And the man had laughed. Rose had filled his lonely moments. The patient got what he needed, but Rose got even more in return. For Rose, being a nurse gave her the chance to be needed, to care for people as though they were family. Nurses were more like family than the relatives who visited their sickly relations. Rose was one of the best at critical care, a master at hospice, whatever nursing a patient needed.
In opening herself up to nursing in that way, Rose closed off the desperate part of her that had allowed Bennett into her life and bed. Still the gap behind the newly erected barrier to her heart needed to be filled. So, before she fully embraced her religion, she sowed a row of sexual partners that would have shamed the most practiced of playboys.
Unlike when her body was forcibly taken or when her affection was stolen, when Rose chose whom to seduce, how and when, she felt power and pain in her own pleasure. She convinced herself those months of angry promiscuity had helped her reclaim a physical sense of self even if she knew it was wrong. She quickly learned it was not how she wanted to live and going on that way would cast her into even deeper emptiness than she’d experienced before.
By the time she met Henry, she understood what men needed to see in women they wanted to marry. Rose was only required to pretend a little bit to meet Henry’s expectations. He was different. He didn’t pry like other fellas. He didn’t ask for history and the nauseating retelling of loves gone bad. Still, even though he admired her nursing career, she knew Henry had wanted to see at least a tiny part of her as needing him; he wanted to protect her.
So Rose let him care for her by not telling him anything about her past. Beyond revealing the fact she was orphaned, she left most of the details regarding her childhood and teen years unsaid. She guessed this allowed Henry to invent anything he wanted for her. She supposed it was his kindness and understanding that no orphan would want to retell her awful upbringing that kept him from prodding her. She’d worked to condense the gruesome portions of her early life into a forgotten seed, buried in her soul and hidden behind her nursing persona, tucked away until the last few days.
Even though Rose had managed to squash the pain and ruminations about her own abuse, she could never forget that she abandoned her baby. The birth and adoption of Theresa had haunted Rose. After her self-flagellating, sexual missteps she gathered up some pride and she kept her past from handicapping her future by enacting a well-plotted string of good works and smart choices. All that had served her well, but as the days unfolded Rose was discovering she could not deal with Magdalena or Theresa because she could not deal with herself. She understood Henry’s words, now.
Her delusions of past healing were shattered and she could finally see what he meant. The way she controlled everything. It had been the only way. She nodded at the thought. She wanted the best for them, the life she hadn’t had as a child. She wanted their lives to be happy and full and blessed. That’s all she had tried to do for them. Rose threw back another shot. Henry? He had his secrets, too. Remembering what Mrs. Saltz had said, Rose had come to realize he was no saint either.
* * *
Henry shuffled into the kitchen, his slippers scratching over the linoleum. He grabbed Rose’s shot glass from her hand and pushed it aside. “What the hell are you doing?”
Who was he to question her about anything? Rose wanted to yell at him, but she saw concern in his eyes. She couldn’t help herself. She went to him and collapsed into his arms.
Henry’s stubbly cheek pressed against hers before he pulled back and lifted her chin. “Are you drunk? How are you going to work if you’re three shittin’ sheets to the wind? Is this why you were arguing with Sebastian? Were you drunk yesterday?”
“What? How did you…No! I was not.”
Sara Clara rushed into the kitchen. Rose pushed away from Henry, stumbling. Sara Clara and Henry clamped Rose under each arm and shuffled her back toward the table.
“Dammit!” Rose screeched as she wiggled out of their grip and slammed into a chair.
“This has got to stop,” Henry said.
Rose rubbed her hip where they’d knocked her into the table. I know, Rose thought.
“What’s got to stop, Hen? Tell me please. Buzzy’s gambling? Magdalena? Johnny pushing me? Or is it Dottie?” Rose wagged her finger at Henry. “That has to stop. What in hell are you doing with her? I want to know, now.” She reached up and poked Henry’s shoulder.
Sara Clara butted Henry out of the way and bent to Rose, handing her coffee. Rose took it and swallowed the same cold coffee she’d made hours before. She spit it back into the cup.
