “I'm doing my best to help her recover,” I said. “That's my job.”

I remember Polly turning to look at me. “You're a nurse,” she said. “Everyone on this floor is your job.”

I stared back and said nothing, then went to give 409 her hourly meds.

Simone went on the deathwatch. Despite Dr. Mattheson's increased antibiotics, she was sinking.

Twice Polly had to nudge me out of the room as I attended Simone, seeing those hopeful eyes grow weaker. But then I got the flu. Two days later I came onto my shift weary and depressed. Studying for four classes at once was exhausting. Sky, my soon-to-be ex-husband, hadn't paid his bills, and now men with bad haircuts and K-Mart ties knocked on my door, reminding me what a stupid thing co-signing was. My junior college days, when I threw
myself into nursing and redefined my life, seemed far away. I needed to see Simone. To be reassured. To hope.

Polly told me she'd died fifteen minutes earlier.

I prepared the body for the morgue, brushing aside Polly's initial objections as I controlled my guilt and nervousness. Throughout it all, I was silent and clinical: the body was washed with soap and water, then wrapped in a plastic sheet and put in a body bag, finally covering Simone's gaunt face. The orderly arrived with the morgue cart, the hall was cleared, and doors closed to take the body to the rear elevator. I handed the paperwork to Polly, who nodded and handed it to the security guard accompanying the orderly. All done in silence: an army doesn't talk about its defeats.

In those days, the roof was used by the staff as a smoking area, and at three a.m. I went up there because I needed space. I looked north and saw St. Louis at peace. The dawn still unborn, the night deep and serene. A cool September breeze was welcome after a humid day, but its relief only meant a wakening autumn. The yellow light of the street lamps and winking traffic signals contrasted with the world beyond the black trench of the Mississippi and necklace of lights from East St. Louis. Beyond lay the dark forests and corn fields of Illinois and her Midwestern sisters, all shrouded in night. To me, this mid-shift break was usually a contemplative time. But not that night. That night, I cried.

“Lee.”

I turned to see Polly, cape around her shoulders and cigarette between her fingers. I expected a reprimand, but she stepped closer and offered her pack. I shook my head and looked west. The green mansard roof of Firmen Desloge Hospital on the south side rose in the distance. I'd worked there a few months earlier, and I missed it.

“You're a good nurse, Lee,” Polly said. “Maybe that's why I ride you all the time. You're the best on the floor, and tomorrow you're taking over as charge nurse. You've got a good future, but get Simone and those like her out of your system. We can't get that close.”

“She had her life before her.”

“We all do, but it leads to a dead end. There's nothing we can do about that. Help them, Lee. Never give up. Serve them, but do it professionally, clinically. We're not God. The doctors think they are, but we're smarter than
that; we don't carry that kind of baggage. Get rid of yours, honey. Cut the straps loose and walk faster. The world needs you.”

Polly belonged to the old school where nurses controlled their emotions with patients. She wasn't cold; just formal. The younger nurses and I had trouble doing that. Polly deferred to the docs. We chafed at that. Most of the time the docs ignored our suggestions on the charts. Some of them still expected us to mop floors, put on coffee for them, and shut up.

Polly cut through to my tears. “It's tough seeing them die, but don't let your ego get wrapped up trying to save them. Use your skill and talent. Use your love, for Christ's sake, but not your ego.”

As she blew out a long stream of smoke, I tapped my foot against a crumpled soda can. Its rattle echoed in the still air. “I want to,” I said, poking my head out of the blanket of defeat I had wrapped around myself. Polly was an Aunt Mary to me, someone taking me on, offering to lead me to a better way. “Shit, I want to.”

“Want to and have to, Lee. I trust you.”

My self-pity now seemed ugly. I looked north and saw a bus come off I-55 and stream along the dead streets to the Greyhound station on Broadway. It was probably the late bus from New Orleans. I knew all about it, and its long haul from Jackson to Memphis, Poplar Bluff, Farmington, Dubourg, a coach filled with drowsy mothers and children heaped on their laps. Soldiers going to their next post. Drunks and ex-cons in the back seats, scoring some junk. Nuns in pairs. Amish in beards or long frocks, whispering in Plattdeutsch. I rode that bus retreating from a crappy marriage.

I became a nurse because I was tired of retreat, of withdrawal. Up here I was, if not God, then one of his angels, looking down on the city and my own past. I had come far, but still had a long way to fly. In my soul, a small part of the little girl that missed her daddy who had died much too young. As I pulled a Kleenex out of my pocket, Polly continued.

“I became a nurse back in 1940,” she said. “That's when I got this cape. I was an army nurse. It was the only way I could get out of that podunk town I grew up in. Among us hillbillies, a girl was sitting pretty if she married the son of the funeral director.”

There was a slight drawl I hadn't noticed before. Polly dropped her cigarette and crushed it.

“I was sent to the Philippines four months before Pearl Harbor. We were at Bataan until the hospital was evacuated to Corregidor.” She paused as she folded her arms. “The Japs pounded us every hour. I had no choice but to put my heart in storage. You won't have the crisis I had. I hope to God you won't. But it's the same thing. Death in wholesale or single trips. You learn to cope, and you will.”

