Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

“It makes me want to be right here,” said Kildare.

  Meg took the glove from her right hand. A square-faced jewel gleamed on a ring. “You’re happy, Jimmy, are you?” He said nothing, but leaned forward and stared at her. The pulse in his throat was like a small, jabbing, insistent finger, a pain that was not a pain, but as though his heart had shifted up there. After a moment she melted back against the cushion, her head resting on the top of it, so that he could see the clean, pure line of her profile.

  He raised her ungloved hand and kissed the palm of it. It was cool. It closed over his mouth and chin. He pushed her hand down and pressed it against the wild pulse that throbbed and ached in his throat.

  “When I hold your hand like this,” he said, “it’s as though I had you close in my arms.”

  Her lips parted. She said, as though she had hardly strength and breath for the saying, “How real is this, Jimmy?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “It’s never been this way before. Not with me. Do you feel it too, Meg?”

  She closed her eyes, and made a murmuring sound of content. He could have kissed her if he wished, but he refrained. Other faces blew past him on the steady wind — that freckle-faced girl who used to meet him at the junction when he rode down from the farm for the mail; another in high school, in college; a nurse, trim in her white uniform; but all of them had been no more than a touch of sweetness, like spring, to prop his eyes open while he saw invisible things.

  “You’re more beautiful. Is that why you’re real?” he asked her.

  “I’ve always been such a fool” said Meg. “Do you know how big a fool I am, Jimmy? I could cry. I’d better drive back. Otherwise, I’ll be dripping tears and go smash in the traffic. I suppose I’ll just take the thought of you home and cry over it. Will you go home with me and have a drink or something?”

  “Yes,” said Kildare. “I don’t want to end it.”

  “You lie back and relax. You’re tired.”

  He lay back, his head resting on the top of the cushion, as hers had been.

  She turned the car and started back.

  The tar-thick blackness of sleep was welling up about him. His head kept falling. He slept...

  When he wakened, the car was standing still. He found himself with his head on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry!” he gasped, jumping up.

  She had both arms around him; his movement pulled them away.

  “How long—” he began.

  “It was just happiness. I don’t know how long,” she said.

  They got out of the car and he went behind her uneasily, up the steps of the old brownstone house. She fitted her key into the lock.

  “You’ll see me again, Meg, before long?” he asked.

  “Why should I stop seeing you now?” she asked, as she pushed the door ajar.

  “The hospital,” he said. “I’ve got to get back. Good night!”

  “You don’t just say good night, do you, Jimmy?” she asked.

  He touched her forehead with his lips. “That’s not a very big kiss,” said Meg, still waiting with her head lifted.

  A cold tremor shook Kildare. “You’re beautiful. And — you’re beautiful!”

  “Thanks,” said Meg, and stepped back into the doorway. “You’re such an upstage idiot, Jimmy — you darling.”

  She vanished behind the door, which began to close slowly. He set a hand against it, cast it wide. She was standing right behind it.

  Kildare got into the hall and shut the door behind him. One ceiling light poured a moonshine highlight down the balustrade.

  “You didn’t—” began Kildare. “You knew that I’d — You waited, Meg.”

  She said nothing. Only, when he came closer to her, she tilted back her head. Her eyes lifted, studied him, moved from feature to feature.

  Someone else had looked at him like that, a thousand years before, in another life, but staring down, not up.

  “Meg!” he said. He took her in his arms. “Meg, you love me!”

  “I love you, Jimmy,” she said.

  “I’m not going to kiss you, Meg.”

  “No, Jimmy?”

  He stepped back from her. “No, I’m going to save all the happiness. We’re going to burst out — like summer — like summer after winter — like blue heaven — you and I, Meg, when we’re married.”

  He got out into the street somehow and walked with his hat off, laughing a little to himself. His steps wandered as though he were drunk, for he was still seeing her as she had stood at that last instant, wide-eyed, stunned, as though a light had flashed and blinded her.

  When he reached the hospital he went straight to Lafferty.

  The nurse met him at the door of the ward and murmured a report. “We’ve given sedatives, but Lafferty’s terribly nervous. There’s something on his mind. You see the way he’s rolling around? That’s no good for a man hurt the way he is.”

