Читать книгу Drink We Deep - Arthur Leo Zagat - Страница 8
IV
ОглавлениеDr. Courtney Stone’s account, continued:
I confess that for a brief moment I was jolted out of the scientific attitude and almost believed that lying before me was a revenant, somehow returned to life after being nine months dead. Then I saw that what I had taken for a scar was merely a groove across the tramp’s neck. To continue the simile I have used before, if the fellow had been sculptured from putty the awkward artist might have used Elijah Fenton as a model and attempted to reproduce the result of his operation along with the rest.
It was coincidence pure and simple, of course. If the investigators of so-called psychic phenomena would remember the frequency of such accidental duplications they would not make such fools of themselves.
Nevertheless I was grateful for the interruption of Miss Horne’s steady, “Mr. Lambert’s wound is still seeping and I’m ready for you. Would you want to take care of him first?”
“Perhaps I’d better. He can’t stand the loss of much more blood.” She was waiting for me with operating gown and sterile gloves as I turned. “Think you can take an X-ray of this fellow’s chest without help?” Artery clamps, sterile sponges, catgut-threaded needles, were laid out on a towel-covered instrument stand next to the examining table. “I’ll have to see what’s inside him before I can do anything.”
“Of course.” There was no hesitation in her reply. “I’ll wheel in the portable machine and have the picture ready for you by the time you’re through with Mr. Lambert.”
The artery wall was cleanly cut, the tissue firm, holding the suture without tearing.
The care with which Hugh Lambert always kept himself in condition paid him dividends now. Sewing him up, I heard the rumble of the portable X-ray machine behind me, the click-click of the exposure and, as I finished, Nurse Horne was beside me, handing me the bandage and tape I required.
“The plate’s in the developing bath, doctor,” she said. “Are you going to give Mr. Lambert a shot of tetanus antitoxin?”
I felt Hugh’s pulse again. It was dangerously feeble. “No. I don’t think he could take it without the shock putting him out. He seems pretty weak. Get me a blood-count on him. On the tramp, too, while you’re about it. I’ll get to the darkroom meanwhile and take a squint at the Roentgenograph.”
I lifted the film out of the hypo, washed it, adjusted it against the ground glass of the viewing frame and switched on the light behind.
The outline of the torso was clearly visible. I made out the bony structurem the fractured costal cage and the vertebral column, traces of musculature and circulatory system. But that was all. Where the shadowy outlines of the soft organs—the heart and lungs and the membranous sacs enveloping them—should be, there was only a dark, amorphous blur!
If that plate was to be believed, my patient was nothing but a bag of skin and flesh stiffened by an amateurishly articulated skeleton and stuffed with something like a thick jelly. But the picture lied, of course. We’d have to take another.
A second later the glare of the surgery blinded me as I stepped out into it. Then I saw Edith Horne emerging from the laboratory. Her lips were colorless. “Doctor Stone! Hugh’s—Mr. Lambert’s count is under two million.”
“Phew!” I whistled. “That’s bad. I’ll look up the list of professional donors while you type his blood.”
“I’ve already done that. And—and it doesn’t fit into any of the four groups. Its serum agglutinates the corpuscles of Type Four, and none of the standard sera agglutinates it.”
“You must have made a mistake. If you were right about that, Lambert’s would be the only case of that kind ever found.”
“Not the only case,” she said. I was disturbed by the husky quaver that had crept into her tones. The atmosphere of the camp seemed to have badly impaired her professional impersonality. “The other sample, that from the tramp, reacts the same way. I’ve cross-typed the two bloods too, and they match.”
“There’s your answer,” I pointed out. “You must have made the same mistake with both. I’ll soon find out.”
But what I found out when I repeated the simple technique in the laboratory was that she had made no mistake. Only a scientist will understand the elation I felt as I racked the four test tubes that confirmed her report. In my mind I was already drafting the paper I would write for The Journal of the Medical Association....
Then I realized that the result of the tests I had just made was a virtual sentence of death on my friend. Being the sole possessor on earth, as far as science knew, of this unheard-of blood type doomed him assuredly as a noose around his neck. If he did not receive transfusion within a half hour at the outside there was no chance to save him, and there was no possibility of finding a donor for him.
