Читать книгу Green Light - Lloyd C. Douglas - Страница 3

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UNCOMMONLY sensitive to her owner's moods—for he had imputed personality to her—Dr. Paige's rakish blue coupé noted at a glance that this was one of those eventful mornings when she would be expected to steer her own course to Parkway Hospital.

The signs of Dr. Paige's preoccupation were unmistakable. Sylvia, who usually plunged through the street door of the Hermitage Apartments wagging her tawny tail from a hinge located in the lumbar region, was following her broad-shouldered master with an air of gravity absurdly appropriate to the serious concern of his flexed jaw and faraway eyes. Pete, the garage-boy, instead of loitering to tell the young surgeon what kind of day it was, had ambled off without venturing the customary amenities valued at a quarter.

Assured that her entire family was safely aboard, the coupé hummed a subdued monody on her twelve well-organized cylinders, and glided into action. Reckless of Sylvia's precarious dignity on the slippery rumble seat, she illegally swung herself around in the middle of the busy block, narrowly missing a ten-ton removal-van, and earning an impolite salutation from the burly driver of a gasoline tank. Dusting apprehensive fenders for a half-mile on Elm, she nonchalantly scraped the whole arc of the right kerb at the corner of Euclid, made pretence of colour-blindness at One Hundred and Eighty-Sixth, where she knew the cop, grazed a hub-cap at the narrow entrance gate, forced an empty ambulance into the dogwood bushes as she scudded round the big stone building, and demobilized a small convention of smoke-stealing orderlies in the parking-ground at the rear.

Pleased with her undamaged arrival, she belatedly made a great show of professional poise, by rolling to a discreet stop on the crunching gravel between Dr. Armstrong's sand-coloured sedan and the five-year-old roadster of Dr. Lane, who at that moment was noisily tuning up for departure.

Sighting the smart car sliding into the stall beside him, the grey-haired anæsthetist turned off his cyclone and nodded a greeting without enthusiasm.

"Where to?" queried Paige. "We're doing that tuberculous kidney at nine."

"Not till to-morrow," explained Lane discontentedly. "What's the trouble?"

"Oh—Endicott has been detained somehow. Just now 'phoned from Harrisburg or some place. Business conference or something. Back in the morning, or some time. I wish he had given orders for you to go ahead with it."

Paige, still at the wheel, absently lifted an expressive hand, and with a single flick of the fingers acknowledged the compliment and dismissed the suggestion.

"The lady is Dr. Endicott's patient, Lane. Came here especially to have him—and quite properly, too," he added meaningly, almost militantly, after a frosty pause.

"Of course!" agreed Lane, too fervently to be convincing. "I said I wished you were doing this Dexter excision because I dislike these postponements. They're too hard on the patient's morale. Once you've got a case all nerved up for an operation, it's—"

The banal platitude perished of its own stupidity under the unfocused steel-blue stare. Paige wasn't hearing a word; just sitting there glowering at a distant ghost. What was eating him? Lane guessed—and thought he knew.

Silently curious and more than a little perturbed, he watched the athletic young fellow's abstracted movements as he locked the gears, stepped out of his car, chained the whimpering setter to the steering-wheel, and mechanically moved away without another word or a backward glance. It wasn't like Newell Paige to do that.

With narrowed eyes he broodingly followed the tall figure towards the rear entrance, a bit hurt but not offended. He liked young Paige, often wondering why; for, as a passionate social radical, Lane was naturally contemptuous of the well-to-do.

He chuckled a little. Dr. Benjamin Montgomery Booth—specialist in radium, with a degree from Edinburgh, one of Paige's most intimate friends—had just been curtly disposed of with the briefest of nods as they encountered each other in the doorway. Bennie Booth's open-mouthed expression of bewilderment was amusing. Paige was playing no favourites; he evidently had something important on his mind.

Lane's grin changed to a reflective scowl. Drawing a tiny red book from his ticket-pocket, he moistened his thumb and extracted a thin leaf; brought up a small hard package of cheap tobacco, opened it, tilted it, peppered the leaf expertly, tugged the package shut with two fingers and his teeth, rolled a cigarette, ran his tongue along the margin, struck a match, inhaled deeply, all the while reminiscently spinning the reel of Paige's singular relationship to the celebrated Endicott.

