He smiled and truly looked pleased. “Then you must call me Gray.”
“If we are to be friends,” I replied, a bit tired of the formality my 1861 path demanded, “then you must call me Maggie.”
“Then Maggie is not an alias after all.”
“Not entirely, no.”
He continued to study me, as if he couldn’t quite unravel a mystery burning within him.
I recognized the look, because I had one burning within me as well.
8
MAY 3, 1941
BETHESDA, MARYLAND
The evening festivities beckoned to me as I finished my rounds. We had been invited to a dance at the Army and Navy Club, and I had been looking forward to it for days.
Anna had not wanted to go at first, but I convinced her it would be good for her. She had been smiling a little more lately, though I still heard her crying into her pillow from time to time. It took several days of cajoling, but she’d finally agreed to go.
She’d been off duty for over an hour and would be waiting for me in our dorm, no doubt catching up on all the Hollywood drama inPhotoplayor reading about the latest fashion trends inCosmopolitan. She devoured popular culture in ways I would never understand, though it made her well-liked among the other nurses since most of them loved to gossip about the celebrities they’d never meet. And it seemed to be one of the only things that brought her joy.
The hospital was quiet as I stood at the sink and washed my hands outside the recovery room. I had assisted in five operations that day, and though I would have loved to be the surgeon,helping Dr. Philips had been just as rewarding. After two weeks, he still treated me as if he didn’t want me there, but he never mocked or derided me when I made suggestions.
Thankfully, Private Edmund had made a full recovery after his appendectomy, though Dr. Philips never spoke to me about it—or any of the other successes we’d had. It didn’t matter. I knew thatheknew, and it was enough.
I had to pass Dr. Philips’s office on my way back to my dorm. Usually the door was closed, and I could slip by without notice. But today the door was open, and I saw him sitting at his desk with a large book open before him. He was reading from it, his right hand sitting on the desk with a pencil poised over a piece of paper.
I had noticed his dermatitis several times and observed the sallowness of his skin. He also looked like he’d lost weight since I’d arrived, making me wonder if he was suffering from an illness. Stress could easily cause all of those symptoms, but perhaps it was something more. Something Dr. Philips didn’t even understand.
Suddenly I realized why he was so crabby. He was suffering. I’d seen it hundreds of times with patients. Illness had a way of bringing out the worst in some people, and I had definitely seen the worst in Dr. Philips.
I paused outside his office door, thankful for the shadows of the hallway that would keep me out of his peripheral vision.
Slowly, he closed the book and began to write on the paper. It gave me the opportunity to see its title:American Journal of Digestive Diseases. Near the book was a glass of water with the telltale signs of fizzing from an Alka-Seltzer tablet.
Was Dr. Philips suffering from a digestive disorder? Did that account for his sallowness, weight loss, and dermatitis? If so, it appeared to be a puzzle to him, if he was doing research. Did he know what ailed him, or was he stumped?
I wanted to ask him about his medical history and his currentsymptoms. There was still so much we didn’t know in 2001, but there was so much wedidknow. And the chasm between medical knowledge in 1941 and 2001 was immense.
Deciding I would never know if I didn’t ask, I tapped lightly on the doorframe of his office.
He looked up, startled, and frowned at me. “What do you want?”
“I’m going off duty,” I said, trying to smile at a man who had never once smiled at me.
“Why does that concern me?” His usually meticulous hair was disheveled, as if he’d run his hand through it several times. He looked back at his paper and continued to write.
“A fascinating topic,” I said, gingerly entering his office. It wasn’t very large, but it was clean and orderly, just as I would keep it if it were mine. Outside, the sun was setting, painting a multicolored canvas of light across the heavens.
“You are familiar with digestive diseases?” His question seemed more like mockery, as if I could not possibly know anything about the subject.
He galled me, so I said, “More than you might realize.”
With a grunt, he pushed his paper under the book and turned to me. “What do you want, Nurse Hollingsworth?”
WhatdidI want? Truly? “For us to be friends.”
