Here and Again Page 29

  Chapter 24

  The Three Musketeers

  When Ginger arrived at Franklin District Community Hospital, she found the front door wide-open with an ambulance backed in, its red and white flashing lights sending secret semaphore messages to the quarter moon. No one was in the waiting room and there was a great deal of mumbled conversation floating down the hall. As Ginger came around the wall of the triage desk to drop her handbag into the drawer, Nurse Margery entered and picked up the phone.

  “Ah! Virginia! It’s a full moon for sure. We’ve got Hamburger in here. Mr. Wolfe has been asking for you. He’s in room two.”

  Hamburger—someone was hit by a train.

  “Acute two,” Ginger repeated.

  “No, no. Room two here.” Margery motioned to the ER. “He’s PBOO and the only patient in acute. I needed the LVNs and the nurses’ aides. We’ve got an anaphylactic reaction, a severe asthmatic with bronchitis, and the Hamburger just came in. You take Mr. Wolfe. We’ve got the rest.”

  PBOO—“Pine Box On Order.” Ginger reached down into her purse before shutting the drawer, pulled out the Three Musketeers, and walked it into the waiting room. She set it on the chair nearest the triage desk and, heading back into the ER, passed the Hamburger with Nurse Margery, Dr. Patterson, and one of the LVNs in attendance. She found Janet, the other LVN, in the hall tending to the asthmatic. With Jack Wolfe in room two and the anaphylactic reaction in room three, there was no more room at the inn.

  “Janet, let me take a look at Mr. Wolfe, and if I can, I’ll move him back to acute. It’ll free up room two.”

  Janet nodded and peered into the open door of room three.

  Reaching for the handle, Ginger closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Death was a given in ERs, but personal involvement rarely was. The cow had changed that, as had whatever was moving Samuel and Ginger and, well, everybody around them. Ginger warmed a little as she remembered the calf had insurance and, opening the door, she found Joshua Wheldon sitting at Jack’s side. When he saw her, he smiled a great, sad smile and stood.

  “Ah am so glad you’ve come,” he said softly.

  Ginger took his offered hand and then gazed over to Jack. He was gray, his chest heaving in shallow breaths as he struggled to get the oxygen that was fed to him through the tubes at his nose.

  “Me, too,” Ginger said.

  “Virginia Moon?” Jack whispered hoarsely.

  “Yes, Mr. Wolfe. I am here.”

  “How’s my cow?”

  “Fine. Fine. She’s a good milker.”

  “Said she was. And the goat?” He laughed and then went into a severe coughing fit, his body convulsing with the effort. Calmly, Ginger stepped to his bedside and lifted him up a bit to take the pressure off the back of his ribs.

  “Now, Mr. Wolfe. We can’t have you laughing anymore. This is very serious.”

  His eye popped open above the deep circles beneath and he managed a small grin.

  “The goat is a menace but I feel that Bubba has learned a certain level of respect for the rest of us.”

  Jack eyed her quizzically.

  “Respect came in the manner of a large wooden broom on his backside.”

  If Mr. Wolfe could brighten, he did.

  “No laughing.” She laid him back down in bed slowly.

  I want a candy bar, he mouthed.

  Mr. Wheldon replied, “Ain’t no candy bar for you, Jack. Nurse Margery says it’s against orders.”

  Ginger winked and Mr. Wolfe smiled a little more.

  “That’s right, Mr. Wheldon. He can’t have candy because he’s really sick.” She looked over her shoulder at the man, meeting his eyes with great seriousness. “However, sometimes sickness is helped by candy bars, wouldn’t you say? A little happiness brings health in other ways than physical ones, if you catch my meaning.”

  His eyes widened. He nodded.

  She smiled like sunshine and turned, unlocking the brakes on Mr. Wolfe’s bed as she disconnected his oxygen tube from the wall. “Now, I’m gonna wheel Jack back down to his usual room in acute. If you can open the door for me, that would be great. And I think I saw a candy bar in the waiting room, but I can’t be certain because Mr. Wolfe isn’t allowed to have them.”

  Jack chuckled.

