I Never Thought I'd See You Again: A Novelists Inc. Anthology (41 page)

The room would never match the hominess of her small living room, even though furnished with older furniture, worn from use. A sigh escaped her as the candy striper parked the wheelchair beside an end table stacked with magazines, primarily the housekeeping variety. As the aide walked away, Bettie reached for a copy of
National Geographic
. Why read about housekeeping while in a nursing home?

A shuffle mixed with the soft padding sound of a cane caught her attention. A tall man, bent from the years, with thick white hair and a deeply wrinkled face that appeared permanently tanned, came toward her. Black suspenders over a white, long-sleeved shirt what comes next?”s ru were were clipped to his brown trousers. She envied him the independence of his cane. Would she ever recover to the point she could use a cane instead of a wheelchair?

His faded blue eyes caught her gaze. “Mind if I sit here?” He waved the cane slightly in the direction of the camel-back sofa on the other side of the end table.

“Go ahead.” She patted the arm of the wheel chair. “I brought my own place to sit.”

He chuckled as he lowered himself with stiff movements to the sofa. “I haven’t seen you before. What brought you here?”

“I fell on the ice and broke a hip. The doctor doesn’t want me to go home, at least not until the hip heals further.” He had to let her return to her own home eventually, didn’t he? She knew that the house she loved wasn’t a practical place for an eighty-two-year old woman with a broken hip, but she longed for it.

The man folded his large, gnarled hands over the top of his cane. “Broken hips are nasty things; land a lot of people in here. What’s your name?”

“Bettie.”

A smile spread across his liver-spotted face. “Let me tell you about my favorite woman named Bettie.” He settled against the back of the sofa, hands still clasped over the head of the cane. Bettie recognized the contented look of a favorite memory that softened the deep lines in his face. “It was 1918, right after the end of the Big War, World War I.”

She nodded. It didn’t matter how many wars followed, to those who lived through it, World War I, the war to end all wars, was the Big War.

“I was a farm boy, raised on the Minnesota prairie. I moved to St. Paul, the big city, in the fall of 1918. Found myself a room in a boarding house, an old, two-story clapboard building near downtown. Wind came right through those old walls and windows; couldn’t keep my room warm for love or money.

“That’s where I met Bettie. She was rooming in the boarding house, too, one floor below me. She was a pretty young thing. We never spoke to each other directly, not more than a nod or hello when we passed on the stairs. But she was at dinner every night, along with the rest of the boarders — half-a-dozen of us, maybe, two girls and the rest guys, all about the same age. I saved money by only eating one meal a day, so usually I was starving by dinner time.

“I came home from work the last Saturday in November, a couple days after Thanksgiving, excited to be alive. Guess all the boarders felt that way, because we lingered around the table after the meal ended, talking together longer than usual.”

November 30, 1918

Carl took the last bite of apple pie and leaned back in his chair, filled with good food and satisfaction. With sugar no longer rationed since the war ended, the landlord treated them to desserts more often. It was obvious from the way the other boarders devoured their pie that they appreciated the luxury as much as he did.

Listening to the chatter and laughter, he smiled. People couldn’t help but be excited about life with the war over and the Spanish flu on the wane. Anything seemed possible since the Allies won the War to End All Wars. Even that shy boarder who had just arrived.y vo, Bettie, was smiling at black-haired Michael Conrad’s story of the disaster that befell him and his friend, Jack, the night the city celebrated the Armistice two-and-a-half weeks ago — November 11, 1918, a date etched in his brain for life.

The strings from the white gauze mask he wore at work and in public areas to ward off the flu caught his attention, dangling from his trouser pocket. He pushed them back into hiding. No one in the boarding house had caught the flu, so he didn’t feel exposed here. Besides, a person couldn’t eat while wearing a mask.

“What about you, Carl?” Michael’s question jerked Carl out of hiid you have any adventures during the Armistice celebration?”

“You might say so.” Carl leaned his forearms on the cloth-covered table. “I visited my brother, Peter, at Fort Snelling. He was with the first group of wounded doughboys to arrive at the Fort, on Armistice Day.”

