Chapter IV: Part 4

Still if she was afraid again, it wouldn’t hurt to make believe. Make believe, as she used to do when she first knew Tony and wished she could get sick and nearly die and have pneumonia, and heart trouble and ... and then she smiled to herself at the funny child she had been. If she had ever come down with a combination of any two of the diseases she had desired in trios and quartettes, she would have never recovered ... and the object of those imaginary illnesses had always been to get well and marry Tony!

She was aroused from her reverie by a student nurse saying, “Miss Standish, are you ready to wash? Here’s your basin.”

She looked at her watch and smiled at the child.

“Right on time, aren’t you?”

The girl laughed merrily.

Rose threw her head to one side and inquired, “And supper will be along in a minute?”

“Yes, mam. I’m going to begin bringing it in, right now.”

Rose sat erect and wrung her wash cloth out and ran it over her small face. The water felt good. She wrung it again and laid it behind her ears. That felt good, too. She took a small comb from her hand bag and slid it through her short black hair. Then she wrung the cloth out carefully, folded it as she had been taught to do when a pupil nurse, and brushed her teeth into the basin.

This was nice. It was fun being in bed in a ward of perfectly strange women, rather than in a stuffy infirmary with six or seven nurses talking shop and telling jokes all the time. She looked down the ward at the rows of beds, and the glass partition which separated them from the other fourteen beds; at the place where the partition stopped in the center of the ward to create an aisle and then at the white beds beyond. Through the far windows was a perfectly glorious sunset, and out of her own window just the feathery beginning of new leaves upon an old tree.

She had never seen the ward from this angle. It was really a very pretty sight, when viewed from bed and with nothing to do. Perhaps it was because she had been through so much emotionally today that it looked especially pretty. Things did, after such days.

Or perhaps it was because she wasn’t rushing to get everything in order before the duty changes, rushing to remember this and do that. For once her day was ending with the sun’s setting.

It was a good feeling. She stretched her toes and the covers swelled with her rising breasts. And now in a few minutes supper would be along.

The ward was full of chatter, but she didn’t hear it. A voluptuous relaxation was upon her. In bed. At sunset. Awaiting supper, and watching the ugly faces of old women bloom, with the softening light ... and the new leaves on the tree taking on that clear green which hurt.

“You are the last in line, so I’m a half minute late in bringing it to you,” the student nurse apologized, poising her tray. “Want to sit up?”

“Please, nurse,” Rose responded in a very helpless voice.

The nurse wound up her bed, took away the wash basin and Rose began her supper.

It fitted in exactly with her mood, and seemed, at the moment, much nicer than the meals she had in the nurses’ dining room.

Cream of tomato soup, and batter-bread and liver with bacon and lots of gravy, and lettuce salad with thousand island dressing, and then for dessert stewed pears ... the only stewed fruit she liked. How utterly lucky!

She began “tasting” and discovered that her milk had real cream in it, too. That was sumptuous!

She ate with a dainty grace which captivated Mrs. Witherspoon, who put down her soup bowl from which she had been drinking, and announced “Birdlike! That’s what you are! Set a body wondering soon as I seen you. Lift your fork as refined as a canary does his foot. Pleasure to watch you at your victuals, dearie.”

Rose laughed and blushed simultaneously.

Ward women made you feel so nice, somehow....

At seven Miss Kexter and the student nurse went off duty. They had both come to her and asked if there was anything she specially wanted before they left. But, of course, there wasn’t, and Miss Kexter had said, “Please be alive in the morning, Standish.”

And they had both laughed.

After Miss Kexter had gone Mrs. Witherspoon looked over her spectacles and announced:

“I hearn what she said, dearie. Guess you feel like the clown who was sick and the doc said, ‘See you in the morning,’ and the clown seys, ‘Sure you will, doc, but will I see you?’ Brave, them circus people. An’ loyal, my soul! They are paying for you, ain’t they, Woodsie?”

She turned to the shrivelled woman with the bad heart. The woman’s face outshone the sunset.

“Payin’ my pension like I done for many a trouper before me. Circus folks never let each other down. Never!”

“Who did you travel with?” Rose, who had been “letting her supper down,” a new and delightful experience, turned and asked.

“I done the back somersault in Barnum and Bailey’s up to 1906. Then I fell ... I ain’t ever known how, but the ringmaster seys the horse slipped ... in Minneapolis that August ... and I ain’t ever been right since.”

“You must have had a wonderful sense of balance and courage.” Rose’s voice carried awe.

“If you ain’t got guts you’d better stay outa circuses, and nursing, too, I guess.” The woman’s voice had a note of admiration.

The two student nurses who had the seven to nine duty began preparing the ward for the night. One brought around the bed-pans and tooth-mugs. Mrs. Witherspoon, and the woman who had been a bareback rider, extracted their teeth and placed them in their mugs.

The other nurse came around with the thermometers and started counting pulses.

