Читать книгу Magnificent Obsession - Lloyd C. Douglas - Страница 9

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SLOWLY and carefully—for he was still limp from his battle with pneumonia, resultant from the prolonged use of a lung-motor in the inexperienced hands of excited people—two nurses had trundled young Merrick up to the well-appointed solarium.

"It won't hurt him a bit," Doctor Watson had said, "and there is at least the suspicion of a breeze upstairs."

Parking his chair in an alcove somewhat sequestered from the general assembly of convalescents, most of them white-turbaned like himself, his uncommunicative attendants had pattered quickly away as if relieved to be off to more pleasant undertakings.

Their scamper added to his perplexity. Yesterday he had tried to explain the prevailing taciturnity of the people who waited on him: it was the weather. The muggy, mid-August humidity accounted for it. If doctors were brief and brusque, nurses crisp and remote, it was because the patients were fretful...everybody out of sorts...naturally.

But, even so, something more serious than a low barometer ailed this hospital. Its moodiness was too thick to be interpreted by a murky yellow sky, the abominable rasp of cicadas in the dusty maples, or the enervating heat. Brightwood was in trouble; nor could Bobby shake off the feeling that he, himself, was somehow at the bottom of it; else why this conspiracy of mute glumness in their attitude toward him? My God!...He might as well have been some penniless bum, fished out of the gutter, and patched up for sheer humanity's sake...Didn't they know who he was?...Why, his grandfather could buy up the whole works and never miss it!

It wasn't that they'd neglected him, he was bound to admit. Somebody had been always hovering over him...God!...What a ghastly experience he had been through!...That fog...drifting in greyish-white, balloon-like billows across the road—impenetrable, acrid, suffocating—a damp, chilling, clinging cloud that pressed painfully against his chest, swathed his arms, clogged his feet...That trip back from Elsewhere!...Would he ever live long enough to forget? It made him shudder to remember it!...That unutterable fatigue!

Sometimes it had been more than he could bear. After he had plodded, staggering, groping his way for a few shaky steps, the Thing would rush him, with a roar like heavy surf, and hurl him incredible distances back toward oblivion. Then the violence of the storm would subside, followed by an ominous silence...Was he really dead, this time?...Suddenly, the Thing would swoop him up again and pitch him deeper into the stifling fog...

After years and years of that—he had grown old and stiff and sore with his hopeless struggle—the situation had begun to clear. Now and again there were ragged rents in the fabric of the fog through which certain landmarks might be fleetingly recognized, as steeples and spires come up, faintly, on an acid-touched plate. These hazy perceptions were, at first, exclusively olfactory. He had read, somewhere, that the nose was more integrally a part of the brain than the other sense organs. Perhaps the smelling faculty (he had taken more than a casual interest in physiology) was the oldest of all the perceptive organs; earliest to evolve. But no; that would be feeling...feeling first, then smelling...It had amazed and amused him that part of his mind seemed to be trudging alongside, analyzing the predicament of the rest of his mind, wading through the fog.

Now there had come a much wider gap in the drifting cloud, and through it breezed a combination of identifiable odours; strong scents crushed hard against his face; smell of good wool, and, buried in the wool, iodoform, cigarette smoke, chlorides of this-that-and-the-other, anæsthetics, antiseptics, laboratory smells, hospital smells.

A weight shifted about on his chest. It was warm. It throbbed. It pressed firmly, rested briefly, moved a little space, paused again, listened; went back to spots it had visited before; listened, more intently.

Then the weight had lifted and the medley of smells vanished. Through the next rift in the fog, voices were speaking from a vast distance; one of them calm, assured; the other bitter, unfriendly...That had been the beginning of his perplexity...

"I believe he's going to pull through!"

"Doubtless—and it's a damned shame!"

After that, there had been a complicated jumble of voices—one of them a woman's—before the fog closed in on him again. Occasionally, the cloud would tear apart, and he would take up his load...he seemed to be carrying some enormous weight...and plod on woodenly. He would have yawned, but deep breathing had gone out. They weren't doing it any more...quite too painful. One breathed in short, dry, hot gasps...glad to have them at the price...Tom Masterson had confirmed that fact...Tom—doubtless this was part of his delirium—Tom had sat by the bed; and, queried about the new style of breathing, remarked, "That's the way we're all doing it...Not nearly so good as the old way, of course, but better than none."

Another smothering billow of fog had engulfed him; but the Thing wasn't in it. He didn't mind now, so long as the Thing was gone.

He opened his eyes and glimpsed a square of blue sky through a real window. The curtain fluttered. A motor churned in a court somewhere below; gears rasped, gravel scrunched. Ice tinkled in a glass, near at hand. A starched nurse, eyes intent on her watch, fumbled for his forearm. The sharp tip of a thermometer dug cruelly into the roots of his tongue. That was what ailed it, then—all this awkward gouging while he had been unconscious.

He had become aware of the steady drone of an electric fan, the metallic whir of a lawn-mower in parched grass; had dully explored his cracked lips with a clumsy tongue; had regarded with apathy the nurse who bent over him; and, after a few hoarse croaks, had contrived to ask where he was. She told him. Sluggishly, he surmised that his presence at Brightwood indicated there was something wrong with his head. There was; it ached abominably, and was bandaged. He felt of it gingerly, and inquired.

"A hard bump. But you are doing very nicely. Drink this, please!"

And then he had slept some more. A dim light was burning when he awoke. Everything was very quiet; so he decided to go to sleep again. Another day came...two or three of them, maybe...he couldn't remember.

A young, red-headed doctor, in a white coat, had appeared and asked some questions of the nurse. He seemed a friendly person...but young. Doctor Hudson was the big man at this place. If there was something the matter with his head, he wanted Hudson.

"I say," he had called, stiffly turning his eyes toward the doctor, "why doesn't Doctor Hudson look in? He knows me. I've been at his house. Does he know I'm here?"

"I'm Doctor Watson, Mr. Merrick. I'm looking after you. Doctor Hudson is not in the city..."

After Doctor Watson had left the room, he had beckoned the nurse to the bedside. Had Miss Hudson called?...No; but that was because he wasn't seeing visitors yet...that is, not many...Yes, his grandfather had been in...and a Mr. Masterson...The accident?...Oh yes, they would tell him all about that, a little later...What he needed now was sleep; lots and lots of it; no worry or excitement...What we wanted now to make us well was sleep...Then we could have visitors, and the visitors would tell us everything we wanted to know...That kind of silly baby-talk!...Hell's bells!

This morning however he had grown impatient. These people were carrying their stupid silence strike too far! Obviously he had been in some sort of a scrape. Very well...It was not the first time. There would be some way to settle it. There always had been. Was he not accustomed to paying for smashed fenders, broken china, splintered furniture, outraged feelings, and interrupted business? If anybody had a grievance, let him make a bill of it, and he would draw a cheque! It wasn't any of this hospital's business, anyway! Or...was it?...What could he have done to their damned hospital?...Run into it?

"Tell me this much, won't you, Miss...?"

"Bates."

"...Miss Bates; just how did I get this whack on my head?...And I won't ask you any more questions."

"There was a mast or something flew around and knocked you off a boat."

"Thanks."

A mast had knocked him off a boat! He grinned; tried to remember. Well—that was that; but how did the hospital get in it?