Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [20]
They were both soaking wet and by the time they came up the front stairs, Ruby was in a fit. “Well, I’ve heard of people who didn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain but this is the first time I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And to think, Bobby Smith, that you of all people would lead a poor little blind girl around in a downpour.”
Beatrice defended Bobby. “It’s not his fault. I’m the one who wanted to walk in the rain.”
Nurse Ruby looked at Bobby, dripping all over her rug. After she moved him off the rug onto some newspapers, she said somewhat skeptically, “Well . . . whoever’s idea it was, if you die of double pneumonia it’s not going to matter. Both of you ought to be ashamed, putting your health at risk for such foolishness. I’ll be surprised if you live out the week.”
Despite her dire predictions, neither one got sick, not a cold or a sniffle, a disappointment to Nurse Ruby, who took their temperature daily for a week. After the seventh day, unable to detect the slightest symptom, she relented. As she held the thermometer up to the light and it read 98.6 again she said, “Well, all I can say is that you both were just lucky this time, that’s all.”
Later that day she said to Dorothy, “Imagine if that girl had come down with pneumonia and died while she was living under the roof of a registered nurse, what would people think? After all, I have the responsibility for the health of this entire community and I take that seriously.”
Neighbor Dorothy said, “I know you do and everybody appreciates it but—”
She continued. “Beatrice takes this whole episode lightly but I have a medical reputation to uphold. How could I go on giving out medical advice on the radio if my very own boarder had died right out from under me, I ask you that?”
Dorothy tried to be sympathetic and tactful at the same time. “Ruby, I know you worry about her and that’s very sweet of you but don’t you think she needs just a little bit of fun every once in a while?”
Nurse Ruby puffed up and slung one side of her blue cape over her shoulder. “Fun? Well, Dorothy, if you call putting your health at risk fun, then no, I don’t.”
There was no getting around Ruby, but what she did not know would not hurt her, was Bobby and Beatrice’s way of thinking. From that day forward Beatrice was taken on many secret excursions that Nurse Ruby knew nothing about. Including one wild ride in a wheelbarrow, a trip out to Blue Springs on the back of one of Anna Lee’s boyfriend’s motorcycle, a gallop on the back of an old mule that Monroe had borrowed and brought over, and a slide down a hill in the snow on a flattened cardboard box.
They had been caught only once when some busybody happened to mention to Ruby, “Oh, by the way, I saw your boarder Beatrice out at the state fair riding that big roller coaster and she and Bobby Smith were screaming their heads off.”
This information was serious enough to cause Ruby to put on not only her official nurse’s cap but her cape as well and immediately march over to the Smith house to tell his mother. And even Dorothy was a little alarmed at the thought of a blind girl on a roller coaster. “What if she had fallen out and broken her neck?” she said afterward to Bobby. Bobby just thanked his lucky stars that someone had not told Nurse Ruby about the other rides he and Beatrice had gone on that night, including the Loop the Loop, the Thunderbolt, the Whip, the Wild Mouse, the Caterpillar, and the bumper cars. Especially the bumper cars. They both could have gotten hurt the way he drove. With Beatrice at his side, going as fast as the car would go, he had whizzed around the track like a madman, with blue electrical sparks flying overhead, crashing into everybody he could. And in turn Monroe, a speed demon in his own right, had shown them no mercy