After the Fog (33 page)

Out of the corner of Rose’s eye she saw movement at the bedroom door, Mr. Sebastian.

Rose was confused, embarrassed, as though Sebastian had walked in on her nude. He was seeing something he shouldn’t. She had let her emotions out and they took hold of her, dragged her into an unprofessional place.

Still, part of Rose wanted to declare right there who she was, to pronounce the Sebastians unfit parents; Rose could give Theresa everything she needed. But Rose knew you didn’t do things like that. The news of an illegitimate baby was something to be buried.

“What sort of treatment are you offering, Nurse Pavlesic?” He looked between Rose and Theresa repeatedly, his face concerned. “I doubt I would find much hand-holding and dancing suggested in the annals of nursing care if I were inclined to look.”

Rose and Theresa dropped hands.

“Matter of fact,” Rose said, “you
would
find hand-holding in the literature and practical cases. And it wouldn’t hurt you to do a little more of it yourself. I’ve read Theresa’s case and…well…” Rose glanced at Theresa who was smiling, clearly not scared anymore.

I’m her mother, Rose said silently to herself.

Mr. Sebastian pulled Rose by the arm, wrenching her backward toward the door. Rose couldn’t take her eyes off of Theresa, frightened this might be the last time she saw her. Sebastian’s fingers tightened on Rose’s arm, meeting at the bone under her bicep. She tripped over the chair that held her bag as Mr. Sebastian muscled her through the doorway.

Mr. Sebastian leaned over Rose, shoving her against the wall, his voice low enough for Theresa not to hear.

“You read her file? Just what were you going to tell her? We never told her anything regarding her birth. And there’s no way that after all these years, we would happen upon the woman who gave birth to Theresa. That woman claimed to have been on her way to Boston with some hotshot playboy. That woman was glad to be rid of Theresa and we were glad to have her.”

He released Rose from his grip and ran his hand through his hair.

Rose didn’t know where she summoned the courage. “I read the file,” she said. “You
didn’t
want her. Neither did your wife. She spent all that time in the care of psychiatric doctors, you made Theresa think she was crazy and weak. That file tells me everything I need to know.”
I am her mother.
“She is so much more than you’ve let her be. She’s in there hiding books and journals as though they were rancid, diseased objects rather than the key to opening up a world to a girl who’s obviously brighter than the dickens, for the love of Jesus himself! Let her be who she is.”

Mr. Sebastian grabbed Rose’s things and prodded her down the hall toward the stairs.

“Did the file indicate the times I didn’t sleep for days while caring for Mrs. Sebastian, when she
couldn’t
sleep and the baby wouldn’t either? Or how I nursed them both back to health from pneumonia? Or how I got TB and spent my days and nights away from them so to not infect either? Was there one word in those files about me?”

Rose stopped at the bottom of the stairs. She was nauseated and light-headed. She had to stay close to Theresa. She needed to care for her.

“Please let me continue her care,” she said. “I will tell her there was a lapsed moment, that I’d been recently grieved by an unexpected loss, that I had a moment—”

Mr. Sebastian gripped Rose’s arm again and forced her toward the door, tossing her bag and hat out onto the porch. “I’ll let you know two things. First, I don’t know what I witnessed in that room, what you were up to, but I’m sure you are not permitted to reveal what’s in confidential files. Two, I’m not sure at all you embody the character needed to properly administer a community health clinic.

“I’ve been nursing for nearly two decades. I can do it in my sleep.”

“Or while drunk?”

Rose drew back.

He clenched his jaw. You smell like a brewery. I smelled it last night. I wonder if you even had a patient to see at the Merry-Go-Round at all.”

Rose covered her mouth. The vodka? Stale beer odor from the night before?

“Just so we’re clear. I don’t want to see you back here,” he said. “Theresa believes we are her parents. Trust me, her birth mother was more than happy to give her up. I’m a practical man and I went to the mother to be sure she was okay with this and I didn’t even have to ask. She turned to the nurse before she saw me and said. “I can breathe again,” and she combed her hair as though that were her only concern.

