Chapter 11
“You’re healing very nicely, my dear, but I’m afraid going back to your… line of work for at least two weeks is completely out of the question.”
“Two weeks!” Jenny yelped in dismay while Dr. Brown gave her an understanding smile as she snapped her medical bag shut. “But I feel fine.”
“If you were to return any sooner, you would be likely to do serious damage to your insides,” the doctor replied, her tone gentle, although she eyed Jenny, still lying in bed, with a certain sternness.
“And that would almost certainly inhibit your… future prospects of employment here, if that is what you are concerned about.”
Jenny subsided against the pillows with a discontented sigh, her straw-colored hair tousled about her freckled face.
Maggie suspected she would not heed the doctor’s advice; Jenny was so fearful of being turned out, and it had been three days already.
And considering how Miss Jessie was demanding her own imminent departure, Maggie did not put too much stock in the madam’s current generosity of spirit.
In the three days since Miss Jessie had given her ultimatum, Maggie had spent the afternoons once she’d finished her mending tramping the streets of the Barbary Coast and beyond, looking for work.
There were plenty of jobs to be had, it was true—she could work as a washerwoman in one of the laundries, or at one of the garment sweatshops, or at the peach cannery on the waterfront, but none of those jobs paid her enough to keep a roof over her head.
The foreman at the cannery had come off the floor to tell her she’d be paid one dollar for a day’s ten-hour shift, and she’d have to buy her own apron and cap.
At six days a week, that would only just pay her room and board at Miss Jessie’s, with nothing left over and no time to do the mending that would be required to pay that rate in the first place.
She would be no farther ahead than she was now, and in many ways worse.
Yesterday, wearing her smartest dress and hat, Maggie had used her last few pennies to take one of San Francisco’s famous trolleys to I.
Magnin, a prominent department store on Union Square.
Walking among the elegant counters and high wooden shelves had given her a pang of yearning for the life she’d once had—back in New York, when she’d spent hours standing in front of the plate-glass windows of Arnold Constable’s or Lord the store was one of the city’s most luxurious and, judging from the floor manager’s derisive sniff, she clearly hadn’t been considered high class enough to work there.
Despondent, Maggie had walked all the way back to Miss Jessie’s, her dress sticking to her back in the heat, because she didn’t have the fare for the return journey.
“I don’t see a need to return again unless you experience complications,” Dr. Brown told Jenny now. “But I don’t foresee that happening, since you’re healing up so nicely.” She held up a warning finger. “But you must have two more weeks of bed rest! It’s very important, and I insist upon it.”
Jenny gave her an unhappy smile, and Maggie feared she had no intention of obeying the doctor’s orders. She was just as fearful that Miss Jessie would not insist upon it, either.
“Are you well, Miss O’Halloran?” Dr. Brown asked as Maggie accompanied her to the front door. “I ask only because you look a little peaked.”
“I’m fine,” Maggie replied quickly. In truth, she was exhausted from sleepless nights worrying about where she would go, as well as the hours she’d spent walking up and down San Francisco’s steep streets, but she wasn’t about to explain all that to the good doctor.
Dr. Brown eyed her thoughtfully as she pulled on her gloves.
“I wonder if you might call on me at the hospital one day? The Hospital for Children and Training School for Nurses on California Street. It’s not too far.
” Maggie stared at her blankly as she raised her eyebrows in expectation. “Shall we say tomorrow, at noon? Good.”
And without waiting for a reply, Dr. Brown stepped out into the street, while Maggie simply stared after her departing figure.
What on earth could Dr. Brown want with her at the hospital?
Perhaps she wanted to talk more about Jenny, away from the listening ears of the other girls and Miss Jessie.
Yet what more could she do to help the girl?
With a sigh, Maggie went back inside, her mind, as ever, wearily turning in futile circles.
She started to head back upstairs to finish collecting the mending, only to be stopped by Brendan coming down the stairs, dressed for the day, his skin still slightly damp from shaving, smelling of soap.
Maggie’s heart gave a treacherous little skip at the mere sight of him.
“Maggie!” He reached for her arm, and she withdrew instinctively. He dropped his hand before he’d touched her, studying her face. “You’ve been avoiding me,” he stated quietly.
“I haven’t,” Maggie replied quickly, although she knew that wasn’t quite true.
She hadn’t been avoiding him, but she certainly hadn’t been seeking him out, either.
But then, why should she? Ever since the evening where she’d come uninvited into Brendan’s room, and then Jenny had fallen down the stairs, he’d seemed, simply from his searching looks, to presume an intimacy between them that Maggie was quite sure wasn’t there…
by Brendan’s choice. And no matter how she might respond to him, conscious of his nearness, noticing the glint in his hazel eyes, she had wanted to keep her distance, to spare herself any more humiliation.
“Are you angry with me?” Brendan asked, cocking his head, his gaze still sweeping over her.
“No,” Maggie answered truthfully. She wasn’t angry, but she was hurt, even if she knew she had no right to be.
Hurt by Brendan’s rejection of her on that night, and then the further, stinging rejection of him accepting a permanent position here at the parlor house while knowing she had nowhere to go.
Her reaction didn’t make sense and it wasn’t fair, she knew, because she’d told him herself that she didn’t want him to be beholden to her.
So if he wasn’t, she knew she should hardly mind, and yet somehow she did.
