The Faculty Lounge

Chapter Eleven

Eleven

Since 1985, Nurse Honeycutt had steered Baldwin High through more than thirty broken appendages, multiple paranoid reactions to ingested hallucinogens, countless bouts of stomach flu, the birth of a baby in a student bathroom, poor Mr. Lehrer dying in the faculty lounge, and a global pandemic, and yet the first thing students, alumni, and even teachers thought of when the sixty-eight-year-old school legend had cause to cross their minds was how easily her name could be adjusted to Nurse Honeybutt. She was referred to in this manner frequently and casually, but not without kindness, to be clear.

Nurse Honeycutt was beloved.

For decades, the tall, slender woman inhabited the clinic on the first floor, near the school’s main intersection, and kept order with a cool and collected demeanor. She let her hair turn gray naturally, and for many years now she had worn it in a bun pulled back tight from her face. She was kind but firm, quiet but commanding. She had won the state’s School Nurse of the Year award multiple times. She often wore scrubs covered in small honeybees, and every year she gratefully accepted presents from students and faculty members in the form of small jars of honey, small ceramic bees, bee-shaped earrings, and mugs with bees that playfully insisted the reader buzz off because the drinker was drinking coffee.

She was known to slip students with upset stomachs peppermints and cups of cold, fizzy ginger ale (she stocked both items in the clinic with money out of her own pocket), and she could be depended on to whip up the perfect ice pack for a muscle strain in thirty seconds flat, but Nurse Honeycutt was no fool. Decades of school nursing had calibrated her bullshit detector into a finely tuned instrument, and she knew exactly when a student was truly in need of her services and when they were just faking it, the latter being the case about 40 percent of the time. The biggest offenders were the freshmen, who had not yet learned that Nurse Honeycutt had the ability to stare into your soul with her green eyes, rest a cool hand on your forehead, and wait three beats before saying, “Please head back to class, but feel free to take a peppermint on the way out.”

In short, Nurse Honeycutt believed in following policy, keeping impeccable records, and maintaining order at all times. Even during the past stressful month and a half without their leader Principal Kendricks on campus, Nurse Honeycutt had gone above and beyond to make sure that she was compliant in all areas and communicative with interim principal, Ms. Baker. She had continued to try to serve as a stabilizing force in the middle of a storm.

But there was one area of care where Nurse Honeycutt bent the rules, and she did so for the girls.

A handful of times a year, a young woman would venture into the Baldwin High clinic, and without the girl needing to say much, Nurse Honeycutt would understand the predicament even when the student had not really been able to admit it to herself yet. The pained expression, the pale face. Tears often already lining red-rimmed eyes. A few times in Nurse Honeycutt’s career the girl simply folded over and puked, breakfast vomit splattering all over her pink tiled floor.

Even though she knew she was not supposed to do so, inside a cabinet Nurse Honeycutt kept a black duffel bag filled with pregnancy tests she purchased at the local drugstore. Better the girls know the full truth, and the sooner the better, reasoned Nurse Honeycutt. While stocking these tests was a gray area when it came to the rules, Nurse Honeycutt figured she was simply helping speed along an already difficult process. After all, there was nothing holding these girls back from going and buying a pregnancy test on their own.

Locking the clinic door so as not to be interrupted, Nurse Honeycutt would unfold the test’s paper directions like a map to some as-yet-unknown destination, walking the girl through each step. Then she’d send her off to the clinic bathroom, test in anxious hand.

Sometimes it was blissfully, beautifully negative, and there were screams of delight from inside the bathroom. Nurse Honeycutt would remind the young woman of the importance of testing again in a few days if her period had not arrived, and she would stress the need for birth control and suggest where the student might acquire it. Pregnancy tests were something Nurse Honeycutt might be able to explain to the school board, but condoms, unfortunately, were something else entirely. Nurse Honeycutt was still mostly a rule follower, after all.

When the test was positive, those two blue lines looking at them as if they were proud of themselves, Nurse Honeycutt would give the young woman a moment to sob, to stare, to collect herself as best as possible. She would jot down the names of different websites, then, and phone numbers, too. And she would always urge the girls to go home and speak to their parents, even when she knew some of them would have to talk to some other adult in their lives. There were various outcomes for these girls. Some would continue coming to school until their bellies swelled, and some Nurse Honeycutt would spot months later, their adolescent stomachs as flat as boards, their youthful minds occupied with grades and boys and teenage triviality.

But things changed. Elections happened. And one morning in mid-April, about six weeks after Principal Kendricks had been removed, a twelfth grader named Isabella came in and said her period was two weeks late. She eventually found herself sitting in a metal folding chair, holding a positive test in her hand, and from the look on her face, Nurse Honeycutt knew the situation was particularly bleak.

