Taking a Chance on Love (14 page)

I checked in with the receptionist on the main floor of Heather Pavillion and took the stairs two at a time up to the Medical Floor. My heart pounded in my throat as I started down the polished corridor.

The door to Bruce's room was closed, a dressing cart parked outside. Around it were gathered a group of white-coated doctors. One of them began to read aloud from a chart. I spotted a wheelchair parked nearby and sat down in it to wait until the doctors had finished and gone. From where I sat, I could overhear much of what was said. A strong smell of Lysol permeated the air.

“This young naval officer suffered third-degree burns when torpedoed in the North Atlantic,” droned the older doctor. “You will recall from your lectures that such a third-degree burn means charring and destruction of the tissues. You will remember that I said there is constitutional and local shock and toxemia with liver and kidney symptoms.” He paused. “Gentlemen, let me emphasize that it is not the degree of the burns, but the extent of the skin surface that is the most important factor in recovery.”

Just then, a cart holding several pitchers of water and fruit juices and pushed vigorously by a student nurse in a blue uniform, went out of control. It came rolling down the hallway and, gathering momentum, hit the wheelchair I sat in. Before I knew what was happening, the wheelchair spun around and crashed into the doctor's dressing cart.

I got up and fled, leaving astonished doctors staring after me. I kept walking rapidly until I found an open doorway. I ducked into it and found myself in a bathroom with urinals, toilets and sinks. I hid there until I had enough courage to peek around the doorway to see when I could safely leave.

Three student nurses were picking up broken glass. A senior nurse in a white uniform, starched bib and cuffs, was trying to placate the doctors. A janitor with a mop and bucket appeared.

I waited until the coast was clear, found an elevator at the opposite end of the hallway and punched the button repeatedly for the first floor.

“That was a short visit,” said the receptionist, looking at me over her glasses.

“My friend was busy,” I said. “I'll come back later.”

I kept away for an hour, walking around and hoping the fresh air would calm me. This time when I went up to the second floor, I spotted Bruce through his open door. He was sitting up in bed, partially turned to the right, as if talking to his roommate.

I stayed where I was, letting the sound of his voice drift over me, like wood smoke.

“Meg! Meg!” Bruce called out.

I went in, and without thinking, put my arms around him. My tears were impossible to stop. I kept holding him.

“Let me see you,” he said. “I need convincing you're really here.”

In a moment, I pulled back, but I couldn't speak. I remembered the parcel his mother had sent and gave it to him. He put it aside, his eyes never leaving my face.

I began to tell him all of the news of the Landing. “The Ballards are expecting another child. Yes! I guess they made up after all their troubles. Mr. Ballard seems happier about it than his wife. But then she's still not feeling well.” I was talking too much. “And, oh, I've got my application for nurses' training with me — I'm going to drop it in at the School of Nursing this afternoon. I'll be down at St. Paul's anyway, visiting Amy. She's going to have a Caesarian section early next week.”

“Come closer,” he said.

I did.

“No, closer. I want to make sure you're really here.” He took my hand and raised it to his lips. “Okay, now you can sit down.”

I fumbled for the chair. I seemed to have lost all sensation in my legs. Had he any idea of how he made me feel?

I babbled on. “Oh, I forgot to mention. I'm staying with Mrs. Thompson at her apartment. She's worried about her son Doug.”

“Come back here again, Meg.”

A student nurse's head appeared around the doorway. “Mail for you this morning, Mr. Hanson,” she said. She came in and handed Bruce a pale blue envelope. I could smell its perfume from where I sat.

Bruce let the envelope drop onto his bedside table. “I can look at that later. Thanks.” The student left. Bruce said, “You're more important, Meg. Besides, I don't even recognize the handwriting.”

“I do,” I said, standing and craning my neck. “It's Amy's.”

“Not likely.” He frowned. “Why would she be writing me?”

He retrieved the envelope, opened it and took out a single sheet of matching blue paper. A snapshot fell out. The smell of perfume became even stronger in the air between us.

He read the letter, glanced at the snapshot and handed them both to me.

Dear Bruce
,

I guess you are surprised to hear from me. You shouldn't be. I think of you often
.

We're both patients in hospitals. You must be as lonely as I am
.

I'd be glad to see you again
.

Yours
,

Amy

Okay. This is all right, I told myself. Almost. No. The photo was of Amy at her loveliest and most provocative. I had taken it early last summer with Amy's camera, when she was going through her movie star stage. This was her pose as Hedy Lamarr. She succeeded in looking like a beautiful, seductive woman.

Why would Amy do this? She must be out of her mind.

I let everything fall from my hand onto Bruce's bed.

“You should see your face, Meg. You're not very pleased.”

“No, I'm not.”

“Are you jealous? Don't be. That's Amy. No big surprise there.”

He picked up the letter, envelope and photo and dropped them all into the wastebasket near his bed.

“Are you going to answer her letter?” I asked.

He laughed and motioned me to him. “You must be joking. You know me better than that, Meg. You're the one for me. If you'll have me.”

I seethed all the way to St. Paul's. I decided to visit Amy on the maternity ward after I'd put in my application at the School of Nursing. I hoped to have calmed down by then. After all, Amy was a patient, and, I gritted my teeth, I shouldn't upset her.

A short flight of stairs led up to the doors of St. Paul's Nurses Home. Looking through the glass windows of the entrance door, I saw a statue of St. Paul. Student nurses in white uniforms passing in the hallway flitted back and forth in front of it.

