I picked up, thinking it’d be Paul, but according to the Caller ID, it was Dorothy.
“Dorothy. Hi,” I whispered, not wanting to wake the children.
“Oh, Hannah, I just had to talk to somebody!” Dorothy was weeping so copiously I could barely understand her.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Ted,” she wailed. “He’s being investigated. People are crawling all over his office and he’s being transferred!”
I leaned back against my pillows. It was happening. At long last it was happening. The feds had closed in on Ted Hart. If all went well, the spotlight would be trained on him now, not on me. A weight had been lifted from my shoulders, but it had been placed squarely on Dorothy’s. With her health so precarious, I worried she’d not be strong enough to support it.
Dorothy was saying something about Norfolk.
“Norfolk?”
“Ted’s going to Norfolk, Virginia. They’re assigning him as Special Assistant to the Commander, Fleet Forces Command. You know what that means.”
I did. It meant that the Navy was kicking him out of Washington, D.C. with a rocket tied to his tail. While they investigated the allegations against him, Admiral Hart would drive a desk. He’d plan menus, address invitations, and write place cards for Navy Relief balls. As much as I wanted the Navy to dress Theodore Hart in cammies and drop him off in downtown Falujah with a target strapped to his back, there was no way they’d give the man anything important to do.
“Oh, Dorothy, I’m so sorry.” And I was sorry, too, but for her, not for the admiral. He’d made his bed and would have to lie in it. Eventually, there’d be a courtmartial. Chances are, Hart would do hard time in Leavenworth.
Dorothy wept quietly into the phone and I waited her out. “I have a migraine like you wouldn’t believe,” she sobbed.
“Don’t worry about checking the set this week,” I told her. “You just stay home and get well.”
“But I want to stay involved,” she choked. “What else am I going to do now that-that-”
“Does Kevin know?” I asked.
My question set off another crying jag. It was over a minute before Dorothy was able to speak to me again. “Kevin’s so angry, I thought he was going to kill his father.”
“Is Kevin with you?”
“No.”
So Kevin was laying low, too. I wasn’t surprised. Until this happened, he’d been the pampered son of an admiral, cocky, behaving as if the stars his father wore were his own. When the news broke, it’d be payback time. The brigade would not treat him kindly.
“Dorothy? I’ll call you later, okay?”
Snuffle.
“If you need anything, you just let me know.”
Sniff. Sniff.
As I hung up the phone, I realized that Dorothy’s worst fears had come true. Except for me, she was utterly, completely alone.
CHAPTER 23
I checked in with Dorothy every day after that. On Friday her headache was better, so she’d gone ahead with her chemo. The next day, however, the migraine came back with a vengeance, affecting her vision. Ted Hart, at home on leave before departing for Norfolk, called the doctor, who prescribed Imitrex for the pain. Kevin talked to his mother on the telephone, expressing concern, but refused to visit while his father was present.
It seemed like years had passed since opening night, but Sweeney was winding down at last. Friday’s show ran smoothly, Saturday’s was a triumph. Only the Sunday matinee to go, and the show would go down in Academy history.
On Sunday morning I telephoned Dorothy to say I’d check the set before the final performance, but Dorothy didn’t pick up. Never mind, I thought. She’s either too sick to answer the phone or she’s already on her way to the Academy. Better to err on the side of having two people show up to check the mechanisms rather than nobody.
The snow that had fallen midweek had begun to melt in one of those warm snaps that often comes to Annapolis in late February, fooling the crocuses into sending out green shoots and hopeful yellow blossoms in the mistaken assumption that it’s spring. I pulled into a parking spot in front of Mahan, where the piles of snow thrown up by the snow plow had begun to melt, sending rivulets of water trickling across the pavement.
Although it was nearly noon, few people were around. At the chapel, the Protestant service was still in session. Back in Bancroft Hall, midshipmen were probably catching a few last minute z’s before Noon Formation, sleeping off the excesses of a Saturday night away from the Yard.
In the auditorium, everything looked as we had left it the night before. The curtains stood open but the house lights were off so I couldn’t see very well, just the gray outlines of a set that I’d come to know so well-Sweeney’s tonsorial parlor, Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop, the hulking rectangle of her diabolical oven. It was so quiet I could hear my own breathing.
Or was it?
The breathing became a whimper, the whimper a moan, and I realized I was not alone.
“Hello?” I called out. “Anybody there?”
I drew closer to the stage. “Hello?”
The moaning seemed to be coming from the area around Mrs. Lovett’s oven, so I climbed the steps to the stage and crossed over to it. Someone was slumped on the floor, bent over a plastic waste basket, violently retching. “Dorothy?” I rushed over and knelt next to my friend, lifting her chin so I could look into her eyes. “My God, Dorothy, what’s wrong?”
“Oh, Hannah, I think I’m losing my mind! I had chemo yesterday, but this whole business about Ted and the investigation has got me so spun up that I forgot to take my antinausea medication. Oh, God, I feel like hell.” She ducked her face into the wastepaper basket again, her body jackknifing in its futile attempt to vomit up something, anything.
“Dorothy, how long have you been like this?”
With her face still in the basket, Dorothy shook her head. “I don’t know, maybe an hour.” She curled up like a leaf in autumn, and the horrible dry heaving continued.
When the retching subsided, I gathered her into my arms, gently rocking. I straightened her wig, which had tipped over her forehead and was in danger of falling off the next time she dove for the wastebasket. “Dorothy, this is way past the point where it’s going to get better by itself. You need to see a doctor. I’m going to take you to the emergency room.”
Dorothy lay limply in my arms and moaned.
One arm at a time, I shrugged out of my coat and folded it like a pillow, using it to prop Dorothy into a sitting position against the oven. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
Dorothy raised a hand, then let it drop to her side. “Hannah, don’t leave me.”
“I’ll be right back. A minute, no more.”
I dashed off stage left and ran down a short flight of stairs that led to a little vestibule. On my left a spiral staircase went up and up, first to the balcony, then to rooms at various levels in the clock tower. In the other direction was a janitor’s closet, and just beyond, on the other side of the door, I remembered seeing a water fountain. I wrenched open the closet door, grabbed a handful of paper towels, and wet them thoroughly at the water fountain. Then I hurried back to Dorothy.
“Here,” I said, handing her a paper towel dripping with water. “Suck on this. You’re dehydrated.”
“I’m going to die!” she moaned.
“Trust me. You’re not going to die.” With one of the towels, I swabbed her forehead and cheeks. “You’re going to the hospital where they’ll give you something that will stop the nausea.” I tugged on her shoulders, urging her to muster what resources she had and stand up, but she was dead weight in my arms. “Come on, Dorothy,” I urged. “Work with me here.”
“Oh, oh, oh, oh, I am going to die,” she whimpered.
“You’re going to be fine, but not unless you stand up and let me take you out of here.” I tugged on her again. “Dorothy!”