Ring Around her Heart

By Shirley Thulin

Previous Chapter

Chapter 7

Synopsis: Joan Morgan, superintendent of nurses at Hillcrest Hospital, spends a week end with her roommate Kathy at the Kirk family farm and becomes attached to Joey, the youngest of the family. Later, Joey is critically injured in a farm accident, and all the staff at Hillcrest are greatly concerned over his condition.

Joan and Doctor Desmond hurried to the emergency ward. The voice that summoned the doctor a few moments before sounded calm and impersonal, but they both knew the “calling Doctor Desmond” could mean Joey had taken a turn for the worse. Neither of them spoke the words that were uppermost in their thoughts, it was not necessary to speak. Joan felt what he was thinking, and by the time they reached the first floor, she also felt that there was a close bond between them.

When they reached Joey’s room, the nurses were working frantically with the child. Joan’s first thoughts were for Kathy.

“Kathy, come out with me,” Joan begged.

“No, Joan. I can’t leave.” “Where are your folks?” “They made them go, but I can’t, please.”

“Kathy, you’ve got to forget you’re a nurse. You are family.”

“Please go, Kathy,” Doctor Desmond said, and then hurried to Joey’s bed.

“Your folks need you.”

“Uncle Jay’s with them.”

“You can’t do any good here. Your mother needs you.”

Joan felt Kathy relax. “You’re right,” she said, “Mom needs me,” and she left.

In a few minutes it was all over. Little Joey was dead. Doctor Desmond’s shoulders were bent. He didn’t say anything to Joan as he brushed past to go for Kathy. Joan felt that she was living a nightmare from the past. I let it happen again, she thought. In spite of my careful planning and reasoning, I have become involved again. I loved little Joey and now he’s gone. She went to her room.

Hours passed and Joan lay there on her bed, waiting. She didn’t know what she was waiting for. Was she expecting Kathy to come? Was she wishing Doctor Desmond would call, or Doctor Niles? She had never felt so unwanted or unneeded. Then she remembered that Tom would be waiting for her. It was a little past two and she had told him she would take him to therapy. She got up and went to his room.

“All ready?” she asked him.

“I’m not going,” he told her.

“Of course you are.” She pushed the wheel chair closer to his bed.

“It’s no use, Miss Morgan. I know my legs won’t get any better. There isn’t one bit of feeling in them.”

“But they can fit you with braces. They can teach you so many things . . . how to get into and out of a wheel chair by yourself. How to dress and undress by yourself. . . .”

Tom was silent. It seemed, that he wasn’t even listening to her. “Little Joey died, didn’t he?” he finally asked.

“Yes, yes, Tom, he did.”

“I knew, because when I asked about him, Doctor Desmond acted funny.”

“How long ago was Doctor Desmond here?”

“Just a few minutes ago. I think he was looking for you. Miss Morgan, can we go tomorrow? I don’t want to go now. I. . . .”

“No use putting off till tomorrow. …”

“But I know they can’t help me. Why did little Joey have to go? Why couldn’t it have been I?”

“Because your mother needs you, Tom.”

“No, she doesn’t. I’ve been here for almost six months and she has been getting along without me just fine.”

“That’s not true ”

“Joan,” Doctor Desmond came into the room. “Are you busy? Could you come here a minute?”

“I’ll be back, Tom.”

Doctor Desmond walked a few steps down the hall and then turned to Joan. “I wonder if you could help Kathy pack a few things. They are going home now. She’ll be off for a week or so.”

“Of course. Tell Tom I’ll be back later.”

“I will, and Joan ”

“Yes?”

“Thanks ”

In the weeks that followed, Joan was miserable. For awhile she thought it was the lingering depression brought on by the funeral and the memory of Joey, but now she knew it was more than that. She recognized the old feeling of despair. I feel just the same as I did just before I came here, she told herself. She tried working extra shifts hoping to tire herself to the point where she could sleep, but night after night she lay sleepless. She became enclosed again within herself, and more determined not to let herself get too close to anyone. The nurses who had begun to be a little friendly toward her were beginning to avoid her again.

Joan worked very hard but she seemed to derive no special joy in her work, as she had when she first had come to Hillcrest. The only thing that gave her pleasure was in working with Tom.

“You will soon be ready to go home,” she told him. She turned a deaf ear to his insisting that he wasn’t going home.

One day Joan went to Tom’s room when Doctor Desmond was there.

“This boy is ready to be released,” he told her.

“Really? That’s wonderful. Do you hear that, Tom?”

“Yes.”

“He won’t let us call his mother.”

“I’m not ready to leave the hospital yet. I have to find a place . . . Miss Morgan, I can do a lot for myself, but I have to find a place. . . .”

“We won’t call your mother until you want us to,” Doctor Desmond told him.

“I don’t know what to do,” Tom said.

“Tom, have I ever told you anything that wasn’t true?” Joan asked.

“No.”

“Well, when I was at the Kirk farm, I met your mother, and she told me how she needed you home. She said it was more than she could handle. She needs a man to ride herd on those kids.”

“I’ve been thinking . . . you know, about little Joey? Someone needs to watch after the little kids and keep them off the horses. They are too little to ride,” Tom said.

“When shall we call her, Tom?”

“Right now, Miss Morgan, I’m going home!”

