Читать книгу The Secret of Dr. Kildare - Max Brand - Страница 5

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MARTHA KILDARE wangled it SO that Beatrice Raymond came over to see the box opened when Stephen Kildare brought it home before lunch. Mrs. Kildare knew that Jimmy and Beatrice, without the slightest malice on either side, had turned their lives away from one another, and she was perfectly convinced that eventually she would be able to arrange a match between them; in the meantime she did what she could to keep them fresh in one another's memory. Jimmy's note read: "Dear Mother, I'm passing on to you a present given to me by a patient who knows that interns can't take money. Maybe you have room for it somewhere. Anyway, there are things like this going on in town, so why don't you come to look at them and let me see you at the same time?" That was all the note said.

"You see," said the mother, "he doesn't write letters. He doesn't know how to write letters."

Beatrice Raymond smiled at her. She said: "You don't have to explain him, Aunt Martha. You don't have to apologise either. I was reading in a book about young men the other day, and now I know all about them."

"Do you?" asked Martha Kildare, watching the smile of the girl.

"Yes. The book says that they're only half real."

"What's the other half composed of then?"

"Legend," said Beatrice.

"But what legend, my dear?"

"The legend of what they want to be or think they are."

"Did you read that or discover it for yourself?"

"I may have dreamed it," confessed Beatrice Raymond.

"And what do young girls do about them—supposing the girls care a rap?"

"Young girls are made up of equal parts of patience, stupidity, and hope, aren't they?" asked Beatrice Raymond.

"Well, that's what the poets used to say about them."

"Was it ever true?"

"No, thank God...Look, Beatrice!"

She had worked off the cover from the box and the Fair model sparkled under their eyes.

"Stephen!" called the doctor's wife. "Oh, Stephen! Come here!"

She hurried into the front room which had once been changed from a New England parlour sanctum into an office for young James Kildare before the old people knew how far away ambition was driving their son. Once altered, they never had been able to bring it back to the old semblance. They could not take down the diplomas from the wall or displace the big mahogany desk, and yet every memento of Jimmy gave them a sadder assurance that he never would come back to them again. They had glimpses from time to time, but his devotion was like that of a novice to some great and ascetic religious order. They felt about him equal parts of pride and grief.

Old Doctor Kildare was found by his wife studying a letter which he crunched almost guiltily in his hand and then tossed into the fire. It glanced back from an iron firedog and rolled on to the hearth again.

"Come see what Jimmy has sent me," she called to him, but when he came hurrying out she lingered for a moment to pick up that soiled and crumpled letter from the floor; but she did not open it until her husband had left the house to answer a patient's call. Then she took Beatrice Raymond into her confidence and smoothed the typewritten sheet of paper face down on the table.

"There's something in this that hurt the doctor," she said, "and he's trying to hide it from me. Beatrice, do you think it's wrong for me to look into it?"

"If I were you I wouldn't dare," said Beatrice. "But then, I'm not you."

Attacked in this unexpected manner by conscience, Mrs. Kildare looked down to the floor and tried to find a ready way out.

"There was such a look about him, Beatrice," she explained. "You take a glance at it, dear, and tell me if there's anything I need to know about poor Steve."

"We'll look together," said Beatrice. "That'll give him two people to blame." She turned the letter face up.

"It's from Doctor Carboys!" whispered Mrs. Kildare. "What has Steve been doing with that terrible man."

"But isn't Doctor Carboys a very fine physician?"

"He's one of those good men who never have anything but bad news...I can't make it out. You read it aloud, Beatrice."

So she read:

"Dear Steve, I have the complete laboratory reports now on the blood, urine, and nonprotein nitrogen. These are all within normal limits, I'm very glad to say. The electrocardiogram and the X-ray plate of the chest are not quite so favourable, however. I am sending them over to your office tomorrow.

"I have to consider your symptoms after eating, of a marked sense of fullness in the upper abdomen together with enduring substernal pain, some constriction about the chest, radiating pains down the inner side of the left arm, shortness of breath and an impending sense of death. In addition, as you know, in recent years you have had signs of renal changes, your heart has become somewhat enlarged to the left, and you become more and more easily fatigued.

"In considering these things, I must remember that you are not growing any younger and I've tried to take that into consideration, but these are the findings on the heart.

"The ECG report is as follows:

Auricular rate...78

Ventricular rate...78

Rhythm regular

Voltage variable

"QRS excursion greatest in lead 1, upright in lead 1, diphasic in lead 2 and inverted in lead 3. Slight slurring is present. Lead 4 had a relatively small Q. PR interval is .20 seconds. T is upright in leads 1 and 2. ST interval is slightly above the base line in leads 1 and 2.

"The slurring and variable voltage indicates the presence of some myocardial damage, and this, in conjunction with the raised ST interval in leads 1 and 2 and in lead 4, the relatively small Q, probably indicates the presence of coronary changes. The inversion of the QRS complex in leads 2 and 3 indicates the presence of left axis deviation.

"In addition the chest plate shows, together with the enlargement of the heart to the left, elongation of the aortic arch with possible sclerotic plaques visible along the arch of the aorta.

"Now that I've given you the facts, you can interpret them yourself clearly enough. You hardly need to have me say in black and white that I believe you have had a coronary occlusion. You ought to go to bed and stay there for a long time. Bed rest for two or three months is my idea for you, and this should be followed by a complete change of occupation to remove all stress and strain. My dear Steve, it is a terribly unpleasant duty for me to say that you may live ten seconds or ten years, but the chances for the ten years are not so good. Tell me when I may come to see you, and we'll talk over all the details.

"Affectionately yours,

"ARTHUR CARBOYS."

The scientific terminology had kept Beatrice stumbling until she came to the last paragraph, but this was expressed in such layman's language that its meaning was all too clear; her voice lowered as she proceeded with the reading. The thousand wrinkles of pain in the face of Mrs. Kildare made her look down, and she did not look up at once after reaching the signature, and she still was trying to draw words into her mind when she heard the steady, firm voice of Mrs. Kildare saying: "I suppose it's the end."

"What will you do?" asked Beatrice pitifully.

"Everyone manages to get along somehow. If we can't run, we can walk. If we can't walk, we can creep. If we can't creep, we can lie in bed and remember better days. But Jimmy must not know. Not a breath of it must come to him, or he'd throw up his career and come home to help."

"But what else is it right for him to do?" cried Beatrice Raymond. "You can't let him stay on in the city..."

"Why not?" asked the mother fiercely. "We've tried to help him forward. Are we going to hinder him now simply because we've lived too long? I'd rather we both dropped dead—now—this instant!"