The conversation ceased.

Rose Standish put forward her wrist for the child to count her pulse. How young this pupil nurse looked. How young and frightened!

She was trying to think of something to say to her when the negroes on the floor above began singing. Through the melody of their voices ... she had been in the accident room so long, she had forgotten about their singing after supper, she lost touch with the student nurse. A high soprano fluted: “Swing lo ... o ... Sweet Char ... ee ... ot.”

And suddenly she knew their plaintive harmony, the admiration of the patients, the sense of work ceasing with the day, had left her tremendously happy and glad to be here. Glad she was part of the Elijah Wilson! And she was part of it! Dr. MacArthur had said:

“We are planning to enlarge the accident room. You are the first person I have told about it. And while you are lying in that bed, I want you to decide what changes you think it would be wise to make. You can be a great help to me, if you will.”

A great help ... and every head nurse in the hospital would give her eyebrows to have him say that to her! As soon as the ward quieted down, she’d have to begin to think about it ... or perhaps it might be best to wait until tomorrow and let the singing of the negroes lull her to sleep.

She wasn’t afraid any more. And anyhow Dr. MacArthur had said, so far as evidence was concerned, she had nothing to be afraid of, except hypodermics, and she would like to see the person who could give her a hypo now! She would like to see two people try to give her....

Down the corridor she caught a glimpse of Dr. Ethridge Sterling, Senior, and Dr. Sterling. Was Dr. Bear shrinking or did he just look so little and chubby because he was walking beside Dr. Cub? They both looked worried; when they entered the ward, they were smiling.

Their arrival created a nervous tension just the same. A sense of dread filled the air. Dr. Sterling began doing his rounds and talking briskly to his father about each patient. But Dr. Bear put his famous hands firmly across his back and looked solid. Rose Standish frowned. He looked just that way when a bad accident came in. Like it hurt him ... all over ... too.

Finally they reached her bed and Dr. Sterling barked, “Good evening, Miss Standish. Want Father to look you over. This condition sometimes comes from effusion and is operative.”

The student nurse hovering in the background ran for the instrument basket, and Dr. Sterling began drawing the bed curtains.

Dr. Bear was already leaning over and looking straight into her eyes with his measuring ones.

“All right?”

Her bloodless lips turned a pinkish red. They accentuated the ivory pallor of her peaked face.

“Perfectly, thank you. But if I get examined many more times, you are bound to find something wrong, somewhere. How are you, sir?”

It was fun to be talking to Dr. Bear this way. He was accepting her as an equal, sort of....

“I’m tired. Did two bad carcinomas this morning. Breasts. Two ruptured appendices, and a gall-bladder, and I’ve a cold.”

“Then why not wait and go over me in the morning, sir?”

“Because I’m the parent of an electric dynamo,” he growled and the nurse and Dr. Sterling, Junior, reappeared.

“What are you waiting for?” Dr. Bear frowned at the pupil nurse.

“To hand you what you want, sir.” she replied woodenly.

“You can’t. What I want is rest. My son will hand me what I need. You go back to the ward.”

The nurse backed out hesitantly. Miss Kerr had said every nurse in the building must permit no doctor to approach any patient without being present all of the time ... but ... but....

Mrs. Witherspoon’s, “Nurse! Tend to me....” and then “Hurry, nurse!” sent the girl running.

Dr. Bear put his stethoscope carefully to his ears and listened to Rose Standish’s chest.

“Do everything you ought to. Don’t make me ask you,” he ordered.

She inflated, deflated, said “A ... A ... A....” held her breath, turned so that he could listen through her back. Repeated it all for Dr. Sterling, Junior, who listened carefully to her heart.

“Mmmmm.”

Dr. Bear winked at her.

“‘Two physicians at the oar will row you to the Stygian shore,’” he quoted.

Miss Standish laughed, and Dr. Cub Sterling gave both of them a harassed stare. They sobered obediently.

The examination was thorough, painstaking and consumed almost half an hour. At its conclusion Dr. Sterling, Junior, said a very clipped, “Thank you, Miss Standish,” and vanished. And Rose knew how deeply grateful he was, really.

His father lingered long enough to say:

“He’ll explode some day. Thank you, my dear. Thank you very much.”

He took her thin little hand in his capable one and growled:

“You are nervous, aren’t you? I’m going to tell Mattus to give you a bromide, if you need it.” And then he squeezed her hand gratefully and uttered, for the edification of the ward, a very professional, “Good night, Miss Standish.”

“Good night, Doctor.”

Her reply was professional, but she put her hand under the cover and squeezed it herself.

Dr. Bear was a darling. It had been sweet the way he had explained Dr. Sterling’s attitude and then thanked her himself.

When this was all over, how many real friends she would have gained. But she mustn’t forget that she was here for a purpose. Perhaps if she took a short nap now, she would be in better trim for the real thing ... if it came....

