Taking a Chance on Love (13 page)

“Up the stairs, turn left, through the doors, and you'll find Mr. Hanson's room about halfway down on the right-hand side. Here, I'll write his room number down for you.”

Once up on the next floor, I went down the short corridor to Bruce's room. His bed was empty. “I'm sorry,” said the nurse attending to the other patient in the semi. “Visiting hour are over, and Mr. Hanson is in the treatment room right now.”

“May I leave this?” I asked.

“Yes, just leave it on his bedside table.”

I tucked a card in the foliage. On it, I'd written, “Dear Bruce, With warm thoughts of you and to you. Meg.”

I found a cafeteria in the main building of the hospital and bought a cup of coffee and a date square. The coffee was vile — a thin, bitter brew that Mrs. Hanson would have poured down the sink — and I couldn't finish it.

Once I was out of the hospital, I went back to Heather Street and stood there, looking up at what I thought must be Bruce's room. I caught a brief glimpse of a movement at the window. It was too far to see who was waving. But just in case — yes, please, Lord — it was Bruce, I waved back until my arm ached.

The Christmas holidays were over. When I saw Jack at the bus stop, I wondered what had happened to him. He looked wild with his uncombed hair and purple shadows under his eyes.

As soon as we got in the classroom, he flipped up his desktop and started to throw things on the floor. He was swearing under his breath. Once, he kicked the desk.

“What's up, Jack?” I asked.

His voice was deep with bitterness. “My stepfather has made another one of his brilliant decisions. He's moving us into Vancouver. He and Mom are in there now, looking for a place to rent. That means starting a new school — which totals four in the last two years — and no one cares how it affects me. I hate the bastard.”

“Oh, Jack! Sorry. We'll miss you. One day we'll read about your brilliant career in science and say, ‘We knew he could do it.'”

“I'll write to you, Meg, and let you know my new address and phone number. When you come into Vancouver, we'll get together. Okay?”

I nodded. I would be sorry to see him go. It would be hard to keep up with chemistry on my own. But it was more than that. Amy gone. Bruce away. And now Jack.

Feb 7, 1945

Dear Bruce
,

I hope you liked the poinsettia I left for you at the hospital. I wanted to visit you, but they said you were in the treatment room
.

My brother's fiancée Olive, I told you about her, is a nurse, and she says the new drugs and dressings they're using are working miracles. I sure hope that's true and that your pain will be gone soon. I say a prayer every night for you. (I'm for anything that works.)

I'm trying to knit booties for Amy's baby. I've had to unravel them twice. I'm only going to try once more
.

Your mother has a few mill workers boarding with her
.

Most of them are single guys who are lonely and away from home. They rave about her cooking
.

Love
,

Meg

I wished I had enough nerve to visit Bruce, but I wasn't sure he'd want me to.

I missed him so much that I felt like I had swallowed a huge rock, one with jagged edges on it. Sometimes I couldn't stop tears from coming. I thought if I ever started crying, I would never be able to stop.

I was worried about him because his mother said, “Bruce is doing as well as can be expected,” which could mean anything. I worried that he was in a lot of pain. I worried that he had a raging infection. I worried that the skin graft wasn't taking.

Most of all, I was almost sick thinking that he didn't really care for me, and it was all just wishful thinking on my part. Of course, why should he care? Then I felt so foolish. Pathetic. And I was torn up by the idea that I'd imagined that, somehow, I was special to him and that he did want us to be together in the future. What kind of skin graft was he having, anyway, that made this all so mysterious and serious? Had his burns made him somehow afraid to fall in love? Why? Did he think he was too disfigured? Maybe he couldn't have children? Or couldn't make love? Physically, I mean. I loved him anyway.

I decided that I would study even harder to fill up the big hole in my life. Before Jack left at the end of January, he had gone over all our correspondence chapters yet to be done and helped me make out study cards, and he chose lists of experiments I could do on my own. We checked it over with Mr. Freeman, and he was impressed.

“Well, Jack,” he said. “It has been a pleasure to have you as my student. We all wish you the very best.” Mr. Freeman never showed any emotion except cheerfulness, but I thought I saw a look of sadness in his eyes.

“You and Meg. You are two of the best students I've ever had. If all my students were as good, my life would be easy. Keep in touch, Jack. Let us know how you are doing. You will go on to do great things, I'm sure. If there is any way I can help, any way at all, please don't hesitate to ask.”

A few days later after school, I stopped off at the Landing to pick up the daily mail. The
Lady Rose
was tying up at the wharf on her return trip to Vancouver, and, as usual, I went down to the wharf to see her off.

Jack stood by the gangway with a suitcase by his side, and I walked over to say goodbye. His body was stiff with anger, but I thought I saw more than that in his eyes, a softness, a vulnerability. He took my hand and said, “You did come down to say goodbye.”

“I didn't know what day you were leaving,” I said. “When I didn't see you at school, I thought it might be today.”

He pressed something into my hand. It was a small, metal bar with a crest on it. “It's my school pin, from the year I went to Lord Byng. I want you to wear it.”

I hesitated.

“This isn't goodbye for us, Meg.”

He sounded so sincere that I felt like a fraud.

“Jack, uh, you know I like you, but I can't wear your pin. Wouldn't it mean we are going steady?”

