Arch shook. Yes, his hands shook. He forced a smile. "Maybe a little cold. Let"s get you somewhere warmer."
A sailor escorted the man below, and Arch hauled another survivor to safety. Arch had survived too. He was safe. But when would he be free?
8.
Boston
Monday, January 19, 1942
A man with thinning gray hair and a droopy mustache handed Lillian a prescription. "Mr. Dixon"s never had a clerk at the counter before."
A common misconception, despite her white coat. "I"m actually a pharmacist."
"But you"re a . . ." His nose wrinkled. "Girl."
"Yes, and a pharmacist too." She hefted up her sweetest smile, one her twin sister Lucy might wear, and examined the prescription for digitalis. "Everything looks in order."
Gray eyebrows drew together. "It"s for my heart. I"d rather have a real pharmacist fill it."
"Don"t worry, Mr. Barnes," Mr. Dixon called from the back, where he was compounding an ointment. "She does a fair enough job. Would I hire an incompetent?"
Mr. Barnes"s face relaxed. "Of course not."
"I"ll have this ready in ten minutes, sir." Lillian typed out the prescription label. That was the closest Mr. Dixon had come to a compliment in the last two weeks, and Lillian smiled. She"d win him over.
After she finished the label, Lillian shook a few dozen digitalis tablets onto the counting tray, counted them by fives into the collecting chute, poured the extra back into the bulk bottle, then poured thirty tablets into an amber gla.s.s vial. She gummed the back of the label and applied it to the bottle, nice and neat.
"Mr. Fenwick, your medication is ready." Mr. Dixon stood at the counter with an ointment jar. "Ah, good morning, Mrs. Harrison. I"ll take your prescription in a minute."
"Thank you, Mr. Dixon."
At the sound of her neighbor"s voice, Lillian peeked around the wall. "Hi, Mrs. Harrison."
"There you are, sweet girl. I tell you, Cyrus, you"re blessed to have this young lady. Smart as a whip."
Mr. Dixon grunted and peered around. "Mr. Fenwick?"
"Cyrus, when you"re done, would you please help me find an antacid?" Mrs. Harrison tapped her gla.s.ses. "I can"t seem to read the labels."
"May I help her?" Lillian gave the vial of digitalis to her boss. "Mr. Barnes would prefer if you dispensed this to him, and it"s ready."
Mr. Dixon narrowed his eyes at Lillian"s prosthesis and heaved a sigh. "I suppose you"ll need to go out front sometime."
"Thank you, sir." She was making progress today, and she darted out the door before he could change his mind. If only calf-length dresses were fashionable as they were when she was in high school. The knee-length hemlines in vogue didn"t hide the top of her prosthesis or the hinged steel bars connecting it to the leather strap around her thigh.
Mrs. Harrison handed Mr. Dixon her prescription, asked for Albert to deliver it, and led Lillian to the antacid section. "It"s too dark in here for my old eyes."
Lillian pulled a bottle of calcium carbonate off the shelf and lowered her voice. "It"s also too dark in here for my young eyes. Makes the whole store look dingy and old-fashioned too."
"You should tell Mr. Dixon."
"I don"t dare. He doesn"t like having a lady pharmacist, especially . . ." She shook her head. Best not to talk of that.
Mrs. Harrison squinted at the shelves. "Maybe if your suggestions brought in customers, he"d see your worth. I"ve known Cyrus for years. Bedrock of the community, that man, but he does like money."
Lillian"s mouth twitched. "Yes, he does."
"I only shop here because it"s on the way home from the City Square station, and I trust Cyrus. But when I just want to do some shopping, I go to Morton"s on Winthrop Square. So bright and modern."
Lillian rotated the bottle in her hand. Perhaps that would be the best tack to take.
After Mrs. Harrison selected her antacid, she headed to the front cash register with her purchase, and Lillian returned to the prescription area.
Mr. Dixon was mixing an elixir. "Did you help her?"
"Yes." Lillian took the bulk bottles back to the shelves. "She has a hard time reading the labels because it isn"t bright enough in here. We wondered if we could improve the lighting. It would increase sales."
"I doubt that. It would only increase my electric bill."
Lillian set the bottles on the shelf and put on her cheeriest voice. "I think it would be worth it. A bright store is so inviting, especially on a rainy day like today. And I"m sure Mrs. Harrison isn"t alone in her difficulties, but most people are too proud to ask for help. They"ll just go to another store."
"I"ve never had complaints. My father established this store in 1878. It"s a Charlestown inst.i.tution, and our customers are loyal. Extra lightbulbs? Do you want me to take that out of your salary, young lady?"
Not a bad idea. Perhaps they could make a deal where she swallowed the cost, and if sales increased, she could earn back her salary. "I wouldn"t mind."
"Foolish navete of youth." He poured liquid from a graduated cylinder into a gla.s.s bottle. "A customer"s coming. Man the counter, please."
"Yes, sir." She sighed, then smiled for the patient, a light-haired man in his thirties. "Good morning. How may I help you?"
"I need this filled. Have it delivered, please."