  “No more laughter, Mr. Wolfe.” Stepping down to the end of the bed, Ginger gave it a great pull, which moved it away from the wall, and set it in motion toward the door. “If you please,” she said to Mr. Wheldon.

  He opened the door, setting it ajar, and through it Ginger pulled Jack into the hall.

  “Room two is free, Janet,” she called as she turned the bed and pushed it toward acute care.

  “I am glad to see you, Virginia Moon,” Jack mumbled. His eyes looked down at her as she pushed him forward from the foot of his bed. The automatic doors between the ER and acute opened as she came to them.

  “I’m glad to see you, too.”

  “I’ve written a letter to Jacob Esch,” he said. “A story of my life.”

  “Really? Is it a good story?”

  “I don’t regret any of it.”

  “I know you don’t.” Ginger came to a stop and opened the door to acute two.

  “But I was thinking he wasn’t raised like me. He’s dutiful and responsible.” Mr. Wolfe smiled again and took a deep breath.

  “Don’t you laugh until I get you to the oxygen again,” Ginger said with a scowl. She pushed him into the room, slowly setting the bed flush with the wall. Reaching for his oxygen tube, she attached it to its spigot and turned it on. Then she checked his IV, making sure it was feeding properly after the move.

  “Okay. You can laugh.”

  He didn’t, but looked at her deeply. “Stay with me,” he whispered. “Hold my wrist like you did.”

  “I will,” she said and took his wrist gently. She counted—one, two, three. The pulse was there but shallow like his breath and she felt no need to look at her watch. Instead she stared back into Jack’s weakening eyes and watched a single tear roll down his temple to the pillow.

  “No need to cry. I still feel your pulse.”

  He gurgled a chuckle. Joshua Wheldon entered and, with him, he brought the weighted presence that was always around near death. Often, Ginger would hear nurses talk to the presence as if it were sentient, chatting to it quietly as they hovered around the dying, and she found them odd for doing so. But now knowing Samuel, she wondered at it.

  “You know? I think dinner is in order, Mr. Wolfe. I bet you’d like some watery, salt-free chicken stock with a dry, tasteless cracker. Let me go get that.” She turned and, in her sunniest fashion, grinned at Mr. Wheldon. “I’ll be right back,” she said to him, nodding a little.

  Softening the room’s light, Ginger stopped at the door and thought. She shrugged. Why not? “Wait till I’m back,” she whispered to the heaviness in the room.

  Heading to the kitchen, Ginger pulled out a packet of soup stock, poured it into a bowl, filled it with water, and stuck it into the microwave for one minute. Then she grabbed a tray, tossed onto it a napkin, a spoon, and a cracker, and leaned against the counter waiting for the microwave to finish and for whatever was happening with the chocolate bar to happen. With the microwave’s beep, she lifted the soup, set it on the tray, stirred it a little with the spoon, and walked back down the hall. Slowly she opened the door, stepping back into the room.

  “Mr. Wolfe, are you chewing on something?” she asked with a sideways glance.

  He shook his head and swallowed. Placing the tray on the counter near the door, she lifted the napkin and slid past Mr. Wheldon. He shrugged nervously at her with three-quarters of the candy bar yet in his hand.

  “What’s that on your lips?” she inquired, squinting at the chocolate edges of his mouth.

  “Nothin’,” he whispered, a chocolate cough following
the word.

  She wiped his mouth with the napkin and as she did his lips rose a little at the edges. He closed his eyes.

  “Rest now,” Ginger murmured. “All is well.”

  Taking his wrist, Ginger counted—one, two, three. The room grew still and quiet. One, two, three. Joshua Wheldon stood for a while behind her and then, slowly, as time passed and Jack’s breath grew impossibly labored, he made his way around the end of the bed.

  “I need a candy bar,” Jack announced clearly through closed eyes. He lifted his left hand, reaching into the air, moving his body back and forth in agitation.

  Ginger looked up at Mr. Wheldon, who pulled from his pocket the rest of the Three Musketeers and placed it into Jack’s waving hand. His fist closed around the chocolate bar and he quieted, lowering his hand to his stomach.

  One, two, three. One, two, three.

