# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 44

I went back to Asbury Park faint and dizzy, but found our baby Elizabeth Ann in fine condition. This pleased me and seemed to give me some strength.
I dismissed Miss Evans at the end of three weeks, and the nurse I next employed, upon Dr. Ackerman's recommendation, was a Mrs. Howe. She was what he termed a "practical nurse," and not so expensive as Miss Evans, who was strictly a private nurse. Mrs. Howe had raised a family of five children and was more like a mother than a nurse. She sometimes held me close in her arms, and I felt so much safer now that I had her.
She did not get along well with Mrs. Tonnesen, and we decided that we would change quarters before I left for Chicago. I had discussed my plans with Mr. Harding, both over the phone and by letter, which were that I should go on ahead to Chicago and find a suitable place for Elizabeth Ann, having Mrs. Howe follow later with the baby as soon as I had found someone to take care of her in Chicago.
So one day Mrs. Howe and the baby and I bundled ourselves into a taxi and went around to a semi-sanitarium, nearer the downtown district of Asbury Park, and quite a distance from the Tonnesen abode. Here the lady usually took only those who were recuperating from illnesses, she said, and I thought it seemed like a fairly good place to leave Mrs. Howe with the baby until I could send for her to come on to Chicago with Elizabeth Ann. I trusted her implicitly.
Late that evening an automobile ambulance drove up with a woman on a stretcher. They brought her in and she and her nurse had a room on the same floor, across from my nurse and baby. About an hour or so after she arrived we began to hear the most horrible moans and groans accompanied with shrieks of, "Oh, I'm nervous! I'm nervous!" This kept up until I was my​self completely exhausted listening to her and in such a high state of nervousness that I thought I, too, would scream. It didn't seem to bother Mrs. Howe and I asked her to read aloud to me to take my mind from the moaning across the hall. But the walls were very thin and it was as though the poor woman were right in the room with us. I had to tell the landlady that if that kept up we would have to go to a hotel. They gave the woman some morphine which quieted her temporarily, and I went into my own room and soon fell asleep. About three o'clock next morning it started again. I crept into Mrs. Howe's room and into bed with her, and lay there shivering and mentally crazed with nervousness until the morphine which they administered again took effect and the poor woman slept. The next morning they took her back to her home in Philadelphia. I was so tired of doctors and nurses and of shifting from place to place!
Someone had told me that it took about six months to recuperate completely from having a baby, and I began to count the weeks and try to find some improvement in myself as time passed. But when I took the train back to New York, from where I was going to leave for Chicago, I had to confess that in the seven or eight weeks that had passed since the baby's birth I had grown weaker instead of stronger. In New York, in the same room I had when I had been there before, I stayed in bed most of the time. The lady who rented the rooms had been an actress and was very broad-minded, and once or twice her sympathy and tender solicitude tempted me to tell her why I was so ill. But I didn't. I called Mr. Harding again on the phone and he urged me to get to Chicago and to rest after I got there. "Never mind about the baby now," he said, "she will be all right. It is you who need to be taken care of now." But the baby was on my mind constantly. I phoned Mrs. Howe sometimes twice a day. I had given her my sister's address in Chicago and I told her to write me immediately if anything went wrong.
I remember I bought a ticket for a Saturday train—it was almost impossible at that time to procure reservations, soldiers ​returning home for Christmas, the general rush of holiday travelers—and I was fortunate to get a reservation at all for that particular day.
A chum of mine, Dorothy Cooper, who lived where I had been staying, went down in the taxi with me to the train. I felt so faint that she suggested we stop at a drug store and get a bottle of smelling salts for me to have on the train. As a result, when we reached the Grand Central Station, we were just in time to see the iron gate close and watch the train pull out. I had wired Elizabeth I would be there for Sunday, and of course I was just sick over missing the train. I went to the Consolidated Ticket Office and learned that I could not get another reservation until the following Tuesday. Those days of waiting tortured me. When finally I found myself in the train, bound for Chicago, where I longed to creep into my sister Elizabeth's arms and cry, I sighed audibly with relief.
I had taken an "extra fare" train, scheduled to reach Chicago earlier than the others, and that night I wakened after a first sleep to feel the train fairly skimming the tracks. "Gone wild!" I thought and sat up quickly in my berth. I pulled the curtains and peeked out. Everything seemed to be normal and the passengers were sleeping. How could they sleep, I thought, when every moment brought us nearer to destruction! It would be awful to die in a railroad crash, I thought to myself. And terrible fears assailed me when I thought that maybe Elizabeth wouldn't be able to locate our precious baby, and perhaps my sweetheart would be afraid to claim her openly after my death—horrible, horrible! I felt I ought to get up and go forward to the engineer—but what could I tell him! Evidently he knew the train was going wild and couldn't do a thing to stop it. Nor could I help him, surely. I became drowsy and concluded that a protecting Providence would intervene. At any rate, this was a case beyond human power! I lay back on my pillow praying, and gradually the rhythm of the flying wheels grew fainter and fainter and I slept.
In a few days Elizabeth located a nurse, recommended by the same doctor who had discouraged my having an abortion—a woman by the name of Mrs. Belle Woodlock, who would take Elizabeth Ann into her home and care for her for $20 a week. She lived within easy distance from my sister's apartment, which was at that time at 6103 Woodlawn Avenue.
During the lapse of time—which was about three weeks, I think—between my arrival and my sending for Mrs. Howe to bring on the baby to Chicago, I carried on correspondence with her regularly. I received my letters, addressed to "Mrs. E. N. Christian," in care of my sister Elizabeth (Mrs. S. A. Willits), usually getting the mail before my brother-in-law, or "kid sister" Janet, who was living with Elizabeth then, had a chance to see to whom they were addressed.
Once, I remember, my brother-in-law, Scott Willits, was quite put out because the postman requested him to sign for a special delivery letter from Mrs. Howe to me and he stoutly refused to do so, saying there was no such person as "Mrs. Christian" living there! In the end, the postman took the letter back and afterward I myself signed for it.
I remember also another incident. It was before Mrs. Howe brought Elizabeth Ann on from Asbury Park to Chicago that my ​mother came to Chicago to visit. It is possible the occasion of her visit was explained by the Christmas vacation from work in Ohio University where she taught, though possibly she was curious to see whether or not her daughter Nan was really safe and sound, perhaps not believing my written reports to this effect.
Mother and I had just come downstairs and were leaving the apartment to go shopping over on 63rd Street when I spied the postman across the street. Without thinking I called, "Any mail for us?" "A letter here for Mrs. Christian," he answered. I knew it was foolish for me to disclaim knowing such a person before my mother, inasmuch as she had been told that I was living in Asbury with a "Mrs. Christian," so I said, "Give it to me—it is for a friend of mine." And I took it and put it away in my bag. Mother asked sharply, "Nan, what is Mrs. Christian having her mail sent to you for?" And I, searching my mind for a quick explanation, found this to say, "Why, she is coming here enroute to California and I shall see her soon. I told her I would take care of any mail she might want sent here." This, you see, came to my mind because Mrs. Howe, the nurse, had written that she was planning to go on to California—so I simply substituted names.
I think about that time, however, my mother's suspicions were definitely aroused, for she remarked to me on one occasion, "You think you are deceiving your mother about a lot of things, but you're not." Often she has said to me, "God has certainly protected you, my girl," and of course I know that He has. More fortunate was this protection for my sweetheart, however, than for me, for his position, as United States Senator, demanded protection.