She turned over and tried to sleep, but the tension on the ward was so overpowering that she thought perhaps if she entered the conversation she might discover ... or maybe she was just imagining things and the thunderstorm which was brewing was causing that feeling.

If only they would all begin to talk of something they were interested in and not to cover up what they were thinking.

There came a lull and she asked Mrs. Witherspoon:

“Do you think the flavor is better when you cook pork with sauerkraut, or without it?”

“Without it!” chimed in the woman with the enormous legs. “I give it to my children since they was babies and I always cooks it thorough ... four to five hours ... and then....”

“You do?” Mrs. Witherspoon laid down her crocheting, inserted her teeth and became emphatic.

“Thet saps all the taste. Mr. Witherspoon likes hisn so ez the pork and kraut is mixed flavored, if you know what I mean. Ain’t it awful leathery, yo’ way?”

“It ain’t the cookin’ time, as I was about to say,” the fat woman drew up her chins, “it’s the _cookin’_ way.”

“I got one of them steamer cookeths. It doz gran’,” lisped the ex-circus woman.

Mrs. Witherspoon gave her a frivolous glance, and replied positively:

“I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout workin’ them new fangled things. But I’ve et from them. Eddie May, Sammy’s wife,” both of her listeners nodded, “the one what come to see me Satd’y has one. And Mr. Witherspoon seys after we went to Sammy’s Easter dinner, ‘Jennie, the only way to cook victuals is to cook ’em with the eye. Baste ’em, and taste ’em, and it’s jes’ like stokin’ an ingine,’ he seys, ‘you got to keep yo’ eye to it.’ If you know what I mean....”

This precipitated a hot argument upon washing machines, with the fat woman as the defendant. So Rose Standish shifted her attention to the clouds. If the women kept up for fifteen minutes more ... and if she knew wards they were good for hours ... the thunderstorm would be here, and they would be quieted down for the night.

She looked at her watch. It was almost nine. Time for the night nurse to be coming along, in just a few minutes. And while she was waiting for her to come and bed the ward down, she might as well begin to think about the accident room.

Those scrub-up basins should be moved across the room and as far away as possible from the door in which the accidents were brought. And then, too, some arrangement should be made to equalize the lighting over the two tables. And also to give the nurse at the instrument table enough light to see what she was handing. And in some of the badly mangled cases, it would quicken things considerably if a passageway was built directly into the elevator corridor, so that they might be hurried up to the operating room.

Then, of course it was a little thing, but awfully important nervously: the girl who took the doctors’ dictation onto the typewriter ought to have a noiseless machine. And it would be terribly hard to convince the Superintendent of Nurses, but she was going to tell Dr. MacArthur that she needed another student nurse on duty there. After a football game or a big race meet when the automobile accidents began to pour in, it was frightful. There was nobody, except the girl at the typewriter who couldn’t stop, whose hands were not all gory and spotted every paper they touched.

She was distracted by a flash of lightning, Mrs. Witherspoon’s, “Lan’ sake, nurse, I’ve wet my bed,” and Miss Kerr’s niece, the night student nurse leaning over her and purring:

“Miss Standish, are you better? Here’s your thermometer.”

Perhaps it was her voice coming so soon after the flash, but there seemed something too saccharin in its tone to Rose Standish. She shivered before she turned to take the extended thermometer.

Of course she knew Miss Kerr’s niece was the night student nurse they were watching, but somehow she didn’t associate the name and the girl. She had never liked this girl when she had been in the accident room. No real heart, and stubborn and cattish ... and then her eyes were too close together....

With barely a fleeting smile, Miss Kerr thrust the thermometer into Miss Standish’s hand and ran to close the windows. It had begun to rain.

While the windows were being closed Bessie Ellis, the child down the ward who had received the toy in the night, began crying in her sleep. She had been disturbed by the lightning, and her moans made the women shivery.

Several of the women called out to her and Mrs. Witherspoon’s lisping (her teeth again removed), “Alwite bavvy, don cwy,” struck Miss Standish as highly amusing. She slipped her thermometer around and laughed. Miss Kerr, the student nurse, flopped down the last window and went to the moaning child.

While she was walking down the ward there came another flash of lightning, a sudden hissing, and the lights went out. It was followed by a panicky silence and then the hysterical laughter of Mrs. Witherspoon.

Rose Standish ducked as if she had been hit, and as she ducked something began choking her about the neck. She spit her thermometer upon the bed and began tugging at the horrible pulling. A thing, like a brick, hit her upon the head as she tried to sit up, and she thought, “it can’t be the murderer, he only uses hypodermics,” and the lights went up, while Mrs. Witherspoon was still laughing, and she saw Miss Kerr standing between their beds, and reaching for her thermometer.

In a moment she understood that the sash of her kimona had become twisted about her neck, and it was the book she had been reading and stuck upon the edge of her pillow which had fallen ... and it was all absurd. All, that is, except the look in Miss Kerr’s eyes.