Lillian frowned at the prescription for Harvey Jones for three hundred tablets of phen.o.barbital. Goodness, they received lots of prescriptions for large quant.i.ties of phen.o.barbital, all from Dr. Maynard Kane. What she"d seen as an unusually high inventory of the sedative seemed to be the store"s normal usage.
"Is something wrong?" Mr. Jones asked.
On Dr. Kane"s printed form, his handwritten order was complete and used proper abbreviations and terminology. Lillian gave a flimsy smile. "I was worried we might not have that much in stock, but we did get a delivery today."
"All right."
"Albert will deliver it in his afternoon rounds." Lillian pulled down a stock bottle.
Why did Dr. Kane write so many prescriptions for this medication? Her education told her to call and ask. Lillian stepped to the telephone and dialed the physician"s number.
"Let me guess," Mr. Dixon said. "The doc forgot the sig."
She stuck her finger in the dial for seven and swung it around. "No, the directions are there. But the quant.i.ty is extremely high."
"Hmm. Let me see."
Lillian nestled the receiver in the cradle and brought the prescription to Mr. Dixon. "Three hundred tablets. I"ve seen several prescriptions for high quant.i.ties of phen.o.barbital from Dr. Kane."
Mr. Dixon gave her a look as if she were daft. "Some patients require higher doses."
"But why all from Dr. Kane?"
"His office is across the street. And what are you going to do? Question his judgment? He"d be furious."
Lillian shifted her weight off her bad leg. "Not if I word it tactfully."
"Tactfully? Doctors hate it when we disturb them and question their orders. Choose your battles. Call if the prescription is incomplete. Call if a patient could be harmed."
"But the medication is habit-forming."
Mr. Dixon waved his arm toward the door. "The doctor knows the man"s condition better than you. He knows the proper treatment. Besides, did that man look like a drug addict?"
"No, but . . ." What did a drug addict look like, anyway?
"First rule . . ." He lowered his thick gray brows and thrust the prescription back in her hand. "Never turn away a paying customer."
Lillian"s muscles stiffened, but her spine felt limp. "No, sir. I won"t."
The prescription was legal. Filling it wasn"t wrong. And she couldn"t afford to lose her job. It was hard enough to get this job as a crippled woman. It would be impossible to find a job if she were fired.
Her stomach squirmed. She"d have to keep a low profile for a while to undo today"s damage.
Sat.u.r.day, January 24, 1942 Lillian played Chopin"s "Mazurka" on Opal Harrison"s piano. The tension of the week pulsed into the piano keys-the worry over her job and the dread of the coming evening.
The Ettinger was in port. Jim and Arch would want to go out. If only Lillian had something else to do, but she didn"t have any other friends in town. Arch hadn"t flirted with her since Christmas, but she couldn"t take any chances. She couldn"t let herself become incapacitated again, weak again, hurt again.
"Softer, Lillian. Softer." Mrs. Harrison leaned back in her wing chair, her eyes shut and her gnarled hands in her lap. "It takes more strength to play softly than loudly, more control."
"Yes, ma"am." She finished the piece.
Mrs. Harrison picked up her eyegla.s.ses from the end table. "You"re a fine technical player. Out of practice, of course, but you have good technique and know your scales. A bit zealous in the allegro sections and impulsive in the adagios."
The same traits that had gotten her in trouble as a girl still plagued her piano playing, even though she tempered them in real life.
Mrs. Harrison put on her gla.s.ses. "Yes, a fine technical player."
Lillian sighed. She"d heard it since childhood. "But no heart."
"Oh? Why do you say that?"
"My playing is cold, no heart. I know." She ran her finger over the smooth keys.
"Mm." Mrs. Harrison sipped her tea. "Why do you play?"
Lillian traced the black keys in their patterns of twos and threes. "After my accident, I couldn"t run or climb. But I couldn"t sit still and play tea party with my twin sister. My mother understood, so she started me on the piano. At least my hands could be active."
"I have just the piece for you." She eased out of the chair and opened a cabinet.
"Nice and hard, I hope. I love a challenge."
"Oh yes, it"ll be a challenge." She set the music in front of Lillian-"To a Wild Rose."
So much white. She liked her music as black as she liked her coffee, with lots of notes and complications. "I could play this without thinking."
"Ah yes. You can play it without thinking." Mrs. Harrison tapped her chest. "But you can"t play it without feeling. You need to open your heart."
"My . . . heart?" Why not ask her to dance the rumba? "I can"t."
Mrs. Harrison shuffled back to her chair. "I think you can."
Lillian"s head wagged back and forth. Her heart was as ugly as her stump, and both needed to be concealed.
"Oh, sweet girl. You may be able to hide your feelings from people, but you can never hide them from the Lord."
Lillian spun to the older woman. She kept a polite distance from G.o.d. If she opened up to him, he"d see just how cold her heart was.
But didn"t he know that already?
Her fingers gripped her necklace, and her mind flicked to the Bible verse Dad had tucked in the jewelry box, Hebrews 6:1819: "We might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast."
Lillian stared at the music that required so much of her.
Consolation. Refuge. Hope. G.o.d promised those things if she held on to him.
Could she pay the price?