  Kildare leaned over the bed and took the big, hairy wrist in his hand. “Hello, Lafferty,” he said.

  Lafferty’s restlessness ceased gradually, and consciousness returned to his glazed eyes. “Hi, doc!” he murmured.

  “How are things?” said Kildare.

  “Queer. Sort of restful,” said Lafferty. “Like being asleep with your eyes open. When do they get a stenographer so I can talk?”

  “You can’t talk now. Just rest,” said Kildare. He took the nurse aside. “Watch Lafferty,” he said. “Record his pulse and respiration every hour.”

  “Yes, doctor. What did you do to him just now? He’s as quiet as a baby.”

  “Why — I — sort of prayed,” said Kildare, and managed to laugh.

  A moment later the nurse was saying with stealthy softness over the telephone, “Lafferty is still hanging on. I thought he was dying a minute ago but Doctor Kildare brought him around and sent him to sleep like a child. I don’t know how he does it, Mr. McGuire.”

  Weariness was so great in Kildare that he had to make separate efforts to keep awake, and each effort caused his heart to jump and sink back again like a horse unable to take the fences. He went dizzily through his round.

  At eight o’clock he was called to the telephone. It was Meg, saying, “Jimmy, can you come over for a minute?” In the background he heard other voices.

  “I’m on duty,” he said. “Unless it’s terribly important, I can’t come.”

  “Jimmy, don’t be a doctor all the time; be a darling and come over.”

  He thought of Gloster, waiting above him like a hawk at the pitch. One fault on his part, and Gloster would make an end of him. “If I leave the hospital, all sorts of hell might break—”

  She broke in, “Jimmy, will you come — for me?”

  “I’ll come,” he answered, and turned from the telephone.

  He saw the assistant house surgeon at once. “I’ve got to leave the hospital for half an hour. Will you cover me, Tom?”

  “Leave the hospital?” echoed Tom. “Well, you know what you’re doing. I’ll try to cover you. But Gloster—”

  “I’ve got to go,” said Kildare.

  “‘Got’ is a hell of a big word,” said Tom. “If some of those frozen-faced old buzzards at the head of the hospital get you down, they’ll squeeze the heart out of you... Well, go ahead. I’ll cover you all I can.”

  As Kildare got into his half-ragged street clothes, he kept telling himself that it had to be something important or Meg would not have insisted. He got out of the hospital, slinking like a thief for the first time in his life. As the taxi shot him north toward Meg’s, he sat forward on the edge of the seat.

  They pulled up in front of the brown-stone house. He found the apartment bell and rang; the latch clicked rapidly.

  Before he reached the second floor, a door flipped open, letting out a chorus of laughter, man-laughter. Meg stood on the threshold with a half-filled cocktail glass in her hand.

  “Hello,” she said. “That you, Shorty? Come in and meet the boys, Jimmy.” Kildare went past
her into a long, narrow living room. A queer dread gripped him.

  Three men were in the room. One was pouring a drink from a cocktail shaker. A big, handsome fellow in a brown suit looked at Kildare with grinning curiosity.

  Something about him sickened Kildare. He could look at nothing else. He could not even see the shimmer of the white dress that molded Meg’s body. She was a mist, off there on the horizon of his mind — the horizon of the past.

  She called out, “I thought you boys were all so big you ought to have a little variety. This is Doc Kildare. He’s the poor little fellow that wants to marry me. Stand up straight, Jimmy, and try to look like a real man! I forgot to tell you that I was married already. Meet my husband, Harry. Harry, shake hands with the doc.”

  Kildare could not see the other faces, but Meg’s remained in the mirror that topped the mantelpiece. She was sipping her drink, still smiling.

  Kildare said, “I’m sorry I was such a fool, Meg,” and turned out of the room.

  Before the front door slammed behind him, Pat Hanlon entered the room by a rear door. He hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “Out! Get out!” he commanded.

  “Sorry, boys,” said Harry. “But he seems to know more than the rest of us about where we belong.”

  That was all anyone said as they slunk past the tall, rigid figure of Hanlon at the door. He slammed it after them.