“It only means that I'd like you to be my girlfriend. I know I won't be here. But, soon, we'll be together, in Vancouver once you're in nurses' training, and I'm at UBC. Take it. I'll write.”

The ship's whistle sounded. Jack bent to kiss me. I turned my face away, and his kiss landed on my cheek. He started up the gangplank. The school pin in my hand pinched into my skin.

“Mom, I've decided I don't really like Jack. I mean, he's been a good friend to me, and kind, in many ways. But he's got a cold streak in him.”

“He seems like a nice enough boy, Meg. And he's going to make something of himself. You could do a lot worse. What choice of young men do you have on the peninsula, anyway? Fishermen, loggers. So many of our young men away at war. What's left for you?” She paused. “Did you know that young Douglas Thompson is missing in action? I just heard. Poor Mrs. Thompson.”

“Oh, no! How sad. I'll go over and see her.”

Later that day, I brought up the subject of Jack with my mother again. “It's more than coldness, I think. He's so angry inside and so determined to have his own way, that it's kind of scary.”

“We all have to put up with something from men. It's their nature … You'll find it pretty hard, Meg, to make it on your own. It's the way society's set up.”

“But if I get my RN, then I
will
be able to make it on my own.”

“As a spinster. If you ever decide to marry, you'll be out of a job.”

“There's a shortage of nurses.”

“Doesn't matter. The hospitals won't hire married nurses unless they have to. You have the choice to be independent with no husband and no children, or get married to someone with a future. Like Jack. You can always use your nurses' training to take care of your own children when they come. But Jack's family could be a problem. They sound unstable to me. And they're English, you say.”

“Mom! We aren't prejudiced against the English here in Canada, the way you were back in Ireland.”

“I'm just pointing out the facts, Meg. Marriage is tough enough as it is.”

It made me think about marriage. I thought of all the married couples I knew in the Landing, and maybe Mom was right. There was always compromise, most often on the wife's part. Robert Pryce's wife looked the other way. Mr. Ballard forgave, but had he really? Mr. Miller stayed away. Mrs. Hanson was widowed early. My own parents quarrelled; there were hints of other women. I couldn't think of one married couple that I could look at and say, “I hope my husband and I will be like that.” I thought about marrying Bruce and decided our marriage would be different.

I wrote to Bruce every week, and every mail day I called in at the post office, hoping that there would be a letter from him.

Then one day in March, when purple violets grew in clumps between the rocks outside the post office, there was a letter from him. I had never seen Bruce's handwriting before, but his name and return address, Room 202, Heather Pavillion, Vancouver General Hospital, 2775 Heather Street, were on the left-hand corner of the front of the envelope.

I went back out into the bright spring sunlight, down to the beach, and found a quiet place to sit and savour the moment of holding his letter. His handwriting was like him, clear, decisive but not bold, like Jack's, whose handwriting on the few letters he'd written was pointed like daggers on their upward strokes.

I held Bruce's letter to my face, hoping to catch his smell. There was nothing but a paper smell. I opened the envelope, my breath catching.

March 1, 1945

Dear Meg
,

I'm feeling better today and want to thank you for all your letters and for the poinsettia you left at Christmastime. It's still blooming on my bedside table, and I think of you every time I look at it. It is so bright and lovely in the sunshine, just like you. It means a lot to me to have you care
.

I won't bore you with the details of life here in the burn unit. The important news is that the graft is finally healing, and every day I see an improvement. The doctors say that at the present rate of progress, I could be discharged by summer
.

Keep well, dear one
.

Bruce

I kissed his letter. The sun was surprisingly warm on my face. Never had the sky been so pure a blue.

During the Easter holidays, I was scheduled to work six days a week at the guest house, but Mrs. Thompson invited me to go into Vancouver with her. My mother said, “She's fretting about her son Doug, and now that her young boarder has gone, she's in a real slump. It would be good for her to have your company, Meg, and she likes you.”

“I could visit Amy at the same time,” I said. And Bruce, too, I thought.

I asked Mrs. Hanson about my taking a few days off from the guest house. “I'll work extra time for you before I go into Vancouver and again when I come back,” I said.

“It's just that without Anna here, I'll be swamped. From Good Friday on, is one of the busiest times of the year. I was counting on you.”

“If I worked Thursday morning, went in on the noon boat and came back on the late boat on Friday? And I could come in a couple of hours early for you on Saturday morning.”

“Yes,” she said reluctantly, “I suppose that would work out … But what's so important that you have to go into Vancouver?”

“Mrs. Thompson asked me to. And Mrs. Miller says that Amy is having a rough time. She's going to have a Caesarian early next week. I'd like to see her.”

“Well … All right, then. It's only Good Friday that you're missing … When you're in Vancouver, do you think you'd have time to take something in to Bruce? I've made a parcel up for him, and it would cost a fortune to mail.”

Of course, my main reason for wanting to go into Vancouver was to see Bruce. I caught the streetcar near Mrs. Thompson's apartment, and within an hour, was within walking distance of the burn unit at Vancouver General Hospital. The trees lining the streets smelled of sticky buds. Spring. I felt full of its promise. Though it was the end of March, and we should have been getting warm breezes from the south, the wind was cold. Snow on the mountains across Burrard Inlet glistened in the early morning sunlight.