“It’s either the Pennsylvania Railroad or the Central of New Jersey, the two twenty-five p.m. or the four thirty-five p.m.,” said Fannie. “Which is it?”
Fannie was so distracted by the conversation that she failed to notice Mary enter the room. When she tapped her on the shoulder, Fannie nearly dropped the handset.
“I need you to finish up this call,” she said, before turning her attention to Dorothy. “Who’s she talking to?”
Esther was saying something about the train schedule but Fannie had stopped listening. Was Mary angry at her or Dorothy? It was hard to tell. “Mother,” she said. “I think I have to go. Tell Florence I’m counting on her to come by. Really.”
She replaced the handset on the receiver. Her back ached and her feet felt like bricks. Maybe her mother was right and she shouldn’t have gotten out of bed.
“Sorry,” she said to Mary. “I just needed to speak with my sister.”
“This phone’s not for patient use,” Mary said, shooting Dorothy a withering look. There was still a small dab of mayonnaise on the nurse’s top lip. “Dorothy, will you get her back to bed?”
No one on the hospital’s staff had ever spoken to Fannie in such a stern voice, and for a brief moment, she felt almost guilty for implicating Dorothy.
Dorothy got to her feet slowly, as if she’d rather be doing anything else, and gave Mary a wide berth as she guided Fannie out of the lounge. As they walked down the hall, she muttered to herself. Fannie thought she heard her say, “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” but that hardly made any sense. Doing what? And who was the “we”—surely not Dorothy and Fannie?
“What did you say?” Fannie finally asked, when they’d reached her room.
“Huh?”
“You said something.”
Dorothy was either hard of hearing or had chosen to ignore Fannie’s question.
“Listen, Dorothy, I really am sorry if I got you in trouble.”
Dorothy ignored her. All she said, as she turned the bed down was, “In you go.”
Fannie awoke to the fluttering kicks of the baby inside her. The sensation of being prodded from the interior of her own body had never grown old. She pushed down her bedsheet and lifted her nightgown to reveal her bare stomach, hard and round. Sometimes, on mornings like this, when the baby was active, she could actually see her stomach tremor, the muscles subtly bending to accommodate the jut of a tiny fist or the heel of a foot. She imagined this baby vaulting off her pelvis, swinging from her ribs.
Fannie reached for her water glass on the bedside table, and saw a folded piece of paper leaning against the glass. Across the flap, her name was written in pretty script. Confused, Fannie picked up the note.
Now she remembered—she had stayed up later than usual, waiting for Florence. First, she had worried that her sister wouldn’t make it to the hospital before visiting hours ended, and then, as nine o’clock came and went, that she wouldn’t come at all. Fannie had tried not to doze but it had been impossible not to; she was always so tired now. At one point, she’d stirred and could have sworn she overheard McLoughlin reprimanding Dorothy but now she realized she must have been dreaming.
The handwriting on the note wasn’t Florence’s—it was neater and more controlled. When Fannie unfolded it, she saw that the message, which was short, had been written on a piece of hospital stationery.
Fannie,
Florence stopped by tonight but you were already asleep. You looked so peaceful that she hated to wake you. She asked me to tell you that she loves you, and that she’ll be thinking of you and the baby constantly over these next few weeks.
Bette
Fannie let the note slip from her fingers. It fell closed and settled on her lap. Was this really it? Florence was going to leave for France with no real good-bye? The thudding pain in Fannie’s temples had returned. She picked up the note again and reread Bette’s words. She asked me to tell you. Why would Florence have passed along a message through Bette when she could simply have woken her? Or asked Bette for a piece of stationery and a pen and written the note herself? Surely, Florence could have spared the two minutes it would have taken to toss off these few lines. Did she care so little about Fannie? Fannie’s breathing started to quicken. She crumbled the note into as tight a ball as she could manage and, letting out a low growl, threw it across the room and out into the hall.
Fannie pulled her nightgown back down over her stomach. Her hands had gone numb, and she could barely feel the cloth of the gown beneath her fingertips. A wave of nausea washed over her and then she was hot, so incredibly hot, that she kicked her sheets all the way to the bottom of the bed.
Dr. Rosenthal and a nurse Fannie didn’t recognize walked past her room on morning rounds. The doctor stooped to pick up the wad of paper, then glanced into Fannie’s room, as if he were trying to calculate its trajectory.
“Fannie?” he said, hurrying into the room.
Fannie’s breath was coming in short bursts now. She had tried to put her head between her knees but found she couldn’t, not with the bulge of her stomach in the way. All she could do was lock her arms around her knees and rock back and forth, trying to get a gulp of air. It wasn’t working. What was wrong with everyone? Florence, Isaac, her mother, even Gussie? It was as if no one cared what happened to her.
“Fannie, can you hear me?” Dr. Rosenthal said. His voice sounded very far