“My father is going to kill me,” said Isabella, who had not cried yet, even though Nurse Honeycutt knew the crying was inevitable. Isabella was a tall girl with big lips and big hips, pretty and careful about her appearance. Her creamy white skin was free of blemishes, her mouth stained with berry-pink lipstick, her eyelids painted a shimmery copper.

“You don’t think your parents would be open to listening to you?” said Nurse Honeycutt, mostly just to buy time. Despite all the signs that she should not risk it—this year of all years, with everything that had happened—despite all of that, the wheels in her mind were already spinning.

“No,” said Isabella. “My parents won’t listen. I mean, my mom might . But my dad, definitely not. And my dad…” At this, Isabella squeezed her eyes shut.

“What about the boy?” asked Nurse Honeycutt. She purposely did not use the word father .

“He’s an idiot,” said Isabella, brown eyes opening, her face a sudden scowl. “I realize that now , of course. Like, a month too late.” She paused and considered Nurse Honeycutt before delivering the final, humiliating detail: “I’m not his only girlfriend.”

Nurse Honeycutt nodded sympathetically but tried to keep her facial expression judgment-free. She reached over and patted Isabella on the back a few times as a signal of caring, then withdrew. Nurse Honeycutt wasn’t much of a hugger, in part because she didn’t consider it professional and in part because she respected the fact that some children did not want to be touched.

“Do you want to carry this pregnancy?” Nurse Honeycutt asked, her voice quiet, careful not to lead. It was a question she didn’t used to ask, back in the days when she could write down websites and phone numbers and wish the girls luck. At that time, the girl’s answer had not been any of her business. But given the circumstances in which they were currently living, the answer now seemed more pressing. More dire.

The young woman gazed at Nurse Honeycutt. Isabella was eighteen years old. Her backpack was covered in patches that the nurse had come to learn represented different pop bands from South Korea that were popular among many of the students. When the young woman opened her mouth to take a deep, shaky breath, Nurse Honeycutt caught a glimpse of a retainer.

Now came the inevitable tears.

“No,” said Isabella, shaking her head to punctuate it. “No, Nurse Honeycutt, I don’t want this baby. I know that I don’t.”

—

In the summer of 1970, when Nurse Honeycutt was a fifteen-year-old girl named Nancy Carter, America was shifting. In flux. Chaotic. The American government was slaughtering college students on campus. Women, young people, and minorities were flooding into the streets to demand their rights. People were boycotting grapes. The war in Vietnam still raged.

But that summer Nancy’s world was as still as her community pool after hours. Unchanged. Steeped in tradition. Despite changes in neighboring districts, Nancy’s school had already announced that it would still not allow girls to wear pants to class that coming fall. Nancy’s mother continued to sign her name Mrs. Thomas Carter . And even though the debut of Ms. magazine was only two years away, Nancy fully expected that she would grow up to be a nurse, teacher, or secretary; those were the only three available options. She hoped for nurse, as she didn’t get queasy at the sight of blood and she liked helping people.

Nancy was the youngest of three children, a change-of-life surprise who was the only child left at home during the summer she was fifteen. Her parents were kind but somewhat distant. Her mother still dressed for dinner, and her father, an attorney, still led grace at the start of every meal. But there was security in Nancy’s world. She wanted for nothing. The summer of 1970, she spent the lazy June days cutting out pictures of Bobby Sherman and the Jackson 5 from Tiger Beat and making her own facials out of oatmeal and egg whites.

Shortly after Independence Day, a new family moved in to the house next door. Nancy’s mother asked Nancy to help her make two apple pies, one for them and one for the new neighbors. As Nancy cubed the butter, broke up lumps in the flour with a fork, and sprinkled sugar on the finished pie so that it fell like a miniature blizzard, she caught glimpses of her mother, quietly humming to herself as she worked alongside her daughter at the kitchen counter, a red-and-white checked apron tied tightly around her trim waist. Mrs. Thomas Carter had spent all her adult life humming and busying herself around this three-bedroom home, keeping it pristine and peaceful, almost trapped in time. She maintained a schedule, written in careful black cursive in a small leather notebook she kept on her nightstand, of when to rotate the mattresses, when to wash the windows, when to restock the medicine cabinet, when to defrost the freezer. Nancy’s mother didn’t watch news programs or read the paper because she said it bothered her. Every Election Day, Nancy’s father wrote out the list of candidates that Nancy’s mother should vote for, and Nancy’s mother tucked the paper into her purse and headed off to the local elementary school to pull the levers.

Later in her life, Nancy Carter would view all this with a sort of dumbfounded amazement. But the summer that Nancy was fifteen, it had just seemed normal.