When Doctor Desmond and Joan walked down the hall to the phone, they were quiet. Joan had a place in her throat that she felt was getting bigger and bigger and she couldn’t talk. She knew she should be happy that Tom was leaving, but she somehow wasn’t. There won’t be anything left when he goes, she thought. I won’t have a thing to keep me here.

As they reached the desk, there was a stiffness in the air that they both felt. The attitude of the nurses and the awkward silence that prevailed told them that something was wrong. And Joan, catching sight of Kathy walking swiftly down the hall, was afraid she knew what the matter was. She had noticed that several times lately Kathy had caused feelings among the nurses. She has been almost rude to them, Joan thought.

“What seems to be the trouble?” Doctor Desmond asked, looking in the file for Tom’s card.

“Trouble?” Miss Jackson’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “We never have any trouble.”

“Kathy been giving you a bad time again?” He didn’t look up, just kept on writing. And when no one chose to answer him, he finished signing Tom’s release and walked away.

Joan had found Mrs. Aines’s phone number and began to dial. She was glad for something to do to dispel the awful moment. She was also glad to be the one to spread the good news of Tom’s release, and could well imagine the excitement it brought to his mother and the children. She will be baking and cleaning like everything for the next two days, Joan thought, as she hung up and went to find Kathy.

When Joan didn’t find Kathy in the cafeteria, she went to their room. Kathy was there, sitting by the window, and when Joan stepped into the doorway, she got up and picked up her purse.

“Just a minute, Kathy,” Joan said. “I want to talk to you.”

“What about?”

There was a tone in Kathy’s words that was certainly not like the Kathy of a few weeks ago, and Joan didn’t know quite what she did want to talk to her about. “What was the matter today? Did someone do something to offend you?”

“What do you mean?”

“When Doctor Desmond and I came from Tom’s room, the air around the desk was bristling, and you were hurrying away.”

“So?”

“So what was the matter?” Joan was beginning to get angry at Kathy’s attitude, but she didn’t let it show.

“I don’t have the faintest idea what you mean. As far as I know, everything is working out just fine.”

The phone rang and Joan was closer to it than Kathy, so she reached out to pick it up.

“If that’s Dean,” Kathy said, “tell him I have gone out for the evening and you don’t know where.”

Joan waited until the door closed behind Kathy then she answered the phone. “Hello.”

“Hello. Is Kathy there?”

“No. She just left. Oh, Doctor Desmond, I’m worried about that girl. She’s acting so strangely.”

“I hardly expected you to notice. When you see her, tell her I’ll be waiting for her at breakfast. I have something important to tell her.”

The phone clicked and for a moment Joan held it and wondered what the doctor had meant, but so many things didn’t make sense to her lately, that she put the receiver back in place and decided not to try to puzzle it out.

That night Joan lay for a long time in the darkness and thought. The night noises brought her back to the first night she had lain like this. She wished she could recapture the feeling of contentment she had had then. Now her feelings were all mixed up, with the thoughts of resigning uppermost among them.

But where would I go, and what would I do? she asked herself. If I go to another hospital, it would only be a matter of months until the same thing would happen to me. She was beginning to drop off to sleep from exhaustion when she heard Kathy’s key in the door. It was well past ten, and that, too, was reminiscent of her first night at Hillcrest.

Kathy began to undress without turning on a light, so as not to disturb Joan, but Joan spoke her name softly in the darkness, “Kathy.

“Yes, I know, I’m late.” There was a trace of sarcasm in her voice.

“Not very,” Joan said. “Do you feel better?”

“I feel fine,” Kathy told her.

“Kathy, you’ve got to get hold of yourself. You are only making things harder. . . .”

“Joan, I have never felt better. I feel that at last I have grown up. At last I know where I’m going and how to get there.”

“You’re lucky, Kathy, not many of us know that.”

“You do, Joan. And now I do, too. I know that you were right all along . . . that you have to build up a protection so that nothing can get to you. I’m going to do that. I’m going to be a fine nurse, Joan, just like you.”

The flood of tears that sprang forth from deep within Joan surprised her so that she didn’t dare say anything. She didn’t want Kathy to know she was crying . . . silently crying into her pillow. She lay there in the darkness wanting to tell Kathy that she was wrong. But was she? What was wrong? What was right? Joan didn’t know. She didn’t know and the not knowing frightened and sickened her, and the night was long and sleep didn’t come until almost dawn.

The first thing Joan was aware of was the insistent ringing of the phone. It was Doctor Desmond. “Where’s Kathy?” he asked.

“I don’t know. In her bed, I suppose, I just woke up . . . Just a minute . . . .” But Kathy was not in her bed, and Joan went back to the phone and told him so.

“Did you tell her what I told you to?” he asked.

“I . . .” and for a moment Joan couldn’t remember if she had or not. “We talked, but then, I guess I forgot. . . .”

“Joan, I hope you’re satisfied. Do you realize what you’ve done to that girl? Does it matter to you that she’s patterned herself after you, and has withdrawn so that I can’t even reach her? There for a little while I thought you had become almost human. But you still have that ring around your heart. A heavy steel band that won’t let any affection out. Well it works both ways, Joan. It won’t let any in, either.

“I’m going to marry Kathy. We’re going to take Tom home tonight, and I’m going to talk to her all the way back until she sets a day.” He hung up and Joan wanted to cry, but there were no more tears.

Today I will hand in my resignation, she told herself. And then . . . and then what? She quickly dressed and went towards Doctor Niles’s office.

(To be continued)