Tom Dennison’s doctor stopped by four times daily, although he never did much besides operate a thermometer as far as Evie was concerned. Some friends visited the third day, Joe and Ingo, but they didn’t stray in from the hallway. Jake was sleeping anyway. Evie let them see him laid up a moment then whisked them down the stairs.
It produced such amazement to see him knocked down. She couldn’t help but flit around in helpful ways, a stern, wary smile on her face. She promised to stay until he was better. “So you won’t have to worry where I am,” she said. He’d have worried what she was up to if she left. He had no concept of time and place and couldn’t figure why Evie was with him and not somebody else. “Why me?” he pestered her, and not Joe or Ingo or Ennis the Irishman, whoever they were.
There were times she thought he was a goner. She’d stay with him until he was better, and in this way he’d have to get better.
The fever lasted four days. She was an impassioned nurse. Held cool rags to his forehead. Covered and recovered his kicking limbs in afghans. Changed his sheets if the chamber pot spilled. Kissed him incessantly. She didn’t care if she caught whatever it was he had; how extraordinary that was. She rubbed his body with alcohol. She soothed him. She promised he wouldn’t die. She pressed her head into the pillow beside him and kept it there a long time. Somehow Maria Eigler tracked down a crate of oranges—which was a miracle, given the war rations—and Jake had to drink the juice even though it burned his throat. It was a simple matter of whether or not Evie could keep up his strength. She made him take turnip broth and a beaten raw egg every hour. She didn’t let him forget for one second he was being taken care of and was going to be fine.
And then, suddenly, he was.
Evie sat crooked on the edge of the mattress, propped up by an arm. Jake woke and saw her.
“Does your face hurt much?” she asked.
“Don’t touch it,” he said, shying away, his cheeks still swollen and inflamed.
“Would it bother you if I opened the window? The weather turned nice.” The sun shone through in a brilliant rectangular mass. The spring air was warm and lively, an alluvial bouquet blown in from the country. Once a window was open, Evie realized the room had filled with the base odor of turnips and vomit, one that strengthened as it thinned, the memory of it, because she hadn’t noticed before.
“Do you think you could eat something? I’ll get whatever you want, some mashed potatoes or meat.”
“I’m hungry.”
“I bet you’d eat anything so long as it isn’t turnips and orange juice.”
“Some chipped beef sounds good,” he said, “if you have it.”
Sure, there were tins of meat. She went to the kitchen then came back with chipped beef over toast. Evie chatted the whole time he ate. She was taken by the feeling that Jake wouldn’t have survived without her. She saw him warm inside too, his health returning. Every note of music was profound to him. Every bit of food was gravy. Most of all he loved on Evie, and she soaked it up. She’d stayed with him. She’d made sure he saw the other side of his sickness. She could have dumped him off in an infirmary or sent him home with Maria. But she hadn’t. She stuck by him even when it meant she might be infected. She’d surprised him with the way she acted. It made him bashful. He hadn’t expected her to be like that—she hadn’t either.
She told him how Maria stopped in with eggs then a crate of oranges. How his skin turned alien blue for three hours in the beginning. How a doctor came four times a day to listen to his insides. How even Tom Dennison made sure he was okay and brought whiskey as a gift.
“How did everyone find out? Were you going around telling people I was sick?”
“No,” she said. “The River Ward knows these kinds of things. You have no secrets.”
Consider Anna Miihlstein.
She never wanted to come to Omaha in the first place. Living in the Bowery wasn’t the greatest either, when they first arrived in America, not with the Second Avenue Elevated running right by their window and the screams from down the hall in the middle of the night, but at least she’d heard of New York City. The truth was that Anna missed being a Salzburger. Forget Omaha, forget the Bowery, forget Galizien. Anna’s desire went way back. Maybe they’d been poor in Salzburg, and they had been, six of them then trying to get by on what meager work Herr could find those days. Their mother had alienated everyone—Frau Albina Tropsch was blackballed in Salzburg because of her outbursts—but the city was nice. What Anna remembered. What Silke and Theresa had told her about. Promenading riverside along the Salzach on cobblestoned roads. Rolling around in the hills. Swells of music from the Mozarteum conservatory. Apfelstrudel and white sausages. Anna didn’t remember so well. She was only four when they left for Galizien. But she remembered the feeling distinctly. Sitting along the river in the summertime, the grass tall and clustered with clumps of satisfied folks. Women in hats and dresses. Girls who worried the hems of their dresses so the fabric didn’t stain trouncing through the grass. This was living well. Being healthy and free and fruitful. The Miihlsteins had left all that behind. And now Anna wasn’t so sure a reality still existed to match the feeling she had, not anymore. The way things were talked about, the way the dailies presented the news from Europe. Franz Josef had died. The empire would fall. This was a very sad thing to Anna. As if there could be no more white sausages and green wine and apple strudel with vanilla sauce, never again, not in Austria. There would be no more wearing white dresses and sunbathing by the Salzach.