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The young nurse walked down the maternity hallway with a paper chart folded against her waist and the soft rubber soles of her shoes whispering over the polished linoleum. It was well past midnight, deep into the portion of night duty when the hospital seemed to have drawn inward around the people sleeping inside it. Most of the overhead fluorescent panels had been switched off. The few left burning divided the corridor into long islands of pallid light, each followed by a gentler stretch of shadow. Her white uniform caught the brightness whenever she passed beneath one, then softened again under the dim wall lamps beside the patient-room doors.
The ward was never truly still. A ventilation grille breathed steadily overhead. Somewhere near the nurses’ station, the ice machine gave a sudden internal shudder, followed by the hard little tumble of cubes dropping into its bin. Wheels squeaked once in a distant corridor and then receded toward another wing. An elevator arrived on the floor with a muffled bell, opened upon nobody she could see, and closed again. From behind one door came the faint rhythm of a man sleeping in an upright chair, his snoring restrained and regular. From another came the restless rustle of sheets, then the brief squeak of a bed frame taking someone’s weight.
Near the end of the hallway, the windows held a dark reflection of the ward. Beyond the glass, Huntsville lay under a warm, cloudless night that belonged to a later part of the year. The dogwoods had begun to open ahead of themselves, their pale blossoms visible only when the parking-lot lamps caught them. A few windows on the far side of the hospital grounds remained lit, lonely amber squares above the black silhouettes of parked cars. Valerie could see her own small figure passing through the reflection, cap pinned into place, chart at her side, shoulders slightly stooped from the accumulated hours of the shift.
She straightened as she approached the next room.
The strip beside the door bore Glenda Robinson’s name in block capitals. Valerie had already been inside several times that night. She knew the arrangement of the room without needing to think about it: the hospital bed against the wall, the rolling tray near its foot, the bassinet usually parked beside the mattress, the armchair angled into the corner beneath the window. She knew the young mother was recovering well, though exhaustion had settled into every movement she made. She knew the baby had been born alert, with a low, indignant cry and one small fist held tightly shut. She knew the child rarely fussed unless she wanted something particular and could spend surprisingly long stretches looking up at whoever held her.
Dana Robinson was only a couple of days old, and already the night nurses had begun to recognize her temperament.
Valerie paused at the partly closed door and rested her hand against its edge. A narrow band of golden light showed beneath it. She expected to find the bedside lamp burning and Glenda asleep with the bassinet drawn close, perhaps one hand hanging toward it through the lowered rail. The young mother had done that earlier, fighting sleep until her eyes closed despite her efforts, keeping her fingertips within reach of the bundled shape beside her.
Valerie eased the door inward and stepped into the room.
The light came from a small lamp mounted above the bed, its shade directing most of the glow downward. It left the corners dim and gave the pale walls a warmer color than they possessed by day. Glenda slept beneath a thin hospital blanket, turned slightly to one side, her face relaxed after the strain and wakefulness of the preceding days. One arm lay outside the covers. The plastic identification band circled her wrist, and a faint indentation remained where she had earlier been clutching the edge of the sheet. Her water glass stood half full on the rolling tray. A small vase beside it held three dogwood sprigs brought in that afternoon, their stems crowded into a repurposed drinking glass because no proper vase had been available.
The bassinet was empty.
Valerie’s attention went at once to the armchair beneath the window.
A woman sat there with Dana resting in the cradle of her arms.
At first Valerie saw only the arrangement of shapes: the chair’s broad vinyl arms, the small woman settled deep between them, the pale oval of her face above the newborn’s blanket. One of her feet rested flat on the floor while the other had turned slightly inward. She wore plain dark trousers and a soft, earth-colored cardigan over a cotton blouse, clothes that bore the gentle creases of a long day. Her shoes were low and practical. A light coat had been folded neatly over the back of the chair, its sleeve hanging almost to the floor.
She held Dana with the ease of someone who understood how little strength a newborn possessed and how completely that little body trusted the arms beneath it. The baby’s head lay in the bend of her elbow, fully supported. Her other hand rested over the blanket, not pressing, only following the small curve of Dana’s side. Each breath lifted the fabric by an almost imperceptible degree. The blanket had been tucked beneath Dana’s chin and folded back just enough to leave her face uncovered.
The woman’s head was turned toward the dark window. In the reflection, Valerie could see the baby gathered close against her and the woman’s pale hair illuminated around the edges by the bedside lamp. It was an extraordinary shade, almost silver where the light touched it and warmer toward the roots. A few strands had loosened near her temple. Her face looked smaller in person than it had on television, more finely made, with sharp cheekbones and wide-set brown eyes that seemed darker under the low light.
