by Max Brand
"What's wrong with you?" demanded Gillespie.
"Nothing, sir."
"Then get out! What do you think this is? A social hour, or what?"
Kildare backed slowly toward the door.
"I hoped that you'd be able to see my father, sir. His doctors think that there has been a coronary occlusion..."
"And what do you think?" demanded Gillespie.
"I feel that they're wrong, sir."
"Reasons, please. Feelings haven't a damned thing to do with medicine."
"I don't presume to know. But if I were a practising doctor I would send the case to you, sir."
Gillespie said: "Send him elsewhere. His name is against him here. Kildare, there once was a man who had twelve disciples. It was a tragedy when one of the twelve betrayed him. I have had one disciple. And that one betrayed me. Do you understand?"
"I understand," said Kildare, and got out of the great man's sight.
He stood in the waiting-room for a moment while his brain cleared. The voice of Mary Lamont said: "I don't think that he meant it all, doctor."
"He meant every word of it," said Kildare.
"I told him what you have been doing in the experiment, and he was frightfully interested," she said.
"Was he?" asked Kildare wearily. "Nevertheless, he despises me."
"Will you let me try to explain?"
"No," said Kildare. "Nobody can explain him to me. If I don't know him, I know nothing. Mary, did he go to see Nancy Messenger?"
"Yes," she said. "This morning."
"Did he say anything?"
"Not a word."
* * *
The day grew to the afternoon, and the interns of the big hospital sat in well-ordered rows before Gillespie, once more back on the job. Pens or pencils staggered rapidly across notebooks as the young doctors tried to keep pace with the outpourings of the great man. In the rearward row sat Kildare.
"...hysteria that can take the place of almost any disease," he was saying. "There is a simulation that almost passes understanding. A feature is the glove anesthesia, which will begin in the hand and spread over it, a total senselessness to all impressions...we have cases of people struck mute, and people who suddenly grow deaf...The mind and the nervous system are the tyrants over the body."
The elect among the interns generally sat up in front, close to the lecturer, making their notes. Toward the rear were those who came more from a sense of duty than in real hope to learn. From among these Kildare suddenly sprang to his feet, snatched the door open, and was gone from the room.
"Who the devil left this room? Who left that door open?" shouted Gillespie.
"It was Doctor Kildare, sir," said an intern, hastily rising to close the door at the rear of the room.
"Ha?" said Gillespie. "He's been doing a little deducing, has he? Well, brains will show themselves in spite of the devil."
Kildare, opening the door of Nancy's room a trifle, carefully beckoned Mary Lamont out to him into the hall. She had been sitting close to the bed of her patient, talking with animation.
"How is she?" asked Kildare.
"Much better. She's eaten something. Her whole temper is better."
"If you were the doctor, how would you describe her present condition, frankly?"
"I'd say that it's a minor improvement in a hopeless case."
"Would you?"
"Yes, doctor."
"You were interesting her just now."
"Yes, doctor."
"What were you talking about?"
The answer came up in her eyes and stopped there without words. She flushed.
"Is it none of my business?" demanded Kildare.
"Yes, doctor."
"Get Mr. Charles Herron on the telephone and ask him if he can come to the hospital at once to consult with me about Miss Messenger. If he can come; ask Landon and McKeever if they can give me a few moments at a conference. I'll want Mr. Messenger also."
"He's always in the next room waiting for a call, doctor."
"Is he? By the way, the great Carew probably would want to be at that conference. You might tell him."
"Yes, doctor."
"That's all," said Kildare, and went on into Nancy's room.
"Johnny?" she asked.
"You're a mind reader," said Kildare. "You can see in the dark, so you don't need eyes; but you're going to have them anyway."
She sat up in the bed with an exclamation.
"What have you found?" she asked.
"I've found," said Kildare, "that when you sit up like that and smile you're a lovely girl to look at, Nancy."
"Ah, I like that!" she said. "If there were only more nonsense like that in you, Johnny!..."