  “We should sing somethin’,” Mr. Wheldon said, his shaky voice breaking the stillness. “Shouldn’t we?”

  How hard it was for most to stand in the room with death, for always a certain silence came with it, partners arriving together to bring the inevitable gift. It was familiar to Ginger because she was an ER nurse. Yet as she held Jack’s wrist, she realized her comfort with it had become more than that. Ginger had lived in this silence for a year and a half—the emptiness of the acoustic shadow. She had learned that even in that emptiness there was purpose, like the space within the jar of clay. Now she heard so clearly, pouring across the acoustic shadow, the sound she had been missing. And that sound came from Joshua. He felt the loss coming and was even now standing between notes. But the next note must be sung for there to be a song. He was yet living even as death came on.

  “Please,” Ginger whispered, swallowing hard. “Sing.”

  In a hushed voice, he began singing of Jacob’s Ladder, but his words were mumbled in the weighty presence of the room and Ginger couldn’t make them out exactly. His tune, however, flowed in time with her count—one, two, three.

  As the song ended, Mr. Wolfe’s pulse slowed and his breath crackled. Ginger lowered her head to look at her watch and then she snuck a peek at Mr. Wheldon. His eyes flicked between the candy bar in Jack’s hand and the foot of the bed and the ceiling above. If he were not a man of duty and a true friend, she felt he’d make a run for it. But he stayed and she, reaching across the bed, took his hand in her free one. Startled from his solitary and undesired visit with death, he met her eyes.

  “Sing again,” she said, her hand holding his steady.

  He squeezed firmly, grateful for the company on this road, and he sang, this time a little louder.

  One, two, three. One, two, three.

  “Ginger, my love,” Jack whispered.

  Joshua stopped his song.

  One, two.

  “Beautiful.”

  One.

  “The gate is open.”

  There was a release of breath and then—it passed.

  “All is well,” Ginger repeated.

  They stood, the four of them—she, Mr. Wheldon, death, and silence—hands held for a while as pictures floated by: a car wreck, a cow, a candy bar. There were so few memories with this man and surely there would have been many had their acquaintance been conjured earlier. Mr. Wheldon was ready; he let go of Ginger’s hand, setting himself free. In doing so, the circle was released and death and silence drifted quietly apart and away from the room, returning once more into the ebbing flow beyond death’s door.

  The rest of Ginger’s shift that night was truly like a full moon. Three car wrecks, one of which involved a Two Beers, as well as two broken arms, a twisted ankle, and a stroke arrived to join the party with the asthmatic, the anaphylactic reaction, and the Hamburger. The Hamburger miraculously survived long enough to be medevaced to Winchester with the stroke.

  At eight thirty-two a.m. the coroner came for Jack Wolfe and at two thirty-two p.m. Ginger walked out of Franklin District Community Hospital into a sunny, rather warm West Virginia afternoon. Huge, puffy clouds floated by, sending shadows drifting across the large, round thermometer on the wall of the hospital, which read sixty-eight degrees.

  “Balmy,” Ginger mumbled as she dug in her handbag for her keys. She crossed the football field of a parking lot to her truck and as she climbed in she felt the buzzing of her cell phone. She pulled it from her purse and read the number. She didn’t recognize it. To answer or not to answer, that was the question? She decided.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Martin?”

  Grinning like the wild, wonderful West Virginia afternoon, she replied, “Why, Jacob Esch. How do you feel?”

  “Terrible.”

  “Good, good,” she replied.

  “Eli says your truck smells like vomit.”

  “How kind of him.”

  “No—I mean, did I throw up?”

  “Not last night.”

  “Before.”

  “Yes. It still smells like your throw-up.”

  “I’m sorry. I should clean it up.”

  “Not to worry.”

  There was no reply on the line and Ginger sat, staring down at the keys in her hand, thinking how different this quiet was from the silence of death.

  “Mrs. Martin. Jack Wolfe died last night.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “He wrote me a letter.”

  Ginger moved her keys a little, which sent several reflections of light dancing around the cab of her truck.

  “Mr. Wheldon dropped it off early this morning,” he added.

