bruised face. “The driver of the truck was only scratched. Isn’t it the way of things?” she added with a sad smile.
Dana bit her lip. “Yes,” she murmured.
“Jenny said she’d see you later, by the way,” the older nurse added. “And Miss Ena asked about you.”
Dana couldn’t repress a tiny smile, even through her grief. Miss Ena had undergone a gall bladder operation days before, and was the bane of the nursing staff. But strangely, she’d taken a liking to Dana and would do anything the young nurse asked.
“Tell her, please, that I’ll be back on duty Friday night,” Dana said gently. “If that’s all right with you.”
“That depends on how well you are by then,” was the stern reply. “We’ll wait to see about the funeral until Dr. Willis has seen you. You have to be prepared: he may very well refuse to let you go.”
Dana’s eyes blurred again with hot tears. “But I must!”
“You must get well,” Mrs. Pibbs replied. “I’ll see you later, Nurse. I’m very busy, but I wanted to check on you. Dr. Willis will be around shortly.” She paused at the door, her eyes frankly concerned as she watched the blond head settle back on the pillow. Something was wrong there, very wrong. Dana’s father had said as much when he was told that she refused to see him. But he wasn’t going to insist, he told Mrs. Pibbs. Dana would work it out herself.
But would she? Mrs. Pibbs wondered.
Dr. Willis stopped by thirty minutes later, and Dana was shuttled off shortly afterward to X-ray. For the rest of the day, tests were run and results were correlated, and by night the tearful young nurse was given the verdict.
“No funeral,” Dr. Willis said with faint apology as he made his night rounds. “I’m sorry, Dana, but a concussion isn’t something you play around with. Your head took a brutal knock: I can’t risk letting you up so soon.”
“Then can they postpone the funeral…?” Dana asked hopefully.
He shook his head. “Your aunt is in no condition to put it off,” he said bluntly. And he should know: her Aunt Helen was his patient too. “Mandy was her only living relative, except for you. She’s pretty devastated. No, Dana, the sooner it’s over, the better.”
“But I want to go,” Dana wailed bitterly.
“I know that. And I understand why,” he said gently. “But you know that the body is only the shell. The substance, the spark, that was her soul is already with God. It would be like looking at an empty glass.”
The words were oddly comforting and they made sense. But they didn’t ease the hurt.
Dr. Willis took her pulse and examined her eyes. “Shall I call Dick and have him come by and talk to you?” he asked when he finished, naming her minister.
She nodded. “Yes, please. It would be…a great help right now. Aunt Helen—is she coming to see me?”
He shook his head. “Not tonight. I’ve had to sedate her. The shock, for both of you, has been bad. Where’s Jack? I’d have thought he’d be with you.”
“My father has a family to think about,” she said bitterly.
He stared at her. “You’re his family too.”
“Tell him,” she said curtly, staring back. “Because he hasn’t even phoned me since the divorce. Since I left home. Since I went into nurse’s training! Never!”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t.” She looked down at the white hospital sheet. “I’m very sorry, Dr. Willis; I know you’re only trying to help. But this is something I have to work out by myself.”
He nodded. “If I can help, I will. I’ve known your family for a long time.”
She smiled at him. “Yes. Thank you.”
“We’ll keep you for two or three days, depending on how you progress,” he said gently. “I wish I could give you something for the grief. But only God can do that.”
* * *
Aunt Helen came by the next morning, dressed in a wildly expensive blue suit with a peekaboo hat and looking as neat as a pin. She looked a lot like Mandy, but she was taller and thinner. And much more emotional.
“Oh, darling,” she wailed, throwing herself on Dana in a haze of expensive perfume and a chiffon scarf. “Oh, darling, how horrible for us both. Poor Mandy!”
Dana, just beginning to get herself back together, lost control again and wept. “I know,” she whispered. “Aunt Helen, she was so unhappy, so miserable.”
“I know. I told her she never should have married that man. I warned her, but she wouldn’t listen!” Aunt Helen drew away with a tearful sigh. Her brown eyes were wet with tears. “I knew the minute she told me about the divorce that she wouldn’t be with us much longer. She wasn’t strong enough to live alone, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” Dana groaned. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “It all happened so quickly; she was drinking….”
“They told me everything. But, darling, why did you let her drive? Didn’t you realize what might happen?”
Dana felt her face stiffen. “Yes, but…”
“Of all the stupid things to do, and you might have just taken the keys from her in the first place.” The brown eyes so like her mother’s were accusing. “Why in the world did you let her drive, Dana?”
Dana couldn’t even manage a reply. She reached blindly for the buzzer and pushed it. A minute later, a nurse came to the door.
“Will you show my aunt the way out, please, Nurse?” Dana asked tightly, not looking at Aunt Helen, who was obviously shocked.
The nurse knew what was going on from one look at her patient’s drawn face.
“I’m sorry, but Miss Steele can’t be upset; she has a concussion,” the nurse said firmly. “Will you come with me, please?”
As if she’d just realized what she was saying, Helen’s face was suddenly white and repentant. “Darling, I’m sorry….”
But Dana closed her eyes and wouldn’t look or listen. The nightmare wasn’t ever going to end, it seemed, and she wondered vaguely if everyone blamed her for her mother’s death. She turned her face into the pillows and cried like a child.
Her minister visited that night, after the funeral was over, and Dana poured out her heart to him.
“And it’s my fault; even Aunt Helen said it’s my fault,” she confessed.
“It’s no one’s fault, Dana,” he said, smiling quietly. A gentle man, he made her feel at once comforted and secure. “When a life is taken, it’s only because God has decided that He has more need of that life than those attached to it here on earth. People don’t die for no reason, Dana, or because it’s anyone’s fault.
