Part 8

When this was all over, how many real friends she would have gained. But she mustn’t forget that she was here for a purpose. Perhaps if she took a short nap now, she would be in better trim for the real thing ... if it came....

She turned over and tried to sleep, but the tension on the ward was so overpowering that she thought perhaps if she entered the conversation she might discover ... or maybe she was just imagining things and the thunderstorm which was brewing was causing that feeling.

If only they would all begin to talk of something they were interested in and not to cover up what they were thinking.

There came a lull and she asked Mrs. Witherspoon:

“Do you think the flavor is better when you cook pork with sauerkraut, or without it?”

“Without it!” chimed in the woman with the enormous legs. “I give it to my children since they was babies and I always cooks it thorough ... four to five hours ... and then....”

“You do?” Mrs. Witherspoon laid down her crocheting, inserted her teeth and became emphatic.

“Thet saps all the taste. Mr. Witherspoon likes hisn so ez the pork and kraut is mixed flavored, if you know what I mean. Ain’t it awful leathery, yo’ way?”

“It ain’t the cookin’ time, as I was about to say,” the fat woman drew up her chins, “it’s the _cookin’_ way.”

“I got one of them steamer cookeths. It doz gran’,” lisped the ex-circus woman.

Mrs. Witherspoon gave her a frivolous glance, and replied positively:

“I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout workin’ them new fangled things. But I’ve et from them. Eddie May, Sammy’s wife,” both of her listeners nodded, “the one what come to see me Satd’y has one. And Mr. Witherspoon seys after we went to Sammy’s Easter dinner, ‘Jennie, the only way to cook victuals is to cook ’em with the eye. Baste ’em, and taste ’em, and it’s jes’ like stokin’ an ingine,’ he seys, ‘you got to keep yo’ eye to it.’ If you know what I mean....”

This precipitated a hot argument upon washing machines, with the fat woman as the defendant. So Rose Standish shifted her attention to the clouds. If the women kept up for fifteen minutes more ... and if she knew wards they were good for hours ... the thunderstorm would be here, and they would be quieted down for the night.

She looked at her watch. It was almost nine. Time for the night nurse to be coming along, in just a few minutes. And while she was waiting for her to come and bed the ward down, she might as well begin to think about the accident room.

Those scrub-up basins should be moved across the room and as far away as possible from the door in which the accidents were brought. And then, too, some arrangement should be made to equalize the lighting over the two tables. And also to give the nurse at the instrument table enough light to see what she was handing. And in some of the badly mangled cases, it would quicken things considerably if a passageway was built directly into the elevator corridor, so that they might be hurried up to the operating room.

Then, of course it was a little thing, but awfully important nervously: the girl who took the doctors’ dictation onto the typewriter ought to have a noiseless machine. And it would be terribly hard to convince the Superintendent of Nurses, but she was going to tell Dr. MacArthur that she needed another student nurse on duty there. After a football game or a big race meet when the automobile accidents began to pour in, it was frightful. There was nobody, except the girl at the typewriter who couldn’t stop, whose hands were not all gory and spotted every paper they touched.

She was distracted by a flash of lightning, Mrs. Witherspoon’s, “Lan’ sake, nurse, I’ve wet my bed,” and Miss Kerr’s niece, the night student nurse leaning over her and purring:

“Miss Standish, are you better? Here’s your thermometer.”

Perhaps it was her voice coming so soon after the flash, but there seemed something too saccharin in its tone to Rose Standish. She shivered before she turned to take the extended thermometer.

Of course she knew Miss Kerr’s niece was the night student nurse they were watching, but somehow she didn’t associate the name and the girl. She had never liked this girl when she had been in the accident room. No real heart, and stubborn and cattish ... and then her eyes were too close together....

With barely a fleeting smile, Miss Kerr thrust the thermometer into Miss Standish’s hand and ran to close the windows. It had begun to rain.

While the windows were being closed Bessie Ellis, the child down the ward who had received the toy in the night, began crying in her sleep. She had been disturbed by the lightning, and her moans made the women shivery.

Several of the women called out to her and Mrs. Witherspoon’s lisping (her teeth again removed), “Alwite bavvy, don cwy,” struck Miss Standish as highly amusing. She slipped her thermometer around and laughed. Miss Kerr, the student nurse, flopped down the last window and went to the moaning child.

