Читать книгу Aunt Jane - Jennette Lee - Страница 5

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Aunt Jane was thinking, as she went along the wide corridor to Room 15, that the new patient was not unlike Miss Enderby.

It was an hour since the operation and Aunt Jane had been in to see the patient two or three times; as she had stood looking down at her, the resemblance to Miss Enderby had come to her mind. There was the same inflexible tightening of the lips and the same contracted look of the high, level brows.

A nurse coming down the corridor stopped respectfully.

"Dr. Carmon has finished his visits," she said. "He asks me to say he is in your office—when you are ready."

Aunt Jane nodded absently. She went on to Room 15 and looked in at the door. The patient lay with closed eyes, a half-querulous expression on the high brows, and the corners of her lips sharply drawn. Aunt Jane crossed the floor lightly and bent to listen to the breathing from the tense lips.

The eyes opened slowly. "It's you!" said the woman.

"Comfortable?" asked Aunt Jane. She ran her hand along the querulous forehead and straightened the clothes a little. "You'll feel better pretty soon now."

"Stay with me," said the woman sharply.

Aunt Jane shook her head: "I'll be back by and by. You lie still and be good. That's the way to get well."

She drifted from the room and the woman's eyes closed slowly. Something of the fretted look had left her face.

Aunt Jane stepped out into the wide, sun-lit corridor and moved serenely on. Her tall figure and plump back had a comfortable look as she went.

One of the men in the ward had said that Aunt Jane went on casters; and it was the Irishman in the bed next him who had retorted: "It's wings that you mean—two little wings to the feet of her—or however could she get along, at all, without putting foot to the floor!"

However she managed it, Aunt Jane came and went noiselessly; and when she chose, she could move from one end of the corridor to the other as swiftly as if indeed there had been "two little wings to the feet of her."

She was not hurrying now. She stopped at one or two doors for a glance, gave directions to a nurse who passed with a tray, and went leisurely on to the office.

Over by the window, Dr. Carmon, his gloves in his hand, was standing with his back to the room, waiting.

Aunt Jane glanced at the back and sat down. "Did you want to see me?" she inquired pleasantly.

He wheeled about. "I have been waiting five minutes to see you," he said stiffly.

"The man in Number 20 is coming along first-rate," replied Aunt Jane. "I never saw a better first intention."

The doctor glared at her. His face cleared a little. "He is doing well."

"I want you to put Miss Wildman on the case," he added.

"She's put down to go on at eleven," responded Aunt Jane.

"Humph!" He drew out his note-book and looked at it. "I suppose you knew I'd want her."

"I thought she'd better go on," said Aunt Jane serenely.

"And Miss Canfield needs to go off—for a good rest. I shall need her on Tuesday. There are two cases"—he consulted his notes—"a Mrs. Pelton—she'll go into the ward—after a few days."

"Poor," said Aunt Jane.

"Yes. And Herman G. Medfield——"

"He's not poor," interposed Aunt Jane. "He could give us a new wing for contagion when he gets well."

The doctor scowled a little. Perhaps it was the unconscious "us." Perhaps he was thinking that Herman G. Medfield had scant chance to give the new wing for contagion.... And a sudden sense that a great deal depended on him and that he was very tired had perhaps come over the surgeon.

Aunt Jane touched the bell by her table. "You sit down, Dr. Carmon," she said quietly.

Dr. Carmon picked up his hat. "I have to go," he replied brusquely.

"You sit down," said Aunt Jane.

He seated himself with a half smile. When Aunt Jane chose to make you like what she was doing...!

The white-coated boy who came, took an order for meat broth and sandwiches and returned with them promptly.

"You're tired out," said Aunt Jane, as she arranged the dishes on the swing-leaf to the desk. "Up all night, I suppose?"

"No." The doctor nibbled at a sandwich. Then he broke off a generous piece and swallowed it and drank a little of the hot broth.

She watched him placidly.

He was a short, dark man with a dark mustache that managed, somehow, at once to bristle and to droop. His clothes were shabby and creased with little folds and wrinkles across the ample front, and he sat well forward in his chair to eat the sandwiches.

There was something a little grotesque about him perhaps.

But to Aunt Jane's absent-minded gaze, it may be, there was nothing grotesque in the short, stout figure, eating its sandwiches.... She had seen it too many times roused to fierce struggle, holding death at arm's length and fighting, inch by inch, for a life that was slipping away. To her Dr. Carmon was not so much a man, as a mighty gripping force that did things when you needed him.

"I suppose I was hungry," he said.

He picked up the last crumb of sandwich and smiled at her.

Aunt Jane nodded. "You needed something to eat."

"And some one to tell me to eat it," he replied. And with the words he was gone.

The next minute Aunt Jane, sitting in the office, heard the warning toot of his motor as it turned the corner of the next street and was off for the day's work.