Promise to Cherish Read Online Free

mocking smile. “Idealism doesn’t work in a place like this. Look around, Freeman. This facility is its own town, with its own community. You know that. Do you think the state is going to listen to you, a woman just barely a nurse? Your very meals depend on the garden the patients maintain and their harvest and canning in the fall. Why do you think it’s like that?” She paused for a minuscule moment, appearing not to want an answer from Christine. “Because no one wants to bother with the patients. No one wants to even believe they exist, including the families that drop them off. They want to go on with their nice simple lives behind their picket fences and pretend this beautiful building isn’t more prison than hospital. Besides, even if we had more clothing for the patients, what we really need are workers. There’s just too many patients and not enough of us.”
    They’d been over capacity for a long time without any help in sight. The war had taken so many of their staff away while an excessive number of patients poured in—some of them soldiers returning from the war and unable to cope.
    Without another word, Nurse Minton walked away but turned back after several steps.
    “Adkins says you sing hymns to your patients.” One of her eyebrows arched and a crooked smirk shifted across her lips.
    “I think it helps their nerves,” she said pushing up her glasses though they had not slipped down her nose.
    “Sing all you want, as long as you’re getting your work finished.” The nurse turned and walked away.
    “S’cuse me, ma’am,” a deep voice said a few moments later.
    Christine’s eyes caught Gibson’s. He was holding one end of a canvas stretcher and a younger man held the other. Gibson was a tall, brawny colored man with a voice that was gravelly yet still somehow kind. His cottony hair and eyebrows reminded Christine of summer clouds. His eyes, on the other hand, haunted her.
    Gibson’s job was to gather the deceased and take them across the hospital grounds to the morgue. If warranted, a doctor would perform an autopsy before the patient was prepared for burial. In that brief moment she returned to a hot August day when she had observed an autopsy. Half her class fainted. Christine nearly had herself. The odor, sight, and sounds, mixed with the humidity, made her fantasize about running away from the school.
    Now, in the frozen days of winter, Christine wanted to pretend she was somewhere else. She shuffled awkwardly back toward the wall near the windows, her knees locked. She could not watch them take the bodies away, not like this. Without a word, she pushed past them and left the room. She ran to the opposite end of the hall and leaned against the stairwell door.

CHAPTER 2
    E li Brenneman blew warmth into his hands. They were chapped and calloused. He and several other Civilian Public Service campers had been digging fence posts for what seemed like a month. How this satisfied the government was beyond him. Requiring hard labor from thousands of men, without paying them a dime, had nothing to do with the war effort—but there were worse options for him. Several inches of wet snow had fallen while they worked. The rubber boots he wore sunk into the slush along the ditch. He wiggled his toes, trying to keep them from going numb. He would have to write to his mem for another pair of socks.
    The sun settled deeper into the sky. It was late afternoon but he wasn’t sure what day of the week it was. Days rose and fell, one after another, and were each the same except Sundays. Since they didn’t work on Sundays, it was the slowest day of the week. The dark winter evenings seemed to last an eternity—it made him so stir crazy he couldn’t even sit still to read a book. Sundays made him miss the comfort of his Amish settlement in Sunrise, Delaware. He’d been away for several months and missed the steady lifestyle of his community. The world beyondhis home was not as wonderful as he’d