“And the cherry tree?”
“Frank planted it,” Grandma said softly. “Right outside that window. In the middle of the night, so nobody would stop him. He dug the hole with a shovel he brought from home and planted a little cherry sapling. He said if somebody was going to look out that window, they ought to have something to look at.”
I thought about the big bare tree in the courtyard. The one I’d been looking at from the waiting room. Shiny and wet in the rain.
My grandfather planted that. Fifty-three years ago. In the middle of the night.
“I went back to work in the fall,” Grandma said. “Same floor. Same job. Everybody thought I was crazy for coming back. Everybody thought it would be too painful.”
“Why did you?”
“Because of the girls,” she said.
“What girls?”
Dr. Hale stepped forward.
“Back then,” he said quietly, “this hospital had an arrangement. With a few of the churches and some private agencies. Young women who got pregnant without being married were sent here to deliver. Quietly. They were brought in through a side door. They gave birth in Room 214, where nobody would see them. And then their babies were taken away immediately and given to adoptive families.”
