by Fern Shepard
Margaret took a moment to give this run-down, and before she had finished, Nora wished she had a good thick pillow where she could bury her head in shame.
"I deserve a good stiff kick in the posterior, Maggie!" She said it fervently. What right had she to pride herself on being a good nurse, a conscientious nurse, yet take time out to worry over her own trivial personal problems, with struggles between life and death going on all around her?
And yet nothing was exactly trivial if it undermined her efficiency, was it? How could she keep her mind on her work as long as she was a walking bundle of nerves and anxiety, with any number of unanswered questions hammering at her brain?
She wanted, she told Margaret, to take an hour off from duty. She was perfectly willing to take on an evening shift to make up for it. So if Maggie would have one of the floor nurses look in on Andrew Fine—
"I'll drift in to check on him myself," said Margaret. "I'll pat his fevered brow, take his pulse, and suggest very subtly that I'd be a real comfort in his old age."
Nora grinned. "Lots of luck, pal." Then, very seriously: "I know I'm behaving like a mixed up school kid, Maggie. I'm ashamed I haven't more control over myself. But I've had a series of small shocks, as you know. Then came the last straw. I just tangled with Rita Lansing."
"Oh? Who won, honey?"
"Who knows? I certainly don't. I won't know until I've had things out with Paul. I won't be any good around here either, until I gel things settled between us, one way or the other. Then I'll snap out of it."
Margaret Thorpe nodded and told her to run along. Paul was over in the annex, she said, looking a little like a sick kid himself. "If gorgeous Rita is really loaded for bear—and from what you say, she obviously is—how about hustling Paul into the isolation section along with our meningitis case?"
An inspired idea, Nora thought. She added dryly: "He'd be a lot safer there."
Chapter 7
Architecturally, the children's annex was not on speaking terms with the elegant exterior of the main hospital building. It had been started three years before, its main purpose to provide treatment for youngsters from poverty-stricken families in the hills and back country. There had been no money to waste on an impressive, modern structure. Surgery cases were taken to the surgery section in the hospital proper. Lab tests were made there, pictures taken. For uncomplicated hospitalization and medical treatment, the long one-story building sufficed. It resembled an Army barracks.
The small consulting offices used by the doctors were at the back end. Nora went around a side path to avoid going through the huge main ward. When she caught sight of the big, unkempt figure roaming about through the wooded area which bordered the grounds, she shuddered.
Crazy Ben Sackett was forever hanging around the hospital. The sight of him gave her the creeps.
She went up half a dozen wooden steps and into a narrow hallway. Paul's voice came to her from inside the first of the small offices. He was talking to a patient. Her heart sank as she heard his words: "Your son has a serious heart malformation. Immediate surgery is imperative. But I repeat, I can only diagnose and advise. One of the other doctors will perform the operation."
"But I want you to do it, Doctor Anderson." The woman seemed to be sobbing. "Oh, I'm so worried about my baby. I love him so. He's all I've got to live for, and I know you're the one who could save his life. Somehow I just can't trust my baby to nobody else. Please."
"I'm sorry. For the time being I am not undertaking any surgery."
The door opened. The woman came out, walking slowly, a forlorn little person with straggly hair and hopeless eyes.
Nora went in.
Paul's expression told her clearly that he was something less than delighted to see her. His eyes seemed to close against her completely as she walked to his desk and asked flatly: "Are you proud of yourself, turning down that poor woman when she begs for your help?"
He looked at her for a moment. "Let's not go through all that again, Nora. Frankly, I can't take it."
She drew up a chair and studied him for a moment. A feeling of deepest compassion washed away her momentary anger. She saw the lines of weariness carved deep around his wide mouth. His eyes looked tortured. Paul was thirty-four years old. Until recently he had looked closer to twenty-five. Right now he could have been taken for forty. So much for what worry and mental unrest could do to a man in a few short weeks.
"Paul, whether you like it or not, we've got to talk about this. I see you destroying yourself for no sensible reason. The other doctors see it. Everyone wants to help you pull out of this black mood. It's as if you were caught in some kind of emotional trap. We all want to help you out of it. But you refuse to be helped. You won't take advice from anybody."
He smiled thinly. "That's putting it fairly accurately. I am in a trap of sorts. How would you suggest that I get out of it?"
Nora was ready with the logical answer to that question. "I'd suggest that you do the thing you are afraid of doing: operate on that child whose mother just begged you to. Forget this obsessive fear that has taken hold of you. Once you've done a good job and brought a patient through, you'll be sure of yourself again."
Very sound advice, Paul agreed wryly; the advice one gave to someone who had been thrown from a horse, or survived a plane crash.
"It also applies to your problem, Paul. Why doesn't it? You've lost your self-confidence because of those cases you lost. So you're scared to operate again, afraid you've lost your skill. I say operate again, and fast. You'll do a successful job. Then you won't be scared any more."
"Very simple." He nodded. "But you overlook two small details. One, I might not do a successful job. And two, I'd be gambling with another life; not my own."
