“Marvelous idea, Jeannie,” he said. “I think Ralph will like the idea, too.”
5. April Wedding
Ethel’s and Ted’s wedding was scheduled for April eighteenth. The first two weeks of the month were dreary and rainy. The skies above Elmhurst were constantly gray, and the countryside looked bleak and unpromising after the long winter. Tempers were short at the clinic. The season of spring colds was on, and Jean felt a great depression as she tended her duties as an upperclass nurse. Because of the shortage of graduate nurses at the hospital, Jean and her classmates were used almost as regular nurses. Jean had to attend courses in chemistry, biology and dietetics along with her regular duties, and as the spring term got under way, she was now in charge of the pediatric ward.
A whole procession of youngsters flooded both the doctors’ offices and the hospital wards. And Jean’s days were full of bathing youngsters, trying to put dosages of penicillin and sulpha into unwilling small mouths, taking temperatures and pulses of the squirming children. She tried to study at night after writing her daily letter to Ralph, but often she would steal back into the ward to hold the hand of a tiny, miserable patient lonely for his mother. Jean found solace in the quiet ward at night. The children were calmer, there were no adults about, and she couldn’t see the dreadful, gloomy sky.
Ordinarily, Jean would have welcomed the chance to work so closely with Ted, whose capacity as pediatrician kept him closely in touch with the ward. But Ted was cross and nervous. For hours at a time, he swabbed throats and sprayed sniffly noses and tried to reason with mothers weary of the winter and of housefuls of pent-up children.
The radio forecasts were always the same: showers.
“April showers,” Jean remarked one day bitterly as she gazed up at the sky which was sending down its interminable drizzly rain. “If these are showers, let me know when one stops and the next one starts, someone!”
Only Ethel and Jack seemed to retain their high spirits. Ethel was too excited about her wedding even to notice the weather. And Jack, bedridden already a month, had drawn from some inner source a courage and even temper which amazed everyone around him. Although Jack knew that he would be in bed for many months, he never seemed to be depressed. He made a full life for himself within his tiny room. Although he wasn’t allowed many visitors, he soon fell into a routine which occupied his mind, but which didn’t excite him too much.
But just when everyone decided that it would never stop raining, the sun came out. The sky was blue with fluffy white clouds, and spring had come to Elmhurst. Trees which had been barren two weeks before were now covered with soft green buds. The whole countryside softened with new-growing greenery. The river ran with vigorous energy to carry its extra burden to the ocean, and the air smelled clean, as if the heavens had spent two energetic weeks in spring housecleaning.