"Well, what?"
"You could make more people happy. Particularly..."
"Particularly who?"
"What is it you found out?"
"That I'm going to have to knock you out for three days."
"Ah?" she said indifferently, sinking back in the bed once more. "What's going to happen to me while I'm asleep?"
"Some rather painful applications to the eyes...When you wake up, there'll still be a bandage across those eyes...Nancy, you didn't believe me when I told you that there was no brain tumour?"
"No, Johnny."
"Will you believe me if, when I take the bandage off your eyes, you see?"
"Johnny, I know that you're not simply encouraging me. You mean what you say this time?"
He had to close his eyes to shut out the sight of her. Still with his eyes closed, he said: "I mean it! You're going to see! Full vision in both eyes."
She put her hands up over her face. "I'm going to try to believe," she said.
"I don't care whether you believe or not," said Kildare. "Set yourself against it, and you'll have all the more pleasure when those bandages are taken off. Surprise is one of the first elements in real pleasure, isn't it?...I'm going to give you an injection that will knock you galley-west. Shall I put the bandage over your eyes before or after you go to sleep?"
"After," she said. "I don't want you to sit there looking at me when I'm wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy. I'm terribly vain, Johnny, and I'm sentimental about you besides."
He prepared her arm and gave the barbital injection.
"You're going to sleep fast," he said. "If you have any talking to do, do it now."
"I want Nora here when I wake up."
"She has a lot of wrong ideas."
"I know. But I love her, and she loves me."
"I'll have her here when you wake up."
"Thank you...Johnny, when you talked to me about the hell that you were going through, it was all made up, wasn't it? There wasn't a word of truth in it?"
"There was more than a word of truth in it. I was in a different sort of hell. That was all."
"I knew that there was something. Are you happy now, Johnny? Is all the sorrow gone from you?"
"You're the patient, not I."
"I wish you could tell me about it. You can't be sure that I wouldn't be able to help."
"I'll tell you about it when you're on your feet, able to look me in the eye, and happy."
"Happy? Do you think that I can ever be happy again?"
"Leave that to me too," said Kildare.
"I almost think I could," said the girl. She yawned. "Johnny," she murmured, "you're the only friend in the world. Nobody else—nobody knows—how—to be—a friend..."
She was asleep. Kildare went into the next room, where Messenger stood up at once and passed him a cheque.
He said to Messenger: "What's this?"
"A small retainer, doctor," said Messenger.
"Interns can't accept fees," explained Kildare. "There was a reward offered for the finding of Nancy," argued Messenger.
"Finding her was merely a part of my medical duty in the case," said Kildare.
"I've learned a little about what has happened to you in this hospital," said Messenger, "and what you gave up in order to take t
he case of Nancy. If you didn't expect to get some financial return, will you tell me what induced you to make the change?"
"It's one of those things that don't stand talking."
"If you can't take this cheque, will you throw the thing away?...Give it to the next beggar on the street—but don't ask me to take it back."
Kildare crumpled the cheque blindly in the palm of his hand. He forgot it.
"How long will it take you to bring Nora here?" he asked.
"She's in town. I can have her here in half an hour."
"Please send for her then. Tell her that Nancy is going to have her sight restored."
Messenger left in haste for Nora; when Mary Lamont hurried into the room a moment later, she found Kildare sitting at the centre table bowed over a book in which there was a complicated chart of the eye in colours. He was lost in the study of it.
She said breathlessly: "Doctor Gillespie has sent for your father."
"Don't bother me," said Kildare.
"Your father is with him now," said Mary Lamont. "With who?" said Kildare.
"With Doctor Gillespie."
"I'm busy," said Kildare. "Who is with Dr. Gillespie?"
"Dr. Stephen Kildare," said Mary Lamont.
"Doctors ought to stay away from Gillespie," said Kildare. "He has enough to do handling the laymen."
"Did you understand the name I gave you, doctor?"