"Oh, Paul!" She shook her head sorrowfully, then got up and went to him, putting her hand on his shoulder. "What is it that's eating you, honey? Is it something you haven't told me?"
Suddenly she laughed, as if at the absurdity of the suggestion. "Surely you haven't let that old crackpot, Ben Sackett, get under your skin? He goes around bellowing that you aren't fit to be a doctor, but nobody pays any attention to him. Surely you don't, do you?"
He took a long time to answer. When he did, it was as if a great light had been turned on, and in its reflection Nora saw the deeply buried doubt which must have been haunting the man through all of his grownup years.
"The trouble is, Nora, a long time ago my father told me the same thing. He warned me that I'd never make a good doctor. He said I belonged on the land, not in the operating room. Maybe he was right."
So there it was, out in the open. And what could she say and do? She wasn't a psychiatrist.
As he talked, she recalled many things he had told her from time to time about his father: a domineering man whose word was law; a man who made all the decisions, who always knew best.
Paul's mother used to tell him that. "Your father knows best, dear. You must obey him without question. You'll never go wrong if you listen to your father. Look how smart he has always been. He came to this strange country with nothing. Now he owns all this rich corn land, stretching farther than the eye can reach. And such a good man. He reads his Bible and goes by the Word of God. You always listen to your father, son. He knows best."
And Paul had listened, and obeyed. "The only time I ever defied him," he had said once, "was when I went in for medicine."
What could Nora say? She still believed, would continue to believe, that he could lick this defeatist attitude, if he would just get back to surgery and do one successful job. But there was no way she could force him to do that, and if this whole thing stemmed from a childhood conviction that his father was all-wise—
I'm not clever enough to cope with a big fat neurosis like that, she thought, and walked over to the window just in time to see crazy Ben moving from behind a scrub oak a few hundred feet away. He looked like a big animal scurrying about.
When she turned back, Paul was still at his desk, staring at his
hands like a man in a trance.
"Oh, let's have a cup of coffee," she said, and went over to the electric grill. Maybe she'd better change the subject. Heaven knew she had plenty else to say.
"Well, you can't go on like this, Paul. That's for sure." She set the coffee in a paper cup on his desk and sat down to sip her own. "So what are your plans? Rita Lansing tells me her father has a really big deal in mind for you. Are you going to take him up on it?"
He jerked upright, looking extremely surprised. "When did Rita tell you that?"
"About an hour ago." And she told him how the conversation had come about. Then, out of the blue, she asked the question which had been nagging at her mind.
"Paul, are you in love with that girl?"
He jumped up then, coming really alive for the first time since she had come into the office. "Are you out of your mind?" he asked, grabbing her shoulders.
"A little bit, yes." She bit her lip hard. "Did you tell Rita that we were simply good friends; that there was no thought of marriage between us?"
"Of course not!" The question seemed both to astonish and anger him. "Why would I say such a thing?"
"I don't know. That's what I want to find out."
He glared at her; then very abruptly he began to qualify his words—just a little.
"Well, look," he said. "I may have said something which gave her that impression. Not that I meant it that way."
"I see."
"It was like this." He began pacing the floor, lit a cigarette. "She asked me a lot of personal questions, see? And—well, I'm sure I can count on you to understand that no matter what I said, I didn't mean—"
"You'd better not count on me to understand anything," she said coldly. "I don't even understand how you got to know Rita Lansing well enough to discuss me with her."
She stood very still, as Paul continued to prowl the small room while he explained how he had become acquainted with Rita.
She had stopped in to say hello to Mr. and Mrs. Lodge one evening about two weeks before. That was the first time he had met her. Subsequently there had been several accidental meetings. Two or three times she had picked him up in her car when he was walking. Once, in the evening, he had run into her in the drugstore and bought her a coke. She had driven him home afterwards, and sat for quite a while talking.
"That was the night she asked me about you. She said that she had heard around town that you and I were engaged, and asked when we were to be married. I said, 'Probably never.' "
"You said what?"
He went to her swiftly and caught her hands. "Oh, honey, please try to understand. I've been so mixed up about everything, so miserable. To be honest, what chance is there for us to be married?"
Why not face it? She kept postponing marriage because of her family responsibilities. "Now that my life is up in the air, it's more hopeless than before. I don't know what my future is to be. If I can't get back in stride—"
"Which you refuse to try to do," Nora said cuttingly.
"All right. I refuse to try. Which is to say, I'm sunk. If I don't resign here I'll be asked to get out. And what have I got to offer you? What right have I to hold you tied to a promise which has become almost meaningless?"
"Exactly what are you trying to tell me?" she asked stonily. "That you want us to break up?"
He did not speak.
"Because if that's what you want," she continued in that cold, expressionless voice, "just say so. All you have to do is to say that you've stopped loving me."
"If you would try to understand, Nora. I'm trying to do the right thing, the honest, decent thing. What right have I to—"
She had turned wearily away from him. Now she turned back in sudden anger. "You call it decent and honest to discuss our relations with Rita Lansing; to deny to her that we planned to be married?"