While she was walking down the ward there came another flash of lightning, a sudden hissing, and the lights went out. It was followed by a panicky silence and then the hysterical laughter of Mrs. Witherspoon.

Rose Standish ducked as if she had been hit, and as she ducked something began choking her about the neck. She spit her thermometer upon the bed and began tugging at the horrible pulling. A thing, like a brick, hit her upon the head as she tried to sit up, and she thought, “it can’t be the murderer, he only uses hypodermics,” and the lights went up, while Mrs. Witherspoon was still laughing, and she saw Miss Kerr standing between their beds, and reaching for her thermometer.

In a moment she understood that the sash of her kimona had become twisted about her neck, and it was the book she had been reading and stuck upon the edge of her pillow which had fallen ... and it was all absurd. All, that is, except the look in Miss Kerr’s eyes.

The surprised look, when she saw Miss Standish was still alive! Her tongue was so dry she couldn’t speak and a horrible nausea began rising within her, but Mrs. Witherspoon drew the girl’s evil eyes when she demanded that her bed be fixed _now_.

Miss Kerr went for the sheets and Miss Standish lay down and turned her face toward the window and tried to forget it all. She placed one of her thin hands at the base of her brain and began massaging her neck. This was no way to do. Get frightened at a little thing like a book hitting you. A person who lost her nerve over such things wasn’t fit to look for mice in a dark pantry let alone clear the reputation of Dr. Cub Sterling and solve the terror of the Elijah Wilson. Forget it all for a few minutes and remember the routine a student nurse should be following, now.

Of course the changing of Mrs. Witherspoon’s bed was throwing everything slightly behind time, but that should be finished in a minute, and she turned over to watch the girl make the bed. Her technique was excellent and she was a swift worker. Seemed sure of herself.

Even from the back, Rose knew she didn’t like her. And never would. Miss Kerr turned to finish the pulses. Then she began taking the flowers out of the ward for the night. She took the pink roses which the clowns had sent to the circus woman, and the nasturtiums the children had brought the fat woman, and Mrs. Witherspoon’s tube rose ... thank goodness ... and then she came back and gave out the final round of bed-pans, the final glasses of water, and went for her medicine tray.

The little girl had gone back to sleep, but down the ward a gray old woman, whose face was like cracked rock, was breathing with the horrible labor of a heart attack. Rose Standish started to call the student nurse and tell her to get Mattus right away, and then she decided that it was about time she began to remember that she was a patient on the ward and not a nurse.

Miss Kerr returned with the medicine tray. She gave Mrs. Witherspoon her hypodermic, and almost as a sponge does water, the withered body soaked it up, and she fell into a deep slumber. The woman with the thyroid insufficiency had her sleeping potion and began the long slow breathing of a laboring body.

The rain had broken the tension and the women were drifting off before the lights were dimmed. It, with the aid of the drugs, of course, was soothing and lulling them into oblivion. The long, slow torrents fell in strips outside the window and drowned out the labored breathing of the woman with the heart attack.

Rose lay perfectly still, so still she was almost drifting herself. Miss Kerr had reached the bed in which the heart patient lay and at last realized her condition ... a tuned ear could have noted it down the corridor ... she turned and walked prissily off the ward ... not hurrying, and with her hips flat ... and called Dr. Mattus. Rose could hear her cooing out the dying woman’s condition, and gathered that he was coming up.

In a few minutes he appeared and after a quick glance began pumping digitalis into her ... Rose could have told the nurse to do that! Then when she rallied, and after the lights had been dimmed, he came by her bed and said:

“All right, Miss Standish?”

“Perfectly. Thank you.”

He took her pulse and said:

“Good heart you’ve got. Dr. Sterling, Senior, said you could have a sedative if you buckle. Ring for it, if you want it.”

“What’ll it be, doctor?”

He crinkled his long nose and sniffed, “Poison! Little nurses mustn’t ask big questions! ’Night!”

His smile was broad, and forced.

