Chapter 24
St. Ann’s Hospital was built on a hill, Mount Roberts rising high above so the two wooden buildings were in the great mountain’s shadow.
Maggie had had a reassuringly uneventful walk from the boarding house to the hospital, navigating her way down the raised, wooden sidewalks, taking in the colorful sights of the town as well as the beauty all around her—the snowcapped mountain, the seemingly endless carpets of spruce, the beautiful blue-green waters of the bay, bustling with all manner of boats and sailing vessels.
The weather wasn’t nearly as cold as she might have feared, and there were signs of spring all around, from the shoots of green grass springing up amidst the muddy streets to the lush bank of tiny pink wildflowers she spied between two houses.
The hospital was contained in one modest, two-story building, made of wood as nearly every edifice in Juneau was, and as Maggie stepped through the door, she saw a comfortingly familiar sight—beds lining the rough-hewn walls and a nurse walking sedately between them.
Admittedly, St. Ann’s was a far smaller and humbler operation than the Children’s Hospital of San Francisco, and the whole place looked to house only forty or fifty patients in total. The downstairs was one big room, and she suspected the upstairs was the same.
As she stood hesitantly in the doorway, the nurse she’d spied before glided up to her, her pleasant, round face wearing an expression of gentle inquiry underneath her wimple and veil.
“Are you in need of medical care?” she asked kindly. She was middle-aged and wore a dark blue dress and white apron, with a white nun’s coif hiding her hair.
“No, no, not at all,” Maggie replied, smiling. “I came to ask if you are in need of assistance. I arrived in Juneau this morning with my family, and I trained as a nurse back in San Francisco.”
“A nurse!” the nun exclaimed, sounding surprised but, Maggie hoped, delighted.
“I didn’t receive my certificate,” Maggie hastened to add, wanting to be completely honest. “I was very near to completing it, just two months away, but then my father and brother decided to try their luck here in Juneau…” She trailed off while the nun nodded in understanding.
“I don’t know anything about certificates,” she told her with a wry smile.
“None of us have them here, but I’m sure we can put an educated woman like yourself to good use.
There are precious few of you, and precious few of us!
You’ll have to talk to Sister Mary Zeno, however.
She’s teaching the children in the school now, but I’m sure she’ll be pleased to speak with you.
As of late, we’ve been run off our feet. ”
Within an hour, it was all arranged. Sister Mary Zeno asked Maggie only a few questions, then told her she was hired.
She could collect her apron and cap from the hospital, and any dark dress would serve as a uniform.
The pay was a dollar a day. She would be the only other nurse besides the three sisters, who lived in the convent quarters on the hospital site and weren’t paid anything at all.
As Maggie returned to the boarding house, she could hardly believe it had been so easy.
She hadn’t been in Juneau one day and she already had a job, a calling, and a means to support herself.
Her step was light as she hurried down Seward Street, only to stop abruptly when a man stumbled out of a saloon, clearly drunk.
“Excuse me!” she exclaimed, drawing away as he nearly fell to his knees before righting himself, only to gasp in shock when she saw who it was—Brendan.
He stared at her blearily, while Maggie stared wordlessly back, too stunned to speak. She had never, in all their acquaintance, seen Brendan drunk before—and he was certainly drunk now, reeking of spirits, barely able to stand up, one hand flung out to a lamppost.
“Brendan?” she finally managed.
“Go… ’way,” he mumbled, shaking his head as if to clear it. “Go ’way, I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” Maggie told him. She glanced at another man loitering in the doorway of the saloon, looking speculatively at them both as he jangled some change in his pocket.
“In the state you’re in, you’re likely to fall into a ditch or be robbed blind,” she told him sternly. “Let me help you home.”
Brendan shook his head again, but he didn’t resist when Maggie took his arm and started leading him down the street.
She felt saddened as well as guilty to see him in this state, and she was conscious once again of the distance he’d kept from them on board the steamer.
How lonely it must have been, she reflected, to come all this way to Alaska and then set out completely on his own.
She should have fought harder for Brendan to join them, Maggie thought.
She should have insisted. If she could put her own complicated feelings aside, then surely so could he.
“Where are you staying?” she asked and he shrugged.
“Haven’t found a place yet.”
“Then where are your things?” Maggie asked in some alarm. “Your suitcase?—”
“I paid a barkeep a dollar to store it.” He jerked a thumb back to the saloon from where he’d stumbled. “Back there, behind the bar.”
“Then we’d best get it,” Maggie replied, and steeling her spine, she ushered him back toward the saloon, stepping through the swinging doors with a shiver of trepidation as well as a ripple of curiosity.
She had never been in such a place before; no decent woman ever would venture into such an establishment.
Brendan swayed next to her as Maggie blinked in the gloom. The floor was covered with sawdust and the air smelled thickly of smoke, sweat and whisky. A few men looked up from their glasses, as bleary-eyed as Brendan, and one man sauntered toward her with a leer.
“How are you, little lady?”
“Very well, thank you,” she replied crisply.