Rose’s eyes widened. She scraped through her memories for that phrasing. Had she really said that? Maybe. But… “I just meant…
she
probably meant that her diaphragm was finally relieved of the weight of a baby, not that…no, no I don’t believe any mother would have said that, meant it that way. Do you realize the gift you have lying in that bed?”

Rose pushed her hair behind her ears, sweat licking her fingertips. She froze as Mr. Sebastian’s gaze broke from hers and leveled on her double earlobe.

“What?” she said. “Haven’t seen a person who isn’t perfect before?”

Mr. Sebastian reached for Rose’s ear. She stepped back.

“The problem is,” he said stepping forward, narrowing his eyes at her ear. “I’ve seen that ear before.”

Rose opened her mouth to ask him what the hell he meant. When she realized, she looked away so he couldn’t see that side of her face. Rose recalled that day, the way some man had entered the room and walked nearly to the bed. Rose remembered the well-dressed fellow standing there as though he had a question to ask. But, as she put her brush down, smoothed her hair, the man was gone. The nurse chased him away. Could that have been him?

“Don’t come back,” Mr. Sebastian said. “Tell your husband he’s done for good.”

Rose turned back to him, lifting her chin. He took her shoulders and backed her through the doorway, onto the porch.

“That’s right,” Mr. Sebastian said. “I took up for Henry saying he was only helping his daughter. That he was desperate to help her and was late from break for that reason. He was not simply milling around the hospital with the nurses for fun. But now I see. The whole Pavlesic family has a bent toward making trouble. You can forget about that clinic of yours being funded. You are out of line and starting January, 1949 you are out of a job!”

He slammed the door on Rose making her stumble.

She’d lost Theresa again and now, it seemed, Henry’s story of what he’d been up to in order to get fired had changed yet again.

R
ose stood dazed outside the Sebastian’s home, the zinc mill grinding away across the street, sending smoke into the air. Mr. Sebastian knew who she was?

The fog had grown more tangible, grainy as though she could chew it. She was comforted by its odd weight; it would hide her from anyone she passed.

Her eyes began to tear, slapped with emotion of twenty years. She wrapped her coat tight against her, her shoulders bunched up as though she were walking into whipping wind rather than the stillness that kept the fog battened over the town.

Walking home, the fog filled her lungs, choked her, made her feel like Unk must feel every blessed day of his life. She cleared her throat repeatedly, feeling claustrophobic. She pressed on, catching her toe on this crack, her heel falling into that crevice, moving as though she were drowning in the Monongahela River.

Voices rose and spiked the fog as she passed clutches of people, made anonymous by the scratchy fog. The passersby excitedly discussed Saturday’s football game, the way they were going to beat the Monongahela Wildcats to all hell.

Donora Dragons had been rated the best football team in the country a few years back and it wouldn’t take much for them to garner that distinction again. And people discussing Johnny—murmurs of the scouts in town to watch and meet him—the idea that at least one more fella would be headed off to college on a scholarship.

The town, not just the person who earned the award, always shared that pride. Johnny needed to understand that. He and his success belonged to Donora as much as it did his family and John, himself. It wasn’t just Rose who wanted this for her son. He’d see that some day. Many knew the gift college would bring.

Rose tripped over a bulky, soft thing in the sidewalk, surprised to discover she’d tripped over a person.

Adamchek squealed like a woman. “Don’t it just paint the right damn picture that it’s
you
falling over my big ass in the middle of the street.”

“You, Adamchek. Fourteen thousand people in this town and all I ever see is you. Quit following me. I’m not in the mood for any of your bullshit. And, stay away from Buzzy.”

The two of them scrambled to their feet using each other’s bodies for leverage, grunting to be the first to regain their balance.

He smelled like garlic perogies. Rose brushed the front of her coat. “Watch it next time, Dumbo,” she said.

“We’ll see who the dumbo in this town is. Don’t you worry.” Adamchek brushed past Rose, knocking her shoulder to the side.

“Is that supposed to be a threat of some sort?” Rose wondered if his words had something to do with Buzzy, Henry?