The surprised look, when she saw Miss Standish was still alive! Her tongue was so dry she couldn’t speak and a horrible nausea began rising within her, but Mrs. Witherspoon drew the girl’s evil eyes when she demanded that her bed be fixed _now_.

Miss Kerr went for the sheets and Miss Standish lay down and turned her face toward the window and tried to forget it all. She placed one of her thin hands at the base of her brain and began massaging her neck. This was no way to do. Get frightened at a little thing like a book hitting you. A person who lost her nerve over such things wasn’t fit to look for mice in a dark pantry let alone clear the reputation of Dr. Cub Sterling and solve the terror of the Elijah Wilson. Forget it all for a few minutes and remember the routine a student nurse should be following, now.

Of course the changing of Mrs. Witherspoon’s bed was throwing everything slightly behind time, but that should be finished in a minute, and she turned over to watch the girl make the bed. Her technique was excellent and she was a swift worker. Seemed sure of herself.

Even from the back, Rose knew she didn’t like her. And never would. Miss Kerr turned to finish the pulses. Then she began taking the flowers out of the ward for the night. She took the pink roses which the clowns had sent to the circus woman, and the nasturtiums the children had brought the fat woman, and Mrs. Witherspoon’s tube rose ... thank goodness ... and then she came back and gave out the final round of bed-pans, the final glasses of water, and went for her medicine tray.

The little girl had gone back to sleep, but down the ward a gray old woman, whose face was like cracked rock, was breathing with the horrible labor of a heart attack. Rose Standish started to call the student nurse and tell her to get Mattus right away, and then she decided that it was about time she began to remember that she was a patient on the ward and not a nurse.

Miss Kerr returned with the medicine tray. She gave Mrs. Witherspoon her hypodermic, and almost as a sponge does water, the withered body soaked it up, and she fell into a deep slumber. The woman with the thyroid insufficiency had her sleeping potion and began the long slow breathing of a laboring body.

The rain had broken the tension and the women were drifting off before the lights were dimmed. It, with the aid of the drugs, of course, was soothing and lulling them into oblivion. The long, slow torrents fell in strips outside the window and drowned out the labored breathing of the woman with the heart attack.

Rose lay perfectly still, so still she was almost drifting herself. Miss Kerr had reached the bed in which the heart patient lay and at last realized her condition ... a tuned ear could have noted it down the corridor ... she turned and walked prissily off the ward ... not hurrying, and with her hips flat ... and called Dr. Mattus. Rose could hear her cooing out the dying woman’s condition, and gathered that he was coming up.

In a few minutes he appeared and after a quick glance began pumping digitalis into her ... Rose could have told the nurse to do that! Then when she rallied, and after the lights had been dimmed, he came by her bed and said:

“All right, Miss Standish?”

“Perfectly. Thank you.”

He took her pulse and said:

“Good heart you’ve got. Dr. Sterling, Senior, said you could have a sedative if you buckle. Ring for it, if you want it.”

“What’ll it be, doctor?”

He crinkled his long nose and sniffed, “Poison! Little nurses mustn’t ask big questions! ’Night!”

His smile was broad, and forced.

By ten ... Rose looked at her radio-light watch ... the ward had “bedded down” and the rain had diminished to occasional drippings. Everything was cool and still. Miss Kerr had settled down to doing her fever charts at the desk. Occasionally, she turned and peered into the darkened ward, and Rose felt her looking at her bed, inquiringly.

She lay on her back, stretched her legs, put her arms at her sides, little girl fashion, and began to breathe deeply. Perhaps if she did that for thirty counts, she would drift off to sleep. If she buckled. ... she’d show ’em. Begin to get some rest ... plenty of it ... it had been a long day ... a trying evening ... now everything was peaceful and everybody was beginning to sleep.

But if she dared to go to sleep, why couldn’t the person ... whoever it was ... come while she was asleep and ... and....

She reached for her glass of water and took a drink. Her lips were so dry it hurt to open them. This was foolish. How was her heart doing? She took her pulse and discovered it was 106. Perhaps she had better have a potion after all.

She looked toward the desk. Miss Kerr wasn’t there!

»VI«
The Second Doll

At nine o’clock Dr. Harrison entered the hospital through the accident room door and started up the main corridor. The last of the nurses and internes were returning from breakfast, the morning sun as they passed the occasional windows was picking each face out of its oblivion and then throwing it back again.

Dr. Harrison shivered. The faces looked as the faces did upon the streets of every city in the United States the morning after the Lindbergh baby had been found....

The cynically young, the frightened vacant, the intelligent, the eager, the stupid, all reflected the knowledge that Rose Standish was dead.

“A nurse died last night,” the stupid faces, the childish faces, the vacant faces reflected, and as the intelligence increased, the horror in the eyes grew....

Upon the internes and residents they showed:

“A nurse was murdered last night.”