The delivery of the apple pie revealed that the next-door neighbors had a boy just a year older than Nancy. His name was John, but he went by Jack. Jack Harris. And he was cute, Nancy decided. Not as cute as Bobby Sherman, but handsome in his own way. He had a slim runner’s build and big hazel eyes and a crooked front tooth that was more charming than off-putting. When he came over a few days after moving in and asked Nancy if she wanted to ride bikes down to the local pool, Nancy was surprised to hear her mother say it was all right with her as long as Nancy was back by dinner. But Nancy’s mother had been so busy flipping mattresses, defrosting the freezer, canning vegetables, and baking pies that she had seemed to miss the fact that her youngest child was growing hips, developing breasts, dreaming of boys, and lacking in critical information about everything that came along with all of it.

Nancy wore her peppermint-striped suit to the pool, so on their first outing Jack jokingly referred to her as Candy, like a candy cane. (But after that, he always called her Nancy. Much to Nancy’s delight, Jack quickly proved himself to be the sort of boy who knew how to do just the right amount of joking.) He did flips off the high diving board to impress her. She proved to him that she could hold her breath underwater for a minute. They debated whether the band Bread was corny. (Jack said yes but Nancy said no. In truth she thought their song “Make It with You” was the most romantic thing in the world.) Jack bought her piping-hot French fries from the snack bar, and after she ate them, he reached over and gently took one of her hands in his and licked the salt from each of her fingertips. At this she felt a warm, quivering, melty sensation all over her body that could only be described as exquisite.

Jack was old enough (and had permission!) to drive his father’s heritage-green Oldsmobile 98, a hulking mass of a car that made Nancy feel so grown up when he picked her up for dates, once they’d both decided they’d like to do more than just spend time at the pool. Jack was the sort of boy parents liked. He could stand inside the Carters’ well-appointed living room and shake hands with Mr. Carter and compliment Mrs. Carter, and the two adults were pleased and even delighted to see their daughter leave the house with him. He was literally the boy next door!

I have a boyfriend. I have a boyfriend. I have a boyfriend. The words zipped through Nancy’s mind on a loop that summer, and sometimes she found herself whispering them to herself in the bathroom mirror, even pinching herself once on the arm, hard, to make sure it was all real. Having dug out a black-and-white composition book that she’d intended to use as a proper diary but rarely did, Nancy would curl up in a warm, secret ball under her bedspread and write things like Mrs. Jack Harris and Jack and Nancy Harris and When Jack kisses me he makes me feel like I’m going to explode. I want to touch him all over his body (yes even there) and I want to let him touch me all over my body (yes even THERE!!!!!!) Just writing those words makes me dizzy. I know it’s a sin but how can it be a sin when being with Jack is so perfect and good?

The back of the heritage-green Oldsmobile 98 was roomy and comfortable and smelled faintly and pleasantly of Jack’s father’s Tareytons. Jack Harris was a genuinely nice boy. It must be said that when it came right down to it, he really was. And it should also be said that Nancy Carter did not do anything she did not want to do. In fact, she was a willing participant and, in addition to that, she liked it. All that summer and into the fall, Nancy wondered if there was something wrong with her because she liked it so much. The story she had always been told was that boys were the ones who really wanted it. Did this make her unusual or dirty? Or was it just that girls and boys were not really that different in this regard? For a time, Nancy decided it must be that. Fervent nights in dark backseats must be a universal pleasure.

Until, unfortunately, the moment came when Nancy was forced to remember that in one important way boys and girls were very different indeed.

—

Isabella left Nurse Honeycutt’s clinic dejected, with a vacant sort of expression on her face. Before she did, Nurse Honeycutt had asked the girl, point-blank, if she wanted to hurt herself. Legally, it was the right thing to do. Morally, it also was, and Nurse Honeycutt believed in doing the moral thing. Isabella had whispered that she did not want to hurt herself and she would not, but Nurse Honeycutt had written down the number for a teen crisis line on a scrap of paper just in case. It had felt like putting a Band-Aid on an oozing third-degree burn. Isabella had taken the paper wordlessly and shoved it into her jeans pocket. She had glanced at the pregnancy test still sitting on the table in front of her and had then gotten up to leave. Nurse Honeycutt had wanted to say something else. To offer some sort of encouragement, perhaps, but what words would those be?

So Nurse Honeycutt had said nothing. She’d just watched Isabella slip out of the clinic and into the crowded hallway full of shouts and the squeaks of sneakers. Then she’d glanced at the large calendar she kept on her desk. She counted days and weeks. Made calculations. She thought about that emergency all-staff meeting in the auditorium weeks ago, and about how rudderless the school had felt recently without their well-liked principal. She thought back to the events in the courtyard, to Mr. Lehrer’s ashes all over Jessica Patterson’s face.

