A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [79]
“Louise,” Innes said once again. “Who was here? Who were you talking to?”
Louise raised her head from the pillow. “Hazel,” she said. “Hazel was here, and now she has gone away.”
Though expected, the name, when said aloud, was a blow. “Did she say where she was going?” Innes asked.
“No,” Louise said.
“Did she say where she was living now?”
“No,” Louise answered curtly, perhaps having heard too inquisitive a tone in Innes’s voice.
“Was she hurt?” Innes asked. “Did she suffer any wounds in the blast?”
“She did not say,” Louise answered with a distinct note of pique.
“And her father. Your father. Did she have word of him?”
“He is dead,” Louise said.
Louise began to wail, and Innes rubbed her arm again. He wanted to comfort her, but it was all he could do to remain at her bedside. If Hazel had left Louise just moments earlier, she might still be in the building. He watched as the orderly finished cleaning up the mess. Innes had Louise sit up and take a drink when a new pitcher of water was brought. He told her, as he had several times before, that many blind women had full, rewarding lives. They had husbands, and they had children. There were schools where domestic skills could be learned and practiced.
Louise would have none of it.
After a time, Innes told Louise that he had to leave. He bartered for his freedom, saying that he would return in the evening and that he would read the newspaper to her. Both the pilot and the master of the SS Mont Blanc had been arrested and would go to trial. This fact captured Louise’s attention. “If you promise,” she said.
Innes searched every room and corridor in the building. He ran out onto the street, believing he had just missed Hazel, that he would see her slender form moving away from the building. He described Hazel to the nursing staff. Each sister shook her head.
During his dinner break, Innes walked the streets near the hospital. Logic dictated that he would not find Hazel in his wanderings, but now that he knew she was alive, he couldn’t help himself. Reluctantly, he returned to the hospital in the evening to read to Louise as he had promised. He wanted to ask her more questions, but he knew they would upset her.
On the following day, when Innes had two hours to himself, he made his way first to the Camp Hill Hospital and then to the surgical train from Boston. He searched through rooms and cars but saw no one who resembled Hazel. He made inquiries and received no answers. Had Hazel already left the city? Had she gone inland? Or was she simply staying with friends in a part of Halifax not damaged?
Innes made a plan. He would search each quadrant of the city until he had satisfied himself that Hazel was not in Halifax. The task seemed as imperative to him as breathing.
Innes returned to the hospital for his afternoon shift. He hung his overcoat in the cloakroom. Just the day before, Innes had found, buried deep in the pocket of the coat, a receipt for a lighting fixture made out to a M. Jean LeBlanc. Innes imagined it was M. LeBlanc’s coat that he wore now. He wondered whose shoes he owned? Whose suit coat?
The need for surgeries did not abate. Lately, these had been second surgeries, the first meant merely to save a life. Innes repaired crude work, some of it his own. He visited his patients, most housed on the second floor. The hospital no longer smelled of ash and death as it had when Innes had arrived on the first day. There were no patients lying on the floor between the cots. On the upper floors, the hospital was keeping patients longer than was necessary, simply because the wounded, like him, had no place to go. Hundreds of children had been orphaned.
Occasionally, there were moments of joy as when family members were reunited. Happy cries, rare enough, caused the staff to look up from their work for the source of the jubilation. Just that morning, a father had found his daughter whom he had thought lost, ecstasy turning to sorrow when the father had to tell the daughter that the