WHEN AGGIE SCREAMED
Now Aggie has hay fever, and the slightest excitement, any time in the
year, starts her off. So when we heard her sneezing as we went down
the stairs, we were not surprised to find Tommy Andrews in front of
her with an order book on his knee, and Aggie trying to hold a glass
thermometer in her mouth.
“I can’t,” she was protesting around the thermometer. “Justh try
sneething yourthelf with a--a--choo.”
Her teeth came down on it just then with a snap and her face grew
agonized.
“There!” she said. “What did I tell you?” And pulled the thermometer
out minus an end.
“Where’s the rest?” Tommy demanded.
“I--I swallowed it!”
Tommy jumped up and looked frightened.
“Great heavens, it’s glass!” he said. “What in thunder--why, there it
is in your lap!”
“I swallowed the inside,” Aggie said stiffly. “I should think that’s
bad enough. It’s poison, isn’t it?”
Tommy laughed. “It won’t hurt you,” he said. “It’s only quicksilver.”
But Aggie was only partly reassured. “I daresay I’ll be coated inside
like the back of a mirror,” she snapped. “Between being frightened
to death until I’m in a fever, and then swallowing the contents of a
thermometer, and having it expand with the heat of my body, and maybe
blow up, I feel as though I’m on the border of the spirit land myself.”
In spite of Tommy’s reassurances, she refused to be comforted, and sat
the rest of the afternoon waiting for something to happen. She ate no
luncheon, and she absolutely refused to go home. Aggie is like most
soft-mannered people, trying to make her do something she doesn’t want
is like pounding a pillow. It seems to give way, and the next minute
it’s back where it was at first, and you can pound till your hands
ache. So when she said she was going to stay at the hospital until she
felt sure the mercury wasn’t going to blow up or poison her, we had to
yield.
We got the room next to Tish’s and put her to bed, and she lay there
alternately sneezing and sleeping the rest of the day. I went out
during the afternoon and brought a nightgown for her and one for
myself, and the mentholated cotton wool for her nose. The walk did me
good, and by the time I got back I was ready to sneer at footprints
that go up a wall and Johnson hanging to a chandelier.
As I left the elevator at Tish’s door, I met Miss Linda Smith and
stopped her. “Is there anything new?” I asked.
“Nothing, except that Miss Blake has been sent back to bed,” she said.
“She’s a nervous little thing anyhow, and she has not been here very
long. When she has had almost three years, as I have, she’ll learn
to let each day take care of itself--not to worry about yesterday or
expect anything of to-morrow.”
“And how about to-day?” I asked, smiling at the contradiction of her
pessimistic speech and her cheerful face.
“And to work like the deuce to-day,” she said, and went smiling down
the hall.
I had brought in some pink roses, and when I’d put Aggie’s nightgown on
her and the wool in her nose, I had Miss Lewis take me to Miss Blake’s
room.
It was close at hand. If you know the Dunkirk Hospital, you know
that the nurses’ dormitory is directly beside the main building, and
connected with it by doors on every floor. One of these doors was at
the end of Tish’s corridor, and Miss Blake’s room was the first on the
other side.
Miss Lewis knocked and tried the door, but it was bolted.
“Who’s there?” asked a startled voice, quite close, as if its owner
had been standing just inside.
“Miss Lewis, dear.”
“Just a moment.”
She opened the door almost immediately and admitted us. She had on only
her nightgown and slippers, and her hair was down in a thick braid. I
have reached the time of life when I brush most of my hair by holding
one end of it in my teeth, so I always notice hair.
“You’re up,” said Miss Lewis accusingly.
“Only to be sure the door was fastened,” she protested, and got into
her single bed again obediently.
“Now don’t be silly!” Miss Lewis said. “Why should you lock that door
in the middle of the afternoon? I thought you were the girl who rescued
the kitten from the ridge pole of the roof!”
“That was different,” said Miss Blake, and shut her eyes.
“I don’t want to disturb you,” I said. “Only--my friend and I felt
sorry that she caused you such a shock last night. And I want you to
have these flowers.”
She seemed much pleased and Miss Lewis put them on the table by the
bed, beside another bouquet already there, a huge bunch of violets and
lilies of the valley. Violets and lilies of the valley are Tommy’s
favorite combination!
“Doctor Andrews been here this afternoon?” Miss Lewis asked, looking up
from arranging the roses.
“Once--twice,” said the little nurse, with heightened color.
“I see,” said Miss Lewis. “And the husband of thirty-six telephoning
all over the city for him.”
“The husband of thirty-six!” I repeated, astounded. They both laughed,
and Miss Blake looked for a moment almost gay.
“He is not a Mormon,” she said. “It’s a case of ‘container for the
thing contained.’ Thirty-six is a room.”
I think the laugh did the little nurse good, but when we left, a few
minutes later, Miss Lewis halted me a few steps from the door. We heard
her cross the room quickly and the bolt of the door slip into place.
“Queer, isn’t it?” asked Miss Lewis. And I thought it was.
Tommy Andrews came back late that night to see Aggie, but she had
stopped sneezing and dropped into a doze. He beckoned me out into the
hall.
“How is she?” he asked. “Having been quick-silvered inside, I daresay
she’s been reflecting! Never mind, Miss Lizzie--I couldn’t help that.”
“Tish wants to see you, Tommy,” I said. “She--we found something this
afternoon and I don’t mind saying we are puzzled.”
“More mystery?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Don’t tell me somebody
else has shed his fleshy garment and hung it up--”
“Please _don’t_,” I said, looking over my shoulder nervously. The hall
was almost dark.
“Look here,” Tommy suggested in a whisper, “I’ll make a bargain with
you. I’ll go in and listen to Aunt Tish without levity--I give you my
word, no frivolity--if you’ll come over and play propriety while I see
Miss Blake.”
Seeing me eye him, he went on guiltily: “She’s--sick, you know, and
I’ve been there two or three times to-day already. If it gets out among
the nurses--_please_, dear, good Aunt Lizzie!”
Now, I’m not his aunt. For that matter, I’m a good ten years younger
than Tish, but he’s a handsome young rascal, and when a woman gets too
old to be influenced by good looks, it’s because she’s gone blind with
age, so I agreed on one condition.
“Yes, if you’ll see Tish first,” I said, and he agreed.
That was how we happened to be in Tish’s room when Aggie screamed.
Tish had just got to the footprint-on-the-wall part of her story,
and even Tommy was looking rather queer, when Aggie sneezed. Then
almost immediately she shrieked and the three of us were on our feet
and starting for the door before she stopped. As we reached the hall,
a nurse was running toward us, and the stillness in Aggie’s room was
horrible.
It was dark. Which was strange, for I’d left the night light on at
Aggie’s request. Tommy pushed into the room first.
“Where’s the light switch?” he demanded. “Are you there, Miss Aggie?”
There was no answer, but in the darkness every one heard a peculiar
rustling sound, such as might be made by rubbing a hand over a piece of
stiff silk. It was the nurse who found the switch almost instantly, and
I think we expected nothing less than Aggie hanging by her neck to the
chandelier. But she was lying quietly in bed, in a dead faint.
When she came to, she muttered something about a dead foot and fainted
again. By eleven o’clock she seemed pretty much herself once more and
even smiled sheepishly when Tommy suggested that it had been the fault
of the thermometer. She thought herself that she had dreamed it, and
Tish and I let her think so. But both of us had seen the same thing.
Just over the head of Aggie’s bed the pipe-molding was wrenched loose
and pulled down out of line!