Nurse Honeycutt had worked with Mr. Lehrer back when he had been a beloved English teacher, not just a substitute, and she had always found him amiable. Kind. Focused on the kids. How frustrated he would be if he knew that Central Office had turned his death into a reason to make things more difficult for his colleagues and, by extension, more difficult for the students.

But if she was being honest with herself—and she almost always was—Nurse Honeycutt knew that if anyone could read her mind in this moment, they would accuse her not only of risking more of Central Office’s wrath, but of something much more serious.

She examined the calendar again and tapped the eraser head of her pencil rat-a-tat on her desk. She remembered Isabella’s crushed expression and her tears. She thought and thought.

—

At the home for unwed mothers, Nancy spent most of her time absolutely bored out of her skull, which is a terrible thing to be when a person is already horribly sad and lonely, which Nancy also was.

The matron was named Mrs. Broussard, and all the girls referred to her privately and regularly as Mrs. Blowhard. Mrs. Broussard was not beloved. In fact, she was despised, because she seemed to believe that her entire life’s purpose was to remind Nancy and the other girls that they were dirty, that they were failures, and that they were absolutely unfit to be mothers even though they were carrying babies inside them.

“The best thing to do,” said Mrs. Broussard when she was lecturing her trapped audience, “is to remind yourself that this is your punishment for not waiting for marriage, but that you can redeem yourself by giving this baby a safe and healthy home to grow up in. A home with parents who can actually do the hard, thankless work of parenting. You should be grateful that God has granted you the opportunity to be redeemed in this way.” Mrs. Broussard was a short, squat woman with dark red hair that she kept in an out-of-style beehive, and she had an annoying habit of clasping and unclasping her hands as she spoke. Nancy used to try to focus on her hands instead of her words as a way to distract herself from Mrs. Broussard’s hatefulness.

Nancy received cards from her parents. They never said much. They were blank-on-the-inside cards with flowers on the front, or a painting of a colorful bird. Inside, in the same careful script she used to list her chores, Nancy’s mother would write some variation of Your father and I are praying for you every day. The message would always be signed Mom and Dad . But never Love . Nancy reminded herself that her mother and father were not a Love, Mom and Dad type even before all of this. She pinned the cards up on the small bulletin board by her bed in the dorm room she shared with five other girls, all of them young, all of them sad, all of them secreted away to this place where no one visited because it was too painful. Where the only way to leave was to leave your baby behind.

When Nancy had first suspected she might be pregnant, she had fleetingly hoped that Jack would marry her, even as she knew the notion was absurd. There had always been a few girls in her high school who left during senior year to get married. One girl had even graduated as a married woman before she had started to show. But she and Jack were still so young. And anyway, their parents would never stand for such a scandal.

The night she told Jack, the Olds 98 went from being a romantic, dreamlike space in which nothing bad could ever happen to the scene of a claustrophobic nightmare starring two terrified kids.

“I’m so sorry, Nancy,” Jack said, holding her hand, the same hand he’d once tenderly taken at the pool, had once gently touched his pink tongue to, carefully licking the salt off each fingertip. He was sorry because it was happening to her, to Nancy. Again, to be clear, Jack Harris was a nice boy. He was kind and respectful and he cared about Nancy, but in the end, the problem was Nancy’s problem. It was always the girl who was going to have to pay.

Pay she did, and quickly, too. The speed with which her parents made the arrangements was shocking, her father not looking at her once, her mother tight-lipped and forever organizing, carefully writing out a list of all the items Nancy would take with her and packing the suitcase with impressive precision. There was a quick hug from her mother on the day she was dropped off. From her father there was nothing.

At the home, the days rolled by, one into the other. Hours were spent watching Room 222 and The Young Rebels on a small black-and-white in the dayroom. A halfhearted attempt was made at keeping up with studies through a correspondence course. The girls tried not to cry, because when you did, inevitably someone would tell you to shut up. Not because they weren’t sympathetic, of course. But tears were terribly contagious.

Nancy tried not to think about Jack or the strange flips and kicks inside her body and the source of them. Instead, she watched television and went for aimless walks in the poorly maintained garden. She played Go Fish and Crazy Eights with a brunette named Barbara, who was replaced by a blonde named Mary after Barbara’s belly swelled to its capacity and then one day she was gone. When Nancy was gone, Mary would play cards with someone else.

Nancy gave birth alone in the county hospital with a gruff doctor who checked on her periodically, as if she were a laboring cow. Her parents did not come, of course. No one explained anything. The pain was horrific, a hot, burning split up the middle of her teenage body, the screams from her mouth not ones she could have ever predicted she would be able to make. When her baby was born—pink, squalling, and wriggling—it was taken away in a rush. A sympathetic older nurse with a moon face and thin lips was the one to tell Nancy that she’d had a boy.

