Chapter 20 #2
“Yes,” Maggie agreed without looking at anyone. “Yes, I suppose I can.” She tried to smile without meeting anyone’s eye, because she couldn’t bear to. “Excuse me,” she whispered, and hurried from the room.
Upstairs, she paced the confines of her own small room, her heart racing along with her mind.
She felt like she needed to make some kind of decision, but she couldn’t think what it was.
The decision had already been made for her, when her father and brother and Brendan had all decided to leave her in San Francisco without so much as a backward glance.
There was nothing she could say or do about it but simply accept it as fact.
She let out a cry and then pressed her fist to her lips.
She couldn’t accept such a thing! To never see any of her family ever again?
To never see Brendan? It felt as if her heart, her very self, was being torn right in two.
How could she be cast off in such a careless fashion, left entirely alone in the world?
She whirled around, her mind racing. She needed to think. And yet what was there to think about? It had all been decided. She was going to be abandoned, alone, again.
Unless…
With a certainty that sliced through her like a sharp knife, cutting right to the quick of her, Maggie knew what she could do. What she had to do. She could not let the only people she’d ever loved simply walk out of her life forever.
She stayed completely still for several minutes, staring into space, her mind continuing to race and yet at the same time feeling strangely blank as a thousand scattered thoughts fell into surprising place.
Then, in one swift movement, she reached for her cloak, swirling it around her shoulders before hurrying outside.
Half an hour later, she was standing on the doorstep of the Browns’ home in Haight Ashbury. It was nearly nine o’clock at night, far too late to call, but she knew she had no choice.
“Maggie!” Charlotte exclaimed in concern when she came into the drawing room after the maid had let her inside. “My dear… is everything all right?”
“No.” Maggie realized her teeth were chattering even though the room was warm.
She hugged herself before dropping her arms. “No, it’s not.
” She looked hopelessly at her mentor, benefactor, and de facto boss.
“Dr. Brown… Charlotte… I’m so very sorry but I…
I must quit the nursing program.” The words felt as heavy as stones, dropping to the floor with a thud.
Charlotte’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open before she snapped it shut. “Quit… Maggie, you are two months from gaining your certificate!” she exclaimed. “And I am hoping that the board offers you a position at the hospital upon gaining it. Why on earth would you quit now?”
“I…” Maggie stared at her miserably. She feared she was making a disastrous mistake, and yet even so, she knew she had to make it. She could not let her family leave her alone again, the way her da had back in Ireland, and then in New York. And Brendan…
“My family is moving to Alaska,” she stated simply. “I have to go with them.”
“Your family?” Charlotte repeated sharply. “You mean your father who abandoned you in New York and now works in a brothel? Your wastrel of a brother?” She pressed her lips together. “My dear, you are making a tremendous mistake. Surely you can see that.”
“I know I am,” Maggie whispered. “I know. But I have no choice. I can’t… I can’t let them leave me again.” Her voice trembled. “I can’t be all alone like that.”
“Maggie, you are not alone!” Charlotte exclaimed.
“Why, I like to think that I and my family are your friends, and the other nurses who are training with you… Dr. Weston thinks very highly of you, I know.” She smiled encouragingly, her expression troubled but also with a hint of impatience about her manner.
Maggie knew the doctor simply could not fathom her decision, and, in truth, neither could she. Yet she was still making it.
She shook her head, wretched in her misery but still resolute. “I’m sorry, but it’s not the same.” Charlotte stared at her, so clearly disapproving and incredulous, and she offered haltingly, “I could come back one day, perhaps, and… and finish?—”
“And you suppose we shall wait, and take you up for those two months whenever you please?” Charlotte demanded. “The hospital paid for nearly two years of your training, Maggie?—”
“And received ten hours of work, seven days a week, in return,” Maggie replied evenly.
“I’m very grateful for the opportunity, Dr. Brown, please believe me.
But I’ve paid the hospital back in full through my work there.
” She straightened, throwing her shoulders back as she met the doctor’s annoyed gaze with a defiance she hadn’t expected to possess.
“I don’t owe anyone anything,” she declared with quiet firmness, “and the hospital doesn’t owe me anything, either.
” She spread her hands out in helpless appeal.
“Dr. Brown, I know you can’t understand, but I have to go.
I can’t lose my family again. I just can’t. ”
Charlotte stared at her for a long moment, her expression cooling, and then hardening.
“I can see for myself that your mind is quite made up,” she said at last. “I admit, I am deeply disappointed in you.” She tilted her chin up, her eyes flashing.
“I vouched for you when you applied to the members of the board. You must have realized that you aren’t quite the class of young woman the hospital normally accepts.
Your admission was much debated, and there were some ladies on the board who were most decidedly not in favor of it. ”
Maggie flinched at this piece of brutal honesty. “I suppose I did know that,” she replied quietly. She hadn’t, but she’d suspected something like it, at least. Feared it. She just hadn’t wanted it to be true.
“But I said you were respectable and intelligent, and it didn’t matter that you’d grown up in a slum or worked in a brothel,” Charlotte continued, a rare anger flaring in her eyes.
“And now you abandon us like the kind of flibbertigibbet I said you weren’t!
How am I meant to explain myself to them? ”
Maggie stared at her for a long moment. So even her place in the nursing program had been an act of despised charity.
Had the board ever come around to accepting her?
Dr. Brown had not even said a position at the hospital was a certainty, only a hope, despite that other training nurses had received offers.
She was not, Maggie realized, surprised by any of it.
“I suppose,” she replied with dignity, throwing her shoulders back as determination flashed through her, “you will have to tell them that I went back where I belonged.”