It was a dramatic story, the first spectacular episode of which had been witnessed by a very small audience. Lane, himself, knew it only from hearsay, for he had been a mere stripling at the tail of a muddy ambulance in France when Jim Paige died, here at Parkway, of a swift pneumonia, following the malignant flu that had mown a broad swath through the hospitals after the manner of a medieval pestilence.

His old friend Sandy McIntyre, long since a lung specialist in Phoenix, had once recited that initial chapter for Lane in a dusty day-coach on the Santa Fe inexpensively en route from Chicago to the Coast.

"I understand Jim's boy is working now at Parkway," McIntyre had remarked in the course of their shop-talk. "Does he still take such good care of his hands?"

"Hadn't noticed," Lane remembered having replied. "Why?"

McIntyre had grinned broadly.

"They used to say that when the kid was thirteen or so he would sit on the fence and watch the rest of 'em play ball. Willing to play tennis, sail a boat, ride a horse, dive from high places, and almost anything else requiring speed, skill, and courage, but he wouldn't play baseball for fear of damaging his fingers. Said he was going to be a surgeon. Took up the violin, not because he wanted to be a musician, but to improve the dexterity of his left hand. They tell me that chap could walk right on to a stage and play the fiddle along with the best of 'em if he wanted to. Newell's a chip off the old block. You should have known Jim."

Sandy had followed with a dreamily reflective monologue. He had been Jim's classmate through their medical training. Knew all about him. He had also known the incomparable Sally Newell.

"As a student," McIntyre had recounted meditatively, "I used to think that Jim was the luckiest chap of my acquaintance. Boy!—he had everything! Plenty of money, and mighty generous with it, too. Handsome as a Greek god. Brilliant student. Born surgeon, if there ever was one. Not quite so audacious as Endicott, who was seven years his senior and already making a name for himself, but in a fair way to be as competent when he had had the experience.

"Never knew anybody as serious as he was about his profession," McIntyre had rumbled on, half to himself. "They ragged him about it a good deal when we were in school. You remember, Lane, the sort of fooling that goes on among cocky young medicals, as if the whole business was full of hanky-panky. Can't blame 'em much; just sensitive, scared youngsters, trying to build up some kind of defence-apparatus against the screams and shocking sights and stupefying stinks of a big hospital. But Jim hated their kidding about it.

"I recall one cruelly hot afternoon when Brute Spangler—best diagnostician we ever had, but hard-boiled as the handles o' hell—was leading a flock of us through the open ward of the women's surgical, he growled at Jim, out of the corner of his mouth, 'Cheer up, Father Paige. We're not doing the stations of the cross.' Jim's heavy black brows drew together into one straight line, and looking down into Spangler's beady little eyes, he said, without a smile, 'No—we're not, unfortunately. Perhaps that's what ails us!'

"And then—there was Sally Newell—"

There had been a long pause at this point in McIntyre's memories. They had made a tedious job of reloading their pipes to account for the delay.

"Paige's wife?" Lane had queried at length, knowing the answer.

"It was an ideal match," declared McIntyre. "Most beautiful girl I ever saw. You may be sure it hadn't required old Oliver Newell's money to make her the exact centre of interest wherever she went."

Lane, who had taken more than a merely inquisitive interest in psychoanalysis, would have liked to ask a few pertinent questions at this point, but had hesitated, knowing that the lean Scot with the prominent pink cheek-bones would have closed up like a clam. McIntyre didn't need anybody to inform him—even by tactful indirection—that the heart is located close to the lungs. There was another long wait while McIntyre fondled the things he had laid away in lavender.

"Nothing in my professional experience," he continued moodily, "ever stirred me more deeply than the wan and weary little face of their boy on the afternoon of Jim's death. Sally had gone out the same way two days before. God—how helpless we were!

"Naturally, we couldn't let the child into his father's room, for the stuff was deadly. His grandmother, Mrs. Newell, waited in the sun-parlour at the end of the hall. The elder Paiges were still on their way in from California. This boy haunted the corridor for hours, his dry, bloodshot eyes fastened on the door. Every time anyone came out, there he was, eager for news and wanting to come in. I'm afraid we weren't very attentive to his questions or his grief. We had all been too worn down to be considerate.