“You just make sure your son shows up to play Saturday. He’s gallivanting around town playing music to all hours. I got cash on that game, you know. Your kid will make or break more than a few fella’s accounts,” he said and disappeared into the fog.

She looked around wondering if anyone was close enough to have witnessed any part of the exchange, but she couldn’t see another soul. She was relieved her reddened face was hidden. What the hell did he mean? She coughed into her hand as she started walking again, then stopped, the cough buckling her over at the waist. Mother of God, that fog was rotten, Rose thought.

When she got to Doc Bonaroti’s office, a pair of ladies stood in the doorway, huddled and mumbling—one with an accented voice, the tired cadence familiar to Rose.

“Mrs. Lipinski?” Rose said.

“It’s me.”

Rose stepped closer and saw that Mrs. Lipinski was supported by Nurse Dottie Shaginaw. Rose felt a swell of anger.

“Nurse Shaginaw,” Rose said.

“Hello, Nurse Pavlesic. So good to see you.”

Rose unlocked the office door with her key and held it for Dottie and Mrs. Lipinski to shuffle through.

“Thank you Nurse Shaginaw. I’m sure you have many a man’s life to save in the mill hospital. Maybe one of the supervisors has a head cold and needs you to assist him? I don’t want to hold you up with matters of community nursing.”

Rose took on Mrs. Lipinski’s weight and used her foot to hook the leg of a metal chair and slide it across the floor to where she could get Mrs. Lipinski to sit. Dottie bent over her nurse’s bag and shuffled through it as though she were prepared to administer care to Mrs. Lipinski. She straightened with her stethoscope in hand, affixing the ear buds in place.

“Just a scorched Achilles or two, Pavlesic. At the mill. Just a bit of advice for this man or that. You know. I’m sort of a jack-of-all-nursing-trades in the mill.” Nurse Dottie put one fist on her hip and shook her stethoscope at Rose. “I’m there to help whoever needs it in whatever way he needs it. My goal is to be just like you, in the mills, instead of the neighborhood, but just like you.” Dottie bent into Mrs. Lipinski and put the stethoscope into place to listen to her chest. She lifted her eyes to Rose.

Rose pulled a second chair over to them and placed her bag there.

“You do not own the community, Pavlesic. I will nurse whoever needs me. I’m there for everyone. That’s just how I am.”

Rose pulled out her stethoscope and felt her anger, raw as an animal’s. Was Dottie taunting Rose? Was she admitting to helping Henry and Magdalena? What was she insinuating?

Rose plucked Dottie’s stethoscope out of her ears and pushed the woman aside with her hip, placing her own stethoscope on Mrs. Lipinski’s chest. Rose forced a smile at Mrs. Lipinski who appeared apprehensive.

“It must be something to have no life except nursing, Shaginaw. Hit the Bricks and stay the hell away from me. From my life. From my patients.”

“You are awful, Rose.” Nurse Dottie stalked out the door, stuffing her stethoscope into her bag as she went.

Rose felt her body relax once Dottie was gone. She pulled Mrs. Lipinski to standing and moved her into Doc’s office where she stripped off her coat. The woman had a scorching fever and complained of a headache so sharp she couldn’t hold her eyes open any more. Rose shut off the bright light in Doc’s office and let the hall light suffice to softly illuminate her work.

Rose administered some aspirin and massaged the woman’s entire head area, working around her skull, cheekbones and neck, and felt fear. Her life as she’d known it had come against a brick wall. By losing control at Theresa’s home, she jeopardized the clinic’s funding, and behaved like a sixteen-year-old rather than a seasoned nurse. She smoothed a frozen compress on Mrs. Lipinski’s forehead and shivered with the realization that her decisions in the past few days, like the fog, were far worse than she realized.

Friday, October 29
^th
, 1948

A
t four-thirty in the morning, Rose woke with sweat drenching the nape of her neck, heat encasing her head to toe. She felt like she had during those days after giving birth, when her body disposed of its extra fluids. She tossed and twisted now in bed, trying to find a cool part of the sheets, but Henry’s body released too much heat.