“Try to forget this, sweetheart,” she said, her kind voice soft and whispery. She pushed Nancy’s sweaty, dark hair off her face and offered her a cup of ice-cold orange juice. “Try to forget it and get on with your life.”

When Nancy returned home, the Harris family had moved away. No one would tell her where Jack had gone, and she had no way of finding him. He knew her address, of course, but even though Nancy lingered over the mailbox when her mother wasn’t looking and sorted hopefully through the day’s letters and cards, there was never anything. Jack Harris simply disappeared.

Some evenings after heading to bed, always careful to shut the bedroom door tight behind her, Nancy would tug her composition book from its hiding spot in her closet and flip to the pages where she’d written Jack’s name over and over, along with all her secret confessions about him. She ran her fingertips over her girlish scrawl, as if by touching it she could absorb and make real again in her mind those months with Jack. Whether it would be easier or harder to let Jack slip from her thinking was a question she couldn’t answer, so he just stayed there, always on the outskirts of her brain.

So did the baby, of course. Nancy’s glimpse of his chubby pink body kicking and wailing was on a forever loop in her consciousness.

All of her old friends had been ordered to stay away, to see her as tainted and infectious. Not that she would have gone to school with them again anyway. Instead, Nancy’s parents sent her to an all-girls Catholic high school in a neighboring town, where she made the sort of school friends you can talk about assignments and homework with, not the kind you have over for sleepovers. She suspected that some knew the truth about her, but blessedly, not one girl ever brought it up. (Nancy also suspected that perhaps she was not the only girl at the school in her predicament.) At least once a week, Nancy remembered the words of that nurse, the only person who had been nice to her at the birth of her son.

Try to forget this, sweetheart. Try to forget it and get on with your life.

A former B student with a middling interest in academics, Nancy decided to devote all of her energy to her studies as a way to busy her mind and tend to her broken heart. Papers were turned in before their due dates. Class projects fulfilled every requirement and then some. Assigned readings blossomed with careful annotations. It turned out Nancy Carter was quite bright. She made the honor roll. She was named salutatorian. She was accepted into her first-choice university’s nursing program at a college some distance from home. (She had always thought nursing would be her path, but the kind, moon-faced woman sealed the deal.) Once she graduated, she stayed where she was, visiting her hometown twice a year and never for more than a week at a time. Nancy Carter followed all the remaining rules laid out in front of her and surpassed every expectation placed on her in her professional life. After working at several middle schools, she became the nurse at the biggest high school in the city, and she performed this role exceptionally. She was a deeply respected and admired woman.

And on the day her mother died of a quick-moving cancer that ended her life far before anyone had assumed it would, Nancy came home to help. In her mid-thirties at the time, a few years into her career at Baldwin High, accomplished, independent, mostly happy at last, she sat by her mother’s bedside. Some of the last words her mother said to her daughter were these: “Nancy, dear, in spite of everything, I’m proud of what you’ve made of yourself.”

—

Nurse Honeycutt had ordered the pills from overseas. She had done so the summer before, not long after the headlines hit. That awful moment when things had gone so horribly awry. When the great undoing so many had simultaneously predicted and denied could ever happen, happened.

On that terrible June day, Nurse Honeycutt exchanged a few despairing texts and calls with some like-minded friends. Women from her book club. A cousin she’d reconnected with in middle age. Some of her fellow school nurses. Nurse Honeycutt had never been particularly political. She had never marched or protested, and she had eschewed labels like feminist even as a college student in the ’70s. But she followed the news carefully, she read the paper each morning, she made donations to causes that mattered to her, and she had opinions about many things.

And on Election Day, when she voted, she knew exactly who she was voting for and why.

On the Thursday in mid-April when Isabella came to see her, Nurse Honeycutt went home to the small, tidy two-bedroom apartment she had once shared with her late husband, Howard, and where she now lived with her dog, a lovable mutt named Trixie. After a meal of grilled chicken and vegetables and a single glass of red wine, Nurse Honeycutt powered up her computer and printer and sat down to type.

She started the note this way:

It has come to my attention that you are pregnant and in need of assistance. I want to help you. These pills will help terminate your pregnancy. In other words, they will cause an abortion. If you want to continue with your pregnancy, do not take them. These pills are safe and approved by the FDA, but given our state’s abortion laws, we must be careful.

Nurse Honeycutt typed up detailed instructions for taking the pills in clear, numbered fashion like a trained and proper nurse would do. At the end of the note, she added the following:

A slight fever is normal , as is intense cramping and bleeding, but should your fever rise or the bleeding or pain become extreme, it is important that you go to your closest emergency room. These pills cannot be detected in your blood or urine, so the hospital will not be able to tell that you took them; you can tell them you believe you are experiencing a miscarriage and leave it at that.

