19
By the time I woke up, I had a plan. “You’re right,” I told the ceiling. “That’s the answer. No need to say I told you so. I’m the one who said you always knew what to do, you big galoot.”
When Susie and Bobby went upstairs to get dressed after breakfast, I told Ruth to get dressed too.
“Do you want me to drop the children at school for you?”
“No,” I said. “I want you to come to work with me.”
Ruth cocked her head. “Whatever would I do there?”
“You can be a volunteer,” I said. “It’s how I started.” And it’ll keep you from ruining my house again, I thought. She looked uncertain.
“What about Pepper?”
“Pepper will be fine in her box for a few hours. She naps most of the day while the kids are in school anyway.”
“I don’t know—”
“Ruth,” I said, taking her hand with an earnestness that I was far from feeling. “It’s good for you. Trust me. Harry wouldn’t want you to sit home alone all day.”
She looked down at our hands. “I’ll get dressed.”
And that is how I got Ruth into a red-and-white striped pinafore over a starched housedress that was at least a decade old, a nurse instructing her along with a group of much younger women about their duties for the day.
I retired to my office to tweak the day’s schedule, which I handed to Nurse Jones a few minutes later.
She looked it over, then glanced up at me. “Are you sure sending your mother-in-law to Mrs. Kline is a good idea?”
“Shirley, she rearranged all my furniture, bought a dog without my permission, wallpapered my kitchen with cartoon fruits, and nearly burned my house down.”
She tried to swallow a laugh but couldn’t quite contain it. “Mrs. Kline is a fitting punishment, then.”
“Honestly, it serves both of them right,” I said.
“I assume you want her cleaning bedpans next?”
I grinned at her. “I like the way you think.”
But by lunchtime, when I had neither seen nor heard from Ruth, I got a little nervous. She wasn’t exactly known for following rules. And Mrs. Kline was unlikely to tolerate any nonsense. So with a sigh, I went down the hall toward the room where I had argued her into submission the day before.
The door was open and I heard raised voices from the hall. I took a deep breath and started to walk in, but Ruth’s calm reply to Mrs. Kline’s strident demand made me hesitate.
“White toast, rye, or a bagel,” Ruth said, her voice perfectly measured.
“I told you,” Mrs. Kline said shrilly. “I am not Jewish. I don’t eat bagels or rye bread.”
There was a long pause. And then Ruth said, quite calmly, “Do I look Chinese to you?”
Another pause. “Of course not,” Mrs. Kline said, disgust dripping from her voice.
“That’s because I’m not,” Ruth said. “But I still enjoy an egg roll and some good lo mein.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with me.”
Ruth’s tone didn’t change. “It has everything to do with you and you know it.”
There was a creaking sound, and Mrs. Kline’s voice rose to a panic. “Don’t you sit on my bed!”
“It’s the hospital’s bed,” Ruth said. “Why are you here anyway? You seem healthy enough.”
“I’ll have you know, I am extremely ill.”
“With what?”
Mrs. Kline began to sputter. “The very nerve! You and that horrible other Feldman—your daughter I assume—to imply that I don’t need to be here just because these doctors can’t do their job correctly and diagnose me, all because I’m not Jewish and you only care about your own kind—”
“My dear Mrs. Kline,” Ruth said, mirth unmistakable in her voice. “If you hate Jews so much, you really shouldn’t spend all your time in a hospital. Half of these doctors are Jewish. And for the record, Barbara is my daughter-in-law. Her husband, my son, died two years ago.”
Mrs. Kline was quiet for a few seconds, and I wondered if Ruth had placed a pillow over her face. I wouldn’t blame her. But I really should get her to remove it if so.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Kline eventually said quietly. I found myself leaning into the room to hear her better. “I lost my daughter six years ago.”
“Do you have other children?” She didn’t answer. “A husband?”
“Gone twenty years now,” Mrs. Kline said mournfully.
“Grandchildren?”
“No. Gretchen wasn’t married.” There was another pause. “She was my whole world.”
“Harry was mine,” Ruth said. “But Gretchen wouldn’t want you to waste away here. She’d want you to find ways to be happy.”
“I don’t know how to do that anymore.”
I almost jumped out of my skin when Shirley touched my shoulder. “Donna needs help with Dr. Howe again,” she said quietly.
I shook my head. “That man is a menace,” I said quietly, to not be heard in the room. “I’ll handle it.”
An hour later, after telling off a handsy doctor and comforting a weeping nurse, I went storming into Dr. Harper’s office.
“You have to do something about that man,” I said.
“Between Mrs. Kline’s abuse and Dr. Howe harassing every woman on staff, you’re not going to have any nurses left.
Donna is at her wit’s end and her fiancé wants to shoot him. ”
Dr. Harper looked amused. “It would seem one of those problems has resolved itself.”
“Tell me Dr. Howe fell off the roof and is in a coma.”
He chuckled. “No. Although I think the nurses would have a champagne toast. Mrs. Kline is willingly checking out.”
I held a hand to my mouth. “Oh no. What did my mother-in-law do? I should have gone in when she sat on the bed, but she seemed to be making progress.”
“I don’t know what she did,” he said. “But Mrs. Kline said she feels better. And that Mrs. Feldman told her that grief and loneliness can have physical symptoms.”
“She—what?”
Dr. Harper shook his head. “I don’t understand it any better than you do. But bring your mother-in-law back next week. Maybe she can tame Dr. Howe too.”