“The Doctor”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 1 July 1939, Page 15

“The Doctor”

by MARY ROBERTS RINEHART.

CHAPTER I Young Doctor Arden was going through the process of reorienting himself alter a night’s sleep. He had been doing that now' for two weeks. He would open his eyes, gaze for a second or two at his strange surroundings, and then close them again. The wide brass bed with the sagging springs became the narrow one of his hospital bedroom; the telephone beside the bed would ring at any moment, and he would have to hurry into his clothes and go, half-awake, to the slow old elevator with the ancient coloured Joe inside ‘‘Let me off at the corner of the park, Joe. Got to meet a lady.” “Yes, sir,” Joe would say, grinning. It was an old joke between them, but for Joe it had never lost its humour. The elevator would rise with deliberation. It was an open cage, and there w'ould b2 vistas of long bare halls, poorly lighted, and of tired night nurses waiting hopefully for the dawn, ox uf convalescents from the wards, in hospital trousers or loose wrappers, shuffling along in carpet slippers for this purpose or that. Then somewhere the elevator would stop, and he would step out, a tall, disreputable figure, to find an anxious nurse waiting for him. “It’s Baird in D ward. Doctor. Her temperature’s been dropping since three o’clock.” For a little time then he would be king. More, he would be a god of sorts; nurses hurrying to obey his orders, the ward watching him with interest, and perhaps some feeble life hanging on his quickness, his skill. “Tray here?” “Yes, Doctor.” “All right, Baird. This will make you feel better.” He would stand or sit by the bed, holding to a wrist, watching the rise and fall of a chest. His world always sharply contracted ,at such times. Jt consisted only of the patient on the bed and himself, with a nurse hovering by. But sometimes, especially if the call came early in his sleep, he acted by a sort of automatism. He would go through the proper motions, but in the morning he would hardly remember. There might be an empty bed in a ward, the patient gone and the mattress rolled up on the wire springs, ready for sterilising. It would come to him then with a shock that he had seen a human soul pass on the night before and had gone back to bed and forgotten it. “Well, you did all you could, Doctor.” “I wonder!” he would say, and feel the eyes of the ward on him. All day he would have a sense of guilt. Then it would pass. By evening, in the internes’ room, he would be drinking a surreptitious glass of beer and saying: "Nothing to do with that fellow in A. Came in too late. Who wants some poker?” But it was not quite so easy as that. He had a bad habit of going back over his cases. The poker game would start; some of the internes, Scott, the X-ray man, and perhaps Dickinson from the

laboratory. Sometimes six were playing, some-' times only two were left to mark time. But there would be times when his mind wandered back to some empty bed in the silent hospital overhead. “Wake up, Chris! What are you so glum about?” His name, which was Noel, had been altered by some wag to Christmas, and from that to Chris. “Sorry. I’ll check the bet.” It would pass, he knew. In a few hours or a day he would have forgotten. His big heavy-shouldered figure would once more move with assurance into the wards, and once more at times he would be king or even God to his small domain. He would whistle in the corridors and make his little jokes in the wards. “Hold still now. This is going to hurt you more than it hurts me!” Or: “Kick with that leg? Sure you will. You've been kicking ever since you came here!” There would be a triumphant swing to his shoulders under the white coat when at last the dressings were done and the wards quiet. He would change his soiled coat for a fresh one, light a cigarette, stop to chat with a nurse. “Well, I suppose you were out dancing last night! “Dancing! I’ve got other uses for my feet.” “Well, they’re very nice feet,” he would say, and wander on cheerfully. But there were many times when he felt that he had failed. Sometimes when the screens, would be up around the bed, he would be alone with the patient, just the two of them, and it would seem strange to him that one of them was going on into death and the other back to a warm room and to sleep. It seemed unfair. He felt ashamed then of his vitality, and of the fact that when it was over, he meant to see if there was anything left from the night nurses’ supper. Dr. Arden grunted and turned over. He was slowly awaking now, beginning to remember. That last night in the hospital, for instance. He had made his final rounds at midnight, saying a sort of mute farewell to all familiar things. Shabby and old as it was, be had loved every corner of it. Here and there in the wards a patient had been awake, and he had stood by the bed in the semi-darkness. “Sorry you’re going, Doctor. We'll miss you.” "Sorry to go, old man.” But it was in the children's ward that he had remained the longest. A small girl there was crying, and he had gone in and picked her up. “What’s the matter, sweetheart? Can’t you sleep?” “I want my mother.” He had wrapped a blanket around her, and she stopped crying. Always in that ward he felt helpless and filled with pity. These little waifs and strays—the hospital gave them care, but it could not give them love. He held her closer in his arms. “If I sit down with you, will you go to sleep?” “I’ll try.”

So he had sat down with her on one of the hard ward chairs, and after a time she had fallen asleep. Somewhere ahead of him lay the future, unknown and mysterious; but somewhere and someday, God willing, there would be in it some quiet room, and like this he would be holding in his arms a child of his own.

That had been his real farewell to the hospital, although he made a formal one the next day, going cheerfully, shaking hands, laughing, promising to come back often. Then at last he heard the big front doors close behind him and knew that he was through with that phase of his life and that he was at last alone in a not too friendly world. He was fully awake now. He opened his eyes, yawned, and stretched, and as he did so a brass ball from the top of the bed fell down and struck him sharply on the head. His reaction was instant and indignant. He caught it up and flung it across the room, and the resultant clamour broke the Sunday morning calm like an explosion. When it had subsided, he heard slow footsteps climbing the stairs and a drawling voice outside which he recognised as belonging to Henry Walters, with whom and whose family he shared the house. “Anything wrong. Doc?” “That ball fell off the bed again and hit me. And don’t call me Doc!” “I fixed it yesterday, Doctor.” “Well, it didn’t stay fixed. Can I get through to the bathroom?” Henry, outside, cleared his throat. “I'll tell you, Doctor. Dick got home kinda late last night, and his mother thought he'd better sleep this morning. He ain’t so well. If you wouldn't mind using the back stairs —” “It won’t kill him if I go through, will it?” Access to the bathroom was through the room occupied by Dick, and a part of the arrangement had been that Dick should be up and out early for that reason. But the last thing in Dick Walter’s mind was to be up and out early; and now Chris heard Henry’s apologetic cough again. “I’m sorry. He’s locked the doors.” Chris sat up on the side of the bed. Already he knew that he had made a mistake in adopting the Walters family. He felt a vague sympathy for the mild, inefficient man outside, and a sort of pity for l* o drab and listless woman who was his wife. This sympathy at the moment was not lessened by a voice, young, feminine, and sharp, from the hall bedroom next to his. “For heaven’s sake, Father, what’s the idea? And on Sunday morning at that!” “It’s all right, Kt|ie. You go to sleep again.” “I’ve got a fine chance of going to sleep again.” Chris smiled grimly to himself. Already he knew that Katie Walters would not appear downstairs until she was certain that the morning work was done. (To be continued).