Recognition arrived gradually and then all at once.
Vakerie stopped just inside the room.
She had seen that face behind podiums and through the curved glass of her parents’ television set. She remembered it beside President Beale’s in newspaper photographs. She remembered the camera finding it during speeches, state ceremonies and campaign stops, always composed but never vacant, watchful in a way that made Valerie feel the woman was studying the crowd rather than merely standing before it. She remembered election-year photographs taped in the window of the record shop downtown, close beside posters advertising concerts and voter-registration drives. She remembered her father holding a newspaper open across the kitchen table while her mother leaned over his shoulder, both of them following the count from a contest that seemed to tighten every time the radio announced another state.
There had been records in the house, too. Jennifer’s voice had entered Valerie’s childhood long before the nurse understood why adults spoke her name with a peculiar combination of familiarity and reverence. It had come from the cabinet-sized stereo in the front room on Sunday afternoons, low and resonant in song despite the lightness of the speaking voice heard in interviews. Her mother owned one album with a worn corner and Jennifer’s small figure standing beneath a wide Ohio sky. Valerie remembered lying on the carpet while it played, tracing the loops in the rug with one finger and imagining the great grey lake beyond the woman’s shoulder.
Jennifer Fischer-Scott was sitting in an armchair in a Huntsville maternity ward, holding a newborn child as though the room contained nothing more remarkable than the two of them.
Valerie had seen Jennifer’s name among the approved family visitors, written in Glenda’s sloping hand. It had not occurred to her that it might be this Jennifer. The name had looked ordinary on the page, especially among the longer list of relatives and close friends who had called, sent flowers or arrived with carefully wrapped parcels. Valerie had been too busy checking dietary notes and medication times to linger over it. Even had she noticed, she might have assumed it was a namesake or a coincidence.
Now she saw faint lines at the corners of Jennifer’s eyes that the cameras had never caught. She saw the clean, unpolished nails of the hand resting on Dana’s blanket. She saw the softness of the cardigan and the way one cuff had been pushed back above the wrist, probably to prevent it from brushing the baby’s face. Jennifer’s public life had left no obvious trace upon the chair, the folded coat or the sensible shoes. Nothing in her posture asked to be observed. She had made herself fit the room, drawing her elbows close and keeping Dana sheltered within the small circle of her body.
Jennifer turned from the window.
Her gaze met Valerie’s at once. There was no startle in it. She had evidently noticed the door opening and waited for her enter. Her expression remained gentle and attentive, her shoulders relaxed against the chair. Dana did not stir.
Valerie remembered the chart in her hand and glanced toward the bed. Glenda’s breathing remained deep and even. The water was within reach. The call button lay beside her hand, its cord uncoiled and unobstructed. The bedside notes showed nothing due before the next round. On the cabinet, a paper bag from the cafeteria had been folded into a precise square, and beside it sat a tiny knitted cap Dana had worn earlier in the day. Everything Valerie needed to see was in order.
She looked back toward Jennifer.
For a moment, questions gathered faster than she could separate them. She wanted to know how Jennifer had come to be part of this young Alabama family and whether she had traveled through the day to arrive before nightfall. She wanted to know whether she had held Glenda when Glenda had been this small, whether the resemblance she appeared to be searching for belonged to someone Valerie could not see. She wondered how many children Jennifer had carried this way through the years, how many hospital rooms she had sat in while the rest of a family slept.
Behind those came the questions she had carried since adolescence, the great untidy store of them accumulated from newspapers, records, radio interviews and family arguments over the supper table. She wanted to ask what the White House felt like after midnight, when the offices emptied and the corridors no longer belonged to ceremonies. She wanted to know whether national power ever became ordinary to the people asked to hold it, or whether it remained frightening each time a telephone rang. She wanted to know what Jennifer remembered most clearly from the campaign, whether it was the crowds, the travel, the waiting, or some tiny private thing that had never appeared in print. She wanted to know how a person returned to ordinary rooms after standing at the center of so much attention.
She also wanted to ask about the songs. That desire surprised her with its strength. The questions were smaller but dearer: whether melodies came first or words, whether Jennifer still became nervous before performing, whether she remembered the early recording that had played in the nurse’s childhood home. She wondered whether Jennifer knew how many people had listened to her while cooking, cleaning, driving through rain or sitting awake beside somebody who was ill. She wondered whether a singer could ever understand where a song went after it left her.
Valerie felt all of it rise toward speech.
Then Dana made a tiny movement inside the blanket.
It was hardly more than a settling of her mouth. Her lips drew together, relaxed, and parted again. One cheek pressed more fully against Jennifer’s sleeve. Beneath the blanket, her fist loosened just enough to change the shape of the fold near her chest. Jennifer’s hand adjusted at once, moving no more than an inch. Her palm followed the baby’s side and steadied there until Dana’s breathing returned to its previous rhythm.
