Glaring down at the paper, she said, Oh, Im real sure he had his reasons. There are about a million reasons to leave a woman and a little girl behind and start a new life someplace else. I guess he just picked one.
He said quickly, Dont you want to hear it?
Why would I want to hear it? She wasnt quite shouting, but she was warming inside, like a furnace catching its coals. The heat spread up from her belly to her chest, and flushed up her throat to her cheeks. A million reasons, goddamn him, and I dont need to hear even one of them!
Because you dont care?
Damn right, because I dont care! Except that she was shouting now, and nearly on fire with anger, or sorrow, or some other consequence of her tumultuous week. Let him die out there, if thats where he wanted to be all this time!
Paul Forks held out his hands, trying to halt her, or just defend himself-even though
it wasnt his fight, and he wasnt the man with whom she was so furious. Maybe hes where he wants to be, or maybe hes just where he ended up. Either way, he wants to see his little girl.
Mercy gave him a look like shed kill him if he blinked, but he blinked anyway. And he continued: Someday, youll wish youd gone. If you dont do it now, like as not, youll never get another chance-and then you really will spend the rest of your life wondering. When you couldve just . . . asked .
She clenched the telegram in her fist, crumpling the paper. It wont be as simple as that, she said. If he was dying when this was sent, hes probably dead by now.
He fidgeted. You dont know that for sure.
Itd take weeks to make the trip. A month or more, I bet. You know as well as I do what the train lines are like these days. Everyone talks about transcontinental dirigible paths, but nobodys making it happen. Maybe I could hop, skip, and jump it by air-but thatd take even longer than going by train. Forget it, she said, stuffing the wad of paper into her apron pocket.
Paul Forks stepped out of the stairwell and shook his head, Yes maam. Ill forget it. And Im sorry, it wasnt my place to bother you. Its only . . .
Its only what ?
Its only . . . when I took that hit on the field, and when they brought me here . . . I sent for my wife and my boy. Neither one of them came. All I got was a message that my boy had died of consumption six months after I went to war, and my wife went a few weeks behind him.
She said, I . . . Paul. Im real sorry.
He shifted uncomfortably in his clothes. Anyway, thats why I stayed on here. Nothing to go home to. But I dont mean to pry. It just hurts like all get-out when you think youre meeting your Maker, and theres no one there to send you off.
With his left hand, the whole one, he touched her shoulder in a friendly way. And he left her alone there, in the stairwell with the message she couldnt stand to read again, and no idea how she was going to answer it.
Still pondering, she went back up to her bunk, and opened her cases to retrieve the stationery shed taken from Captain Sallys stash down in the hospital office. Not knowing what else to do, or what else to think about, she sat on the edge of the bed and started writing.
Mercys handwriting wasnt any good, because shed never been schooled long enough to make it smooth, but it was legible. And it said:
Dear Mrs. Henry,
My name is Vinita Lynch and I am a nurse at the Robertson Hospital in Richmond, Virginia. I am very sorry to tell you that your son, Gilbert Henry, died this afternoon of February 13, 1879. He was a good soldier and a nice man, and he made jokes while we tried to save him. He had been wounded bad but he died peaceful. I stayed with him until he was gone. He spoke fondly of you and his brother. His last thoughts were of home.
When she was finished, she sealed it up and set it on the nightstand beside her bed, to be mailed on Monday, when the post came.
Three
Shed already said the rest of her good-byes, though theyd been few: to the other nurses, a couple of the doctors, and to Paul Forks, whod worked beside her for six months and would have guessed why she was leaving, regardless.
No one had mentioned her departure to any of the patients. It was better not to, shed decided. Shed seen other women leave before, going down the rows and receiving impassioned pleas, promises of future remembrance, and the occasional marriage proposal; and she wasnt interested in any of it. Shed learned, by watching other employees come and go, that it was best to simply leave at the ordinary time, and fail to return.
If she made any declarations, shed cause a scene.
If she merely went away, it would probably be days before any of the bedridden men noticed. They had their own problems and pains to distract them, and the absence of one nurse out of thirty meant little to most of them. Eventually someone would look up, scratch his head, and wonder, What ever happened
to Nurse Mercy? and then Captain Sally would say, She left. Last week. At which point, the invalid would shrug.
Mercy figured it was easier to ask forgiveness than permission. Theyd forgive her for leaving. But they might not give her permission to go.