There was one. There was, by a weird, impossible coincidence—a sheer, lunatic fluke, the tramp. How badly injured he was, I did not know, but there was no doubt in my mind that any drain on his vitality would lessen his chances of recovery to the vanishing point.
No. That was out. Every principle of medical ethics forbade my taking the chance of tapping his veins. Every principle of the law, too. If he died under the operation I would be guilty of murder.
Back in the surgery, Edith Horne lifted from Hugh’s recumbent form. “Low,” she whispered. Her face was drawn, the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her pert nose vivid against a white pallor. The eyes she raised questioningly to mine were no longer a golden brown but dark with distress. She was far different, in that moment, from a nurse to whom the conflict against disease and death is a matter of emotionless routine.
“You were correct,” I told her. “It will be impossible to find anyone whose blood will match Hugh Lambert’s.”
Her hands closed, slowly, on the edge of the table. She said tonelessly, “The tramp.”
I shook my head. “No. I have no right to choose between them.”
“Right!” The corners of her mouth twitched in a smile more bitter than tears. “Have you a right to do otherwise? Look at them.”
My gaze went from Lambert, clean-limbed, strong-jawed, to the miserable derelict on the couch.
“Think what they mean to the world. And then tell me have you no right to make a choice.”
The one is a sodden hulk, I thought, useless to humanity and to himself. The other has already brought back from civilization’s frontiers outstanding contributions to science, will accomplish far more—if he lives.
My eyes came back to hers and read there a fierce challenge to be for once a man and not a scientific machine. “The Medical Board,” I temporized, weakly. “The law. If the tramp dies....”
“If he dies, only the two of us will know why.”
I made my decision. Not in words, but in an almost involuntary gesture of assent. Only afterward did it occur to me to wonder why the tramp had said not a word through all this, and by that time I had something far more amazing to wonder about.
Edith Horne gave me no time for a change of heart. In almost less time than it takes to write it, she had the Unger transfusion apparatus set up between the table and the couch, had laid out antiseptic and hemostats and ligatures, had handed me a scalpel and was waiting for me to begin.
I did, God help me!
I shall not go into details. Medical men know the procedure, others will not be interested. Suffice it to say that I connected the tramp’s artery to Hugh Lambert’s vein and permitted the blood of one to flow into the other.
I saw the ruddiness of health again tincture Hugh’s cheeks. Edith watched him with an intentness that excluded all else. I turned, then, to check on the tramp’s condition.
My jaw dropped. My hands shook on the stopcocks I was so carefully manipulating. Ice molded my body, tightening it.
The tramp was shrinking! Visibly and with increasing rapidity he was growing smaller! Every part of him was diminishing, at once and in proportion, as if he were a motion picture image from which the camera was being withdrawn at express speed. As if he were a pricked balloon out of which the gas was rapidly emptying.
He was the size of a child, then of a doll, and in no time at all, of one of those bangles that women wear on their wrists. ... He was gone! The tube that had ended in his arm dangled loosely in mid-air.
The table on which he had lain was empty. Absolutely, impossibly empty!
I swear by Hippocrates, of whom I am a humble follower, that I saw that man shrink and vanish, there before me, and leave no trace whatever, that he had ever existed....
| Affidavit of Edith Horne, R.N. | ||
| State of New York | : | |
| County of Albany | : | ss |
| City of Albany | : |
Edith Horne, being duly sworn, deposes and says:
I have read the account of Dr. Courtney Stone as to the events occurring at his home at about midnight on the morning of August 16, 1934, and aver that as to such matters that I could have seen or heard the said statement is true.
I did not actually see the disappearance of the man we called the tramp. My attention was wholly concentrated on watching the condition of the patient, Hugh Lambert, to whom the said tramp’s blood was being transfused, but I affirm that said tramp was on the operating table in the surgery when the transfusion started, and that when I looked up at a sort of strangled cry from Dr. Stone, he was no longer either there or anywhere else in the room. I further depose that I was in such a position that even if the tramp had been in condition to move he could not have gone out through the door into the entrance hall without pushing me aside, and that the only other exit from the room is through Dr. Stone’s office, which was locked.