This is an option if you no longer want to carry out this pregnancy.

I am praying for you.

Through one of the school’s databases, Nurse Honeycutt had access to every student’s locker number and combination, and she had made sure to secure this information on her computer at home. The next day, long before the sun came up, Nurse Honeycutt crossed the front courtyard, entered the building, and headed straight for Isabella’s locker, which was located on the third floor.

As she made her way down the empty hallway, hoping that she was the only soul in the building, she walked past the faculty lounge, its door shut tight. Always busy in the clinic, she had not had cause to be inside the lounge since the day she’d drawn a white sheet over the body of Mr. Lehrer. The image of his grizzled face, etched with worry lines and the strain of living, skated through her mind. Her heart pounding over what she was about to do, her mind suddenly immersed in all she had seen and done in this place, Nurse Honeycutt was flooded with some grief—but also relief—that she was closer to the end of her career than its start.

The inside of Isabella’s locker was a messy explosion of teenage girlhood, charming in its earnestness. Magazine cutouts of boy bands taped haphazardly to its inner door, a rainbow of chewed and hardened gum blobs affixed in careful formation along the back wall, and a note to self on a pink Post-it that read, in capital letters, don’t talk to that fuckhead no matter what .

At the top of a precarious stack of spiral notebooks that threatened to collapse at any moment, Nurse Honeycutt placed the brown paper bag with the pills inside it. Her anonymous typed note was carefully stapled to the package. After surveying her work for a moment, Nurse Honeycutt took a deep breath and carefully shut the locker, spinning the combination lock more times than necessary.

It was the first time she had done this absolutely crazy, utterly dangerous thing. But as terrifying as it was, she did not feel she was violating any of her ethics. In fact, she felt she was living them.

Before the end of the school year, she would do it once more.

Walking with purpose as she always did, she headed around a corner and almost ran into Ms. Fletcher, who often came in early to catch up on her grading. Nurse Honeycutt startled and uttered a small shriek.

“Oh my God, I am so sorry!” said Ms. Fletcher, who was surprised to see the normally unflappable nurse so rattled. She was also curious about why she was on the third floor, but Ms. Fletcher didn’t pry. Nurse Honeycutt was far too respected to be questioned.

“Don’t apologize, please, Ms. Fletcher,” answered Nurse Honeycutt, straightening herself up and laughing off the interaction. “I think I’m just ready for the weekend.”

“Aren’t we all,” said Ms. Fletcher, nodding and smiling. The two parted ways, and as Ms. Fletcher headed to her classroom, she wondered how on earth their school could survive without the hardworking, dedicated, beloved Nurse Honeybutt.

—

In addition to a professional life that had brought her much satisfaction, Nancy eventually knew much personal joy, too. She had many rich, deep friendships, and after a few false starts with men who never seemed to be what they were at first glance, she had met Howard Honeycutt in her late thirties. Upon their first introduction, at a holiday house party held by mutual friends, he had extended his hand toward her and said, “Hello, I’m Howard Honeycutt. I realize my name sounds like a character from a children’s show on PBS, but I swear to you, it’s mine.”

Within six months they were engaged. A few months later, married. It seemed silly to wait at their age—Howard was already forty—especially because they both wanted children. A month into their courtship, Nancy had revealed the saddest part of her past to Howard while the two sat eating Chinese takeout in her living room. Howard had pushed aside his sweet-and-sour chicken and pressed up next to Nancy on the couch, leaning his head on her shoulder almost as if he were the one who needed to be comforted, after hearing such a sad tale. He’d taken her hand, squeezed it tight.

“Nancy, honey, I am so sorry,” he’d said, his voice cracking only just. He never pushed with questions, and he was always willing to talk about it or not. Which was exactly what Nancy needed.

But mostly they did not talk about it. Instead, they simply had a wonderful marriage. They traveled frequently, hosted foreign exchange students, volunteered at the local animal shelter, and attended interesting lectures at a nearby university. They enjoyed a rich and vibrant sex life. They had the same sense of humor. Howard got Nancy into hiking, and Nancy got Howard into thick British mysteries with clever twists. For twenty-five years it was a real love affair.

Kids were not in the cards, as Howard liked to put it when nice but nosy strangers asked if they had children. In those early years they’d tried, of course, and seen all the doctors. Done all the tests. The findings suggested that Howard was fertile, and obviously Nancy knew she was. Or had been once, at least. But the years had passed, and perhaps her window was closing.

