Free Hurricane Nurse by Joan Sargent

put the pipe again in his mouth and blew out a cloud of odorous smoke.
    Donna smiled at this joke which she was sure must have been a very old one between the professor and his wife. "How long have you and Mrs. Ward been married, Dr. Ward?"
    He looked at her proudly. "Sixty-four years. The very same woman, all those years. Monotonous, isn't it?"
    "They'd probably think so in Hollywood, Professor. But I have a notion you and Mrs. Ward still find each other exciting."
    The twinkle of humor that until now had characterized the old man for her entirely disappeared. Donna saw that he was indeed old, his fleshless and almost translucent skin clinging to his beautifully shaped bones. His fine, scholarly eyes seemed to lose something of their bright blueness. He took his pipe out of his mouth and studied her face, but with the air of one who did not see it. After a while, he spoke.
    "Exciting? Perhaps. I'd use the word stimulating. You've no idea the arguments we have. Not quarrels, mind you. Arguments. And usually we come out thinking generally what we went in thinking, yet altered, too. My Maggie was beautiful when I married her. She is beautiful still. We never had children, and that has been a sorrow to us both, but she's been everything I ever dreamed as a wife, and more. Maggie Ward is a wonderful woman. I didn't deserve her."
    Donna murmured a sound that indicated interest.
    He went on, more as if he were thinking than talking to someone else. "Only, now I worry about her. I'm an old man. My heart—it's served me well and longer than anyone had a right to expect. But it's tired and sometimes it falters. When it decides to rest, who's going to look after my girl? There's very little money and she no longer can walk. We've had so much that I ought not to fret, but fret I do. Even if she's taken care of physically, after sixty-four years—she's going to be very lonely. Very, very lonely."
    Donna searched for some comfort to offer him. Hadn't Hank said that the Wards were nearly ninety? Dr. Ward was too intelligent a man to brush off with a shallow remark that they might live years yet. Even if she had thought of something to say, her throat was too choked to say it. She simply stood there, her eyes fixed on his parchment-like face.
    He shook off his mood with an actual shake of his shoulders and put on his twinkle once more.
    "There, child. I had no right to burden your young shoulders with my troubles. I should have talked, instead, about the new life that began here last night. A little girl, I believe. What have they named her?"
    Donna forced a smile that was only surface deep. "I haven't heard since she was born, but last night her mother told me Jacqueline. Not for the first lady, it seems, but for the baby's father, who is Jack. They're just children, Dr. Ward. Babies themselves."
    The old man nodded slowly, puffing on his pipe. "I didn't marry very early. I begrudge those years that I might have spent with Maggie. Perhaps I'll go and tell them that. Maybe it will help them to use what they have wisely."
    Again, he seemed to have slipped away into his thoughts. Donna walked softly away, but she had not really left him. His voice went on in her ears and the mood he had created held her so strongly that she did not notice that the children had left off playing hopscotch and turned to tag; that the mothers, looking tired and a bit bedraggled, stood in knots talking; that the card game in the room across from the principal's office had reorganized and was as noisy as ever.
     

Chapter VIII
    She found Cliff and the injured Mr. Poague both sleeping in her office. Her sensitive fingertips told her that Poague had a fever but that it was slight so she did not waken him to measure it. Even had it been soaring, there was little that she could do to bring it down, and it was her opinion that sleep would do more for him than any treatment. She was about to tiptoe out when Cliff roused, sat up and grinned at her.
    "How's a fellow