"I didn't deny it. I only said—"
"I heard you the first time. Please don't sicken me by repeating it. And another thing: you keep on harping on doing what's right. You call it right to decide what's best for me without asking me how I feel about it? Remember who I am, Paul Anderson? I'm the girl who loves you, the girl who has built all her hopes and plans for the future around you. Doesn't it occur to you that I should have a little say as to whether we break up or not?"
He shook his head hopelessly. "Please, Nora darling, don't make things any harder for me. I'm already hanging over the ropes. I'm beat, honey."
"Good. Maybe you need some more beating, or to be bashed over the head. It might cure what ails you. You're just the way I've read neurotic people get. They can't think of anyone but themselves. I've been worrying myself sick about you. And meanwhile, what have you been doing? You've been forgetting our date, forgetting to phone, running to that girl who is no friend of mine and discussing me with her. You've been pretending there was nothing more than casual friendship between us. Why? Again I ask, have you fallen in love with her?"
He stared at her. "You know better than that, honey."
"I'm not sure of anything any more." She rubbed her fist across her eyes, which felt blurred.
She was silent for a moment; then she spoke in a small, forlorn voice. "I've wanted so to find a way to help you. I thought maybe if we got married right away and went away for a little trip, it might be the answer. I was going to suggest that we do that. I came in here to talk to you about it." The eyes she raised to his were blinded with the tears she could no longer hold back.
"I didn't expect to be told that you didn't want to marry me, ever; that you no longer loved me."
"I didn't say that." He shouted it, and grabbed her in his arms. "Not love you! You're the only girl I'll ever love, but—Oh, my darling. Have a little pity, a little understanding. I've been so miserable; I feel so lost. The future seems like a dense, dark fog. I can't see my way through it. But it hasn't anything to do with my love for you."
For a moment, then, the little room was wrapped in silence while they clung to each other. Nora held him close to her heart, as a mother would hold a desperately hurt child. "I love you," she whispered. "Please forgive me if I said things to hurt you. It was because I was hurt, and so afraid of losing you."
At that point the silence was broken by wild, shouted words from Ben Sackett, who loomed enormous in the doorway. He was a man gone completely berserk, with a rusted, long-nosed pistol in his bony, dirty claws. The revolver was pointed straight at them.
"Killing helpless little children," bellowed the voice, loud enough to be heard on the far side of the Ozarks. "Now carrying on with your nurse-woman. I've caught you right dead in your tracks. Now I know for sure you're a sinner who ain't fit to live. A sinning woman like her ain't fit to live, neither. So I'm gonna put a bullet through the sinning flesh of both of you."
Nora said afterwards that she was sure she didn't have a chance as she felt the first bullet fan the air against her cheek. The second bullet caught Paul in his shoulder, not his heart. But it was a close thing.
At first, when she saw the blood, Nora was sure it was a fatal wound. When she found that it was not, she was able to breathe again.
Chapter 8
An hour later Nora sat on the cot in Margaret Thorpe's office, wondering if she was going to shake to pieces. Margaret had just given her an injection, a mild sedative to quiet her nerves. Now Margaret brought her a cup of strong, hot coffee, spoke into the phone when it rang, and turned back to say that was a call from Surgery. Paul's wound had been dressed and bandaged. He was doing fine.
"And I," said Nora, "am probably going to have hysterics." She gulped the burning hot coffee and said how ashamed she felt to be losing control of herself like this.
At first she had done beautifully, marveling at her own calm. She had been the poised, helpful nurse when the intern rushed in with a chair to wheel Paul over to Surgery. She had even tried to help the two orderlies get control of that fighting, howling maniac before they hustled him off to get him locked safely away until the police came. She was perfectly
calm when the police officer came and took her statement as to what had occurred.
The young officer, with whom she had gone to school when they were teen-agers, had called her a "mighty brave little gal."
"That nut might have killed you." He was telling her.
The orderlies seemed to admire her self-possession, too. One of them said she "sure had guts."
"Gutsy me, Maggie! And look at me now!" After it was all over and quiet restored, she had gone to pieces.
"Reaction setting in," said Margaret calmly, and brought her more coffee. "As soon as you feel up to driving, go home. Stay home tomorrow. Rest. Put your troubles out of your mind. Nobody can live on her nerves forever, the way you've been doing."
"I'll be seeing the wild look in that creature's eyes as long as I live." Nora shuddered, and looked up as the door opened.
It was Paul. "Thank goodness you're all right," Nora exclaimed, coffee spilling as her shaky hand put down the paper cup. He looked a little shaky himself, and pale. But he was able to smile, and somehow he seemed more like himself than he had in a long time as he walked over to sit down beside Nora.
"Does it hurt much, Paul?" Curiously, she suddenly felt a burning stab in her own shoulder, as if she were taking his pain into herself.
"Nips a bit." His worried eyes roamed her face, sending sudden warmth all through her. "Nothing to worry about."
"Nothing to worry about!" Nora gasped, finishing the coffee, which really had helped. Now her hands had stopped trembling like those of an old woman with palsy. "That crazy creature might have killed you! When I think—"
A distracted look crossed the man's face. "How do you suppose I feel when I think he might have killed you?"