And with an increasing frequency he saw eyes which knew:

“She was murdered in Cub Sterling’s Clinic.”

He passed the entrance to his own clinic, and then retraced his footsteps. His duty was to MacArthur, but his first duty was to suppress as much staff hysteria as possible. With the staff in such a condition, it was only a question of hours before the patients, all over the hospital....

His resident was standing beside the elevator upon the first floor. He turned and Dr. Harrison noted the first, second, and then a third horror in his eyes.

“’Morning, Wheeler,” his voice was calm and measured.

“Good morning, Doctor Harrison. Do you know?”

“About the nurse? I do.”

“No, sir. About Doctor Bear.”

Dr. Harrison turned his searching brown eyes into the man’s gray ones.

“What?”

The resident met the glance and responded:

“Pneumonia. Bilateral. Cub is with him. Diagnosis confirmed. Brought him into hospital on a stretcher about two hours ago. He’s in Medicine Clinic now ... hopeless....”

Dr. Harrison staggered for the first time in his medical life.

“They murdered him! The dogs!”

He turned from the elevator and walked out of his clinic and down the corridor toward the Medicine Clinic. He walked calmly, like a man going to his execution and convinced of his innocence.... That heart attack was responsible, as sure as death itself, Hoffbein, Peters and Paton had killed ... his best, his very best friend....

His agony was so acute that the passing faces with their increasing hysteria seemed natural.

Turning to Mattus, Cub Sterling said:

“I’d better look in on Miss Merriweather, in case her father telephones today. Then you can find me with Dr. Sterling, if you need me.”

He turned from Ward B and walked into Room Two and closed the door. That shade onto the Ward was still lowered. He had lowered it himself the first night he brought the cigarettes.

He and Sally Ferguson were completely alone.

She was smoking a cigarette. The room swam with pinking air and Cub leaned against the door jam and snapped:

“How’s the leg since they took the bandages off? All right?”

She ignored the question and said:

“I just woke up! Why did you give me those pills last night?”

He walked toward the bed, and the horror of the night receded and a wild happiness suffused his features.

“Don’t you know, Salscie?”

“To make me ... sleep?”

“Would you have slept ... without...?”

He leaned over her and kissed her twice. Completely and reachingly.

She burrowed her head between his collar and his neck and whispered:

“Did you...?”

He laid the weight of his head upon hers and she moaned and brought her lips within reach again.

Cub drained them a third time and tucking his head between her breasts said:

“God I need that, darling! I’ve been through hell ... hell ... red hot hell!”

Then he jerked his head up and bored his eyes into hers. His voice was wild and heavy.

“Whatever happens, whatever anybody tells you, whatever comes ... you must promise me, Salscie, that you’ll believe in me ... that you’ll trust me ... and know that I’ve wanted you all my life ... and when all of this works out ... I’m going to ... live with you....”

Her body stiffened and she snatched her eyes out of his. Her voice was hard and narrow.

“Cub Sterling, I wouldn’t ... ever ... live with you! At last I see why women have children ... why they want to belong....”

All the angularity went out of him. He reached over and gathered her into his arms. His voice curled and nestled in her ear.

“You’ll have them, Salscie! Lots of little Sterlings!”

Outside the loud speaker began:

“Docterr Ste-earling, Junyior, Doct-terr Eth-err-ridge Ste-arling, Junyior. Calling Doct-terr....”

They wilted apart, but their eyes still held and Cub said, softly and definitely:

“My father’s ill. Very ill. The hospital’s in a terrible stew. I may not get to see you for a couple of days. Be good until I do! Take care of yourself! Don’t be ferocious to anybody, Salscie! Promise? I’ll tell Mattus to let you have your clothes, and try sitting up if you like. Think you’ll need some more pills tonight ... darling?”

She blushed and smiled slowly. Cub took a box from his pocket and gave her two veronal tablets.

Then he leaned over and ordered:

“Kiss me quick, Salscie! Sophie’d better kiss me, too!”

At the door he turned and barked:

“Remember! This place is full of tales.... Trust me?”

“Till death us do part, Cub darling!”

Dr. Henry MacArthur sat at his desk and awaited the arrival of the staff. He sat perfectly erect, dreadfully calm, with the hopeless heroism of the stone blind. His hands were relaxed upon his knees. Lifting them to cradle his head would require such an enormous effort ... mentally and physically....

He was as changed from the man who had lain in bed two nights before and enjoyed scotch highballs as if he had spent twenty years in Siberia. The hair at the temples looked grayer and the face was marble in its emotions. They came separately, and filled its furrows. Bitter self recrimination. He had sent a perfectly innocent woman to her death. A mere child. He had allowed her to go up, pass through hell and die ... for his honor, Cub Sterling’s reputation, and the Elijah Wilson Hospital. And to die so uselessly, so bravely, so quietly.

