Free After the Fog by Kathleen Shoop Page B

skill as she did not let Sara Clara near her clothes. “So, spill it, what were you going to say?”
    She glanced at Henry who was back to scribbling.
    “Later,” he said, his voice conveyed that he was pouting. “Sounds like you have to run.”
    She straightened the white, crisp collar and slipped into her best black, pumps—she had to show Mrs. Sebastian that in the work of a community nurse, the uniform was as important as what she did.
    Rose turned back to Henry and saw the yellow paper sticking out from his pocket. She tugged on it. “Is this part of the poetic question of the day?”
    “Hey,” he took the paper from her and set it on the side-table. “A moment of weakness is all. Nothing you ever…”
    Rose put her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows. She motioned to the yellow paper.
    “It’s nothing Rose. Just a little crisis of conscious is all. Nothing you’ve ever struggled with, I know.”
    Rose bit the inside of her mouth. She was choosing to let this pass. She had plenty of clock-time to get to the Lipinski home, but she needed to gather her thoughts and Henry’s nonsense wasn’t helping her do that.
    “Don’t be sarcastic, Henry. Do what you know is right. Neither of us has the time for horseshit. I’ll take this little conversation as your apology for not telling me our daughter was dabbling in a vat of stupidity in her off-hours.” Rose took his face in her hands and gave him a quick smack on the lips. “She’s a scientist not a seamstress. Talk to her. Magdalena likes you better, after all. And, I’m operating on the notion that this is the end of your clandestine affairs, right?”
    Henry nodded and tamped his cigarette into the ashtray. He stretched out in the middle of the bed, pulled the covers up to his chin and fell, it seemed to Rose, instantly asleep. She stared at the yellow paper he’d put on his side-table, the top half of the fold bouncing up as the radiator pushed heat into the air. Rose picked it up, but the clock caught her eye. She shoved the paper back onto the table and kissed Henry’s cheek before closing the door on the tiny, stale room.
    * * *
    Many believed a community nurse was essential to small town healthcare. She was the bridge between families and the ever-changing world of health and hygiene. Rose and Dr. Bonaroti had discussed the matter for years, but because the town of about fourteen-thousand citizens had eight doctors and several nurses at the mill hospital, it took extensive time and energy to raise the initial funding for Rose and their clinic—the place that offered care for women, children and non-mill employees. She and Bonaroti had only managed to implement their plan in the past year. And, their work had yielded results.
    Across the country strategies mounted in how to win the war on communicable diseases. Rose was a voracious researcher, both borrowing and writing her own plans to best deliver pre-natal and postnatal care for mothers and their babies. She encouraged the thrust to assimilate immigrants into the American way of post-war life as the practice grew sharper and more prominent in large cities and small towns.
    Nurses were charged with everything from showing a family how to manage their money, clean their home and sew clothing, to making regular visits to polio patients and treating acute viruses and infections like tuberculosis. This work inspired Rose more than her hospital job in a neighboring town had ever done. Even before she was a community nurse she’d always been available to help this person or that back to health, but that wasn’t the same as having a structured clinic and services available to an entire town.
    She didn’t dislike nursing at the hospital, but it was inside this community network of delivering services to people whose needs were subterranean and wide-ranging that Rose found her true love and security. In the face of other people’s weaknesses, Rose brought strength. She could help anyone with