By ten ... Rose looked at her radio-light watch ... the ward had “bedded down” and the rain had diminished to occasional drippings. Everything was cool and still. Miss Kerr had settled down to doing her fever charts at the desk. Occasionally, she turned and peered into the darkened ward, and Rose felt her looking at her bed, inquiringly.

She lay on her back, stretched her legs, put her arms at her sides, little girl fashion, and began to breathe deeply. Perhaps if she did that for thirty counts, she would drift off to sleep. If she buckled. ... she’d show ’em. Begin to get some rest ... plenty of it ... it had been a long day ... a trying evening ... now everything was peaceful and everybody was beginning to sleep.

But if she dared to go to sleep, why couldn’t the person ... whoever it was ... come while she was asleep and ... and....

She reached for her glass of water and took a drink. Her lips were so dry it hurt to open them. This was foolish. How was her heart doing? She took her pulse and discovered it was 106. Perhaps she had better have a potion after all.

She looked toward the desk. Miss Kerr wasn’t there!

»VI« The Second Doll

At nine o’clock Dr. Harrison entered the hospital through the accident room door and started up the main corridor. The last of the nurses and internes were returning from breakfast, the morning sun as they passed the occasional windows was picking each face out of its oblivion and then throwing it back again.

Dr. Harrison shivered. The faces looked as the faces did upon the streets of every city in the United States the morning after the Lindbergh baby had been found....

The cynically young, the frightened vacant, the intelligent, the eager, the stupid, all reflected the knowledge that Rose Standish was dead.

“A nurse died last night,” the stupid faces, the childish faces, the vacant faces reflected, and as the intelligence increased, the horror in the eyes grew....

Upon the internes and residents they showed:

“A nurse was murdered last night.”

And with an increasing frequency he saw eyes which knew:

“She was murdered in Cub Sterling’s Clinic.”

He passed the entrance to his own clinic, and then retraced his footsteps. His duty was to MacArthur, but his first duty was to suppress as much staff hysteria as possible. With the staff in such a condition, it was only a question of hours before the patients, all over the hospital....

His resident was standing beside the elevator upon the first floor. He turned and Dr. Harrison noted the first, second, and then a third horror in his eyes.

“’Morning, Wheeler,” his voice was calm and measured.

“Good morning, Doctor Harrison. Do you know?”

“About the nurse? I do.”

“No, sir. About Doctor Bear.”

Dr. Harrison turned his searching brown eyes into the man’s gray ones.

“What?”

The resident met the glance and responded:

“Pneumonia. Bilateral. Cub is with him. Diagnosis confirmed. Brought him into hospital on a stretcher about two hours ago. He’s in Medicine Clinic now ... hopeless....”

Dr. Harrison staggered for the first time in his medical life.

“They murdered him! The dogs!”

He turned from the elevator and walked out of his clinic and down the corridor toward the Medicine Clinic. He walked calmly, like a man going to his execution and convinced of his innocence.... That heart attack was responsible, as sure as death itself, Hoffbein, Peters and Paton had killed ... his best, his very best friend....

His agony was so acute that the passing faces with their increasing hysteria seemed natural.

Turning to Mattus, Cub Sterling said:

“I’d better look in on Miss Merriweather, in case her father telephones today. Then you can find me with Dr. Sterling, if you need me.”

He turned from Ward B and walked into Room Two and closed the door. That shade onto the Ward was still lowered. He had lowered it himself the first night he brought the cigarettes.

He and Sally Ferguson were completely alone.

She was smoking a cigarette. The room swam with pinking air and Cub leaned against the door jam and snapped:

“How’s the leg since they took the bandages off? All right?”

She ignored the question and said:

“I just woke up! Why did you give me those pills last night?”

He walked toward the bed, and the horror of the night receded and a wild happiness suffused his features.

“Don’t you know, Salscie?”

“To make me ... sleep?”

“Would you have slept ... without...?”

He leaned over her and kissed her twice. Completely and reachingly.

She burrowed her head between his collar and his neck and whispered:

“Did you...?”

He laid the weight of his head upon hers and she moaned and brought her lips within reach again.

Cub drained them a third time and tucking his head between her breasts said:

“God I need that, darling! I’ve been through hell ... hell ... red hot hell!”