And the self-recrimination was followed by a nobility which made him beautiful, as the world thought King Albert beautiful while he was bleeding over Belgium.

Bleeding over the tremendous heroism of human beings. Over the cool straight bravery of quiet people. Over the fragile littleness of her still body. Over the sense of still living that her small ivory face had held when he and Cub Sterling and Dr. Bear’s assistant were leaning over her body, under the glaring light of that autopsy table.

It had been like bending over a plucked magnolia blossom, on a summer morning. There was a spiritual fragrance about her as poignant as the perfume of magnolias. A feeling of sheer beauty, wasted....

If he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget the exquisite curve of that child’s small rounded breast and the nauseating sense of having stuck a knife in it, which came over him!

An Edith Cavell, a Florence Nightingale, a Jeanne d’Arc, and he had stood in her presence alive ... and dead....

And all of it had been so futile. But as certain as death itself was the knowledge ... within his own mind ... that Cub Sterling had had nothing to do with it. That Cub Sterling could not have stood beside him in that autopsy room a few scant hours ago and the sense of horror and helplessness have so entirely gripped them. And it did grip ... both of them.

He started to telephone for Cub to come to him now and then he remembered about Bear, and his head ... for the first time since he had been Director of the Elijah Wilson Hospital ... fell into his cupped hands, while the door into the corridor stood wide open.

Caesar was dead, Napoleon was dead, Osler was dead, Socrates was dead, Halsted was dead and Bear Sterling was dying....

Dying because of overwork and a bad heart. Sacrificed to his profession by his colleagues! That heart attack yesterday, coupled with the cold had done it.

All the great men were dead or dying.... Coniine....

He turned over Cub Sterling’s testimony concerning the death of Miss Standish, and stared vacantly at the words. Somewhere, at this very minute, there was walking, still free, about the Elijah Wilson Hospital, probably laughing and talking with other patients, a nurse, a doctor ... a man ... a woman ... a murderer....

Dr. MacArthur rose and walked to the far window through which the warm spring sun was shining. He must pull himself together. His duty was not to his emotional beliefs concerning men and their motives. Above all things he must be fair. His duty and theirs was to the hospital and within the next five minutes he must get himself in such perfect control that he could compel them to see it.

The opportunity of the hospital to be of benefit to humanity for the next fifty years depended entirely upon his ability to hold his staff together this morning. To force these exceptionally capable men to think calmly ... and wisely.

He closed his eyes and allowed the sun to penetrate through the lids. A soft spring breeze floated in the opened window. A living, gentle breeze which foretold all the wealth of future living in flowers and fragrances; which expressed as clearly as Chopin might have, how he felt about the small, slim body of Rose Standish.

It seared him like a sirocco. Yesterday morning, she had stood there with just such a breeze blowing. Yesterday morning it had promised her summer, too ... and today.... He turned his back resolutely to the window and still stood with his eyes closed.

The sun began relaxing the muscles at the base of his brain and then he seemed suddenly sane. Her death had been like those of the officers in the Great War who had jumped out of the trenches and walked up and down to give their men courage....

He returned to his desk and calmly began planning what must be covered at this meeting, and what witnesses must be called. Cub, if he could leave his father, otherwise his testimony must suffice. The day white nurse, the night pupil nurse, Miss Kerr’s niece, and Mattus’ impression of the patient when he last saw her. Then it would be wise to ask Dr. Heddis to come over and report upon the autopsy findings.

The lack of sleep was telling upon him. He had entirely forgotten about questioning the orderly, William. He rang for his secretary and gave her the orders.

When Dr. Barton’s squared frame filled the door it brought with it a sense of relief. Queer how sane associating with children made a man. Almost immediately he was followed by Hoffbein, Peters and Paton ... together. They had just settled themselves when Dr. Harrison strode in. There was an armor of righteousness about him that dazzled. Dr. MacArthur had never seen Harrison this way before. Like some great patriarch of Biblical fame girded for battle.

When they were all seated, Dr. Barton and Dr. Harrison exchanged monosyllabic diagnoses upon Dr. Bear and Dr. MacArthur read their faces.

Peters, Hoffbein, and Paton missed the discussion. They were funereal, self-righteous and pious, respectively.

A nurse was dead. They had gone on record opposing placing her in the position where she might be murdered. Dr. MacArthur had sacrificed her to save Cub Sterling’s reputation.

At half-past six when Dr. MacArthur had notified Dr. Peters, Dr. Peters had telephoned Dr. Paton right away and intoned “The sort of thing that purifies a man,” and after that their conversation had been long, gossipy ... and horrified. Princeton had been propped against his pillows, his feet glued to a white rubber hot water bottle and a deep purple corded silk dressing gown thrown over his still firm shoulders.

His wife was abroad with Mrs. Paton.

Prissy, whose telephone was as much a part of his bedtime equipment as his nightshirt, had lain perfectly flat upon his bed and with their decisions his “seven months gone” bay-window rose and fell. Cushioned upon what had once been his chest was a French telephone.

