Read Online White Wind Blew by James Markert - Free Book Online Page A

inside and returned looking a bit sad. She’d see him in the morning, but of course there was always her greatest fear: that one morning he wouldn’t wake up, that he’d become one of the growing, unstoppable statistics that had long ago made the sanatorium the talk of the city.
    Wolfgang normally stood a careful pace aside from her, keeping a respectful distance. But tonight, if there was someone prowling about who was willing to throw bricks through windows, they were probably capable of more. So he walked closer by her side. Susannah seemed preoccupied with her thoughts too, and to Wolfgang, the woods around them had never appeared so ominous.
    Come after me if you must, he thought, but leave my friends in peace.
    “Wolf, what’s eating you?”
    Wolfgang hesitated. “McVain. He was a pianist.”
    “You said so earlier.”
    “I don’t just mean he plays the piano, Susannah. Didn’t you see him?”
    She folded her arms against the cold wind. “I saw him the same as you did.”
    “His arm movements, how his fingers moved. Even the nubs. Piano wasn’t just a hobby for him.”
    She smirked. “The real McCoy, huh?”
    They stopped outside the nurses’ dormitory, a two-story rectangular brick building that housed thirteen women, including nurses, laundry women, and cooks. The nurses split the two daily shifts, seven days a week. Susannah was a veteran of the crew and was fortunate enough to have her own room on the second floor. Wolfgang had overheard tales among the nurses of life in the dormitory: drinking after hours, smoking and playing cards, laughing, pillow fights, chatter about men half the night—but of course Susannah would not discuss such matters with him.
    Wolfgang shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the dormitory. “I need to get to McVain.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know yet.” Wolfgang stared at the ground, thinking of his plan for tomorrow night. He hoped Susannah wouldn’t back out. He could have asked Lincoln, but he couldn’t trust Lincoln to keep his mouth closed.
    “There’s…something I’d like to show you,” said Susannah.
    Wolfgang looked up. “Show me? Where?”
    “Inside,” she said.
    “Susannah… I can’t—”
    “It’s something I’ve been working on for a long time. Two years, in fact. I’d like you to see it.”
    “What is it?”
    “It’s kind of a surprise. Not a gift, but…it’s something I’m proud of. You’ll see. It’s no big deal, really…”
    Wolfgang watched the silhouette of a nurse pass by an upstairs window. “Um, can’t you bring whatever it is out here?”
    “Well, I guess I could.”
    His instincts told him to run. “You know, I wouldn’t want rumors getting started, Susannah.”
    She seemed amused by this comment. Or was it something else? “It’ll only take a minute. And then you can get back home to your work. I’ll be right back.”
    He waited outside as Susannah hurried toward the small porch. When she opened the door, a wave of giggling came forth from the nurses inside. Wolfgang glanced up toward the second-floor windows again. A form that could have been Susannah moved behind a drawn shade and then disappeared. But there was no way she could’ve made it upstairs so quickly.
    What happened next was so sudden he didn’t have time to cover his eyes. The dormitory’s door burst open and an auburn-haired nurse stumbled out onto the porch, giggling, a white towel over the mounds of her breasts. The flesh of her exposed shoulders was pink from the heat of a recent shower and still slightly wet by the glistening look of it. The bottom of the towel barely covered the opening between her thighs. Wolfgang turned and covered his eyes. But then she screamed, surely not expecting a man to be standing out in the middle of the woods, let alone a budding priest. And so because of the scream he looked up again. She slipped on her way back inside and the towel shifted, exposing her right breast. Another burst of laughter