Free Once a Widow by Lee Roberts

instructions. The woman found on Snake Island was to have a hot bath, plenty of blankets, warm liquids in small quantities, milk, clear soup. Watch her pulse and temperature, call him if there was any change. Because of her weakened condition and apparent shock he’d ordered a private room and complete quiet. He did not know if she could pay for the private room or even for ward service, but that did not worry him, although it did worry Miss Coral Thatcher, the hospital cashier, as she recorded the woman’s admittance at 2:45 P.M.
    Miss Thatcher was also worried and annoyed at the disturbing absence of necessary information concerning the patient, such as name, address, age, marital status, and do you have Blue Cross? It was an emergency, Dr. Shannon had said, but emergency or not, Miss Thatcher disapproved. When they’d wheeled the woman into her room Miss Thatcher had left her desk and peeked, had seen Mrs. Andrews, the head day nurse, put the woman to bed. My goodness, she’d been almost naked! Just a flimsy two-piece bathing suit, and she was at least as old as she, Coral Thatcher. It didn’t seem—moral.
    All right, Miss Thatcher thought sullenly, it was an emergency. Dr. Shannon had said so, and she liked Dr. Shannon, even if he was the youngest staff member. He always smiled at her and said, “Hi, Thatcher,” which was very professional, even if she was just the cashier and not a registered nurse. Nevertheless, she was annoyed. She liked everything to be orderly, neat and complete, and this admittance was certainly irregular. A strange woman, almost naked, found on Snake Island, they said. She probably would not be able to pay her bill and there would be unpleasantness with Mr. Grange, the hospital administrator. Mr. Grange was very strict about patients putting the money on the barrel head, as he always said, before they left the hospital.
    Poor old Mr. Sprang had been brought in at the same time as the woman, a stroke or something, but Miss Thatcher did not worry about securing the necessary data from him before he was assigned to a bed. Everyone knew that Mr. Sprang was wealthy. Even if he died, his estate would pay the hospital. Besides, she knew almost everything she needed to know about Mr. Sprang, including his age, which was seventy-one, the same age as her father when he’d died two years ago. In fact, she could practically fill out Mr. Sprang’s admittance form without talking to him. But that strange, half naked woman…
    Miss Thatcher sniffed and resumed her typing of lab reports. Out of the corner of one eye she saw Dr. Shannon and Mrs. Andrews come out of the strange woman’s room, which was number 102, and move toward her. She pretended to be busily typing as they came abreast of her office, and looked up suddenly with a false expression of surprise as Dr. Shannon said, “Hi, Thatcher.”
    “Hi,” Coral said, smiling. She watched them as they turned into the north wing, no doubt going to see Mr. Sprang, who had been placed in room 140. They returned in about five minutes and as they passed her desk once more Coral heard the doctor say to Mrs. Andrews, “We’ll take some pictures right now, and then I’ll do a cystoscopy. Dr. Carlyle can check the pictures in the morning, but I’m pretty certain what they’ll show. Schedule him for surgery at seven-thirty in the morning.” Mrs. Andrews nodded and the doctor’s voice receded as they moved away.
    It wasn’t a stroke, after all, Coral Thatcher thought. It sounds like kidney stones, or gall bladder trouble, something like that. Dr. Shannon had mentioned a cystoscopy and she had a vague idea of what that meant. In her five years as an employee of the hospital she liked to think that she’d acquired a professional knowledge of medicine and surgery, although some of the things she’d seen in her first year, when she’d been a nurse’s aide in the maternity ward, had disgusted and frightened her. She had been born and raised on a farm