Their first decision had been to tell MacArthur “right out” that they had to have a private meeting without either of the Sterlings present, and decide something.

As Prissy’s upper teeth and Princeton’s lower ones were removed for the night, their vehemence had seemed awfully mushy to the telephone operator when she cut in for Paton’s resident.

But when the discourse was resumed Princeton had said:

“I shell inten’ to shay, at the meetin’ we are demandin’, Paton.”

Prissy’s front had given a proud heave.

“That we cannot have our poshishun jepodized any longer. Action” ... the bay-window rose ... “must be taken immediately. The powice—”

Five minutes had been lost over that word. Neither of them could persuade the telephone to accept it.

“The law to intervene,” Princeton finally substituted.

“I agwee entirely, Peshurs. I’ll stan’ behin’ you, straight through.”

Prissy’s offer even in the noontide sun would have come in a high treble and over the telephone and under the circumstances it didn’t sound very convincing.

However, after they had both bathed, both felt her death had purified them, both inserted their teeth, both had called MacArthur and requested a meeting minus the Sterlings.

It had left them a little shaky ... but now that Dr. MacArthur was beginning to speak, Prissy nodded to Princeton who tiptoed to the door and closed it. They felt they had been justified in the action they had taken.

Neither Sterling was present.

“Gentlemen,” Dr. MacArthur’s voice was measured and low, “Rose Standish is dead. She was murdered last night while a patient in Bed 11, Ward B, of Medicine Clinic. An injection of coniine. She went on that ward to save your reputation and mine. To lift the hospital out of terror ... and she is dead, and we are....”

“I was against it from the first,” Princeton began clearing himself with the rapidity of a condemned schoolboy.

Nobody paid him the slightest attention. Prissy blushed, and Hoffbein squirmed.

“We are faced,” Dr. MacArthur’s blue eyes had taken on their fighting steeliness, “with the blackest day the Elijah Wilson has ever seen. With the fact that no patient anywhere is safe in any bed of the institution ... with the responsibility of catching a murderer within our walls. A person who has committed two untraceable, two traceable murders. D’y’see? Gentlemen, I ask your advice.”

Princeton Peters and Prissy Paton stared at Dr. Hoffbein and he nodded ... with his eyelids, and Princeton rose.

“To put it plainly, straightly and to the point, MacArthur, it is one thing to protect your professional colleagues, but after all our Hippocratic oath binds us _first_ to the protection of our patients.

“I’m glad you called this meeting as we advised, and have given us an opportunity of speaking frankly. Murder, automatically, cancels loyalty! Call in the police immediately is the advice of myself, Dr. Paton and Dr. Hoffbein.”

His peach-blossom face was brick red and it was the fury with which Dr. Harrison rose that, at a distance of ten feet, scared Dr. Peters into his chair.

“You might just as well know, Dr. Peters,” his brown eyes were live coals, “that this meeting was not called without the Sterlings purposely. Barton and I were dead against it, as was MacArthur. Dr. MacArthur was intensely kind in his opening speech about the number of murders which have been committed in this hospital within the last week. They are five.”

“Stop, Harrison. Please stop!” Dr. MacArthur had risen from his chair, but he might have been a fly upon the distant mantelpiece for the effect he produced.

“Sorry. I can’t stop. They might just as well know it! Call in your police! Call them in now! And as sure as Christ was crucified I’ll swear out a warrant for each of you, Hoffbein, Peters and Paton, for the murder of Bear Sterling, now dying of pneumonia complicated by the heart attack which you, famous colleagues and a world-renowned psychiatrist caused by your foul insinuations yesterday.

“If you value your international reputations as much as your self-exhibitions in the last fifteen years indicate, the police are out of the question.

“Now let’s get down to business.”

For fully four minutes after he had finished no man in the room spoke. No man could. For fifteen, twenty, perhaps thirty years none of them had ever heard Dr. Harrison raise his voice above a conversational tone, never had seen him for one-quarter of a split second lose complete control of himself or of a situation, never had heard him judge a man without charity.

And the three he condemned were too seared to be angry, too frightened to be resentful, too dazed to be amazed.

He had spoken the truth ... and they knew it.

Dr. Barton, as a nurse might work upon children upset by an explosion, took his pipe from his mouth, and began speaking. He said:

“Dr. MacArthur, I think it is your advice that we need, suh.”

The thing that cowed Dr. Peters, Paton and Hoffbein, was that Dr. Harrison had suffered no relapse. He sat firmly stroking his beard and looking alternately at each of them.

Dr. MacArthur, his blue eyes firmly defiant, began:

“The hospital has never been in so delicate a situation. I repeat that the matter must be handled with secrecy, tact, and sanity.