"Damn the names. I don't care about the tags. Get Herron for me. Mary, wait a minute. Here's a cheque or something from Messenger. The fool won't understand that interns can't take money. Give it where the giving will do the most good. Or—wait a minute—keep it yourself."
He bowed his head over the book again.
"The other doctors will be in this room within an hour, doctor," she said, shaking her head helplessly as she stared at him. "And Mr. Charles Herron..."
"What about him? I want Herron!" said Kildare.
"He's waiting to see you now," said the girl.
"Bring him here!" snapped Kildare.
He was walking up and down the room when Herron came in. The big man had about the face a bruised and battered look that made him seem older and sterner. He came to Kildare, took his hand, and made an instant apology.
"The last time I spoke with you, I misunderstood your position, Doctor Kildare," he said, "and my treatment of you..."
"That's finished and done with," said Kildare. "Let's not waste time on it. I'm only glad you didn't break me in two and throw the pieces away. I could see that was what you wanted to do...Herron, I haven't time to be polite and indirect. There was a time when you loved Nancy Messenger. She put you through a bad time and your temper wore out. When you told her she never was to see you again, you meant it."
"I was hurt, and I acted like a child. That was all."
"Herron, do you mean to say that you weren't speaking your real mind? Does she still mean something to you?"
"More than I dreamed she did before."
"I'm going to need your help. Can I use you?"
"Use me? God knows you can!"
"Then stand by," said Kildare. "I'll tell you your lines when the time comes."
Mary Lamont took the twenty-thousand-dollar cheque down to Gillespie. When she went into the outer office she heard him saying: "They all agreed?"
"Yes, doctor," the gentle voice of old Dr. Stephen Kildare was answering.
"All agreed that it was heart?"
"Yes, doctor."
"Why, damn my soul, Kildare," said Gillespie, "the fact of the matter is that you have a mortal illness, but it isn't your heart at all. There hasn't been a coronary occlusion. There's only been an attack of indigestion...Don't spend as much time over your wife's cooking—and take some sodium bicarbonate now and then."
"Really?" said the old country doctor. "But the mortal illness?"
"Incurable," said Gillespie. "You're an old man. And God and all his angels can't keep you from dying of old age...That's all that's wrong with you, you fool!"
Mary Lamont waited for the exit of the old doctor before she went to Gillespie.
The tyrant said: "I thought that you were back on general duty. What are you doing here, Lamont?"
"I'm here to shame you," said the nurse.
"I've stood a lot in my life," said Gillespie, "but I've never had to stand the hysterical jitters of a probation nurse. Not before this moment."
"I have this for you," said Mary Lamont, and put on the desk before him a sadly crumpled piece of paper.
"What is it?" asked Gillespie, peering.
"This says twenty thousand dollars, and Paul Messenger's signature makes it mean what it says."
"It's made out to Kildare," said Gillespie. "I see what you mean, Mary. You're giving me an object lesson in how to be a doctor and how to take in the spoils at the same time. Is that it?"
"Look!" said the girl. "He's endorsed it and handed it to me...to give away...to any charity...or keep for myself. He doesn't care."
"Don't try to make a fool of me," snarled Gillespie. "This fellow Kildare would give his soul for hard cash. He wants nothing out of life except the long green...He wouldn't give this away...But he has," said Gillespie.
He crumpled the cheque between both his hands suddenly and stared at the girl.
"What are you saying to me?" cried Gillespie. "Are you trying to make an absolute doddering idiot of me? Are you trying to tell me that he had some secondary purpose? What was it, Lamont? What was it?"
"I don't know," said the nurse. "But you were a very sick man a few days ago."
"Is that it?" said Gillespie softly. "I remember shouting him down when he told me that I had to rest. So he took the tools for work out of my hands. He simply removed himself without explanation and left us here damning him."
"Yes, doctor," she answered in a trembling voice.
"Stop that snivelling!" snarled Gillespie.