I nodded, humbled and fascinated. “Were you captured?” She lowered her voice. “Yeah. No get out of jail free card on that rock. Funny thing,” Polly shrugged, “when we got a chance, we screwed the daylights out of everyone. Some of us were pregnant when it was over. We were scared. We knew what happened in Singapore. The Japs killed everyone in the hospitals. Went through wards with bayonets. The British only lasted a month, and we kept fighting for three. We'd messed up Tojo's timetable. We didn't expect a tomorrow, so we were anybody's.”

I looked up at Margot and said, “Honestly, I had no idea about Polly's past. I didn't know what to say to her. Polly told me that the military brass had hushed it up, that nurses were supposed to be chaste and noble, just like the posters. I remember a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. ‘Well, one out of two,' she said.”

I took another drink of my now tepid tea. That night, up on the roof, Polly and I had stood in silence until we heard the familiar sound of sirens blaring, heralding another shooting in Cochran project. Finally, we headed back to the floor, and later, as the first smoky gray light came from the East, the ER sent up one of the shooting victims and the woman was moved to Simone's bed.

I turned back to Margot with a half smile and a shrug. “I told you it was a long story.”

“But the story's not finished, Lee. You never said how you came to have Polly's cape.”

“Polly and I met every so often after I got hired at Barnes. When she died, her relatives mailed me the cape. She'd left it to me in her will. Now when I wear it, it's like having Polly on my back. It's good and warm. Stately. You can't go wrong with being stately warm.”

Margot sighed with a deep release of pleasure. I shifted and went back to Nurse Official.

“Now, enough of me. We can plan a diet. Also, some supplements to your medication.”

Margot picked up the booklet with a plastic ring binder. “Rainer and I will discuss the diet. He's the butler, and plans the menus. I hope you didn't mind his rudeness. It's only to watch out for me.”

As if on cue, Rainer entered, a Doberman with a jacket and tie. He nodded to Margot, and she turned to me. “Lee, you are the answer to my prayers. I'll study these materials, but now I must prepare for a meeting. The Veiled Prophet Ball doesn't plan itself.”

“Of course.” I rose, seeing an older photograph of a young girl in tiara and gown. By the age and hairstyle, I assumed this had to be Terri, Margot's daughter, now estranged, but in the time capsule of black and white photography, radiant and happy.

“That's your daughter?” I asked. “Was she presented?”

“Yes,” Margot said politely and quickly added, “but it was that horrible night. In 1972. When …” her eyes were pained, “the Prophet was unmasked. Therese … Terri was there. We all were. I felt so sorry for Hope.” She read my confusion. “Hope Florence Davis. She was crowned queen that night. What a terrible thing to do to that girl. Her big night.”

I nodded sympathetically. “Must have been something.” I picked up my cape. “I'll keep in touch.”

Margot returned to graciousness. “This will be good.” Both of her hands gripped mine, as if to squeeze life from me into her. “You've overcome so much.”

After I exited and hooked my cape, there was an unsettling sense I had just dropped right into the middle of something. I frowned.

In the middle of what?

St. Louis is the eye of Missouri. The Mississippi curves its eyeball into a natural bulge. The cornea is midtown where St. Louis University spreads in Jesuitical splendor. The cilary muscle ends at Skinker Avenue and borders Forest Park, where the great fair of 1904 was held. The lens and iris is the Gateway Arch, looking east, looking back as the city does in its heart.

Many Missourians don't like St. Louis. Too ‘dirty,' ‘corrupt,' ‘old.' To them, Kansas City is the real Missouri city; a Harry Truman Stetson compared to St. Louis's tattered bowler.

The Arch, a caternary curve like God's wishbone, was designed by Eero Saarinen to be a gateway, a confluence. Its gleaming sparseness has a sci-fi feel, but it isn't empty. Not at all. Between its gleaming steel rib is a middle passage, a world of arrival and departure.

I walked beside Saul as he looked up at the Arch, gesturing to a young journalist decked out in boots and spandex, her wavy hair highlighted by a dyed pink stripe on her left side, like a Goth scalplock. Her angular face was matched with catlike, probing eyes. She was from one of the alternative 'Zines. Saul is always good copy, and it was a splendid day for an interview. A kite flying rally had over a dozen people flanking the Arch's sides as they flew a variety of kites in patterns from shields to serpentines. Sharing space with the kite flyers was a group of reenactors in 1800-era buckskins, uniforms, and gowns, demonstrating how to fire a musket. They were out in force this year; paunchy, military history types forsaking their usual Civil War costumes to
get with 2005 and the Year of Discovery. Saul looked at the Arch, the bullseye of our lens, and scowled.

“I hate it,” he said about St. Louis's pride and joy. “It sterilizes everything. A pathetic, hopeless monument. They wiped out city blocks to make an empty urban space.” Muskets boomed, their smoke a brief, sulfurous cloud drifting over kites as tourists snapped photos. “You can see the Arch on the horizon thirty miles from here, but it doesn't do shit for the city. It gives us pretensions. Empty space. This was where St. Louis began, and what did they do? Revive it? Rethink it? No. A park.” He shrugged like a prophet. “A fucking park.”

“Okay,” the journalist said, “but it … the riverfront … was a kinda slum, right? I mean, they had to clear it away.”

Saul thrust his hands into his pockets. “Sure, wipe it out. Nuke it. That's just brain-dead urbanism.” He gestured, trying for profundity to hide his bile.

He looked up with an Ahab-versus-the-whale kind of stare, and aurally painted with pointed gestures and pauses.