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“No, I guess not,” Lauralee murmured. She gazed down at Dorothy. This woman was not only lax with her nursing duties, but also herself. She was dowdy. Her white dress showed signs of having not been washed in days. Her stringy blond hair was drooping over her shoulders. Her skin was blemished with scars left by pimples.
There was even a slight aroma of perspiration as Dorothy moved her arms about as she stacked ledgers on the top of a wooden filing cabinet.
Lauralee, however, took pride in hers
elf. She always smelled sweet from a recent bath. Her freshly washed hair sparkled and shone, and her cheeks were rosy and dimpled.
She brushed her hands down her perfectly ironed dress, proud that she made a good appearance whenever she visited the ailing men. She smiled to herself while thinking about how she always drew a compliment or two from them as she entered their rooms.
Lauralee recalled how her mother had looked to her when she was five, and now she saw how much she resembled her whenever she looked into a mirror at herself. She carried that knowledge around with her with much pride and tenderness. She had loved her mother so much. She had never heard as sweet a voice since, nor had seen such a lovely, warm smile.
Not wanting to get into it with Dorothy, always having found it hard to tolerate her neglect of everything, Lauralee walked away. She hurried to the room where the new patient lay with pneumonia, his days on this earth now numbered.
Her heartbeat always raced when she was to become acquainted with a new patient who might have fought side by side with her father. She always said a prayer to herself that this might be the day she would hear what she wanted to hear. That her father was, indeed, still alive.
The door to room fourteen was ajar and Lauralee could hear the labored, hard breathing. This was the breathing of someone whose each and every breath carried with it an intense pain. It was at this stage that many of them prayed for a swift end. Life no longer held within its arms anything warm or beautiful for them.
Lauralee tiptoed into the room. She stopped and peered through the gloom. The shades were drawn at the windows. A candle’s glow on the bed stand was the only light by which to see.
The smell that met Lauralee was strongly medicinal. The sight of the thin, ill man covered by soft blankets was sad. Lauralee was saddened at the thought of him dying soon.
Except for her deep emotions and feelings for people, Lauralee had always felt that she could be a good nurse. When she realized that someone was gravely ill, she became overcome with pity and remorse for them.
Realizing that he was asleep, she moved softly and quietly. She stood over the bed and sucked in a breath of despair when she saw how gaunt this man’s face was, and how bony his hands were as they rested above the blankets. His hair was all but gone, yet still showed signs of once having been gray.
As she looked down the full length of him, she knew that he had at one time been a very tall, and most likely a grand and handsome man.
“My father was tall,” she whispered to herself, taking a cloth from a basin, slowly wiping his sweating brow. “But my father couldn’t be this old. This man must be . . .”
Her thoughts were stolen away when the man slowly lifted his eyelashes and revealed entrancing violet eyes that mirrored Lauralee’s. She gasped and paled, then shook the hope from her heart that finally she had found her father.
And this was not at all the way she had wanted it to be when she found him. This man . . . was . . . dying. She could not bear to think that she might find her father, just to lose him again all that quickly.
Boyd Johnston blinked his eyes over and over again as he stared up at the lovely woman standing at his bedside caressing his brow. His pulse raced. His heart thundered within his chest.
“Are . . . you . . . real . . . ?” Boyd whispered in a voice that held no strength. He slowly raised a shaky, thin hand toward Lauralee’s face. “Tell . . . me . . . I’m dreaming.”
So used to the elderly men making over her, Lauralee laughed sweetly and softly. “No, sir, you aren’t dreaming,” she murmured. “And since you are awake, is there anything I can get you? Would you like to have a drink of water? Are you hungry? Perhaps eating would give you back some of your strength lost to the pneumonia.”
“No, I . . . don’t . . . want food,” Boyd stammered. “Let me look at you up close. Please. Go and lift the shade at the window. Let . . . me . . . see you . . . up close.”
Lauralee’s smile faded and her insides did a strange sort of flip-flop. This man. This stranger. He was not acting the same as the others had, after all, when they had opened their eyes and saw her for the first time. This man seemed to know her. He wanted to get a better look at her to be sure.
But it was foolish of her to make anything of this. She had been only a child when her father had last seen her. He would not recognize her now.
His eyes were the only characteristic that bore the slightest similarity between her father and this man.
And anyone could be born with violet eyes.
“All right, if you wish, I’ll raise the shades,” Lauralee said, feeling strangely weak-kneed as she went to each of the two windows and allowed the blaring sunlight to flood the room.
“Come to me,” Boyd said, his voice weak and gravelly. “Come now. Step up close. Let me see you.”
Lauralee hesitated, then went on to the bedside. “Sir, you are frightening me,” she said, as once again his fingers reached for her face and he ran them over her features. “Who do you think I am?”
“My wife,” Boyd said, a sob lodging in his throat. “Carolyn. My wife, Carolyn. Lord, how you look like my Carolyn.”
Lauralee almost fainted as those words sank into her consciousness. She steadied herself by grabbing for the bed. She peered more intensely at the facial features of this man. If he thought that she was Carolyn Johnston, that had to mean that he had known her. Lauralee did lay claim to being the exact image of her mother!
