Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity's Christmas

“He’s still unconscious,” I told him, “but he’s stable.”

“Thank the Lord,” the vicar said gravely. “No idea who the fellow is?”

“None,” I said. “The police have sent out John Doe bulletins to all of the local shelters, but so far no one’s identified him.”

The vicar sighed. “Poor chap. I’ll offer up a prayer for him at evensong. Mr. Barlow sends his best wishes as well.”

“I’ll pass them along,” I said.

I closed the window, oddly comforted by the vicar’s words. It was a relief to know that not everyone in Finch was as narrow-minded as Peggy Kitchen.

Oxford was as unpleasant as ever, noisy and traffic-choked, a lumpy conglomeration of beautiful colleges swallowed whole, but never fully digested, by a sprawling, unkempt town.

The slushy conditions had reduced the usual stream of bicyclists to a trickle, but the swarming hordes of students had been replaced by hordes of holiday shoppers, none of whom seemed to know the most elementary rules of traffic safety. I frightened a good half-dozen pedestrians before finding sanctuary in a parking garage near the Radcliffe.

Dr. Pritchard was with a patient when I arrived at the reception desk, but he’d told Reception to expect me and assigned a round-faced, red-haired student nurse to take me through to intensive care.

Nurse Willoughby was one of those annoying individuals who seem to thrive on the smell of disinfectant. While she bounced merrily along, I kept my eyes trained on her heels and breathed shallowly through my mouth.

“Our patient is in an isolation ward, because of his pneumonia,” the young nurse informed me brightly. “He hasn’t regained consciousness yet, but that’s not necessarily a bad sign. Matron says it may be that his body needs a good, long rest.” She turned a broad smile in my direction. “I can understand your interest in him, Ms. Shepherd. He’s…” The young nurse blushed prettily. “He’s really something special. We all think so. Even Matron.”

We stopped at a nurses’ station overlooking a glass-walled cubicle, and I exchanged my cashmere coat and leather shoulder bag for a wraparound surgical gown and a tie-on surgical mask.

“You see what I mean?” Nurse Willoughby whispered. She motioned toward three nurses standing before the cubicle. “They come here during their breaks, just to get a glimpse of him.” Her freckled face became somber. “It’s not just that he’s handsome,” she said gravely. “Anyone can be handsome, but he’s got an air about him… as if he’s come to remind us of why our jobs are so important. We’re taking better care of all our patients because of him.” She tugged my gown’s elastic cuff into place. “But you know what I mean. You’ve seen him already.”

I smiled amiably, even though I hadn’t the foggiest notion what Nurse Willoughby meant. The tramp, as I recalled him, had been about as inspirational as a latter-day Howard Hughes.

“You’re sure this is the right guy?” I asked. “The elderly man who—”

“Elderly man?” Nurse Willoughby exclaimed. “You can hardly call our patient elderly, Ms. Shepherd. Dr. Pritchard says he’s no more than forty years old.”

I stared at her, taken aback. I could scarcely believe that the gaunt and gray-haired man who’d lain on our sofa was only a few years older than my husband. “You’re sure?”

Nurse Willoughby was positive. “You must’ve been fooled by his hair color—prematurely gray, Matron says. And of course he’s so terribly thin…. Now,” she continued, in a businesslike tone, “Dr. Pritchard’s waived the rules about visiting hours, but you’ll still have only ten minutes with our patient.”

“That’s fine by me,” I told her.

The tramp’s admirers dispersed as we approached the glass-walled cubicle. Nurse Willoughby opened the door, pulled it shut behind me, and returned to the nurses’ station.

I paused just inside the doorway, gazing once more at the floor. I wasn’t a trained nurse. I didn’t find sick people fascinating. I’d made it through the hospital corridors with my dignity intact, but coming face-to-face with a critically ill patient was another matter. Still, I thought, I’d promised Aunt Dimity…. I braced myself and lifted my gaze.

The tramp seemed as frail as an autumn leaf. His collarbones stood out in sharp relief against the pale-blue hospital gown, and his long, tapering fingers were hidden beneath layers of gauze. A clear plastic oxygen mask covered his nose and mouth, IVs snaked from his arms, and thin wires connected him to a bank of beeping, blinking machines that loomed at the far side of his bed. His long hair was clipped short, his shaggy beard shaved off, and an overhead lamp cast a halo of light upon a face so beautiful it took my breath away.

He wasn’t an old man. I could see that now. His skin was weathered but taut, his chin firm, and the long lashes casting half-moon shadows on his windburned cheeks were as dark as my own. I took one step, then another, until I stood beside his bed, looking down on a face I’d seen, but hadn’t seen. His wide-set eyes and curving lips might have been carved by Michelangelo.

The long, dark lashes fluttered, the eyelids slowly opened, and the cubicle seemed to vanish as I fell into the depths of his violet eyes. In them I glimpsed a soul wiser, braver, and kinder by far than my own, a soul scarred but undaunted by suffering. He gazed at me so trustingly that for a moment I believed I’d come there not merely to observe, but to save him. I stood spellbound, unaware of my surroundings, until he blinked once, twice, smiled as sweetly as a child, and closed his eyes.

Suddenly, Nurse Willoughby was at my side, pointing to her watch. I turned, as if awakened from a dream, and caught sight of a man staring through the cubicle’s glass wall. He was tall and well built—in his fifties, I guessed—and dressed all in black: black turtleneck, black jeans, and a black-leather bomber jacket. His fringe of graying hair thinned to peach fuzz on the top of his head and he sported a neatly trimmed goatee. His long, pouchy face and sad brown eyes reminded me strongly of a placid basset hound.

Nurse Willoughby touched my arm and we left the cubicle, the young nurse looking back a dozen times, as if to fix the tramp’s features in her memory. I needed no backward glance. The tramp’s face was as clear in my mind as Bill’s.

“He opened his eyes,” I said, as I stripped off the protective clothing.

“Highly unlikely,” Nurse Willoughby informed me.

“He opened his eyes and he smiled,” I insisted.

“An involuntary reflex, perhaps,” she allowed.

“I know what I saw,” I stated firmly.

“And I know what the instruments tell me,” she replied, with equal firmness. “You want him to be well, Ms. Shepherd. We all do. But wanting something doesn’t make it so. Our patient is deeply unconscious. He couldn’t possibly respond to your presence or communicate with you in any way.” She patted my arm. “It was probably a trick of the light.”

She was trying to be kind, but I felt the same frustration I’d felt when well-meaning people told me that my babies’ smiles had more to do with gas than with glee. I was about to argue the point further when the man in the black leather jacket approached me.

“Lori Shepherd?” he inquired.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Dr. Pritchard told me you’d be along,” the man said. “I’m Julian Bright.” He put out his hand. “Would you care to come to Cambridgeshire with me?”

5

The request was so preposterous that I didn’t know whether to laugh or call for help. “Thank you, Mr. Bright, but I don’t usually accept invitations from complete strangers.”