"That was the only time I ever saw Bruce Endicott stampeded. I always maintained he was the greatest surgeon I ever knew, and I don't expect to have any occasion to change my mind about that. Never met anybody with such complete mastery over a situation.... Well—I drew the sheet up over Jim's cracked lips and swollen cheeks, and followed Endicott out into the hall. There was this boy—Newell. I told the nurse to go and tell Jim's mother-in-law. Endicott took the lad by the hand and we went back to the library. It was unoccupied. Nobody was patronizing the library much during that frantic period.

"'Well, sonny,' began Endicott, closing the door, 'we did everything we knew.'

"The boy swallowed hard, a couple of times, and asked, 'Is my daddy—'

"'Yes,' growled Endicott, as if he were reporting some monstrous injustice, 'he is; but—' he repeated lamely, 'we did everything we knew.'

"I fully expected to see the gallant little fellow cave in, for he was nervously exhausted from worry and loss of sleep. But he had a lot of strong stuff packed away that we didn't know about. He stood there tense, his fists clenched until his thin knuckles showed white, his babyish mouth twisted into a hard knot, looking as if he had just been struck a blow in the face. And then, to our amazement, he piped out in a shrill treble, 'Now I'll have to be a doctor!'

"Endicott took a turn or two, up and down the room, muttering, 'Doctor!... My God!... He wants to be a doctor!' Then he stood for a long time at the window, looking out. After a while, he came back, reached out his hand to the boy as he might have done had they been contemporaries, and controlling a shaky voice, he said, 'Very good, sir. And if I may be of any service to you, I am yours to command.'"

In white duck, Newell Paige emerged from the dressing-room on the top floor, where he found Francis Ogilvie. It was not a surprise. He was always meeting her.

By agreement, arrived at many months earlier, they waived the conventional greetings and restricted their talk to necessary business.

"Dr. Endicott is not to be here to-day," she said crisply.

"I know," Paige replied. "I met Dr. Lane outside. Has Mrs. Dexter been told of the postponement? We were to have had her first."

Miss Ogilvie's cryptic smile was unpleasant.

"I believe not," she said. "The others have been notified, but"—the carefully pencilled brows arched slightly—"I thought you might wish to talk to Mrs. Dexter yourself." There was an inquiring pause which Dr. Paige might make use of, if he desired, for purpose of explanations, denials, or just plain stammering, but he allowed the opportunity to pass. "I understand Mrs. Dexter has become very fond of you," finished Miss Ogilvie.

"Thanks." Paige pushed the button for the elevator.

A bit of a problem—this competent, bronze-haired, physically opulent, chief surgical nurse. Once a warm comradeship between them had been in the making, but they had spoiled it for each other beyond any hope of mending.

One stormy afternoon in March, quite exasperated over Paige's wilful inattentiveness to her rather obvious and slightly disconcerting overtures, she had impetuously tossed herself at him, with awkward results. He had been sitting alone in the laboratory for a half-hour, studying an X-ray thoracic which wasn't any too generous with its disclosures. For some minutes she had stood at his elbow looking over his shoulder, before he became aware that she had no errand in the room. Her arm touched his lightly.

"Hello," he drawled, preoccupied. "What's the good news with you, Miss Ogilvie?"

She did not respond to the casual inanity as he had expected, and a meaningful silence had ensued, of such duration that he had put the plate down on the table and turned his head in her direction, looking squarely and at very close range into a pair of questing blue-green eyes. Had the cloudy pleura been as easy to read, Paige need not have been detained in the laboratory for another moment. The girl's full lips were parted, and there was an entreating little smile on her face, so near to his that the freckles, left over from last summer, were clearly defined on her white cheeks.

"I'm lonesome as the devil—if you really want to know," she confided, in a low tone of intimacy, adding presently, "and my name is Frances—I hate 'Miss Ogilvie.'"

Paige hooked the rung of a neighbouring stool with his toe and dragged it nearer. "Sit down, won't you?"

She complied with some reluctance, her half-impatient gesture and audible sigh implying a wish that she were well out of this unhappy situation.

"I like that name," said Paige companionably. "If the hospital regulations encouraged us to have Christian names, it would be easy to call you by yours."