Valerie let the questions remain where they were.
Jennifer was not a face on a television screen in that room. She was Glenda’s great-aunt, a small woman nearing fifty who had come to welcome the first baby of a new generation. Whatever distances she had crossed and whatever rooms she had once occupied, she had arrived here with her coat folded over a chair and a newborn tucked securely against her heart. Valerie could see the travel still resting lightly beneath her eyes. She could also see that Jennifer had no intention of putting Dana down until she needed to.
Valerie shifted the chart into her left hand. With her right, she gave a small wave.
It was an almost bashful gesture, the fingers lifting near her shoulder before she could become embarrassed by it. A smile followed, restrained at first and then warmer when Jennifer’s expression changed.
Jennifer smiled back.
Her face softened completely. She raised the hand resting on Dana’s blanket only as far as she could without disturbing the baby and answered with a slight wave of her fingers. The movement was careful and intimate, no larger than the flutter of a moth’s wing. Her eyes remained on the nurse, direct and kind, acknowledging both the recognition and the young woman trying not to make too much of it.
Valerie’s smile widened despite herself. She lowered her hand and dipped her head. Jennifer did the same, the smallest inclination, before settling her palm once more over Dana’s blanket.
Valerie moved farther into the room to complete her check. She approached the bed without turning on another light and examined the fluid level in the hanging bag, then glanced at Glenda’s chart and the notes left by the previous nurse. Glenda shifted slightly as the mattress took her weight, her head rolling toward the armchair. Her eyelids did not open. A strand of hair had fallen across her cheek. Valerie resisted the urge to brush it away, knowing that such a touch might wake her when the noise of the room had not.
She checked the floor for anything that might catch a foot when Glenda next rose. Her slippers were paired beneath the bed. The rolling table’s brake was locked. A folded receiving blanket lay on the lower shelf, with two diapers and a clean gown arranged on top. Someone had placed a small sprig of greenery beside the dogwood blossoms, though it had already begun to droop from the warmth. Valerie added a little water from the pitcher, careful not to let the glass touch the metal tray.
When she looked toward the chair again, Jennifer’s gaze had returned to Dana.
Up close, the child seemed impossibly new. Her features had not yet decided what shape they would keep. Her nose was a small, soft rise above pursed lips. Her long lashes rested against her cheeks, and a faint furrow remained between her brows even in sleep, giving her the grave concentration of someone occupied by complicated dreams. A trace of reddish color warmed her skin beneath the amber lamp. Her head fit so neatly into Jennifer’s elbow that the cardigan seemed made to hold her.
Jennifer’s thumb moved once along the edge of the blanket, smoothing a fold away from Dana’s chin. Valerie noticed how confidently she did it. There was no nervous hovering, no repeated adjustment made merely to reassure herself. She seemed to understand that the baby was comfortable and required nothing more. Dana’s body had relaxed into that certainty. Her shoulders, nearly lost beneath the swaddle, were loose. One foot pressed faintly against the lower edge of the blanket and then eased back.
On the bedside table stood a photograph someone had brought from home. It showed Glenda outdoors in strong sunlight, younger by only a few months but somehow still belonging to another life. She wore work clothes and held a wrench in one hand, her hair pulled away from her face, her smile tilted toward someone beyond the frame. Beside the photograph was a small parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with green thread. Valerie had seen Jennifer place it there earlier when she arrived, though she had not recognized her from a distance. A card rested beneath the thread, Dana’s name written across it in careful, old-fashioned script.
Valerie eturned the chart to its place at the foot of the bed. She made one final survey of the room, then backed toward the door. Jennifer looked up in time to meet her eyes once more. She gave another brief smile, less startled now, and rested her fingers on the edge of the door.
She drew it nearly closed behind her, leaving the same narrow opening through which she had entered.
The hallway received her again beneath its alternating bands of light. Her shoes resumed their measured rhythm across the linoleum. She kept the encounter with her as she continued the round, passing the darkened windows and the empty visitor chairs, checking the next name beside the next door. By the time she reached the nurses’ station, her expression had settled back into its professional composure, though the warmth of the smile remained around her eyes.
Inside the room, the bedside lamp shone over Glenda’s resting face, the three pale dogwood blossoms and the small armchair beneath the window. Jennifer sat without changing position, one foot planted securely against the floor, Dana’s slight weight gathered close. She watched the rise and fall beneath the blanket until the newborn’s mouth softened and the furrow in her little brow eased. Then Jennifer looked down at peacefully sleeping Dana, bundled snugly in her blanket.