There is no question in my mind that the said tramp actually vanished in the manner described by Dr. Stone.
In witness whereof I set hereunto my hand and seal this 5th day of December, 1934.
(Signed) Edith Horne, R.N.
(Editor’s Note: To save space, the jurat, or notary’s statement of the administration of this oath, has been omitted from this and succeeding affidavits. The originals, however, are on file at my office and may be examined there by any one presenting credentials from a recognized scientific society. A. L. Z.)
Dr. Courtney Stone’s account, resumed:
I must automatically have shut off the stopcocks of the transfusion apparatus, for that is how they were when I was recalled to myself by Nurse Horne’s startled demand, “Where is the tramp? What’s become of him?”
I didn’t reply. What could I have said if I had tried to? I sought sanity in ligating Hugh’s vein, in suturing the wound I had made. Edith helped me.
By the time the task was completed I had got more nearly back to normal. “He must have managed somehow to get off the table while I was watching the gauges,” I said. “He must be somewhere around. We’ll look for him.”
We did, in the laboratory, in the X-ray dark room. Even in my office, though the door to that was locked. It was impossible for the tramp to have gotten in there, but not as impossible as the other thing I thought I had seen. We didn’t find him.
Edith turned to me finally, her face inscrutable, and said, “Well, that solves our problem, doesn’t it?”
“How about Jethro Parker and Miss Doring? They will be asking for the tramp.”
“That’s easy. He wasn’t as badly hurt as he seemed, refused treatment and went away. He refused even to give his name and there is no way to trace him. And that’s what we’ll tell Hugh Lambert, too. We won’t even tell him about the transfusion. Glass cut his arm as well as his leg, and in the excitement he didn’t notice it.”
There was everything in favor of the course she proposed, nothing against it. We returned to the surgery and I examined Hugh.
“He’s coming back strong. We’ll fix up a bed for him in my study and he’ll be good as new in ten days or so, with proper nursing.”
“You can be sure I’ll give him that. I—”
“No, Edith. Your job is back at the camp. There are half a hundred kids there to be watched over and I wanted you there because I wouldn’t trust them to any of the other available nurses. I’ll have the Registry send someone over for Hugh.”
“That won’t be necessary, doctor.” The opening door admitted Miss Doring. “I was pacing the hall,” she explained, “and couldn’t help overhearing you. I’m coming to stay here, and take care of Hugh.”
“Very commendable, my dear,” I met her proposal. “I’m sure you’re anxious to do something for him. There really will not be anything to do requiring training, but helping at the dressing of wounds such as his requires courage from one who is not used to the sight of blood. I can’t have you fainting just when I need you.”
“You wouldn’t be afraid of that, doctor,” it was Edith who replied, “if you had seen Miss Doring grasping Hugh’s leg to stop that artery. She saved him, when she couldn’t have been sure that she was not herself badly hurt or so badly cut that her career was ended.”
“I wasn’t doing him much good. It was the bandage you put on that really saved him. I—”
“Wait a minute, you two,” I growled. “Stop throwing bouquets at each other, and let’s get this matter settled. I’ll take you as Hugh’s practical nurse on Miss Horne’s say-so, but aren’t you being somewhat impulsive? It seems to me I read somewhere that you were flying back to Hollywood to start a new picture at once.”
“Hang the picture!” Despite her earnestness there was a twinkle of elfin mischief in Ann Doring’s eyes. “Let Ratskoff do a little worrying about me for once.”
And that ended the discussion. I forebore to ask Mrs. Small what she thought on her return to find that she was being called upon to chaperon a glamorous motion picture actress, but I confess I found myself hurrying through my day’s work to get home a half-hour earlier. Somehow my bachelor domicile had taken on a new allure.
But it was not to last long. Hugh gained strength rapidly, and the third day after these events insisted on being taken back to camp to finish his convalescence there. Ann Doring went with him.