  When he turned, Meg had thrown herself back among the cushions of the davenport. “You knew that he was coming?” demanded Hanlon.

  “I sent for him,” she answered. “You’ve double-crossed McGuire. You’ve smacked us all down, have you?” said Hanlon. “You could have strung him along... The nurse says it’s only the doc that’s keeping that crook of a Lafferty alive. You’ve let us all down, and the yarns that Lafferty tells when he pulls through will make McGuire and all of us seem like dirty crooks. And what was that crazy stuff about the doc wanting to marry you?”

  “He did want to. He told me so this evening,” said Meg.

  “And you—” began Hanlon, almost shouting. He stopped himself. “Yeah,” he said in a changed voice. “You fell for the old doc, did you? Well, to hell with us! He’s worth the whole pack of cards.”

  “Stop talking about him,” she said. Hanlon poured some whisky into a glass. “Get outside of this,” he directed.

  “I don’t want to be cured. I want to be sick,” said Meg. “Pat — he took it big, didn’t you think?”

  “He took it big and silent. Yeah,” said Hanlon. “He wouldn’t take nothing any way else. Just big.”

  “It’s when they bleed inside that they die, isn’t it? I want to die. I don’t want to live.”

  “Quit it, Meg, will you?”

  “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. He was so nice, or something.”

  “Yeah, you love the old doc, I guess,” said Pat. “So does McGuire. So do I.”

  “We could have been so happy, Pat! Why did he have to want to marry me, and me hooked up to that big sap of mine? I could have kept Jimmy away from the hospital all night, but marriage! It broke me down, Pat.”

  “I’m sorry, Meg.”

  “Shut up, Pat, will you?” she said. “I feel sick.”

  “Sure I’ll shut up,” said Hanlon. “I know how you feel. It’ll be a month before you wake up in the morning and want your ham and eggs. Wait till I take the bad news to McGuire, though. He’ll be off his feed for fair.”

  When Kildare reached the hospital, he did not try to sneak in unseen. He went to his room slowly.

  He was changing into whites when the assistant house surgeon broke in upon him, crying, “They’ve got you! Jimmy, I’m sorry as hell! Stewart Black. Gloster. They know you sneaked off. Lafferty went sour. Everybody looked for you, and you were gone.”

  “Forget about me,” said Kildare. “Damn Gloster and the rest. But Lafferty! Tell me about Lafferty!”

  “High fever and delirious.”

  “Sepsis?”

  “I don’t know. The head nurse was watching him closely because you’d told her to. When he went sour, she paged you all over the hospital. I was there on the spot, but I couldn’t make head or tail of Lafferty. He came to and began to call for you. You could hear him three wards away!”

  “And then the nurse called the attending surgeon?”

  “Yes, Black came and took a look. He wouldn’t talk to me, except to ask where you were. It had to come out that you’d skipped off duty.”

  “All right,” said Kildare.

  “It’s not all right. Stewart Black hit the ceiling. Then Gloster came in. When he heard you were out, he says, ‘You wouldn’t expect such a good politician to waste his time in the wards, would you?’”

  “I’ll go up and take it,” said Kildare. “You’ve got the guts,” said the assistant house surgeon. “But they’re going to ruin you, Jimmy. I’m sorry.”

  When Kildare got to the ward Stewart Black glared at him with a silent intensity of disgust.

  The acid voice of Gloster said, “Ah, I hope you finally lined up the votes on the right side, Kildare.”

  Kildare went over and took Lafferty’s hand. “Lafferty,” he said.

  The eyelids fluttered. “Hi, doc!” Lafferty said, and smiled. But he relapsed at once into the delirium. His pulse was crazy. He plucked at the bedclothes with his hands. One of his hands seemed slow and useless. On one side of his face there was a slight twitch now and then.

  “In the army,” said Gloster, “they shoot a deserter. In this hospital — I can only say that it is a large hospital but that there is no room for you, Kildare.”

  “Do you mind if I sit and look at him?” asked Kildare. “I know I’m through.”

  “I dare say you may sit and look,” said Gloster, “if you like to watch sepsis kill a man.” He turned to Stewart Black, and said, “Let’s get down to the operating room.”