Henry took Sara Clara by the elbow, guiding her away from Rose.
Rose stood, weaving in front of her seat. “That’s right, get outta my road, Sara Clara from the south,” Rose said.
“It’s okay, Sara Clara,” Henry said. “I’ve got her. She’ll be fine.”
Rose grabbed his arm and gripped it tight, her nails digging into his flesh. “You’ve got me? As though the two of you could take care of me? As though I need it? Why don’t you start telling me why Mrs. Saltz said you were at the bar with Buzzy the other night? She claims you were gambling. Are you gambling now, too?”
Henry shook his head.
“We just want to help,” Sara Clara said. “We know how hard this is, with Magdalena I mean, you’re under stress, we understand. Let us take care of you for a change.”
Rose bent at the waist burying her head in her lap. She began retching with hiccups and laughter, talking into her legs. “You two taking care of me? That’s a laugh. Why don’t you take care of your philandering husband?”
Rose struggled to her feet, took the vodka bottle by its neck. “The pair of you can go screw yourselves. And make it a good one.” Rose wobbled from the room, feeling self-righteous, self-pity. Rose ran their words through her mind. They were put off by her controlling nature, but none of them, not one, could handle her raw emotions. Rose knew then, she was trapped by the very persona she had created long ago.
* * *
When Rose awoke from her drunken stupor, it was still Friday, October 29th. She stretched on the bed; her jaw aching from the angle her head had been jammed into her pillow. She picked at the slobber crusted at the corner of her mouth and pushed to sitting, her muscles screaming as though she’d set her limbs in plaster. She squinted at her clock, eyes as dry as her mouth and ran her tongue around the inside of her lips trying to figure what had transpired in the hours early that morning. What the hell had she done?
She glanced at the clock. She should have finished four visits by 1:00 Friday afternoon. She shook her head, trying to rid her mind of the fog that clouded even her brain. The council meeting? Bonaroti hadn’t asked her to attend, but she was going.
She scrambled to her closet and threw the door open. Inside her two uniforms hung, ironed and ready. Sara Clara had actually done something around the house besides hide in her bed.
“She’s not all that bad.” Henry’s voice made Rose jump. She spun around. He stood in the doorway, hands in pockets. “I think you’d be pleased to see she managed to wash and iron your uniforms like you like them. Starched, even.” Rose remembered that morning, the way she’d been slobbering drunk, crude and rude to Henry and Sara Clara. She didn’t want to be that person.
Rose thanked him, looking at the floor.
“Bonaroti showed up here an hour ago,” Henry said. “Told him you had the flu. He thought you must be dead if you didn’t come out of the bedroom while he checked over Unk. He moved him to the cellar, convinced that since the fog rises, the cellar would be the safest place. We moved his chair downstairs, he’s got some color back…”
Rose turned away from Henry, so ashamed that she’d compromised herself, Unk, the citizens of Donora.
“Did he mention the clinic? The, uh, the Sebastians?”
“He was holding out on me, I could tell. Gave me more questions than answers, but he definitely needs you to get around to homes. Head to the people who
Hawthorne can’t reach, or double up and help Hawthorne move faster. There’s a lot of stress on people right now with this smog—yeah, more folks are calling it smog now. The smoke’s so heavy, mixing with the fog. But first we need to discuss—”
“I need time to think about Magdalena’s situation—”
“I meant your drinking, what’s going on with you. I don’t care about your job or the clinic or fucking Sebastian. You are who I care about.”
Rose looked at Henry, standing there, bursting with the love he’d always been willing to give, and she became more afraid than ever that he’d discover she was unworthy of it.
“I can’t. I need to get through this day and have the scout over for dinner tomorrow night. I got upset and drank too much. I need to get through this next week and then…”
“Bonaroti knows you’ll be late. You have time.”
Rose’s shoulders hunched as she leaned into the closet. She wanted to disappear inside herself. She wanted Henry to take over her life and tell her exactly why she should forget her past, and forgive herself. She wanted to tell him all that she’d done wrong in her life, and find out if he would still love her.