  “Mr. Wolfe thought kindly of you, Jacob. I’m sure he wasn’t one to write letters to just any boy he met.”

  “He said I was a man of duty and responsibility—not like him at all.”

  Ginger looked out the window of the truck. The evergreens beyond the edge of the parking lot swayed in the spring breeze, pushing the clouds above on their way.

  “I’d like to clean your truck, Mrs. Martin.”

  “Thank you, Jacob.”

  “And h-help you. With your farm, I mean. I’m from a farm.”

  “I’d be most grateful.”

  “Um . . . you leaving work soon?”

  “Now.”

  “Okay. We’ll meet you at the road to Oak Flat.”

  “We?” Ginger tilted her head as if the wind moved her.

  “Eli Beiler is coming, too. Is that all right?”

  Ginger thought. “Is he a man like you?”

  “I think so.”

  “Fine.”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  The line went dead and Ginger started her truck. As she pulled out of the parking lot, she wondered if it was such a good idea to bring Jacob and Eli to Smoot’s farm. She had three little kids; if the two of those boys got into trouble as a pair, splitting them up would probably be the best idea for her own family. The more she thought, the more she realized that a couple of days earlier Jacob had been part of her farm plan, but he left. Now, he was asking to return and with him, he was bringing Eli. He was bringing another pair of hands to help. Perhaps this was how it was supposed to happen. “Supposed to”—she was starting to sound more and more like her parents.

  She drove down the winding road and when she came to the last curve beyond which was the intersection to Oak Flat, she slowed down and flipped on her hazards. Rounding the turn, she rolled forward and then stopped abruptly. There were Jacob and Eli and next to them stood a pretty girl in overalls with sandy brown hair pulled back in a red handkerchief. She smiled shyly at Ginger as she lifted her massive backpack to her shoulder. Before she could get it securely situated, Jacob took it from her and handed it to Eli. Giving a nod and a great white smile to Ginger, Eli crossed the road without looking either way and tossed three large backpacks into the bed of her truck. Jacob hobbled over, held st
eady by the girl, and opened the front passenger-side door.

  “Uh, this is Miriam Schrock. Miriam, this is Mrs. Martin.”

  “Nice to meet you,” the girl whispered uncomfortably.

  Ginger half smiled at the girl and asked, “You raised on a farm, too?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am. All three of us were. We’re from the same church district.”

  “Ah, well. Hop in.”

  The relieved smile on Miriam’s face required no explanation. She was out in this crazy world with these two guys and there was no way either of them was going to leave her behind. It was time to move on from Mr. McLaughlin’s farm and she didn’t want to be the one who prevented it.

  “The Three Musketeers,” Ginger said as Jacob climbed in next to her. Eli and Miriam slid across the backseat.

  “The candy bar?” Eli asked, confused.

  “The book, if you’d like to read it,” Ginger replied.

  “Sorry about the smell in your truck, Mrs. Martin.”

  “We’ve already had forgiveness on that subject,” Ginger replied. “And just look at the help I get because I met you! Small price to pay.”

  She looked over at Jacob, whose face brightened as if he’d known her his whole life, and then she gazed into the rearview mirror. Two young lives sat in her backseat. Behind them, the road to Franklin District Community Hospital and last night’s death rolled away.

  “Don’t forget to close the gate, Jack,” Ginger whispered.

  April 14, 1863

  Falmouth

  My love, Juliette,

  We have spent the winter here, just outside of Fredericksburg—we on one side of the Rappahannock, those people on the other. Through cold and snow and rain and mud, we have called to each other, mocked each other, stood silent as droves of us died of sickness and were buried. We’ve spent Christmas together. I now firmly believe we have more in common with each other than anyone else back home.

  The snow is gone, the river flows, and life has returned but we are yet here in camp. Will we be always across the river from each other, waiting for the other to make the first move? It is as if no one wants to start the killing again. Jackson himself went to the river’s edge with several ladies. The other side tipped their hats as good manners dictate and the ladies waved back. They could have killed him easily, but now I think they feel as I do. He is family. You do not kill a strange but brilliant uncle, do you?