Just as the doctors and the books and the expectations started to push them toward the vast and frightening landscape of infertility treatments, just as they as a couple could have gone on some possibly never-ending odyssey with too many depressing, soul-crushing outcomes, Nancy felt a sudden sense of peace come over her. An answer. One evening over dinner not long after their most recent appointment with a specialist, Nancy told Howard that while she would pursue treatment if Howard really wanted to, she thought maybe a married life—just the two of them—would be enough. More than enough.

“Howard,” she’d said, after slowly and carefully explaining her thinking and extending her arm across the table, palm up, “I love you so much. Being with you. It’s such a gift.”

Howard had looked at Nancy, and after a beat or two, he’d reached his hand across the table and squeezed his answer.

With the advent of social media, Nancy would sometimes see viral posts of adults holding up posters with identifying information, asking if anyone in the great, wide online world could help them find their birth parents. Nancy’s eyes would linger on the faces of the men who fit the right age range, but some gut instinct—she felt strange calling it maternal instinct—told her no, not that one. Howard would sometimes rationalize that a baby whose life had worked out, whose adoptive parents had been loving and kind, would be less inclined to look for his birth mother. This brought Nancy a certain sort of comfort. After all, she had never made any real effort to look for the baby, and wasn’t it true that she had mostly had a very happy life?

A handful of times, Nancy had also looked up the names John Harris and Jack Harris , trying her hometown and nearby locations. But the results were overwhelming. It was such a common name, and the social media pictures showed dozens of men, many who were far too young to be him. Others were far too old. She’d reached out with her fingertips on some of the possibilities, expanded some of the profile photographs, stared into the eyes of balding, bloated men in their fifties or sixties, searching for what, she wasn’t sure. To think of handsome, young Jack Harris as a middle-aged man was depressing, even though she herself was also middle-aged. So eventually she stopped looking. After all these years, she still kept the composition book in a closet, although she never looked at it anymore.

Not long after their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Howard died of a stroke, a sudden, quick, and painless death that brought Nancy to her knees in grief. He had been such a good man. Such a good partner. He had been the biggest blessing of her life. That school year she’d thrown herself into her work, staying after hours to reorganize the clinic files, volunteering for every special school and district committee. It had helped, and after a time, she’d been able to carry on. She ached for him, of course, but she was grateful for him and for her long and happy marriage. She was thankful for decades in a fulfilling career, and for the ongoing sense of purpose Baldwin gave her.

But even though so much of her life had turned out so well, her long-ago past was still there, hovering. It came up in the strangest of moments. The most unexpected of times. Not long after she’d placed the pills in Isabella’s locker, she went for her annual mammogram, and there it was again, in black and white on the simple intake form.

Age at first pregnancy:

Number of pregnancies:

Number of full-term deliveries:

She’d written the answers down with a cheap ballpoint pen borrowed from the front desk.

15

1

1

Her eyes stared in wonder at the number 15 written in blue ink. She was sixty-eight now, and some part of her had to strain to accept that it could even be true. But it was true, of course, and it had happened to her, Nancy Carter.

—

A little over a week after Nurse Honeycutt left the pills in Isabella’s locker, she found herself at her desk after the final bell, organizing paperwork before heading home.

There was a knock on the clinic door. Students never knocked. They barged in or crept in, but they never knocked.

“Come in,” she said, looking up from her desk.

Standing in the open doorway was Jessica Patterson, dressed in a plum shirtwaist dress that showed off her trim figure. Nurse Honeycutt’s first thought was how much her daughter resembled her. The same creamy, blemish-free skin. The full lips. Even the coppery eye shadow.

“Yes, Ms. Patterson,” said Nurse Honeycutt, “how can I help you?” The unflappable nurse’s heart thrummed in her chest. But she invited Ms. Patterson in. The woman stepped inside the clinic and shut the door behind herself.

“Nurse Honeycutt, I need to talk to you,” she said, her voice clear and confident as always, her body language full of her usual assuredness.

“Yes?” said Nurse Honeycutt. Her heart only pounded harder.

But then the mother opened her mouth to speak, and no words came out. Instead, she paused and placed a manicured hand on her chest, just under her collarbone. Everyone on campus knew Jessica Patterson. She was not the sort of woman to suffer a loss for words. Something about how she was behaving now made Nurse Honeycutt breathe a little more easily.

“Would you like to sit down?” the nurse asked, motioning to the same folding chair Isabella had sat in not very long ago.

Jessica took her seat, knees pressed closely together, feet crossed at the ankles. She shifted her chic brown leather handbag from her shoulder to her lap and held it close to herself, as if it served as some sort of protective shield.

“Nurse Honeycutt, I want to…” She paused again, took a deep breath. “This past weekend, Isabella and I had a little talk.” Her voice was strained, her word choice deliberate. “I sensed something was going on with her.” She stopped here, gazed around the clinic, as if taking in her surroundings for the first time. Perhaps she was processing the idea that her own daughter had sat here not long ago, grappling with the worst sort of news. A wave of pain seemed to take over Jessica, and she closed her eyes briefly.

