Mary paused in the hallway, heard Nurse Hastings's crowing voice grow louder as she approached the staircase and quickly decided. She opened the door to Dr. Foster's room and slipped in, trying to close the heavy mahogany door as softly as she could. Still, there was an audible clink as the lock found its home. She leaned against the door, the raised paneling pressing her bodice to her damp back unevenly, a ridge cutting across her shoulder blades and catching her again above the hips. She let out her breath which fluttered the wayward curls along her brow and looked across the room to Dr. Foster.
He lay in his bed, eyes closed and face turned away from the bright window. The covers were tangled around him and his shirt was askew. His basin sat on the floor and half-way across the room, a leather-backed volume splayed, clearly the earlier target of his labile wrath. She saw the sheen of sweat on his forehead and noted she'd left a pitcher of water and some soft cloths near the bed. She'd retreated to his room in an impulse, sensing her rising temper would lead nowhere she could extricate herself from with Anne Hastings, but knew now that he needed her attention.
She walked over to the bed and busied herself arranging a chair, getting the pitcher to hand and wetting a cloth. She began to dab at his face, noting the pace of his breathing, his color, nudging the basin with a foot to gauge its contents. She soaked the cloth and wrung it out, then pressed it against his throat and neck, the open collar of his shirt. Mary caught herself humming under her breath, not tunelessly, but in the manner of a lullaby, the crooning a mother makes to her feverish child through a long night of illness. When she turned back after refreshing the cloth a third time, she was met Dr. Foster's furrowed brow, dark eyes puzzled.
"Why are you here, Nurse Mary?" His voice was low, uneven, the rasp of the bilious vomiting evident to her, though perhaps not to someone so familiar with illness.
"It seemed to be time to check on you, to make sure you have everything you need."
"Well, that is a hopeless task. I have nothing I need, since you have taken the needle—"
"No, Dr. Foster, you agreed to that, I took nothing you did not give me. You know you could not still take the drug and continue in your profession. You know what you were risking, who you were risking." Mary let her voice get louder, her frustration with him providing an easy entrée for all the other frustrations and hurts- Nurse Hastings's unrelenting harangues and obsequies, Dr. Hale's blunt demands of her, as if she were simply the hands or feet he needed at that moment. She allowed the anger she had been starving, trying to deprive it of all light and water, become a rapacious vine within a few seconds. Her mind flitted about, all the insults from Bullen, worse than a beast in his den, Mrs. Dix sending her here so ill-prepared, pitched over a cliff, the offense of Miss Green's hoop-skirts brushing past her, pretty face only prettier with her moue of disapproval, her sniff nearly swallowed by the swing of her silk petticoats. And before her, Dr. Foster, the great man himself, mocking and demanding, decrying her, holding her so cheaply…
She opened her mouth to speak then saw him shudder. She could tell he would not vomit this time, but he was caught in a wave of nausea, pallor evident on a face that should ever be ruddy with health. All her anger with him fell away, with the ease of a candle blown, and in rushed her proper nurse's care and concern but yet something else as well. She could not quite place the feeling, but it had a tenderness she never felt for patients in the wards, and the urge to comfort him in whatever way he required.
"What else is it that you need?"
He slowly opened his eyes to look at her. Such great dark eyes, even bloodshot and pained, glassy, looking at her and perhaps, truly seeing? "Nothing you can give me— a wife who 'goest whither I will go?' A mother whose love is not a spider's web, strong enough to trap but destroyed by an errant touch? My mind unfogged by this manna that poisons me, my soul—"
"Hush, now. You are ill and things are not as bleak as they seem. You are strong, in mind and body, and you will recover from your illness. I know you will. Then you may write your wife and recall her, mend the break with your mother—all these are within your grasp when you are well again. And that will take a tincture we have at hand, if you will only let yourself take the time." While she spoke, she touched his face with the damp cloth again, then, letting her instinct guide her, softly stroked his hair. His curls were unruly, thick and lustrous, his beard grown overlong. As she let her fingers feel the curve of his skull, a noticeable ease took him. His eyes closed and he dozed a minute, two, then five. She let her hand come to cup his cheek and felt that he turned to it, claimed the caress she has not known she was prepared to offer. He opened his eyes again as she sat with her own head drooping, her other hand lying loose in her lap, palm up.
"Mary, what are you doing here?" His eyes held shadows but his voice was only curious and perhaps kind. She drew her hand away from his cheek, a blush burning on her own.
"I am hiding from Nurse Hastings and her abominable, incessant demands! I am hiding from everyone and everything in this whole house, hoping I could find, for just a moment, a bit of peace. That I could do one thing without interruption or snide commentary, even if that one thing is only to wipe your face and give you a drink of water, poor enough nursing as it is!"
He laughed, surprisingly heartily. "Ah, the truth. I can hear the ring of it now. But wait," he reached out a hand, tremulous but still strong, "Poor enough nursing? What do you mean? You are a fine nurse, a comfort to all the boys, steady, accomplished. Who have you been listening to? Not that Crimean hag, surely? Yes, she can deal with bandages and casts but have you ever seen her sit with a boy, just sit? She is always on to her next performance, for surely you know, as I do, that is what it is. Why she chooses to act upon this stage is beyond me, but perhaps we are less discerning that Covent Garden. I can think of no soldier who would choose her care when you are about. I could never— that is, you are the only one…" He trailed off, the words stumbling like the injured boys as they walked the steps to Mansion House. His color was up but not as she'd like to see it, too bright across his cheekbones, the sweat coming again, his movements restless.
"That's enough then. Sip some water, then rest." She offered him a glass and he took some, not very much but more than she had expected. He lay back against his pillow and she took a few minutes to straighten the linens, shake out the coverlet at the foot of the bed, adjust the curtains. It was as she expected, he was ready to sleep again, likely for a few hours, worn out by the talk.
"Mary, why are you being so honest with me? For it does seem this is the most honest talk we have ever had…" As he drifted, edging closer to sleep, she decided to answer.
"Because you asked and because you will not remember, as you have not remembered our other conversations in any great detail, just that you rail and I nurse," she said, her voice growing quieter, the voice for soothing to sleep, "because you cared to have the truth, Jedidiah." She stopped then. He was asleep but it was not his awareness she worried about. Even using his given name was a step further than she should have gone. She was not ready to face that the effort now was to call him Dr. Foster, when every time she saw him, Jedidiah was on her lips, sprung from a place within her she was unwilling to name.
It no longer mattered how noisy the wards were or what interrogation waited for her. He needed to sleep and she would come back, when evening was falling into night, with some dish to try and tempt him. Perhaps tonight, he would take some and try to unbalance her, a sign of his return to health. She was sure he would not recall much of their talk and that she alone could fold up his words like a letter and hide them away in her heart. The nights were long and broken and it would be easier to think on it with only the moon as her companion.