Her face brightened a little and she murmured, "I could say yours, I think."

"For it fits you—exactly," continued Paige hastily. "I don't know very many people who have as good a right to it—Saint Francis, you know," he explained, when it had become apparent she was not following him.

The shapely lips were a little derisive as she replied, "Rubbish! I have no ambition to be a saint. I'm all fed up with everything; silly rules, stuffy discipline, pompous doctors, jealous nurses, and earnest social welfarers.... Tell me something, won't you? Why do you dislike me so? I've got to know!"

"But I don't!" protested Paige sincerely. "Quite to the contrary. I never knew an operating nurse with a more authentic talent for surgery. If I haven't told you so, it's only because I don't bubble over."

"Just once—you did," she muttered, with averted eyes. "Remember the day we did the little Morton boy's osteo sarcoma?"

Paige winced at the recollection. "My word!—that was a tough experience."

"I kept up with you pretty well, you seemed to think, with the forceps and ties. And when it was done, you said—oh, no matter. You've probably forgotten."

"I hope it was something pleasant."

"It sounds awfully silly, but it meant a great deal to me. You looked me straight in the face, for the first and last time, and said, 'You're a good egg!' I had never thought much about being an egg before." They both laughed, nervously, and Paige, vastly in need of a little occupational therapy, sharpened a pencil.

"Yes," he said reminiscently, "that was the worst one I ever saw. The little fellow didn't have one chance in a thousand, did he?"

She sighed, rose, and moved slowly toward the door, hesitating there for a moment.

"Perhaps it would be better all around if I left Parkway, Dr. Paige," she hazarded.

"I don't see the necessity of that." He had risen and stood facing her. "You are needed here," he continued, in a tone of challenge. "My God, woman, aren't you big enough to understand that our profession is more important than our personal desires, and gets the right of way over everything—over everything, I tell you! Stay—and play the game!"

She studied the floor, tugging at her lip with agitated fingers.

"You saw my cards," she said morosely. "It isn't fair."

"Nonsense!" scoffed Paige. "I wasn't looking. I don't even know what suit was trump.... Look here—you've been working too hard, and the whole business has got on your nerves. I'll tell Dr. Endicott you need a week in the country."

"Thanks," she said listlessly. "There's no need of that. And—I'll stay—if you're sure you want me to."

Paige smiled his satisfaction. "You're a credit to the hospital," he declared warmly. "It's the proper spirit. I knew you had it."

"And may I still be—an egg?" she queried, with a brave attempt to be playful.

"An uncommonly good one!" He offered her his hand.

When she got to her room that night, Frances Ogilvie found three dozen long-stemmed American Beauty roses bearing Paige's card. It was a mistake, as he discovered next day. If, he reflected afterward, he had wanted to send her some token of his regard for her excellent sportsmanship in a trying position, he should have given her a new clinical thermometer in a gold case, or The Life of Osier, or a dated, candled, de luxe egg. Miss Ogilvie was, as Paige had conceded, an exceptionally able operating nurse, but—long before that—she was a woman. She would make a courageous effort to play the game, but she couldn't abandon her belief that hearts were trumps. So the roses, which had been intended to symbolize their friendship on a safer footing, had not cleared the air at all. Newell Paige came to dread the necessity for working in the laboratory, where he was almost sure to be brought to bay. Keenly interested in bacteriology, he had enjoyed nothing better than microscopical research, but no sooner would he be lost in his scientific problem than Frances would saunter in to bend over his shoulder, ruthlessly reckless as she pressed closely against him. He was for ever bumping into her in the corridors. She was at his heels until the whole place buzzed merrily. At length he had been obliged to be almost surly with her, to shut off the insufferable smiles and winks.

"Very well," she agreed tartly. "Strictly business, then, from now on. You wouldn't know how to be kind, anyhow—except possibly to your dog."

Confused and defenceless, Paige had replied, absurdly, "Well—Sylvia is a good dog."

Mrs. Lawrence Dexter's day nurse, Bunny Mather, obediently but unrewardedly studied Dr. Paige's face as he entered the room.