Inside, and to the left, I found the main office. An elderly woman hovered over the students who were picking up their mail. She wore a long, grey sweater with drooping sleeves, and she picked nervously at the pins holding her grey hair in a bun. Her eyes were grey, too, making her whole appearance one of desolation. The students treated her with grave politeness until they got out into the hallway, and then they snorted laughter.

“Yes?” she said, acknowledging me in a querulous voice.

“I have my application for the September class,” I said, handing her my large envelope.

She bared false teeth. “I'll tell Sister Mary Gertrude you are here,” she said.

Alarmed, I said, “I thought I could just leave the application.” I hadn't counted on being interviewed today. Would my feelings of anger with Amy show?

“Sister will want to see you. Wait in the room across the hall. I'll call you when Sister is ready … Are you chewing gum?”

“No.”

“Sister hates gum chewing.”

The waiting room was small and square. I parked my gum in the earth of a large vase holding a potted fern. Religious pictures on all four walls inspected me gravely. A young man teetered on an uncomfortable-looking straight-backed chair and shuffled his feet back and forth. He was soon joined by a pretty girl, who had stepped out of the nearby elevator. For a moment, there was a brightness and joy in the room. After they left, the eyes of the painted saints on the wall stared down sternly.

The elderly woman stood before me, oxfords firmly planted on the floor. “Sister Mary Gertrude is ready to see you now,” she said in an accusing voice. By this time, I was beginning to think that the whole idea of my entering nurses' school was not a good one.

Sister Mary Gertrude was a business-like woman in her late fifties, whose calm manner was reassuring. I thought that as long as I learned her rules and stayed within them, I'd be all right.

“I know young girls,” she said after she had seated me across from the desk from her. “I know every trick they have in their book. Now, I have a few questions for you. First, let me look at your papers again.” She shuffled through them quickly. “All of your qualifications are excellent, and your grades, too … What does your parish priest have to say about you, I wonder.” She opened a desk drawer, pulled out a folder and quickly read a letter. “Ah, yes, Father Smith. I met him once. Deaf as a post.” After a few minutes, she looked over at me. “He praises your mother and your brother, slams your father and has next-to-nothing to say about you. Why is that, do you think?”

“I'm sorry, I don't know.”

“I don't know, Sister Mary Gertrude,” she corrected.

“Yes. I'm sorry, I don't know, Sister Mary Gertrude.”

“Could it be that you do not go to Sunday Mass regularly?”

“I work on weekends, yes,” I said.

“We have daily Mass here at six a.m., and we expect all our Catholic girls to attend.”

“Yes, Sister Mary Gertrude.”

She went through my papers again. “We do have a three month probation period, so we can ferret out those who are not suited to the nursing profession. Girls who do not put nursing first. Young women who party. Who get engaged.”

She stood up abruptly. I scrambled to my feet. “That will be all,” she said. “I will send you a formal letter of acceptance and a list of what you'll need to bring in with you. You may go now. I'll see you in September when you've graduated from high school.”

“Thank you, Sister Mary Gertrude.”

Amy was in tears when I went into her room on the maternity ward.

“I'm so glad to see you,” she said. “Why does everything happen to me?”

“Are you talking about the Caesarian? That's to make sure that you and the baby are safe.”

“No, I expected that. It's Glen. He's been tired for months. Now it turns out that he has TB. He's in the Willow Chest Centre at VGH, and he'll be there for at least a year. It means that he'll miss writing his finals at UBC.”

“Oh. Can't the university work around that somehow? How long has he been in the Chest Centre?”

“Two weeks now. I haven't seen him all that time. Can't, of course. It's contagious. They think he got it from living with his aunt. You knew Robert's wife had TB?”

She had stopped crying and was studying my face. “You don't seem very sympathetic, Meg.”

“I'm sorry Glen has TB. I just don't know what to say to you.”

She sat back in bed, her eyes never leaving mine.

“I wrote Bruce Hanson, Meg.” She waited, as if wanting me to speak. I didn't know how I was going to control my anger. “Maybe I shouldn't have done that,” she said after a minute. “You're mad at me, aren't you? If you knew how lonely I felt the day I wrote the letter!”

“You're free to do whatever you want,” I said. “But we're not friends anymore.”

“Why? I told you, didn't I? It's not as if I tried to hide anything. I'll
need
you, Meg, when I go back to the Landing. I
have
to have friends.”

“You knew how much Bruce meant to me, Amy.”

“I forgot,” she said, her face expressionless.

“There's always Louise, your best friend. And Robert Pryce,” I said. “You can have them for friends.”

“Yes, that's true.” Amy's face brightened, then clouded. “You won't change your mind? You're being stubborn about this. It's not like you.”

“Actually, it is like me. I have to be able to trust my friends.”

“You mean that from now on you're going to be angry at me? Never talk to me again?”

“I'll talk to you. The way I'd talk to anyone else. Nothing more. It's just that I'm not your best friend anymore.”

The month of May brought sunshine and purple lilacs that scented the air with their sweetness. Birds began to twitter almost before the first light of morning showed at the edge of my bedroom curtains. By the time the sun had risen, the woods outside were full of bird song.

It was hard to believe it had just been a year since Amy and I had found the first note in the woods and traced it back to Rob Pryce. Perhaps it was because I felt alive and glowing with love for Bruce that this spring seemed lovelier than ever. Even the leaves on the trees took on the shape of Bruce.

Amy's baby girl had been born with a congenital heart defect and had been transferred to Children's Hospital right after her birth. Glen was still in Willow Chest. Amy had come back to the Landing to stay with her mother.