Four

It was a wooden boat that carried them across the waterway toward a bank of trees shrouded in mist. The clunk each time William lifted the oars was a metronome to the swish of the wooden blades cutting the water. A heron dragged its legs through the air as it took off from the thick foliage. Grace clutched the sides of the boat, conscious that Claude sat in front of her and slightly above. When they approached the dock, Claude jumped on the decking, threw out the ropes to tie the boat, then held his hand out to Grace. She accepted his help, embarrassed when the instability of her move from boat to land caused her to brush against his chest.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sea legs,” Claude said. “Happens all the time.” He steadied her, then stepped back, as chaste as any man could be. He reached for her carpetbag and his own black leather case. He seemed stiffer this morning, distracted, not sharing his smile nor complimenting eyes.

“Be back at noon, Miss Hathaway,” William said from the boat.

“Oh, I’ll be here all day.”

“Maybe,” Claude commented as he tossed the ropes back to William.

“Five o’clock sharp for the evening call. Before the bugs come out.” William waved before beginning his backward row.

“Most definitely.” Claude tipped the brim of his hat.

Grace watched as William rowed away, unease growing as he disappeared across the water into the wispy fog. She was on her own now, walking up a path with a man behind her whom she didn’t know, nor did she know if he was friend or foe. Still, he carried her carpetbag and right now that was a huge help given the slick trail.

Wilderness Heights, with its many rooms and two stories painted white, dominated the landscape as the sprigs of mist lifted to the towering trees above it. Grace could see small wooden structures like chicken coops nestled back among the firs. Maybe Rebecca had been moved to one of those, and if so, it might be easier then to talk with her, convince her to leave. “How many cottages are there?”

“I don’t know. They were just opened. Here we are then.” Claude huffed a bit as he set her bag on the steps of the veranda, placing his own medical bag beside it. She heard a clunk when he set hers down. “What do you have in there?”

“Just some of my ‘tools of the trade.’ I can carry it from here. Thank you though.”

He opened the screen door for her, and her initial assessment of comfort offered by the fine high-back chairs, delicate needlepoint cushions, shining side tables, greenery, and elegant lamps gave way to concern as groans and cries ached out from the rooms beyond. The scent of camphor and a pungent disinfectant of some kind struck her nose. Her heart started to pound. A vicarious pain absorbed from the cries she heard?

“What is that?” She clutched Claude’s arm.

“The smell?”

She shook her head.

“The sounds.”

“Yes,” Claude said. “Very troubling initially. Likely the massages. Dr. Hazzard performs them herself. Here’s Sam then.”

A man with military bearing approached them, hair as black as piano keys and a mustache so full it covered his upper lip. He shook Claude’s hand and put his dark eyes onto Grace as Claude gave her the name of Sam Hazzard. “And you are?”

“Grace Hathaway. I’m a friend of Rebecca Holmes. I’ve come to visit her and offer her comfort for a few days.”

“That won’t be necessary.” He tugged at an ear in a disarming way, but his eyes were endless black holes that sucked at her. “She’s only able to handle outsiders for a few minutes on good days. She’s making poor progress, I’m afraid. Oh, I ought not to be sharing such things with you. Dr. Hazzard will have an update, if she feels she can share it.”

“You’ve revealed nothing sensitive, Sam,” Claude defended. “But perhaps Miss Hathaway could meet Dr. Hazzard and be allowed at least those few minutes. William will be back at noontime and she could return then.”

“I’ll return when I’m ready, and not a moment before,” Grace said. She hated that these men discussed her in front of her without even noting that she had her own opinions.

“Yes,” Sam said. He tugged at that ear again, like a small child, thinking. “Well, let’s see what you have in your bag then, shall we?” He dragged out certain words, like a caress gone wrong. “We have to be sure you’ve brought no food. Nothing to interfere with the regime of the diet and a patient’s journey toward health.”

Grace opened her bag and Sam peered in, removing the ukulele she’d brought along, and a harmonica. He held sheet music up with a question on his somber face.

“You must have a piano here. Most sanatoriums do these days.”

“Afraid not. This is a serious place of healing,” Sam told her. “Patients have no time for musical frivolity.” He pawed through the bag, unrolled a drawing of the Columbia River done by Caroline.