Bunny had been given a difficult assignment. It had been suggested to her that she should try to discover the nature of Dr. Paige's peculiar interest in her wealthy and prominent patient. She had so much wanted to please Miss Ogilvie, whom she admired to the extent of attempted imitation. Miss Ogilvie's fleeting smile, executed with half-closed eyes and a whimsical little pout, had cost Bunny several long sessions of private smirkings before her diminutive mirror in the nurses' home.

Unfortunately there had been almost nothing to report so far. Dr. Paige had been visiting Mrs. Dexter at least twice daily ever since her arrival for observation two weeks ago. She was not his patient. Dr. Endicott had brought him in, that first day, to present him.

"I want you to become acquainted with my associate, Dr. Newell Paige, Mrs. Dexter," he had said breezily. "You two should know each other. It is no secret, Mrs. Dexter," he had added, "that Dr. Paige is in the running to be the chief of staff here when the old fellow retires to the Lido or Waikiki Beach."

The acquaintance ripened quickly into an unusual comradeship. Sometimes Dr. Paige stayed with Mrs. Dexter for an hour or more. As her disability was neither painful nor fatiguing, there was no reason why she should not receive callers if she desired. No one of her family was in town. Her husband, an investment broker in a huge Mid-Western city, would come if an operation were decided on. A daughter, Grace, at home with her father, would accompany him. There was another daughter, Phyllis, in Europe for the summer with a party of Vassar classmates. The trip was Phyllis's Commencement gift.

So little had Bunny learned about her interesting patient who, contrary to custom, had been disinclined to discuss her private affairs with her nurse. As for the sudden friendship which had developed between her and the young surgeon, Bunny was regretfully unable to enlighten Miss Ogilvie. No—she hadn't the faintest idea what they talked about, for she was always promptly excused from attendance while these conversations were in progress.

"I mean," she had explained, under heavy pressure, "they never have said anything while I was in the room—not anything that really meant anything, if you know what I mean. They have both travelled; maybe they talk about that. Once I heard her saying something about a ship."

"One they had sailed on?" pursued Miss Ogilvie, alert. "Perhaps they knew each other before. Maybe she came here for that reason."

"I don't think so. She quoted something that a dean had said to her about a ship."

"Dean of a college?"

"I don't know. She was talking in a very low tone. I couldn't hear very well."

"Did Dr. Paige make any reply?"

"Yes—he said he didn't believe it."

"And then they laughed, I suppose."

"No."

"It wasn't just a little joke, then?"

"No—they were pretty serious."

"But—how do they look at each other?" Miss Ogilvie had persisted, after a thoughtful interval. "You know what I mean—as if they had something between them?"

"M-maybe," Bunny had ventured uncertainly. "I'll try to notice from now on, Miss Ogilvie—honest I will—but"—she added, truthfully—"I don't think I'm going to be very good at it."

"Was she nettled," inquired Miss Ogilvie, unwilling to leave a stone unturned, "when Dr. Paige said he didn't believe whatever it was about the ship?"

"No," Bunny had replied. She patted Dr. Paige's hand, and said, "I hope it doesn't cost you too much."

"Well—in God's name—what on earth does that mean, Mather?"

"I'm sure I don't know, Miss Ogilvie. You asked me what I heard them say, and I've tried to tell you."

Anyone should have known at a glance that Bunny Mather was not fitted, by nature, for sleuthing. Life had not been very complicated for Bunny. She had no talent for dramatizing the small episodes which sporadically punctuated her routine. An inordinate appetite for candy, cream, and other fattening refreshments had earned her the cherubic rolypolyness of a Delia Robbia medallion. She was not built for the sinister task of crouching at keyholes. Her wide-open, slightly protuberant, birds-egg-blue eyes lent to her round face an expression of ineffable guilelessness. This ocular phenomenon was due to an incipient exophthalmic goitre, but the fact remained that Bunny was almost, if not quite, as naïve and artless as she looked.

To-day she was resolved to stay in the room with them until definitely and firmly invited to leave. No mere hint or inquiring glance in her direction would be sufficient to dislodge her. She had just learned that Mrs. Dexter's operation had been put off until to-morrow. After that, there might be a week or more when conversation would be impossible.

One thing seemed sure: it was not a flirtation. Mrs. Dexter was nearly old enough to have been Dr. Paige's mother. And she certainly wasn't the sort to initiate or encourage a gusty little romance for the sake of passing the time.

