Henry drove me home from the hospital that evening. I couldn’t have said which of us was more grimy and tired. In the car, I told him about Jilly’s admission, but he’d already heard about it from Zeke. He just shook his head wordlessly as I described her condition.
“Hard to believe in God sometimes,” he muttered finally.
“I know,” I agreed. This past year, I sometimes felt as though God had fallen asleep on the job.
When we arrived home, Ruth was in the kitchen making herself a cup of tea.
“Hattie’s chicken and dumplings is in the refrigerator for you,” she said to us, “but first, you both get upstairs and wash that blasted hospital off yourselves before you sit at my table.”
“Nice to see you too, Mama,” Henry said sarcastically, clearly annoyed as he walked past his mother toward the hallway. “Do you want the tub first, Tess, or can I take a quick shower?” Neither of us seemed inclined to use Lucy’s old bathroom yet.
“Go ahead,” I said, following close behind him.
“There’s a box for you in the foyer, Tess,” Ruth called after me.
The doll! What perfect timing.
The box was on the table by the front door. I sat down on the stairs and tore off the brown paper wrapping and then lifted the lid of the white box. There she was, an adorable doll a bit over a foot tall dressed in a ruffly blue gingham dress, white anklets, and black Mary Janes. She looked exactly like Jilly’s beloved doll—obviously made by the same manufacturer—with the exception of her cocoa-colored skin. Her features were decidedly Caucasian. Even the molded hair had a golden glow to it, but it was as close as we were going to get to a Negro doll.
I carried the box upstairs, wondering if I should hide the doll from Henry. He’d been adamant that I stay out of Adora’s family’s lives, but having Jilly as my patient changed everything, at least in my opinion. Of course, I’d asked Gina to get the doll long before Jilly had been diagnosed with polio. I set the open box on the dresser in full view, and when Henry walked into the room, his hair wet and his navy blue robe tied around his waist, he stopped short.
“What the hell is that?” He pointed toward the doll.
“I ordered it for Jilly,” I said, then rushed on. “Don’t be angry. I know you said you don’t want me to do anything for that family, but I couldn’t resist this, Henry. And now Jilly’s losing that doll she loves—she’s losing all her toys—and this is just perfect, don’t you think?”
I expected him to chew me out. Instead, a smile slowly spread across his face. “She’ll like it,” he said, crossing the room to the armoire. He opened the door. Searched through his shirts. “And the bathroom is now yours.”
* * *
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Honor said the next morning when I sat next to her on the bench to show her the doll. I thought it was as close as she had come to smiling since bringing Jilly into the hospital. She fingered the hem of the gingham dress, then looked at me. “I can’t believe you did this for her,” she said. “Thank you.”
True to her word, Honor seemed determined to spend all her time at the hospital. She rode in with Zeke early that morning and she’d talked someone in the kitchen into letting her work there in the afternoons. Jilly was still very tired, but her fever was slowly coming down and Dr. Matthews seemed even more certain that she had a mild case of the disease. Still, he was watching her carefully. Sometimes mild cases of polio improved for a few days, then suddenly turned deadly serious. He didn’t expect that to happen with Jilly, but he didn’t want to let her go home prematurely.
Honor touched the doll’s little white sock and gave me a worried look. “Won’t the doll have to be destroyed when Jilly gets better?” she asked.
I’d thought of that myself. The doll would need to be disinfected before it went home with Jilly. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.” I placed the lid back on the box. “Would you like to watch through the window when I give it to her?” I asked.
She nodded. “I would.”
I stood up and she grabbed my free hand.
“You’re a kind person,” she said.
I squeezed her hand. “I’ll let you know when I have a break to give her the doll,” I said. Then I left her on her bench to stay as close as she was able to get to her baby girl.
* * *
The hospital was bursting with new patients that morning, and the nurses, myself included, were overwhelmed with work. The Sister Kenny method, which we were all committed to now, was so time-consuming. How much easier it would be to have our patients’ legs and arms splinted and immobile than to wrap them in wool and exercise them several times each day. But I was determined to give my young patients the best chance at recovery they could have.
