Until We Meet Again

A Fireside Chats excerpt
By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Walter Johnson drifted in and out of the day, waltzing at a summer dance with Maud and thanking that sweet young nurse, the foreign one, for closing his window shades so he could take a little snooze. He was old, of course, although he couldn’t remember quite how many years he had accumulated, and he was infrequently aware that he favored his reveries when he might better have attended to the present. No matter. He was no dullard. He knew his days were numbered, although he couldn’t remember what his current number might be. And it occurred to him that maybe he’d just had that thought.

“Thank you, young lady,” he rasped through tubes and phlegm to his favorite nurse, Estela, a youthful forty-one to his ninety-nine years.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Johnson. You are always such a gentleman.” She patted his arm, as she checked his pulse, then brushed a wisp of white hair from his forehead.

“And you are a kind young lady. I will ask my Maudy to bring you some of her Scotch shortbread. It is the best in —.” He struggled through a strangling cough that swished everything around in his lungs, but without the strength to bully it out, he produced nothing but rearranged congestion pressing on his aching chest.

“Well, now, that would be so sweet, Mr. Johnson.” She finished checking his vitals and removed his forgotten lunch tray, dappled with droplets of canned peach and sputum.

And then he was gone again, hoping to stealthily slip a bit of verse to Maud under the bathing room door.

You are the blessed sunshine, a wild beauty rose
You stir such joy into my heart, it must be you I s’pose
Whom the angels sent to us, to make our town so sweet —.

He stopped there and resorted to prose because his mind fixated on “nose,” and he didn’t think it a properly romantic word, regardless of the call for a rhyme. He waited what seemed an eternity for Maud to emerge from her ablutions and accompany him to the ice cream social at the Willard Hotel, over in the center of town. Her mother and father and siblings were their encouraging chaperones. He tied up the horse, leaving it hitched to the cart as Maud hopped down, not waiting for him to offer his eager hand. She was a lovely woman with an unusually bold stride and a true gift for baking sweet treasures. Walter could not have been more pleased to have her compose her skirts and take his arm as he escorted her into the hotel.

“Mr. Johnson,” Ashley, a nurse’s aide, poked his arm. “Mr. Johnson. You awake?”

“Fresh as a daisy, young lady. And a great good morning to you.”

“It’s Monday afternoon, Mr. Johnson, and there’s a wildfire. We’re evacuating all patients. We’re going to be moving you, Mr. Johnson. We’re driving all the patients to another hospital.”

“We’re going for a ride? Splendid, splendid! I’ll crank up the Ford and we’ll have a gay time.” He choked on mucus, cleared it partially with a weak cough and wandered into the kitchen to help Maud with the picnic fixings.

Ashley pulled a collapsible gurney into Walter’s room and hurried on to the next. “He thinks the ride will be a ‘gay’ time,” she twittered over her shoulder to Estela, who was helping the more mobile patients into a herd of wheelchairs so they could be pushed out to the four buses on loan from the high school.

“‘Gay’ didn’t mean the same thing when he was young,” Estela scolded. “Did no one teach you to respect your elders, child?” She hurried off with another geriatric patient, gently explaining to her again that, no, she wasn’t going home just yet.

Walter was tickled that Maud was packing all his favorites, baking soda biscuits and Mr. Reche’s Fallbrook honey, chicken fried in pork fat, and peach pie made with fruit fresh from her father’s trees, nearly bursting ripe. He leaned over to steal a peck on her soft cheek, but stopped short when someone entered the room.

“Okay, now, Mr. Johnson. We’re going to move you to the gurney, and I do promise we’ll be so gentle you’ll think you are floating.” Estela and three aides surrounded the bed.

“Who are you?” he coughed. “What is happening? Is my Maudy here?”

“Mr. Johnson, it’s me, Estela, over here, Mr. Johnson.” She patted his arm. “You know me, Mr. Johnson, your favorite nurse, Estela.”

“Oh, oh, yes, of course. Estela.” He coughed and struggled to catch his breath. “And how are you this fine day?” he rumbled.

“There’s a fire, Mr. Johnson. We are evacuating the hospital — just as a precaution. There is not a thing to worry about, but we do need to move you to the gurney so we can put you on a bus and take you to another hospital.”

“Another hospital? But why would I want to leave our own little Fallbrook Hospital? Best hospital in town, it is.”

“Was that a joke, Mr. Johnson? Very good! But there’s a fire, Mr. Johnson, a bad fire, and we need to evacuate. We’re going to lift you now, Mr. Johnson. On three, everybody. One, two, three.”

“Oh, ooh, Maudy. Where is my Maudy?”

“She’s been dead —” Ashley started to say.

But Estela cut her off with a silencing look and said, “She’s just fine, Mr. Johnson. Don’t you worry.”

“You know, I do not deserve that woman. So lovely, so lovely. I do wish I could have finished her poem.”