But the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth. Until she straightened Magdalena out, and made sure her son’s future was secure, the only way she could deal with what she couldn’t face was to go back to work. The only way to make Henry leave her alone was to hurt him before he hurt her.
“Why don’t you go back to saving Sara Clara, Henry? She actually needs your help. I don’t.” Rose could feel Henry’s disappointment, the hurt.
“And while you’re at it,” Rose said. “I want to know right now what you and Dottie Shaginaw are up to. I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me you’ve done nothing wrong. That I have nothing to worry about.”
“You have nothing to worry about.” Henry’s sharp tone pierced her heart, but not deeply enough to make her stop doubting.
He ran his hand through his hair, visibly irritated. “Just forget all of this. Never mind Dottie, never mind Magdalena. Just worry about your job, Rose.” She was far beyond worried about her job.
Henry’s expression was resentful. “You better get in touch with Bonaroti. He wants you to go to some meeting about shutting down the mills. Claims the world, Donora, is about to end…sounds like just your thing.”
Rose grabbed her uniform, knowing she should stay home and begin mending their marital fence but Bonaroti needed her, and the town. And even if that made Henry mad, it was the way their life had gone and he would get over it. She was needed and she would go.
Rose thought she could at least finish the day better than she started it. She stripped out of her house clothes, eager to slip on a uniform and with it, the person she was really meant to be.
* * *
The fog had thickened even more—it was grainy and so wet it moistened Rose’s cheeks. She inched her way around town, her throat scratchy, as though inundated with strep. She could barely swallow. She stopped at one home on Thompson to get her bearings, crawling up the front steps, the chipping cement digging into her palms.
She knocked at the door waiting for someone to tell her where she was. She couldn’t even see if she had passed the office. When the door didn’t open, Rose turned the handle. If she just poked her head inside she could regain her bearings. When she did she accidentally turned on the lights, and saw a woman writhing on the floor. Her coat was still on, a grocery bag beside her, cans and produce scattered around. Rose ran and knelt beside her.
“Mrs. Cushon?” Rose struggled to pull the woman to a sitting position, but she was like a rag doll. Rose laid her back down, undid her coat and pulled it off. The woman’s hands went right to her neck, signaling she couldn’t breathe.
“Okay, Mrs. Cushon, we’re going to help you. That condition of yours is acting up.” Rose popped open her bag and rifled through for a syringe and adrenaline. She poked the needle into the vial and withdrew the medicine. Rose rolled up Mrs. Cushon’s sleeve.
“Next time, how about you call the Doc, before it gets this bad. You know we have six docs in town, right?” Rose forced a smile and a light tone into her voice as she stretched Mrs. Cushon’s skin tight and plunged the needle into her muscle. Rose locked eyes with Mrs. Cushon, soothing her panic, brushing her hair back from her face, watching as the woman’s breathing normalized.
Mrs. Cushon broke her gaze and looked over Rose’s shoulder. Rose turned to see her patient’s son, Al, standing at the door, gaping.
“Down the cellar,” Al said to her.
“What?” Rose said.
“Just came from the Dvronick’s. Having a tall cool one with my buddy when his father up and drops dead right there!”
“Amos! Dead?”
Al nodded, scooping his mother into his arms, struggling to his feet. “The old man wiggled around some, hands at the neck, grey as the smog itself. That fog got ‘em! Right there in front of my own eyes. So next thing, the missus comes up from the cellar, coughing a little and she enters the kitchen sees her husband and she starts the same thing, choking, hacking, can’t breathe. Well, me and Stevie take and shove her back in the cellar on account of her dead husband on the kitchen floor and suddenly she breathes a little better. The air isn’t as bad in the cellar.”
And with that he was gone, carrying his mother to the cellar.
Rose didn’t know what to make of that story. Amos had a history of respiratory issues, as did Mrs. Cushon, but the fog got him? As much as Rose didn’t enjoy the foggy fall days they had in Donora, it was hardly a matter of being deadly. She needed to get to Bonaroti’s office, see where he wanted her to go, file this report and get someone out to the Dvronick home to see about one live and one dead person. Rose shoved the groceries into the bag and took them to the kitchen. She looked out the window of the home and a strange shifting of light through the window caught her eye.
