Cate Campbell (36 page)

He let his head fall back against the pillow, wondering how much medication he had been given. Enough, evidently, to soothe his arm. He wondered how to call for someone, but before he could decide, a plump nurse with sandy curls escaping from her cap put her head around the door. “We’re awake!” she said brightly. “How are we feeling?”

Frank considered this. “All right,” he said, after a moment of assessing himself. “My head aches, and I’m thirsty. But I feel—” He paused, and then said, wondering at it, “I feel all right.” It was more than he could have said any morning, upon any awakening, for more months than he cared to count.

“Well!” the nurse chirped. “Dr. Benedict will be so pleased to hear that.” She trotted to the bed with a rustle of her long skirts, and poured a glass of water. “Now, Major Parrish,” she said. “Your headache is because of the chloroform. Dr. Benedict left an order for pain medication when you need it.” She held the glass to Frank’s lips, and he drank it all. “And I’ll bring you some breakfast if you’re hungry.”

“What happened to me?” he blurted.

She smiled at him as she set the glass down. “I only know what I heard from Matron Cardwell when I came on duty this morning. Your hand and arm were burned when you tried to pull someone out of the fire at Dr. Benedict’s clinic. They brought you here. Dr. Benedict treated your burns, and while you were in the operating theater, she also repaired your—” She paused, and colored. “Your amputation,” she finished.

“She—she repaired it?” Frank said. He closed his eyes, but he couldn’t shut out the image of Margot looking at his stump, handling it, all its ugliness exposed to her.
Margot
had operated on his arm?

“Matron Cardwell is so proud of her! She has a special interest in Dr. Benedict, I think. She’s telling everyone what a brilliant surgery it was. I’m sure you’ll hear all about it. I’m told you’re a very lucky man.” She touched the flowers, straightened the sheet, plumped Frank’s pillow. “Now, Major, how do we feel about that breakfast?”

 

Frank woke again to find a nurse with iron-gray hair beneath her starched cap standing next to his bed. She held a chart in one hand, a pen in the other. The pockets of her long apron bristled with lengths of cotton gauze, a stethoscope, a large thermometer in a glass case. “Good morning, Major.”

“What—what happened? How long have I been here?”

“Two days now. You’re a little sleepy from the medication, but you’re going to be fine.” There was a little bustle on the opposite side of the ward, other nurses attending other patients. The nurse glanced behind her with a stern expression, as if admonishing someone, then turned back to him. “I’m Nurse Cardwell. I was on duty when you came in, and attended your surgery.” She turned a straight chair so it faced him, and sat down, her back very straight, her ankles primly crossed. She opened the chart, and said in businesslike fashion, “Can you tell me what you remember, Major?”

Frank frowned, trying to think. The relief from his constant pain made him feel oddly giddy. Nothing seemed quite real, as if he had dreamed the events of the last days. “I remember the fire,” he said. “Preston was in the storeroom. He didn’t know there was oxygen there. I knew it would flare up, so I ran around the back.”

“You burned your hand and arm rather badly.”

Frank lifted his bandaged right hand. He looked up at her, suddenly uncertain. “Did he—did he make it?”

“I’m sorry, Major. It seems Mr. Benedict did not survive.”

“He—Benedict’s dead?” It didn’t seem right to him. It seemed unreal, like part of the dream. “I can’t believe it,” he said hoarsely.

“It’s a shock, I know. The building burned right to the ground. There’s nothing left.”

“They think his body burned, too?”

“I understand they found bone fragments in the rubble.”

Frank closed his eyes, trying to take it in. Preston dead?

The nurse put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry to be so blunt, Major. It’s not a pleasant subject, but—”

“No, it’s all right. I’m not upset. I’m just—” Frank shook his head, trying to put the pieces together. “A lot to take in. Someone told me Margot—that is, Dr. Benedict—”

The nurse’s thin cheeks wrinkled with a restrained smile. “Oh, yes,” she said complacently. “Dr. Benedict did beautiful work on your burns and also on your arm. Your burns could have been serious, but they’re going to be fine. Your arm—the amputation—was in quite bad condition. I’m sure you’re going to be much more comfortable from now on.”