Then he jerked his head up and bored his eyes into hers. His voice was wild and heavy.

“Whatever happens, whatever anybody tells you, whatever comes ... you must promise me, Salscie, that you’ll believe in me ... that you’ll trust me ... and know that I’ve wanted you all my life ... and when all of this works out ... I’m going to ... live with you....”

Her body stiffened and she snatched her eyes out of his. Her voice was hard and narrow.

“Cub Sterling, I wouldn’t ... ever ... live with you! At last I see why women have children ... why they want to belong....”

All the angularity went out of him. He reached over and gathered her into his arms. His voice curled and nestled in her ear.

“You’ll have them, Salscie! Lots of little Sterlings!”

Outside the loud speaker began:

“Docterr Ste-earling, Junyior, Doct-terr Eth-err-ridge Ste-arling, Junyior. Calling Doct-terr....”

They wilted apart, but their eyes still held and Cub said, softly and definitely:

“My father’s ill. Very ill. The hospital’s in a terrible stew. I may not get to see you for a couple of days. Be good until I do! Take care of yourself! Don’t be ferocious to anybody, Salscie! Promise? I’ll tell Mattus to let you have your clothes, and try sitting up if you like. Think you’ll need some more pills tonight ... darling?”

She blushed and smiled slowly. Cub took a box from his pocket and gave her two veronal tablets.

Then he leaned over and ordered:

“Kiss me quick, Salscie! Sophie’d better kiss me, too!”

At the door he turned and barked:

“Remember! This place is full of tales.... Trust me?”

“Till death us do part, Cub darling!”

Dr. Henry MacArthur sat at his desk and awaited the arrival of the staff. He sat perfectly erect, dreadfully calm, with the hopeless heroism of the stone blind. His hands were relaxed upon his knees. Lifting them to cradle his head would require such an enormous effort ... mentally and physically....

He was as changed from the man who had lain in bed two nights before and enjoyed scotch highballs as if he had spent twenty years in Siberia. The hair at the temples looked grayer and the face was marble in its emotions. They came separately, and filled its furrows. Bitter self recrimination. He had sent a perfectly innocent woman to her death. A mere child. He had allowed her to go up, pass through hell and die ... for his honor, Cub Sterling’s reputation, and the Elijah Wilson Hospital. And to die so uselessly, so bravely, so quietly.

And the self-recrimination was followed by a nobility which made him beautiful, as the world thought King Albert beautiful while he was bleeding over Belgium.

Bleeding over the tremendous heroism of human beings. Over the cool straight bravery of quiet people. Over the fragile littleness of her still body. Over the sense of still living that her small ivory face had held when he and Cub Sterling and Dr. Bear’s assistant were leaning over her body, under the glaring light of that autopsy table.

It had been like bending over a plucked magnolia blossom, on a summer morning. There was a spiritual fragrance about her as poignant as the perfume of magnolias. A feeling of sheer beauty, wasted....

If he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget the exquisite curve of that child’s small rounded breast and the nauseating sense of having stuck a knife in it, which came over him!

An Edith Cavell, a Florence Nightingale, a Jeanne d’Arc, and he had stood in her presence alive ... and dead....

And all of it had been so futile. But as certain as death itself was the knowledge ... within his own mind ... that Cub Sterling had had nothing to do with it. That Cub Sterling could not have stood beside him in that autopsy room a few scant hours ago and the sense of horror and helplessness have so entirely gripped them. And it did grip ... both of them.

He started to telephone for Cub to come to him now and then he remembered about Bear, and his head ... for the first time since he had been Director of the Elijah Wilson Hospital ... fell into his cupped hands, while the door into the corridor stood wide open.

Caesar was dead, Napoleon was dead, Osler was dead, Socrates was dead, Halsted was dead and Bear Sterling was dying....

Dying because of overwork and a bad heart. Sacrificed to his profession by his colleagues! That heart attack yesterday, coupled with the cold had done it.

All the great men were dead or dying.... Coniine....

He turned over Cub Sterling’s testimony concerning the death of Miss Standish, and stared vacantly at the words. Somewhere, at this very minute, there was walking, still free, about the Elijah Wilson Hospital, probably laughing and talking with other patients, a nurse, a doctor ... a man ... a woman ... a murderer....

