“You believe that I think I’m better than you?” Ruth was surprised. She was quiet in school, but that was because she took her studies seriously. If her parents wouldn’t let her go to the front to volunteer as a medical assistant with her brother, she would make the most of her education.
“Well, I don’t think that. Everyone knows the Emeraldines are nothing compared to the Boston Davenports. My mother can show you our lineage all the way back to the Mayflower.” Susie rolled her eyes and giggled. “As if that will do a damn for anyone in the world, right, Raffey?”
“Raffey?” Ruth looked at Susie askance. “I’m . . . Ruth?” While these young women had not previously met, they lived in the same sorority house. Was Ruth so invisible that Susie didn’t even know her name?
“Geez, you’re dense.” Susie grinned as she casually threw her arm around Ruth’s waist. “Your name may be Ruth, but you tower over me like a giraffe. So, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll call you Raffey.”
“Raffey it is then, I suppose.” Ruth smiled back. She clearly had no choice in the matter. But that suited her fine. Other than Harry, she’d never been close enough with anyone to warrant a nickname. It seemed she’d finally found her first real friend.
After college, Susie rejected her family’s plans for her to marry a fellow Brahmin and, instead, moved to Greenwich Village, where she lived a “liberated” life with Meg, a female photographer who had won her heart. Ruth envied Susie’s bravery. While women never held a romantic interest for her, Ruth would have loved to live among the like-minded radical thinkers in the Village, but she valued her work at the hospital too much to risk marring the family’s name with such a blatant disregard for society’s rules. A Village bohemian could not be the assistant superintendent of Emeraldine Hospital. So, when she moved from her family’s Gramercy Park mansion into her own townhome, she relocated to Madison Square Park, a tony and “appropriate” neighborhood slightly north from her parents.
In those early days, Susie often reminded her that just because Ruth didn’t live downtown, that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy it, and she was often Susie and Meg’s third wheel at the jazz clubs and salons they frequented. Susie’s downtown friends were fascinated by the enigma of the stunningly beautiful heiress who seemed to care about neither her looks nor her breeding. Hart Crane invited her to his poetry readings, Cole Porter solicited her opinion on his latest songs for the Greenwich Village Follies, and for a time, the doorman at the Cotton Club up in Harlem knew her by name. Well, he knew her as “Raffey,” but that was Susie’s fault. In those years, her nights out with Meg, Susie, and the men in their circles were a salve for the open wound of life without Harry, but eventually, the hospital began to fill that void entirely.
By the time she hired Dr. Apter, Ruth had accepted that her greatest passion was her patients, and when she wasn’t working, she was more than content to stroll around the city on her own or curl up with a book by the parlor fire of her townhouse. She relished her solitary life and had little concern about finding a man.
It stood to reason, therefore, that in the first few weeks Dr. Apter was at the hospital, Ruth attributed the unusual, fluttery sensation in the pit of her stomach to professional excitement. He seemed more committed to finding a cure for insanity than even Ruth herself. Yet, six months into his tenure, Ruth found that she yearned to be in his presence more every day. She knew when he took his lunch and made a point of venturing to the staff dining room at that hour. She tried to justify it as professional interest, but she knew the truth: she desired him, romantically. It was humiliating, unprofessional, and entirely unexpected. But she couldn’t stay away. She had never been drawn to any man in the way she was to him, and the more she tried to hide her longing, the more she seemed to let it show.
In fact, Ruth believed that Dr. Apter used her unrequited crush to his advantage. In their one-on-one meetings, he always managed to graze her knee or place his hands on her shoulders to look over a file on her desk. He must have noticed how she blushed when they were alone together, seen the sweat form on her brow. She couldn’t believe how little control she had over herself when it came to him. She had never had this problem before in her life. Normally, this kind of attention in the workplace would have insulted her. But when it came from Dr. Apter, she found herself quietly hoping for more.