“But she—” Frank shook his head against the pillow, wondering if he was just too slow to take it in. “I thought—her hospital privileges—”

“It was a problem, naturally, but there was no time to call anyone. It was the middle of the night, and your burns needed immediate attention. Dr. Benedict was still operating when several other doctors arrived for their morning rounds.”

Her smile grew. With a satisfied air, she said, “They could hardly interfere then, so they watched from the gallery.” She stood up, tucking the chart into the crook of her elbow, dropping the pen into an already-crowded pocket. “No one could have made a better job of your surgery than Dr. Benedict, Major. It was most fortunate.” Then, briskly, “But she can’t attend you, because of the other problem. Her colleague Dr. Clay will be in. He assisted Dr. Benedict with your operation. And I promised to keep an eye on you as well.”

She bent, and lightly touched the bandages on his hand, and then on his stump. “We’ll change these when the doctor comes. No need to trouble you now. Are you comfortable?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Mostly you need to rest.”

She restored the chair to its original position, and walked out of the room with a purposeful step, nodding to the other nurses as she passed them. Frank stared after her, blinking in the clear sunlight. He couldn’t shake a feeling that it was all an illusion, that when he roused from whatever state he was in, his pain would return in full force. And Margot—after seeing the horror of what was left of his arm—she could have accepted her banishment from the hospital as a way to avoid him.

He tipped his head back, and pondered the blank ceiling.

 

The morning after Frank’s surgery, Margot went back to the Alexis. She called Benedict Hall, but no one answered the telephone. She called Thea’s neighbor, who reported that Thea was holding up all right, before she fell into bed to sleep for ten solid hours. She woke at six o’clock in the evening to a ravenous hunger. She showered, and put on a linen dress. The skirt and shirtwaist she had worn lay in a pile on the floor where she had dropped them. When she picked them up, she wrinkled her nose at the smell of smoke and chloroform. She dropped them on top of her valise. She had no hat. It had been hanging on the rack in her office, along with her coat and her gloves. All of it was gone, nothing but cinders, along with her precious books, her diplomas—and two bodies, utterly consumed by the oxygen-fed fire.

Hatless, gloveless, she went out to the Royal, where she ate an enormous meal of steak and potatoes. She had no pocketbook, either, but she ordered the bill to be sent to Benedict Hall, then walked out into the twilit street and turned up the hill toward the hospital.

She was just inside the entrance when she saw Dr. Whitely emerging from a stairwell. He started to turn away, as if to avoid her, then seemed to think better of it. With short, quick steps that made him look a bit like a gray-haired robin, he crossed the lobby toward her. Margot stopped where she was. She felt exposed, with neither hat, gloves, nor her medical bag. The absence of her bag, in particular, made her feel she was not fully dressed.

Whitely was wearing an overcoat, despite the heat. He carried his medical bag in one hand, his hat in the other. By the time he reached her, his cheeks were pink with outrage. “Doctor,” he said. “You are forbidden to be in this hospital.”

Margot strove for a mild tone. “I have a surgical patient to check on, Dr. Whitely.”

“Oh, I know,” he said sharply. “We all know that. You went against the board’s directive! You deliberately took advantage of an emergency situation to—”

“As you say,” she interrupted. “It was an emergency.”

“Repairing a stump neuroma wasn’t an emergency!” His voice rose, and the receptionist and two nurses at the desk turned to look. Visitors were straggling out through the lobby, and they also cast curious glances at him.

Margot thrust out her chin. There was no point trying to placate Whitely. The deed was done now, in any case. “Is it your professional opinion, then, Dr. Whitely, that it would have been better to sedate a patient twice? One who has already been through multiple traumas?”

“It’s my opinion,” he snapped, “that you should not be allowed in this hospital ever again.”

“I believe Dr. Peretti may disagree with you. He observed my surgery last night—that is, this morning—and he can judge for himself.”

“Peretti! He’s not a surgeon.” Whitely’s plump cheeks grew pinker, and he bounced on his tiptoes, looking more than ever like an angry bird.

“I don’t think he would appreciate that assessment.” Margot drew herself up, so she could look down at Whitely, make him tip up his chin to meet her eyes. “Excuse me, Doctor. I see Matron Cardwell, and I’d like a report on my patient’s progress.”

