The nurse nodded.
“I’ll get the nurse first. She wouldn’t like me to bring any one in without calling her first, you see.” She smiled a little as she explained this convention of the hospital and her smile angered Freda. It seemed an intrusion.
Gregory’s nurse came to her. She held out a friendly hand.
“I’m glad you’ve come. We’re doing our best but I was glad when the doctor wrote you,” she said simply.
Something in her tone pricked the adventure spirit in Freda. It lay flat, useless, a bit of torn balloon. She saw herself as this other woman saw her—a wife, come in time of stress to a sick husband, not a lover to a meeting. That was what she herself had colored her worry with.
Panic seized her. She followed almost resistingly. The door, with its printed “No Visitors” sign was opened softly. She had to accustom her eyes to the darkness. A smell of disinfectants, clean and pungent, came to her. There was the bed, white and high. She made her way towards it falteringly. The head, bandaged for coolness, did not turn to her. It was only when she stood by the bedside that it moved a little, restlessly. He did not look real to her, not like himself.
“Gregory,” she said mechanically.
His fever-dulled eyes looked up at her—lighted. He made one motion permeating his whole body as if he would rise in spite of the quickly detaining hand of the nurse.
“Angel,” he said huskily, “you angel of God—Freda.”
The sound of his voice was a release. All her frightened feelings, reassured, warmed into life, flooded Freda. She sank down by his side, her head bent over the hot hand, which lay so impotent on the gray blanket.