Dr. MacArthur rose and walked to the far window through which the warm spring sun was shining. He must pull himself together. His duty was not to his emotional beliefs concerning men and their motives. Above all things he must be fair. His duty and theirs was to the hospital and within the next five minutes he must get himself in such perfect control that he could compel them to see it.

The opportunity of the hospital to be of benefit to humanity for the next fifty years depended entirely upon his ability to hold his staff together this morning. To force these exceptionally capable men to think calmly ... and wisely.

He closed his eyes and allowed the sun to penetrate through the lids. A soft spring breeze floated in the opened window. A living, gentle breeze which foretold all the wealth of future living in flowers and fragrances; which expressed as clearly as Chopin might have, how he felt about the small, slim body of Rose Standish.

It seared him like a sirocco. Yesterday morning, she had stood there with just such a breeze blowing. Yesterday morning it had promised her summer, too ... and today.... He turned his back resolutely to the window and still stood with his eyes closed.

The sun began relaxing the muscles at the base of his brain and then he seemed suddenly sane. Her death had been like those of the officers in the Great War who had jumped out of the trenches and walked up and down to give their men courage....

He returned to his desk and calmly began planning what must be covered at this meeting, and what witnesses must be called. Cub, if he could leave his father, otherwise his testimony must suffice. The day white nurse, the night pupil nurse, Miss Kerr’s niece, and Mattus’ impression of the patient when he last saw her. Then it would be wise to ask Dr. Heddis to come over and report upon the autopsy findings.

The lack of sleep was telling upon him. He had entirely forgotten about questioning the orderly, William. He rang for his secretary and gave her the orders.

When Dr. Barton’s squared frame filled the door it brought with it a sense of relief. Queer how sane associating with children made a man. Almost immediately he was followed by Hoffbein, Peters and Paton ... together. They had just settled themselves when Dr. Harrison strode in. There was an armor of righteousness about him that dazzled. Dr. MacArthur had never seen Harrison this way before. Like some great patriarch of Biblical fame girded for battle.

When they were all seated, Dr. Barton and Dr. Harrison exchanged monosyllabic diagnoses upon Dr. Bear and Dr. MacArthur read their faces.

Peters, Hoffbein, and Paton missed the discussion. They were funereal, self-righteous and pious, respectively.

A nurse was dead. They had gone on record opposing placing her in the position where she might be murdered. Dr. MacArthur had sacrificed her to save Cub Sterling’s reputation.

At half-past six when Dr. MacArthur had notified Dr. Peters, Dr. Peters had telephoned Dr. Paton right away and intoned “The sort of thing that purifies a man,” and after that their conversation had been long, gossipy ... and horrified. Princeton had been propped against his pillows, his feet glued to a white rubber hot water bottle and a deep purple corded silk dressing gown thrown over his still firm shoulders.

His wife was abroad with Mrs. Paton.

Prissy, whose telephone was as much a part of his bedtime equipment as his nightshirt, had lain perfectly flat upon his bed and with their decisions his “seven months gone” bay-window rose and fell. Cushioned upon what had once been his chest was a French telephone.

Their first decision had been to tell MacArthur “right out” that they had to have a private meeting without either of the Sterlings present, and decide something.

As Prissy’s upper teeth and Princeton’s lower ones were removed for the night, their vehemence had seemed awfully mushy to the telephone operator when she cut in for Paton’s resident.

But when the discourse was resumed Princeton had said:

“I shell inten’ to shay, at the meetin’ we are demandin’, Paton.”

Prissy’s front had given a proud heave.

“That we cannot have our poshishun jepodized any longer. Action” ... the bay-window rose ... “must be taken immediately. The powice—”

Five minutes had been lost over that word. Neither of them could persuade the telephone to accept it.

“The law to intervene,” Princeton finally substituted.

“I agwee entirely, Peshurs. I’ll stan’ behin’ you, straight through.”

Prissy’s offer even in the noontide sun would have come in a high treble and over the telephone and under the circumstances it didn’t sound very convincing.

However, after they had both bathed, both felt her death had purified them, both inserted their teeth, both had called MacArthur and requested a meeting minus the Sterlings.