“Her daughter drew that for Rebecca.”

Sam removed it and laid it on the side table. “It will distress her,” he said.

“But how could it? She loves that child and—”

“We know what is best for her. I hesitate to even let you bring these musical instruments to her. Dr. Hazzard would—”

“Surely they can do no harm,” Claude said. “I’ve known music to soothe.”

Grace smiled a thank-you at Claude before saying, “Dr. Millikan is quite right. Now if you’ve finished, I’d very much like to meet Dr. Hazzard since that is required before I can see my friend.”

“And I must tend to my duties,” Claude said. He tipped his hat at Grace and left the lobby–living area, as Grace thought of it. She wondered where his office was. She was sure she’d want to confer with him again before the day was out.

“Come with me then, Miss Hathaway. Quite the worldly name. I knew of Hathaways in Chicago. A well-regarded family. Are you from that line?”

“I might be. You’re from the northwest then?” Grace followed him, carrying her carpetbag. She looked back at Caroline’s drawing lying on the side table and vowed to pick it up on her way out. Like music, art infused encouragement to lost souls, and Caroline’s art would do that for her mother.

“Dr. Hazzard began her work in Minneapolis.” Grace hadn’t heard of her when she’d lived in that city. “And we moved to Seattle after a time. Here we are.” They’d walked down a short, narrow hall with closed doors on either side. At the end of the hall, on the right, Sam opened a door with glass labeled DR. LINDA BURFIELD HAZZARD, D.O.

A white-and-blue-striped uniformed nurse rose when Sam entered and Grace thought she blushed as she stammered her good morning. “Sam. I mean Mr. Hazzard. Your wife is with a patient.” Her hands fluttered as she sat back down and Sam tugged at that ear with a lopsided smile.

“Of course she is. This is Miss Hathaway. She’s here to visit Rebecca Holmes. But of course she must meet with Dr. Hazzard first. Will you take care of her until my wife returns?”

“Absolutely, Sam. Mr. Hazzard.”

“Yes.” He pushed himself to his full height from the counter where he’d lounged briefly, unsettling the nurse behind it. He winked at the woman, Grace was certain of it. “You’re in good hands with Miss Johnson here. It’s been a pleasure. I’m sure our paths will cross again.”

Not if I can help it.

Grace looked at her watch. She’d arrived at 8:00 a.m. and was still sitting with Miss Johnson at 11:00 a.m. without seeing Dr. Hazzard or her Rebecca. She stood, paced, sat back down, then asked for a toilet. She was directed outside, which surprised her since the facility gave the appearance of modernity, and with sick people, bathrooms would surely be advised over privies.

“You’ll have to leave your bag here,” the nurse told her.

Grace nodded. She escaped the room and turned in the opposite direction back toward the lobby–living area. Caroline’s picture still lay there and she picked it up. Then she pressed a door that opened onto another hall. The sounds of pain grew louder with the open door, and she debated about entering the hallway on her own. She decided against it as she really did have to use the water closet. After completing her duties in the hollyhock-bordered structure, she wandered to one of the cabins. Each had only one window and a single door off a small porch. She peered inside and saw a single bed, dresser, and chamber pot. At the porch door, she knocked but no one answered. She tried to push the door open, but it was locked. She went back to the window and saw two chairs, a long table, and various pieces of equipment—syringes and such. No hot plate for cooking; not even utensils for eating. Nothing on the wall to bring relief from the wooden walls not even whitewashed. At least no one was being left alone here. She stepped away from the cottage and bumped into a tall woman with a square face and eyes like a hawk’s.

“What are you doing here? This is a private estate. You have no business—”

“You’re absolutely right. I’m so sorry.” The woman’s eyes narrowed at Grace’s fluster. Grace hid Caroline’s drawing behind her skirts. In that moment she made a decision. “I was waiting to meet the famous Dr. Hazzard but had to . . . relieve myself. I have these . . . ailments that require frequent, well, eliminations.” Grace actually blushed with the lie, hoping to appeal to Dr. Hazzard’s healing desires and vanity with the subject. “After leaving the privy I noticed these little houses and thought perhaps if I were to be a patient here, would I be cared for in these cottages or in the sanatorium? But I never should have intruded.”