Dr. Paige always had the manner of a person coming in for advice on some important problem. He was very serious. He never entered with the capable condescension of the physician making his rounds, carolling, "And how do we find ourselves this morning?" Bunny had thought of saying to Miss Ogilvie that Dr. Paige acted as if he were going to school to Mrs. Dexter, but had decided against that because it sounded too silly. She didn't care to risk hearing Miss Ogilvie say, as she had once said to her in reply to a remark, "Don't be an ass, Mather!"

Bunny busied her fat fingers rearranging the books and bottles on the table, glancing up frequently to note Dr. Paige's expression and movements. He stood for some moments at the foot of the bed, toying with his platinum watch-chain. Then he slowly nodded his head, and smiled; not a greeting, but an affirmative.

Quickly shifting her search to Mrs. Dexter's face, Bunny tried to interpret it, but realized that she had arrived the fraction of a second too late. Mrs. Dexter's sensitive lips were parted as if she had just asked an inarticulate question with them—some single-word query that might have been expressed with the lips only. If so—they had a very good understanding between them, these two.

And that would be natural, reflected Bunny, for they were very much alike. They were thoroughbreds. You could always tell. People didn't get to be like that by personal effort or education. If you had it, it was because you were born with it, and nobody could take it from you. You had it whether you were rich or poor, sick or well, happy or wretched. All the money in the world couldn't buy even a cheap imitation of it. Bunny knew very well she didn't have it. She knew Miss Ogilvie didn't have it.

Mrs. Dexter had the eyes of a thoroughbred; steady greyish-blue eyes that never widened suddenly in surprise or alarm or curiosity; serene eyes that never gave her thoughts away. There was one little snow-white curl slightly to the left of the parting on the low forehead, definitely outlined from the environing burnished gold. The white lock was not a disfigurement but a distinction. One suspected that in Mrs. Dexter's youth her Titian hair had been of a brighter yellow. There were deep dimples in her cheeks. Her hands were long and slender, and she could say things with them. Dr. Paige had the same slow-moving eyes and the same speaking hands. He had taken one of Mrs. Dexter's expressive hands in both of his and had seated himself at her bedside. These people were somehow related, Bunny felt.

He said something to her in an undertone, and she replied, with a smile, "What does it matter?—to-day, to-morrow, the day after. Don't be troubled about this little delay. I shall not be fretting. No, no—it isn't a pose, I assure you. I am quite in earnest. It doesn't matter in the least and I'm content."

"You are a very fortunate woman," responded Dr. Paige. "Last night I was thinking over some of the things you had said, and it occurred to me that if somehow it could be reduced to simple terms and communicated, it would practically revolutionize the whole problem of human happiness. But I doubt whether it could ever be made elementary enough for the ordinary intellect. I admit it's too much for mine. I think I get spasmodic little tugs of it—and then it is gone. One would have to be something of a mystic, I presume."

"No." Mrs. Dexter's negative was accompanied by a slow shake of her head on the pillow. "No—it isn't a matter of mental capacity or even of temperament. The trouble is that the average individual leaves most of his tasks unfinished, his mental tasks in particular. The world is fairly crowded with truncated minds belonging to people who learned the scales up to three flats and two sharps. If the tune they are interested in happens to be written in any higher signature, they have either to transpose it into one of the keys they have learned or give it up. Most people try to get along with a vocabulary of about six hundred words. This enables them to understand what is going on in the kitchen, the shop, and on the street. Any idea that can't be translated into kitchen-lore or shop-lore or street-lore is dismissed."

"Did Dean Harcourt ever try to put this into print?"

"No—nor has he more than hinted at it in public addresses. He does it all by the case-method. People in trouble come to him and he tells them. It's really amazing what happens to them. Why—I've known instances—"

"You may run along now and have a bit of relaxation, Miss Mather," Mrs. Dexter interrupted herself to say, without detaching her eyes from Dr. Paige's face.

Bunny still lingered, tinkering with the magazines and vases, consumed with curiosity to hear what was coming next.

"That will be all for the present," said Dr. Paige, with finality. "We will ring when you are needed."

Bunny slowly and reluctantly walked to the door, opened it, and softly closed it behind her.