I never asked.
“After that,” Grandma said, “I couldn’t have any more children. The doctors told me something had gone wrong. Something inside me. They said I’d never carry another baby.”
She wiped her eyes with the tissue Dr. Hale handed her.
“We had saved up money for the baby,” she said. “Frank and I. Nineteen hundred dollars in a coffee can on top of the refrigerator. It was for the nursery. For clothes and diapers and a rocking chair. It was a lot of money back then. It took us four years to save it.”
“What did you do with it?” I asked.
Grandma smiled.
“I went to the hospital administrator,” she said. “A man named Mr. Bauer. Bald as an egg. Smoked cigars in his office. I put that coffee can on his desk and told him I wanted to put a window in Room 214.”
Dr. Hale laughed softly from the corner of the room.