“You’re not to go up to the ward,” Whitely said sourly. He looked over his shoulder at Cardwell. “I’ll make sure Matron knows that.”

“No need to trouble yourself,” Margot said. She brushed past him, and started across the lobby to where Alice Cardwell was just shrugging out of her cape and pinning on her cap. “I’ll tell her myself.”

 

Having learned that Frank was resting well, with no fever or restlessness, Margot secured Cardwell’s promise to watch his postoperative pain. Reassured, she walked back toward the Alexis through a fragrant autumn evening. It was nearly nine o’clock, and the last sunlight still glowed from the western sea. She hesitated at the corner of First Avenue, and then, instead of turning, she walked on down the gentle slope toward the docks. She wanted to stroll along the waterfront, to breathe the salt air. She wasn’t ready yet to go to Post Street and view the ruin that had been her clinic, but she didn’t think she could sleep again so soon.

The waterfront was quiet, most workers gone home, only a few other walkers about. The surface of the bay was glossy in the evening light. Gentle silver waves rippled away from the hull of a ferry at the dock. Margot paused to watch the ferry chug out of its berth and set out across the water. She found a weather-beaten bench, and settled onto it to watch the light fade. It had been a long time since she’d simply sat, watching sky and water, her hands empty in her lap. Tonight, there was nothing else for her to do. It was strange to sit idle, to feel no pressing need to go to the clinic, hurry to the hospital, answer a telephone. The stillness helped to clarify her mind, to let her consider all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

It was hard to take in the knowledge that her tormentor was truly gone. It was even harder to know how to feel about it. Preston, her brother, her mother’s son, had done his best to take everything from her that mattered. He had been willing to do anything to destroy her. She supposed she would never understand that, especially now. She would never comprehend why he had wanted her to fail so much that he had, apparently, destroyed himself.

Night settled over the city as she sat on, staring at the darkening bay. She struggled to absorb the idea that she was free. She still hadn’t been able to reach her parents, but she knew they would be devastated by Preston’s death. She would have to face that. Help them through it. Her clinic was ruined, but that was something she could consider tomorrow. Frank might never see her in the same light again, and that would hurt more than she dared contemplate.

But Preston—Preston was gone. It would be interesting to learn how to live without looking over her shoulder at every moment.

When the moon rose, and strains of ragtime began to float down First Avenue, she roused herself, and walked back to the hotel. One or two men leered at her, but she took long, strong steps, her back straight and her head up, and they didn’t trouble her. She went up to her room, thinking she would have a bath, but when she reached it, she was suddenly exhausted again. She settled for washing her face and brushing her teeth, and fell into bed.

She slept until seven the next morning, when brilliant sunlight pierced the curtains of her hotel room. Groggy with sleep, she climbed out of bed and went to the window to look down on the street. It was going to be one of those surprising autumn days when, even in Seattle, lawns would be parched and flowers and shrubs would droop in the heat.

Hatless, gloveless, she set out to walk to Post Street. She felt strong enough now to face the wreckage of her clinic. She hoped that later she would be ready to face the wreckage that was the Benedict family.

As she passed the rustic café with its G
OOD
E
ATS
shingle, the proprietor, in his stained apron, came out to follow her. When she reached her destroyed clinic, he stepped up beside her as she surveyed the mass of burned timbers glistening like coal in the sunshine. “Terrible thing, Dr. Benedict,” he said, wiping his hands on his apron. “They say it was arson.”

He had never spoken to her before. She suspected he disapproved of women doctors, but he was a fellow businessman. Perhaps this disaster made them comrades. She said, “Yes.”

“They catch the guy?”

Margot gave him a wary glance. “He died in the fire,” she said. The words felt strange in her mouth, but what could she say? Words couldn’t describe the import of it, the weight of the fact that Preston was gone.

He raised shaggy eyebrows. “That so? I didn’t hear that. Huh. Died in his own fire.” And then, easily, “Well. Guess he had it coming.”

Margot remembered the long, thin shriek stabbing through the tumultuous night. It had not been Frank. Norman had already been dead. It could only have been Preston, and he had not died easily. Her feelings about his death were complex, but she wished he had not died in pain.