“You should not have. But you are ill?”

“Yes, though I came here to meet the famous, well-regarded Dr. Hazzard about my ailment. But also to see my friend who is being made well here. Rebecca Holmes. Are you on staff here?” Of course you are. “Do you know Rebecca?”

“And you are . . . ?”

“Grace Hathaway. Of the Chicago Hathaways. And I don’t have an appointment, but I was in Dr. Hazzard’s office all morning and I know she’s doing such good work and so busy and—”

“I am Dr. Linda Hazzard.” The woman stuck her hand out like a man, to shake Grace’s.

“You are!” Grace’s hand flew to her lips, the other still clutching Caroline’s drawing hidden by the folds of her skirt. “I’m so honored. That is,” she grabbed Dr. Hazzard’s hand and shook it like a giddy schoolgirl, “I’m so amazed that you are talking to me, little Grace Hathaway, right here at Wilderness Heights. I can’t believe my good fortune.”

The doctor smiled and sucked her hand free from Grace’s grip, her voice changing to honey as she said, “I’m so sorry you were made to wait, Miss Hathaway. I never want any of my potential patients to wonder if they are always first in my heart. Shall we go now to my office, dear?”

Grace nodded and walked just a step behind the doctor, chattering about nothing. She knew she’d found a key to this woman’s ways: toadying, obsequiousness; flatter and fawn. As they passed the lobby–living room table, Grace slipped Caroline’s drawing back. She’d get it later or maybe ask Claude to retrieve it in case she didn’t return to the hotel.

Because Grace was now a “potential patient,” she was allowed to see Rebecca. “I just want to know if she’s still progressing. It will help me decide if your treatment—should you accept me—is really right for me.”

“Certainly. I’ll take you to her room myself. But first, let’s discuss your ailment. I assume from your earlier comments it is your bladder then?”

“Oh, yes. I can barely wait an hour between visits to the commode. Of course it wasn’t always that way.”

“No, we change as we grow older, but still, your age would not account for such a malady. I would need a specimen.”

“And I can give you one. Within the hour no doubt.” Grace sounded as cheerful as she could, hoping to disarm the woman into thinking she was addled-minded already and would be an easy pushover as a patient, so she could find out what really went on here, where the moans and groans of suffering truly came from. “And I am a musician. Your husband, whom I met when I first came, looked through my bag and found no problem with the instruments. Perhaps I could play a tune for my friend, as a reminder of how things will be when she is better, under your very wise care. Music soothes the suffering body, washes the soul of the dirt of daily living. A German proverb. Have you heard of it?”

“I’ve little time for music or proverbs. I’m English, not German. Can you provide that specimen now?”

“Oh, of course. I’ll just dance to the privy.”

Dr. Hazzard handed her a glass beaker and then told her of a small bathroom inside the hospital. “Down that first hall and to the left.”

Grace did as she was told, glancing into patients’ rooms but seeing little as curtains covered the open doorways, keeping eyes out but not the sounds of agony coming from many of them. She tended to her instructions in the bathroom, noting a second door from the room. She wondered where it went, but it was locked. She needed to know the hospital layout so she could get Rebecca out furtively if needed. She sauntered back to Dr. Hazzard’s office, listening for Rebecca’s tones among the sighs of discomfort.

“Now then, let us visit your friend. Mrs. Holmes, is that right?”

Grace nodded.

“She’s having a difficult transition. Many emotional things affect her physical healing, but she accepts the massages well. The clyster syringe treatments have had to be extended to four times a day now, to compensate.”

Four a day? Why, that could kill a person. And with no food in her, how could she have anything to . . . eliminate?

“Rebecca always did do things differently,” Grace fawned. “My music might help.”

“We’ll see.”

They walked down the black-and-white linoleum tile of the far wing with two rooms on each side. At the last room on the left, Dr. Hazzard walked into the open door and pushed back the curtain. Grace was grateful no moans had come from the room.

“Wait here,” Dr. Hazzard told her as she stepped inside.

Grace looked past her to the bed and gasped at the skeleton of a woman lying there. “That . . . that’s not Rebecca Holmes. It couldn’t be!”