All eyes turned toward Carl, accompanied by exclamations of sympathy and surprise. Everyone knew the fort had been turned into a hospital for rehabilitation of wounded veterans.

“What happened to him?”

“Mustard gas.”

The group’s silence bore witness to the seriousness of his revelation.

“Will he recover?” Bettie’s softly-voiced question surprised him. Carl was certain everyone in the room wanted to ask that question, but it was quiet little Bettie with the courage to come out with it.

“Yes, but we weren’t sure about that for awhile. The lesions in his throat were so bad when he arrived at the fort that he couldn’t speak, but he’s able to now.” He grinned, and swung his gaze back to the others. “Sounds like a frog with laryngitis, hurts him like crazy, and his lungs will probably always be weak, but he’s alive and he can talk.”

“When did it happen?” Michael asked.

“October fourteenth, during some of the toughest fighting the Minnesota’s 151st Rainbow Division encountered in France.”

Blond-haired Jack, seated beside Michael, cleared his throat. “My cousin fought with them. He didn’t make it back. He wrote to me a lot before he died.” The group listened, engrossed, to his cousin’s war experiences.

Carl’s interest was as strong as that of the others at first, but eventually he grew tired. He rested his head on his hand and tried to concentrate as others related stories they’d heard about the war, but his head began to throb something fierce and soon he didn’t hear the stories any longer, but only the beat of blood in his head.

He was dimly aware of people pushing back their chairs, standing and, still chatting, moving out of the dining area toward the hallway where the stairway led up to their rooms.

Someone stopped beside him. “Are you all right?” He recognized Bettie’s soft voice.

“Just…tired.” He could hardly get the words out. His tongue felt thick and it took so much energy to talk.
What’s happening to me?
Fear slithered through him alongside the sudden fatigue. Gathering his strength, he shoved his chair back. But when he pus eventuallyedvohed himself to his feet, his knee joints felt loose and he swayed. He lost focus, and toppled toward Bettie.

“Help!” He heard her cry out as she fell with him to the dining room floor.

Carl opened his eyes and let his gaze wander around his room. The shade-less bulb which hung from the ceiling, the room’s only electric illumination, was dark, but moonlight through the two double-hung windows gave enough light for him to recognize the few familiar items: the bell-shaped clock ticking away beside the white porcelain pitcher and bowl on top of the chest of drawers, the gray-and-maroon striped curtain that hid his hanging clothes, and his winter galoshes peeking out from beneath the curtain.

His gaze rested on the one unfamiliar item — Bettie, asleep on the room’s only chair, a straight-backed walnut affair. Why was she here? A gauze mask hid her lower face. Her chin lolled against the khaki trench coat that lay over her like a blanket, likely a protection against the draft of cold that knifed through the room.

He glanced at the windows. Both were open about an inch. Enough of that foolishness. He shoved the covers back with an effort and stared. He still wore his sleeveless undershirt and the brown trousers he’d worn to work, but his matching suit coat — the new one with the popular army-style belt — had been removed, as had his collar, shirt and tie. He didn’t remember removing them. He pushed himself to a sitting position and grabbed his head with both hands at the throbbing headache and double vision. He lay down slowly, wanting to sink back into sleep to get away from the pain.

Bettie stirred, and then straightened out of her sleep-slump in the stiff-backed chair. “You’re awake.”

“As are you –– both of you.”

“What do you mean, ‘both of you’?”

“There are two of you; but only when I move.”

A frown cut a wrinkle between her brows.

“What are you doing in my room?”

“You passed out in the dining room. Michael and I helped you up the stairs after you regained consciousness, but you fell asleep almost as soon as you lay down.”

“Michael undressed me?”

Did she hesitate? “No. He left immediately.”

Carl ran a hand along his hipbone. “My legs and back ache like fury.”

Her frown deepened, but she didn’t say anything.

He pulled the quilt up over his shoulder. “Would you close the windows?”

“All the advice for treating the flu says to leave windows open for fresh air.”