“At any rate, I finally got her to talk to me, to tell me what happened,” she continued, her voice dropping to almost a whisper. Her hands clutched her handbag more tightly. Then the words came out in a shuddering rush: “She told me she’d only told you. That she’d gone to you as soon as she thought it could be true. But I wish she would have come to me first.” Her voice cracked on the word me , and her eyes glassed over. “I can’t understand why she wouldn’t.”

In one crisp movement, Nurse Honeycutt drew two fresh tissues from the box on her desk and passed them to Jessica. The mother pressed them carefully to the corners of her eyes in a failed effort to hold back her crying, then gave up and allowed the tears to fall freely down her cheeks. There was part of Nurse Honeycutt that could not believe she was seeing this campus powerhouse look so broken.

“I always thought…she could tell me anything,” she said, her voice breaking again as she spoke. “I thought we had that sort of relationship.”

Nurse Honeycutt nodded sympathetically. “I’ve worked with teenagers for a long time, Ms. Patterson,” she said. “Sometimes they are just too scared or too nervous to speak with their parents, even when they should. I’m sure what you’re feeling right now is painful. I understand that.”

Jessica took a shaky breath and then gathered herself and dried her face with the tissues. “I know what she told you about my husband, and the truth is, she’s not wrong,” she said. At this she looked down toward the floor, and Nurse Honeycutt sensed the woman was embarrassed. She wanted to tell Jessica there was nothing to feel ashamed of, even though she herself couldn’t imagine being married to a man like that, but she did not know if this was the time or the place for that.

“He would not have reacted well at all,” Jessica continued, her gaze finally lifting toward Nurse Honeycutt. “If he had found out…” At this Jessica shook her head firmly, apparently trying to push an idea out of her mind. “Of course, I would have found a way to help her, had she come to me. I would have flown her to Europe if I’d had to, and we would have managed to keep it from him. But she didn’t, so I can only say that I am grateful that she came to you instead. And I am grateful you were able to assist her, even at enormous risk to yourself.”

Nurse Honeycutt wasn’t sure how much to acknowledge or admit to out loud in this conversation. So she simply said, “It’s a gift to be a school nurse here at Baldwin High, Ms. Patterson. And it’s a privilege to be able to serve my students.”

Jessica nodded, then folded the used tissues neatly into a square before throwing them away in a nearby trash can.

“Isabella is doing well, I gather?” Nurse Honeycutt asked. From the attendance records she’d checked, she knew the twelfth grader had been absent on Monday, but she’d been in school the rest of the week.

“She is,” said Jessica. “She’s feeling good. She’s looking forward to graduation.”

“And I look forward to seeing her there,” said Nurse Honeycutt.

“It will be a good day,” replied Jessica, standing up and shifting her purse back to her right shoulder. It was obvious to Nurse Honeycutt that the woman was trying to compose herself completely before leaving. She made it to the clinic door, then turned back and said, “Thank you, Nurse Honeycutt. Thank you so much.”

Nurse Honeycutt nodded and offered a small smile.

After Jessica left, the nurse allowed herself a deep exhalation, then let her mind flutter to the graduation ceremony she and Jessica had just discussed. It was only six weeks away. She always had to work the event, which took place at the school district’s field house. She would arrive early and set up in the tunnel through which the graduates would march; her station was always right on the perimeter of the action, and she stocked it with a cooler full of Gatorade and bottled water, her medical kit, her supply of sanitary napkins and tampons, and her smelling salts for the occasional fainter.

Nurse Honeycutt was always prepared.

When at last the members of the Baldwin High orchestra began to play their instruments in a careful, workmanlike manner, and the opening strains of “Pomp and Circumstance” floated toward them from a distant corner of the field house, the graduates would march onto the floor.

At that year’s ceremony Nurse Honeycutt would keep her eyes open for Isabella. It would make her heart lift to see her, her coppery eye makeup carefully applied, her blond hair laboriously styled into big, bouncing curls. Her mortarboard would threaten to slide off for a moment, and Isabella would tug it back on, laughing as she did. And then, just as quickly as she appeared, she would be swallowed up by the sea of students that was flooding the field house to cheers and applause.

Nurse Honeycutt had attended many high school graduations, and she would know the order of things as well as she knew how to make an ice pack in thirty seconds flat or sense a fever with the cool touch of her hand. Soon there would be speeches, and clapping, and shouts of pride from the families in the audience. And soon Isabella Patterson would climb the steps to cross the stage, her red robe flapping around her, her young, colt-like legs uncertain in her brand-new high heels, her fresh young face as wide and open as her future.