by Max Brand
"That's right. Keep saying that; and hold her hand. So."
He went back into the next room. His face was white, but he had his jaw set, all the bulldog in him showing. He had left the connecting door open, and for a long moment the room was in silence, waiting. At length the voice of Nancy murmured something indistinguishable. They could barely hear the reassuring words of Nora as she said: "It's all right, Nancy. My dear, it's all going to be right with you..."
The voice of the girl came again more clearly.
"Now!" said Kildare, nodding to Herron, and the big man made a gesture of assent. They faced the door of the sick room together.
Kildare said loudly:
"She's in there, but she mustn't see you now."
"I've got to see her," said Herron.
"Keep your voice down," commanded Kildare. "These partitions are not very thick."
"Whether she's blind for ever or not, there's nobody in the world who means anything to me except Nancy!" said the booming voice of Herron.
"Charles! Charles!" cried Nancy from the next room.
"Go in—go in, you fool!" whispered Kildare. "Push up the bandages..."
Herron, playing no role now, rushed into the room with great strides. Kildare closed the door except for an inch or two. He stared before him at the others, seeing nothing; then the girl's voice came to them high and sharp with an ecstasy of happiness: "Charles, I am seeing you again. And you're not..."
Kildare shut the door fast behind him.
Paul Messenger spilled back in his chair suddenly on the verge of collapse. There was a confusion in the room; Carew was saying over and over again:
"He's done it! He's done it again!"
Kildare got hastily into the hall. Mary Lamont was waiting there.
"It's okay," said Kildare. "She's telling Herron how well she can see him. It's all over."
He put his hands in his pockets and leaned his head and shoulders back against the wall.
"Funny how happy people can be, isn't it?" he asked.
"Yes, doctor," said the girl.
"Stay around here. When the racketing dies down in there, you be on hand to reassure her. She's going to ask a thousand questions to find out how we discovered the truth. Tell her the facts—it was Gillespie who saw that it was plain hysteria. And he passed the hint along to me."
"Gillespie? Did he do that?"
"He does everything around here. Everything that's worth while. So long, Mary."
He had started down the hall when another thought struck him like a bullet and made him wince.
"Where's my father, Mary? I've got to get to him at once."
"I've tried to tell you about him," she said.
"You've never mentioned his name...and he's ill. I've got to get straight to him."
"I mentioned him. I tried to tell you that Doctor Gillespie has seen him."
"Gillespie? Has he seen father? God bless him for that! What did he say?"
"It's nothing but old age. There's no heart trouble, Jimmy."
"Say that again to me...My God, Mary, I love you for saying that."
There were at that moment in the hall nurses, two interns in the distance, a resident physician, and an orderly, but Kildare smashed a thousand rules as he leaned and kissed Mary Lamont.
"I hope this spoils your reputation, Mary," he said. "I hope I'm dragged up on the carpet to explain."
She shook her head as she looked up at him.
"You'll never spoil any reputations," she said. "You're so—damned brotherly!...I think Doctor Gillespie would like to see you."
"Like to see me?" repeated Kildare, astonished. He watched the tears coming into her eyes. "What have you been up to?" he demanded.
"Nothing...but he knows now why you stopped working with him."
"He knows...what?"
But without waiting for an answer, he turned and hurried down the hall. It was hours before the elevator came. It sank with monstrous leisure toward the lower floor. And the feet of Kildare could not get him quickly enough to the office of Gillespie. When he opened the door he found Molly Cavendish putting things in order.
"Do you think I could see the doctor?" asked Kildare, always a little overawed by her.
"I suppose that's your privilege...if you care to use it," said the Cavendish.
From the inside office the voice of Gillespie roared suddenly:
"Damn the rules! I want you to take your bloodhounds off the trail of that boy!"
The unmistakable voice of the chairman of the State Board of Health answered:
"Naturally, Leonard. Of course we will. But you must realise that young Kildare was very stubborn, refused to offer explanations, and we had no idea of the true nature of the case that involved him until you..."
"Run along! I'm busy!" bellowed Gillespie.
The chairman of the board "ran along."
He exited so fast and in such a state of mental perturbation that he hardly glimpsed Kildare in the outer office. After a moment, Kildare tapped at the inner door and then opened it.
Gillespie, glancing up, made a furtive gesture with a cage of white mice which he had been holding in his lap. It was as though he were trying to hide it from the eyes of Kildare.
"No harm done, Jimmy," he said. "I was just looking at them. I wasn't going to do anything with them, doctor."
He slipped the cage back into its proper place on the shelf. Kildare, amazed, could not speak a word.
Gillespie began to strike one calloused, dry hand into the other, frowning down at the floor.
"I suppose you're going to order me to get all these things out of my office—and out of my life, doctor?" asked Gillespie.
"I?—Order you?" exclaimed Kildare.
"After all," said Gillespie, "if I have to make a choice, I suppose I'd a little rather have a Kildare than a room full of white mice...But I hate to see them go, doctor."
Kildare made a slow gesture that indicated himself and Gillespie and the whole world.
"Don't you think that we might be able to go ahead with everything—but quietly?" he asked.
"I think what my physician permits me to think," said Gillespie. "I wonder if we could go on with it—very quietly, Jimmy, very quietly!"
© 2019 Max Brand
Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
ISBN: 9783749455164
Herstellung und Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand, Norderstedt