"Yes, doctor," she said.
* * *
CHAPTER NINETEEN
FOR the hospital, it was a large room. The flowers were everywhere, but even flowers, even fields of them, cannot take the entire curse from a hospital room.
After all, it was not the impersonal environment on which Kildare intended to depend. He stood by the bed and looked down at the girl for a moment. She had one bare arm thrown up above her head. Thick bandages swathed the upper part of her face. On the other side of the bed stood Nora, looking from Nancy to Kildare like a frightened child at a school-teacher. He said to her: "Nora, you're rather a blatherskite."
"Yes, sir. Yes, doctor," said Nora.
"But if so much as once you mention her mother or her mother's death to Nancy while you're with her, I'll have you boiled in oil."
"Yes, sir," said Nora.
Kildare turned on his heel and went into the adjoining room. Landon and McKeever were there with Carew and big Charles Herron. Paul Messenger walked nervously up and down, halting suddenly when he saw the intern.
Kildare said abruptly: "I've put Miss Messenger to sleep and bandaged her eyes. I've told her that when she wakes up she will have had three days of treatments to her eyes—and that when the bandages are removed, she will have perfect vision."
Messenger and Herron exclaimed softly. The doctors said nothing at all. They merely looked at one another.
Kildare said: "The X-ray plates and the physical examination practically remove all possibility that there can be a tumour or any lesion affecting the optic nerve. The eyes seem normal, and following a suggestion indirectly made by Doctor Gillespie, it seems to me that Miss Messenger's blindness may be attributed to hysteria. In a moment of great emotional stress she was told by Mr. Herron that she never would see him again; she never would lay eyes on him again. The thought persisted in her mind. She kept repeating the word. The idea entered her deeply. Afterward, she received an unpleasant shock when she discovered that I was a doctor and therefore, she felt, established as a spy upon her life. She ran away and hid herself, prepared to take her ow
n life. Then the hysteria overtook her suddenly. She went blind. I have given her enough barbital to put her into a sound sleep. I now propose to inject a stimulant which will end that sleep suddenly. When she wakes up, she will remember, I hope, that I have promised her perfect vision again. At the moment of her waking, I shall give her a happy shock through Mr. Herron. I've discussed with him what he is to say in her hearing. It's my duty to explain my procedure to you, Doctor Landon, and to you, Doctor McKeever."
Carew broke out: "Wouldn't it have been much closer to regular procedure if you had consulted the doctors before you instituted this—this unusual treatment?"
"I was afraid," said Kildare frankly, "that they would object. They would not like my idea in promising her perfect vision, because if the experiment does not work, and if she does not have perfect sight when the bandages are removed, the shock may react detrimentally and confirm her hysteria."
"Exactly," said Landon. "You're risking everything on this. It's neck or nothing."
"It seemed to me," said Kildare, "that I had to devise the greatest possible happy expectation and then at the critical moment supply the greatest possible happy shock. I couldn't create the expectation without making the largest possible promise."
"Irregular, dangerous, and highly dubious procedure throughout," said Landon. "McKeever, do you agree?"
McKeever, after a pause, said slowly: "I'm afraid that I'm too old and conservative to agree with Doctor Kildare; and yet there's something in me that tells me he may be right. It's all or nothing."
"But to make the promise—to risk everything!" groaned Carew.
Messenger said in a voice which extreme tension made flat and mechanical:
"The case is entirely in your hands, Kildare. Whether you succeed or fail, you have my support."
"If the experiment doesn't work, I accept the entire blame," said Kildare, and went back to Nancy.
He gave the injection quickly, leaning over the bed, listened to her heart with a stethoscope. After a moment he said to Nora:
"She's waking up. Be here by the bed. Speak in a very quiet voice and say to her over and over: 'Everything is all right, now!'"
"Everything is all right now, darling," said Nora.
"Softer!"
"Everything is all right now, Nancy, dear," murmured Nora.