  They went out. Kildare sat down by Lafferty’s bed and took his hand. “Lafferty,” he said.

  There was a shudder of Lafferty’s eyelids. “Hi, doc!” he whispered. The queer twitching ran up one side of his face. Instantly he was lost in delirium again.

  Kildare closed his eyes. He was very tired... After a time he went over to the window and looked out. He could see a big star shining toward the west. It seemed strange that a star could shine over New York, where Meg lived.

  He sat by the bed again. Lafferty’s pulse was slow and hard, very hard. He breathed more slowly, too.

  “Lafferty!” said Kildare.

  There was a shudder of the eyelids, a parting of the lips. No sound.

  “I think he’s dying,” whispered the nurse.

  “He’s not going to die,” said Kildare through his teeth. “He’s going to live. God wouldn’t let him die,” he added to himself. “Not on account of a thing like Meg.” Then he said, “Get this man ready for operation. And send word to the operating room — to Doctor Gloster — that Lafferty is not dying of sepsis but of a fractured skull — a compression.”

  Gloster and Stewart Black came back.

  “An accurate diagnosis,” said Gloster. “Take Lafferty to the operating room... Kildare, if you wish to do one final thing in this hospital, you will be permitted to assist. Go scrub up — if you wish.”

  Kildare scrubbed up. When he got to the operating room, Stewart Black stood on one side of the table and Gloster on the other, looking like white-robed inquisitors in a torture chamber. Lafferty looked like one already dead; his face was a pale, purplish marble. The shaved part of his scalp was as white as paint.

  “His pulse is fifty,” said Gloster to nobody. He held out a hand toward Kildare. A little scalpel glistened in his finger tips. “Go ahead,” said Gloster.

  Kildare took the knife, looked into the keen, clear eyes of Gloster, and his brain grew as clear as winter starlight.

  He went to work, cutting the section from the side of Lafferty’s scalp, holding the flap back with retractors. He heard the anesthetist say, in answer to a question
of Gloster’s, “I think it’s too late; he’ll be decompressed too late.”

  Kildare looked up at them. “It’s not too late,” he said. “I’ll have no more comment in my operating room.”

  He cut the bone of the skull on three sides and broke it off on the fourth. It would grow better that way, when the piece was inset again. The blood clot was exposed before him.

  Kildare lifted out the clot. From a small blood vessel blood was oozing almost inappreciably. With exquisite delicacy, Kildare picked up the ruptured blood vessel with small hemostats and tied it off.

  He could hear Lafferty’s breathing. He could see the powerful rise and fall of that great chest.

  Kildare paused, leaning on the edge of the table. “Thank God!” he whispered.

  Black went out, and the nurses, and the anesthetist; there was only Gloster’s cold, drilling eye to confront Kildare after the senseless body on the table was wheeled out.

  Gloster said, “It was because I’d banked on you so much that I talked that way. Was it a woman, Jimmy?” Kildare reached out, mentally, for support. Gloster had called him Jimmy.

  “No. It wasn’t a woman,” said Kildare. “I wouldn’t call her that.”

  “That was a beautiful diagnosis,” said Gloster. “A beautiful operation.”

  He walked out of the room. Kildare dragged off the operating clothes, washed, and went up to Lafferty’s ward. He sat by the high bed and stared at the huge bulk of the man under the bedclothes. It seemed to him that Meg stood on the farther side of the bed. He set his jaw. The ache in his throat brought tears to his eyes.

  He held a forefinger on Lafferty’s pulse. It was quickening, steadier, softer. “Lafferty,” he said.

  Lafferty’s lips parted. “Hi, doc!” he whispered. “I can breathe. I can talk. Get this: I had a fight with Harry — McGuire’s man.”

  “Ah, d’you know my friend McGuire?” asked Kildare.

  Lafferty’s eyes found Kildare’s face. “McGuire — is he a friend of yours, doc?”

  “He’s been as good a friend to me as anyone could be,” said Kildare. “Go to sleep, and don’t talk now.”

  Lafferty stared sadly at the ceiling a moment. At last he whispered, “All right. Give McGuire a ring, will you? Tell him I said everything’s all right. McGuire or Hanlon.”