She pulled the curtain aside and squinted. She watched a train working through town, its stack letting out smoke but instead of billowing up and out like normal, it was as though the smoke hit a ceiling. It rose a few feet then was shoved back down, rushing to the ground like liquid.
The thought of inhaling that sickened Rose. She pulled her coat tighter around her body, buttoning it. She opened several drawers in the kitchen until she found a scrap of dusting rag to cover her mouth as she headed back out. Just in case. She couldn’t ignore what she had seen and heard.
She hobbled down the sidewalk, feeling along the retaining walls that marked property lines. She could hear Al Cushon screaming out the door of the home she just left “The fog got her!” His voice rising above the darkness and ever-present sounds from the mill.
Rose stopped whomever she could along the way, marveling that although many were hampered in movement by the fog, their breathing was normal. If the fog was really “getting” people, everyone would have trouble, wouldn’t they? She remembered the sight of the train’s stack, the smoke, and covered her mouth with the rag. No sense taking chances.
Rose finally made it to Dr. Bonaroti’s office, and injected herself with adrenaline to ease her own strained breath. She administered a shot to Cathy who promptly lit a cigarette and started her choking fit all over again.
“I can taste the smog in my cigarette!” Cathy said. She stared at the end of the lit tobacco as though it had betrayed her and stomped it out on the tile floor.
Rose rifled through the drugs, anything she might use to relieve the suffocating coughs and nausea that was gripping half the town. Cathy filled Rose in on the dozens of calls from citizens requesting a visit from the doc or Rose. She was funneling all the calls she couldn’t handle to the other docs in town, but they were overwhelmed, too, out on-call. No one could keep track of which home or business a doc was visiting, because as soon as he started down the street, some random person would pull him into a house to help someone.
A man had told Cathy that the firemen were traipsing around town giving shots of
oxygen. One minute Rose was convinced the fog was worse than they’d ever seen and the next second, she would be reassured that it wasn’t so bad at all.
Still Friday had carried on normally for others. Even though they moved slowly they still were holding the Halloween parade on McKean as planned, the marching band and cheers from costumed children spiking the quiet. Rose moved from home to home, hearing the parade down the street and was disappointed she only finished part of Leo’s costume. She hoped Sara Clara had come through or maybe just pinned the spots that needed it and the boy could go to the parade. Maybe Henry had been right. If Rose hadn’t been drunk, she would have finished Leo’s costume.
No matter. She wouldn’t drink the next two days, just to prove she could do it.
Rose had six more homes on her list of people to see when she reached the Lynch home on McKean to find Skinny more than halfway dead, and surrounded by six gambling cronies, including Buzzy.
Rose moved quickly, attempting the breathing technique she’d admonished Bonaroti for using the other day. They first dragged Skinny to the cellar where the air should have been clearer. But her efforts at reviving Skinny weren’t working. The fat man had succumbed to the fog and died. Rose found herself thinking like the others, the fog got him.
Rose tried to call Matthews, one of three funeral home directors in town. But, the line was busy. She tapped her foot thinking. Should she head to her next call or keep trying to call the undertaker? She couldn’t just leave Skinny here like a lump.
“Hey Sis, Rose.” Buzzy shuffled across the floor. He wouldn’t meet Rose’s gaze, but she could see tears in his eyes. “Skinny’s, dead,” he said. “I can’t believe it.”
Rose nodded and picked up the phone. She held the phone to her ear and waved Buzzy to her, giving him a hug.
He took the phone from her and hung it up. “There’s no one on the line.” His voice was flat, more adult-like. “You have to talk to me.” Rose grabbed the phone back, pressing the cradle over and over. “Head over to Matthews’ place. Tell him we need the wagon for Skinny.” Rose held the phone between her shoulder and ear and pulled her rag from her pocket, coughing into it.