He remembered the Red Cross poster he read and re-read every day, mounted above the windows in the trolley he took to and from work: “What to do if you catch the Spanish flu.” She was right; leaving windows open was right there on the list. Despair swept through him. The Old Spanish Lady had killed thousands, including healthy young soldiers his age. Would he become one of her victims? His gaze slid to Bettie. She was in danger, too. “You shouldn’t be here.” there the whole time.. d fas

“You‘re too weak to care for yourself.”

“But I barely know you.”

“Patients usually don’t know their nurses, do they?”

“You’re a nurse?” Hope nudged at the despair.

“No, but I’ll do what I can for you.”

“You’d best get out while you’re able.” His eyelids lowered. He struggled to open them again.

“Too late; I’m already exposed.” She poured him a glass of water from the white pitcher.

“I’m not thirsty.”

“You’ll feel worse if you become dehydrated.”

He didn’t think it possible to feel worse, but he drank half the water anyway.

She laid a hand on his forehead, making him uncomfortably aware of his sweaty, unkempt hair. A guy shouldn’t need to be seen in this shape by a woman.

“You’re feverish. Try to sleep. Your body needs rest to fight off the flu.”

He barely heard her finish the sentence before he fell back asleep.

Bettie pushed back hair that had come loose from the fashionable puffs she’d curled at her ears with such care that morning. Frustration tightened her chest. A boarding room held no conveniences for caring for an ill person. She’d looked through the chest of drawers for items that might help. It held a few pieces of clothing of the more personal nature, a razor and blades, a hairbrush, and some handkerchiefs, but not much else.

She pulled back the striped curtain that created a makeshift closet. On a nail beside the clothes rod hung a used wash cloth and towel. As she reached for them, the sound of footsteps hurrying down the hall caught her attention, and she rushed to open Carl’s door.

Michael, the handsome, flirty young man who worked at the drug store, stopped a few feet away. His gaze swung to hers. He hesitated, and then started on again.

“Please!”

Her one word halted him again. He stared at her with a guarded expression. “I can’t help. I took too much of a chance already, helping you get him up here.” He broke the connection of their gazes and started toward the stairs.

She raised her voice. “Would you bring me a pail? You could leave it outside the door.”

Michael glanced over at her and nodded once, hard. “All right.” His shoes clattered against the wooden stairs as he hurried down.

Bettie glanced back at Carl. He still slept. She could go to her own room and sleep, at least nap, and check on him later. After all, even her mother hadn’t stayed at her children’s bedsides every moment when they were ill. But Carl’s collapse, combined with news reports that thousands of strong young men his age had died within forty-eight hours of contracting the Spanish flu, worried her. No, she wasn’t comfortable leaving him for more than a few minutes, but she could get some things from her room.

TenWhere the hell is Sam?edvo minutes later she bumped Carl’s door shut with her elbow, set a blanket on the chair, an oil lamp on the chest of drawers and a hot plate on the floor near the curtain closet by the room’s only outlet. At least the building had electricity — though the room’s only light was too bright for flu-sore eyes — and a telephone in the entry hall. Many buildings lacked both.

A glance at Carl showed his eyes were still closed. The sound of his labored breathing filled the room.

Three loud knocks sounded, and Bettie opened the door.

Mrs. Anderson, the landlord’s wife, was bent over, setting a pail and dipper on the floor. The chubby, gray-haired woman almost stumbled over herself hurrying backward when she saw Bettie. “Keep your distance, Miss Watts. Michael said you needed a pail.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Mr. Anderson and I, we run a respectable boarding house. We can’t be letting you stay in Mr. Richardson’s room without a chaperone. It isn’t proper.”

Bettie fought down the anger that rose from her stomach through her chest and throat like bile, and forced herself to answer politely. This woman could kick her out on the street, and that wouldn’t help Carl at all. “I’m glad you are offering to chaperone. I’ve been concerned the other boarders might misinterpret the help I’m giving Mr. Richardson.”

The woman’s eyes widened above her gauze mask. “I’m not going to chaperone.” Shock increased her Swedish accent.

“Perhaps you could locate a chaperone for me. Surely you realize I’m unable to search for one myself after exposure to the flu.”

“That’s another thing, this young man bringing the flu into the house. We’ll be quarantined now. Maybe you should look for a place in another boarding house, for you and for him. Take the flu with you.”