“I need to go,” she told him as she started up the stairs. “The girls will be receiving visitors soon, and I need to gather their clothes for mending.”
“Maggie—” Brendan called again, but then he fell silent, even though she’d paused on the stairs to wait for him to speak.
After a second’s hesitation Maggie hurried the rest of the way up without looking back.
It seemed, she reflected on a weary sigh, that she and Brendan were always missing each other, one way or another.
Twenty-four hours later, under a heavy gray sky, Maggie stood in front of the grounds of the Hospital for Children and Training School for Nurses on California Street, feeling apprehensive but also curious as to what Dr. Brown could possibly want with her.
In addition to the main building, which was gabled and made of gray stone, there was a circular building with an impressive rotunda and a two-story, white stone cottage.
The hospital was perched on a hill with a wooden fence around the perimeter; up here, high above the waterfront and Barbary Coast with its crowded tenements and narrow streets, Maggie almost felt as if she were in the countryside.
There was space to breathe, to be, which she supposed could only be good for the poverty-stricken patients who made the trek in from the denser neighborhoods near the bay.
It had been a three-mile walk from Montgomery and Market to the hospital, and she was sticky and hot as she mounted the steps to the main building and went inside.
The front lobby area was crowded with patients waiting to be seen, all women, some haggard and elderly, bent over with age, others wearily holding babes in arms or with small children on their laps, their faces flushed, their eyes glassy and dull.
The sound of dry, racking coughs echoed through the waiting room and Maggie hurried by quickly.
As sorry as she felt for the woebegone figures, whatever contagion was present, she didn’t want to catch it. Her situation was precarious enough.
A smart-looking nurse with a crisply starched apron and cap and an armful of bandages directed her to Dr. Brown’s office on the second floor, and as Maggie approached the room, she glanced up and down the freshly mopped corridor in curiosity; she had never been in a hospital before.
When her mother had been sick, they had not been able to afford even a doctor, and in any case, back in Ireland, the general attitude toward institutions such as these was that they were places where you went only to die.
Perhaps, she mused, this hospital was different. It certainly seemed different—clean and bright, the afternoon sunlight slanting through the tall, narrow windows, doctors and nurses—all women—walking briskly into the sunlit wards, greeting patients cheerfully.
“Come in!” Dr. Brown called when Maggie tapped on the door, and she stepped inside the small, neat office nervously, relaxing only a little when the doctor caught sight of her and broke into a smile.
“Miss O’Halloran! I’m very glad you came.” She gestured to one of two wooden chairs in front of her desk. “Please, take a seat.”
“Thank you.” Maggie perched on the edge of the chair, her hands clasped in her lap expectantly. She still had no idea why Dr. Brown had summoned her there.
“Now, how is Jenny?” the doctor asked. “I hope she’s obeying my instructions.” Her eyes creased in a smile of understanding sympathy; Maggie suspected Dr. Brown knew full well that Jenny would be unlikely to comply with the two full weeks of bed rest required.
“She is so far,” Maggie answered, “but it has only been one day since your visit. I don’t know whether she will manage the full two weeks.”
“Indeed.” Dr. Brown folded her hands on her desk.
“I worry for girls like her. So very young, and sadly they’ll be worn out and used up before they’re twenty.
” She shook her head sorrowfully. “I wondered if Jenny might be willing to consider another occupation? I have need of a kitchen maid—not here, but in my own home. Room and board would be included, of course, and the pay would be five dollars a week. Do you think we might tempt her with such a prospect?”
Dr. Brown gave her a conspiratorial smile, her eyes twinkling, while Maggie struggled to frame an appropriate response—and hide her own burning jealousy.
Room and board and five dollars a week in an undoubtedly respectable and welcoming house, far from the dissolute dives of the Barbary Coast!
She could use such a position, desperately, but she could hardly say as much.
Besides, Maggie knew, Jenny had need of it more.
“I’m sure we could,” she replied, managing a smile. So this was why Dr. Brown had summoned her all this way. “Would you like me to suggest it to her?”
“Indeed I would. Despite the hardships, it isn’t always easy for a young girl to turn away from all that her current position offers—the silks and satins, the chocolates and the champagne. I’ve seen it before, many times, but I do pray Jenny will be sensible.”
“I’ll make sure of it,” Maggie vowed. And if Jenny refused such a plum job falling right into her lap, well then, perhaps she would be so bold as to ask for it herself.
But as much as she longed for such security, Maggie hoped the young girl would be agreeable.
She knew it could be her salvation. “Thank you for thinking of her,” Maggie told Dr. Brown.
“It’s very kind of you.” She started to rise from her seat, sensing the short interview was most likely over, since Jenny’s job opportunity was surely all the doctor wanted to talk about.
“Now, now, there is no need to leave so quickly!” Dr. Brown exclaimed on a laugh. “Sit down, if you please, Miss O’Halloran, for I have another proposition for you.”
Surprised, Maggie sat back down with a thump. “You do?” she asked.
“Indeed, I do.” Dr. Brown gave her a frank, smiling look, seeming amused by her obvious uncertainty.
“Jenny isn’t the real reason I called you here today, although of course I hope to see her better situated.
What I really wanted to talk about was you, Miss O’Halloran.
” She paused while Maggie simply stared, having no idea what Dr. Brown might be proposing.
“After seeing how capably you assisted me the other day,” the doctor continued, “I would like to ask you to consider coming to our hospital and training as a nurse.”