Holding tightly to Brendan’s arm, she marched toward the bar.
“I believe you have my husband’s suitcase.
We’d like it back now, please.” She didn’t know why she’d called Brendan her husband; surely such a charade wasn’t necessary here as it once had been in Chicago?
And yet the lie had slipped out, far too easy to say.
“Your husband, eh?” the bartender remarked, propping his elbow on the plank of wood atop two barrels that served as a bar. “Or the woman who snapped his heart in half and crushed it under her heel?”
Maggie’s mouth dropped open in shock. Is that what Brendan had said when he’d been three sheets to the wind? Did he really see her as that carelessly cruel?
She flushed in embarrassment, lifting her chin as she met the bartender’s gaze squarely.
“The suitcase, please,” she said in the same crisp tone as before.
Her knees were shaking, but fortunately her wide skirts hid the tremble.
She kept the bartender’s sleepy, speculative gaze with a steely one of her own.
She could not allow Brendan to lose all his belongings the very day he arrived in Alaska, no matter what he thought of her.
“This is the one, Jim,” Brendan slurred, his head hanging down as he swayed where he stood. “She’s the one.”
The bartender chuckled, looking both sympathetic and amused. “You want me to give her your outfit, bub?” he asked, giving Maggie a not very admiring glance.
Her cheeks felt hot, but she kept his stare.
Brendan nodded without saying anything more, and Maggie feared he might be close to passing out completely.
She kept an iron grip on his arm as, with a long sigh, the bartender reached for the suitcase and passed it over.
Maggie took it, stumbling back a little under the weight, which led to a chorus of guffaws from the men slumped at the bar.
“Thank you,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster, and then she marched out of the saloon, Brendan stumbling next to her, the suitcase in one hand.
Back outside, she let out a shaky sigh of relief. That could have gone so much worse, she suspected, based on what little she knew of Alaska already.
She turned to Brendan. “You’d best come back to our room, on Front Street. We’ll figure out what to do from there.”
Brendan raised his head, his red-eyed gaze baleful. “You don’t need to?—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Maggie snapped, her patience reaching the end of its tether.
“Do you think I’m going to leave you here on this muddy street, to be robbed by whatever common thief happens by?
I might have split your heart in half and crushed it under my heel,” she added with asperity, “but I’m still going to take care of you. ”
In response, Brendan merely glared at her, and Maggie sighed, deciding she could deal with his ire better than his pathos.
“Come along,” she told him, like he was a child, and hauling both Brendan and the suitcase as best as she could, she started walking back to Front Street.
Mrs. Compton barely batted an eyelid when Maggie came inside with Brendan still looking decidedly worse for wear, although at least by then he could walk by himself—mostly.
“Went to the hospital and picked yourself up a patient?” she surmised dryly, and Maggie almost laughed, even though her nerves were well and truly frayed.
“Something like that,” she agreed. “Mr. O’Donaghue came on the steamer with us and hasn’t yet found accommodation. I’m going to sober him up and then find him a room.”
“I’ll have Elvira send up some coffee,” Mrs. Compton offered, and Maggie gave her a grateful smile.
“Thank you very much.”
Upstairs, she guided Brendan to one of the beds, no more than a thin mattress on squeaky springs, and he laid down with a groan, flinging one arm over his eyes as she unlaced his boots.
“Mrs. Compton’s bringing coffee,” she told him. “A few cups and you should be right as rain, or almost, I hope.”
In response, he shook his head and groaned again.
Maggie sighed. “I expect Danny and my father will be returning shortly in a similar state,” she told him with an attempt at wryness. “In fact, I suspect every man fresh off the boat finds a saloon just about first thing. Welcome to Alaska and all that.”
“Don’t,” Brendan said on another groan, this one low and heartfelt. “Don’t try to make me feel better, Maggie. I’m ashamed of myself as it is.”
Maggie sighed again as she sat down on the edge of the bed. She reached over to smooth Brendan’s rumpled hair away from his forehead and he flinched away from her, which caused her a pang of sorrow. “Why not?” she asked. “Why shouldn’t I try to make you feel better?”
“Because,” he managed, the words drawn out and still slightly slurred, “you know I never wanted your pity.”
“And you don’t have it,” Maggie retorted tartly. “Trust me, Brendan, you don’t have one bit of it, and neither will you have it when you have a splitting head later.”
His response was another shake of his head, and now she was the one to groan.
“This is a small town, Brendan, and it’s not big enough for your self-pity or pride,” she told him.
“Or mine, either, for that matter. I’m sorry I came to Alaska and ruined things for you, and I’m especially sorry that you feel you can’t even look at me anymore.
” She heard the hurt in her voice and took a breath to steady herself.
“But it would be better for us both if we could find some way to get along, if only from a distance. I don’t want to pester you, and I will do my best not to make myself a nuisance, but it’s not good for a man to be all on his own here.
Danny and Da are your friends, and I’d… I’d like to think I’m your friend, too. ”
She waited, hoping, longing, for a reply, and after several endless moments she finally got one.
Brendan was snoring.