Free With Every Breath by Elizabeth Camden Page B

Kate loved her new job, even when Trevor was a bottomless well of frustration.
    As the weeks slipped by, she completely ignored his advice not to befriend the patients. Never had she seen people so desperate for simple human companionship until she began working at the clinic.
    One afternoon she was twenty minutes late turning in her statistical report because she had been tempted into helping Ethel Gordon share in her infant granddaughter’s baptism. Ethel was too sick to attend the church ceremony, but her daughter desperately wanted Ethel to see her only grandchild dressed in the family’s antique baptismal gown. A group of the healthier patients gathered in the sitting area, everyone dutifully wearing their masks, to see the little baby dressed in yards of white cotton embellished with handmade lace. The mother held the baby up from behind the nurses’ counter, waving the chubby little fist at the assembled patients on the other side of the room.
    It was one of the most moving things Kate had experienced in years, yet it made her late getting her report in to Trevor. Trevor was sitting at his desk when she rushed the report over to him.
    “Why is this late?” he demanded.
    Kate slid into her desk chair. “Because it was biologically impossible to tear myself away from the sight of that precious infant,” she said. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the sitting area. If you could have seen the way Ethel’s face lit up, even you would have been moved. When we got that baby into the baptismal gown, she looked as sweet and precious as a little princess.”
    “No baby is a princess. I heard the squalling from down the hall. I would appreciate it if you tried harder to rein in your overwrought, womanly emotions.” He turned back to reading a medical journal.
    “These overwrought, womanly hands are going to strangle you if the hectoring from your side of the office doesn’t stop.”
    Despite Trevor’s quirks, it was actually pretty fun working with him. The sheer challenge of calculating huge sets of data and extrapolating the results was so gratifying. Every day sheheld her breath, hoping to see the numbers turn in a way that would indicate the bacillus was declining, or at least holding steady. Ephraim Montgomery’s numbers got worse every day, but most of the others were holding their own. Hannah Wexler was actually showing improvement in her blood.
    “You are not to breathe a word about that to her,” Trevor warned. “She is a terminal patient, and telling her about the improvement in her blood will not cure the disease in her lungs; it will only raise her hopes. This is a stay of execution, not a cure.”
    Kate was getting used to Trevor’s blunt language and refused to let his severity upset her. He still referred to patients by their numbers rather than their names, continually warning Kate against her chatting with them.
    She ignored him. She noticed that a group of about ten patients gathered in the sitting area each day before dinner to read aloud from a novel. Most of the patients became breathless after reading only a few minutes, so the book was passed among the handful who could read, with long breaks while the readers caught their breath.
    “Would you mind if I read to them?” Kate asked Trevor one day as he studied slides under the microscope. “I don’t mind staying after my shift to read a little each day.”
    “They’re patients, not friends, Kate.”
    She lifted her chin. “And I think it would do these patients good to have someone read to them, rather than add stress to their already diminished lung capacity.”
    “Suit yourself.”
    The first day she approached the group, one of the older gentlemen waved a finger at her. “You can’t sit with us until you mask up,” he said.
    His name was Leonard Wilkes, and he had been a sailor in the Merchant Marine until his illness was discovered and hewas put off the ship at an island in Bermuda. It took almost two months for his coughing to go