“A poem, Mr. Johnson?” Estela sent the others away as she strapped him to the gurney.

“Yes, a poem I attempted to write for her the day I proposed marriage,” he tried to cough, “but I could not find the proper rhyme.” Walter waited for the air to squeeze a path under the murderous weight on his chest, and he thought of his lovely Maud.

“Okay, Mr. Johnson, we’re set now. We’re just going to wheel you outside.” Estela stopped to take the picture of Mr. Johnson’s wife from the bedside table and place it by his right hand, and then they headed out to the bus, Walter weakly fighting the smoke-filled air.

“Maudy and the girls, where are they? Are they safe?” Walter ran from his car and joined the well-water bucket brigade trying to douse his home so embers from the burning barn wouldn’t set into the house. As they hauled water, the town’s sole fire truck was aimed at taming the barn, an obvious loss, but Walter knew it was a dangerous one. Maud had herded the goats and the girls out of the way, and Walter wished her a kiss between buckets and thanked God for watching over them and for Maudy’s fortitude.

“Okay, Mr. Johnson, we’re going to lift you up onto the bus now.” Estela looked into his eyes, not sure where he was at that moment, but recognizing where he was headed. “Mr. Johnson? It’s me, Estela. We’re going to take you for a ride on this nice school bus here.”

“School bus?”

“Yes, this nice school bus. The high school let us borrow it. There are just not enough ambulances available with all that’s happening today. So, we’re going to have a ride, a gay ride, Mr. Johnson, on this nice school bus!”

“Ah, the school bus! Is Maudy coming?”

“She’ll be along, Mr. Johnson. Don’t you worry, she’ll be along.” Estela managed the mass of tubing, pump and IV bag and climbed alongside while the aides lifted Mr. Johnson through the rear door of the bus. “And then we’ll ride out to the coast so you can breathe that fresh ocean air. Won’t that be nice, Mr. Johnson?” They secured his gurney atop the backs of three seats. “There we are, Mr. Johnson. You have a view out the windows, and as soon as we’re all loaded, we’ll go for our ride.”

“Splendid, splendid! The school bus ride! Maudy and the girls are coming, too. Have you met my little daughters, Opal and Sally?” He tried to wait out the need to cough. “Sally married one of the Yoakum boys, a nice young fellow. He —.” Walter lost his voice to a rumbling spasm of congestion, and Estela rushed to help the next patient board.

When his throat was clear enough to breathe, Walter looked about the bus with pride, pride and deep satisfaction. It had taken the town the better part of a year, but they had succeeded. They raised the necessary funds and now they had themselves the finest school bus in San Diego’s North County. Used, it was, but still the finest and Fallbrook’s first. And all the donors were being treated to a grand celebration, a ride on the bus and a picnic at the schoolyard, a wonderful community picnic under the live oak trees. He knew his Maudy’s baking soda biscuits and peach pies and her almond shortbread would be standouts among all the baked goods. They always were. She was a lovely woman, a lovely woman with an unusually bold stride and a true gift for baking sweet treasures. She had given him two fine daughters who did well for themselves, yes they did. He was pleased to have such a lovely woman as Maud take his arm. If he could just finish that poem for her, before she left the bathing room.

You are the blessed sunshine, a wild beauty rose
You stir such joy into my heart, it must be you I s’pose
Whom the angels sent to us, to make our town so sweet —.

He stopped there, struggling to move his mind off “nose,” the only word that came to him, but he didn’t think it a properly romantic one, regardless of the call for a rhyme. He waited what seemed an eternity for Maud to emerge from her ablutions, and then it struck him: a couplet instead, of course, of course! He was tickled with his verse, perfectly apropos as it was, and so too, it seemed, was Maud.

To My Precious Maudy
From Your Adoring Walter

You are the blessed sunshine, a wild beauty rose
You stir such joy into my heart, it must be you I s’pose
Whom the angels sent to us, to make our town so sweet
If you consent to be my wife, my life will be complete!

Maudy embraced him and agreed to be his, and though he held her tight to his heart, his chest felt as light as the day he was born.

“Mr. Johnson?” Estela touched Walter’s shoulder. “Mr. Johnson, you’re sleeping through your ride, your school bus ride. We’re almost at the coast.” She looked into his face and she knew at once, she knew from years of nursing, from midwifing her own parents to their deaths, she knew he was gone. She pulled a tissue from her bra and dabbed away the spittle on his lips, the tears from his eyes, and returned it to her heart. She shut off the pump and pulled the line from his tired vein. And she placed Mrs. Johnson’s picture on his chest, put his hands together over it and held them as she hummed a love song for Walter and Maud.

And Walter and Maud laughed at his silly, lovely rhyme and fed each other baking soda biscuits with Mr. Reche’s Fallbrook honey as they lazed in the live oaks’ shade.

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Live oak tree photograph by Bill Ward via a Creative Commons License.)