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Show 5-4 She hurried down the drive, her skirts swinging around her black shoes. "You can wait on the steps," she called back over her shoulders. I walked on up to the front door and squatted on the bottom step, Father's lunch tucked into the shade of the giant urn of flowers on the balustrade. I watched the nun as she walked among the men, patting some, moving one man in a wheelchair out of the sun, stopping to watch a checker game for a moment. She stopped over one man, lifted the bandage taped over his eye and replaced it with another she pulled from her pocket. She spoke to him for a moment then turned back to me. She reached out to take my bookbag and climbed the steps in front of me. "This way." Inside the hall was cool and smelled just like County Hospital. I stopped inside the door, to let my eyes adjust to the dark after the bright sun. My friendly nun spoke to two men sitting in wheelchairs just inside the door. "Look who's come with lunch for Dr. Metcalf. His daughter." I glanced at them shyly and they looked at me gravely. Blankets covered them below their waist. Their hands lay motionless in their laps. I followed the nun down the long, high ceilinged hall, she chattering to everyone we passed, scattering the news of who I was. Finally, I saw my Father at the end of the hall, standing with another nun, looking at some papers in the light from a tall, open window. He turned as we approached and smiled at me, his eyes crinkling as they always did, while he bent his head to hear the nun's quiet voice. While they talked, my nun handed the bookbag to me, patted me as she had done the men on the grass and nodded to my father. She opened a door to the left and rustled into the long room opening off the hall where we stood. Before the door closed behind her, I saw a row of beds, most of them empty, and ceiling-high windows, open to the shady park outside. |