We received a second iron lung late that morning. Everyone had been nervous with only the one respirator, since that was still in use by our twenty-seven-year-old patient. What if we urgently needed another one? I helped the technician set it up. The other nurses were only too happy to let the respirators be my bailiwick.
Jilly was my least needy patient. I kept popping over to her bed to give her a little time and attention in between caring for my patients with paralysis. She knew who I was, despite my mask and cap, and I could tell that she liked me, but she still cried for her mother. It wasn’t until nearly noon that I had a few free minutes. I went out to the yard and motioned to Honor to go to the window. When I saw her appear at the screen, I propped Jilly up and handed her the doll. She stared at it with openmouthed wonder, then hugged it to her chest.
“Let’s give this one a name,” I said. “All right?”
“Nursie,” Jilly said.
“Nursie? Is that her name?”
“Yes. She got a little hat like a nurse hat.”
“You’re right,” I said, realizing that the doll’s hat did look a little like my own white cap. “Nursie it is. And Jilly. Look who’s at the window.” I pointed toward the window and Jilly followed my fingers to where Honor was waving at us.
“Mama!” she shouted, and I was delighted to see her energy.
“Shh.” I laughed. “Some people are trying to sleep, Jilly.”
“Mama! I got a doll!” She held the doll in the air. “Her name’s Nursie!”
Honor nodded and smiled but said nothing. She was not about to shout across the entire ward. She gave a final wave and disappeared from the window.
“Where’s she at?” Jilly asked.
“She’s going to work in the kitchen here, honey,” I said. “She’ll be one of the people who makes your dinner.”
“Will she bring it to me?”
“She can’t do that, but she’ll be in the kitchen, cooking it with love.”
* * *
I had to spend a bit more time in the admissions tent that afternoon, and when I returned to the ward, I was surprised to see Henry sitting on the edge of Jilly’s bed. Since he was working at the hospital, he—like Zeke—could go anywhere he pleased, but I was dismayed to see he was wearing no protective clothing whatsoever. Ruth would have a fit if she could see him at that moment. I walked toward Jilly’s bed, and as I drew close, I could hear her giggling over something Henry said to her.
She spotted me walking toward them. “Mr. Hank brung me a color book,” she said, and I saw the coloring book and small box of crayons next to her new doll on her lap.
Henry got quickly to his feet as though he knew I was going to chew him out for not wearing a gown and mask. He gave me a sheepish smile.
“That was nice of him,” I said to Jilly. I was wearing a mask, but I hoped Henry could see my own smile in my eyes. I was so touched that he’d reached out to Jilly this way.
“I need to get back to work, Jilly,” he said to the little girl. “Next time I stop by, maybe you’ll have a picture colored for me, huh?”
“Okay,” she said, already turning her attention from him to the coloring book. She dumped the crayons out of the box and onto her sheet.
I walked with Henry toward the exit.
“Next time,” I said, “you need to put on a gown and a mask.”
“Yes, nurse,” he said with a small salute, and I laughed.
He left the building and I watched him through the screened door as he walked toward the tent wards, still under construction. His attention to Jilly had been a side to him I hadn’t seen before and I felt nearly overcome with sadness that our baby hadn’t lived. Henry would have been a good father.
* * *
Later that afternoon, I soaked lengths of wool in boiling water for little Carol Ann’s paralyzed legs. I used sticks to feed the too-hot-to-touch wool through the wringer, then set it on a cart and wheeled it over to her bed. She whimpered as I began laying the fabric on top of her right leg. “Too hot, sweetheart?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
I knew the wool wasn’t technically too hot now—not hot enough to burn—but I could imagine how, on a stifling summer day, the weight and heat and stench of the wool could be suffocating.
Two new doctors had arrived that afternoon and one of them was making his way down the row of children, examining each one. He reached Carol Ann as I was still applying the wool. Like me, he was gowned and masked.
“I won’t leave it on too long, honey,” I said as I picked up another length of wool from the cart. “She’s a bit tired of all this wool,” I said to the doctor, who hadn’t said a word to either Carol Ann or myself. I looked at his eyes, the only part of him visible between his cap and his mask, and I gasped, my hands frozen in the air above Carol Ann’s legs. His eyes were a soft, rich brown and oh so familiar.
Vincent.