“You see, gentlemen, this hospital was endowed, it has been perpetuated for, and is famous as, a great teaching institution. When through any clumsiness of ours we have more beds than patients the hospital is doomed. Its great advantage has always been more patients than beds. D’y’see?”

Prissy’s green, Princeton’s lavender and Hoffbein’s liquid eyes were glued upon his face. Dr. Barton’s shoulders were hunched attentively.

“Now if we were to turn this situation over to the police, regardless of Dr. Harrison’s statements, we would automatically spread into every ward of every department, every newspaper in the country, the superstition of every negro within a thousand miles, the means of ruining, absolutely, your work, mine and that of all the medical men now resident and student here.

“Murder is a very horrible situation, but dooming the future of at least a thousand capable men is, in my opinion, worse, all oaths, notwithstanding. D’y’see?

“Whatever hysteria is manifested must not come from the staff, nor the blunders which so horrible an occurrence makes us likely to fall into.”

“You’re absolutely right, Mac!” Dr. Harrison’s voice was placid, and Prissy and Princeton automatically exhaled the breath they had been inhaling preparatory to argument.

Dr. Harrison said:

“Do you know how many rabbit feet I’ve seen on dispensary patients in the last six months? Sixty-three! The cancer cases love ’em. How many patients we’ve lost because they moved when another negro sprinkled salt upon their doorsteps? Eighty-one! Within three blocks of here I’ve counted fifteen chiropractors, ten optometrists, five osteopaths, and seventeen midwives.

“Superstition, witchcraft, voodoo, dynamite! We’ve _got_ to keep our face no matter if all of us are murdered. Matter with you three is just a touch of hysteria.”

Hoffbein squirmed and replied:

“Fear psychosis is a most contagious disease, but like all contagious diseases most debilitating. It has only one cure: to remove the cause of the fear.”

His voice was precise and his words, he felt, showed how he stood and yet were dignified.

“From which I understand you are suggesting we scrap Cub Sterling,” MacArthur’s angry eyes bore into him like a hot poker, and his mouth drew to a tight line as he slapped his hand upon his desk and stated, “I won’t do it without _ample_, _complete_ and _convincing evidence_. Have you any to offer?”

Hoffbein squirmed acutely and he replied evasively:

“Nothing ... tangible.... Only those small and very personal signs which to a man in my branch are so revealing. His hands, the hysterical set of his left shoulder, the peculiar light which comes into his eyes....”

“That’ll do!” Dr. Harrison barked. “If I knew any of you had cancer, I’d tell you so to your face. If Bear Sterling had found any man here suffering from an incurable brain tumor, he would have told that man. We are not asking you for symptoms, Hoffbein. Have you any evidence, yes or no?”

Hoffbein’s eyes lost their whites. “No.”

“Then let’s get on to people who have. Read Ethridge’s testimony, please, MacArthur.”

Dr. MacArthur picked up the long white sheet of paper and began in an even voice:

“Complying with the decision of the General Staff of the Elijah Wilson
Hospital, I admitted Rose Standish, graduate nurse of this
institution, as a patient in Medicine Clinic, Ward B, Bed 11,
yesterday afternoon. The diagnosis, for the benefit of the nursing
staff, being a possible tubercular effusion.

“She received a routine examination from the house staff and from
seven-ten until seven-thirty last evening my father, Dr. Sterling, and
I went over her. We found her lungs in excellent shape, her heart
slightly enlarged, but not seriously so, her general physical
condition splendid, with the exception of the fact that she was
somewhat thin and underweight. There were no signs of any malady of
any kind whatever. Her temperature was normal, her pulse good, though
a little rapid, which, considering the circumstances was not
surprising, and her spirits commendably calm.

“We both felt most reassured by her mental and physical condition,
though my father, Dr. Sterling, in case she might discover herself too
fatigued to sleep advised a sedative. We told Miss Standish of the
order and suggested she call for the potion if she felt the necessity.

“There was some vague hysteria in the ward, which both Miss Standish
and ourselves sensed, and I understand from the seven-to-nine-student
nurses that she calmed it by conversation.

“The prescription for the potion was, later, removed from Miss
Standish’s chart and is in the possession of Dr. MacArthur, as is,
also, the testimony of a patient who claimed to have seen Miss Kerr,
student nurse, standing over Miss Standish’s bed for several seconds
during the thunderstorm which extinguished the lights at nine-forty.

“From the time we walked off the ward at seven-thirty, until Mattus
notified me of Rose Standish’s death at one-ten, I did not see Miss
Standish. Mattus saw her around ten and reported her in practically
the same condition in which Father and I had left her.

“After seeing my father, Dr. Sterling, to his car at seven-thirty, I
went to dinner in the doctors’ dining room, took a short walk, and was
in bed by eleven-thirty.

“When Mattus notified me of Miss Standish’s death at one-ten, I
immediately called Dr. MacArthur who ordered an autopsy, tried to get
my father and learned that the cold he had complained of was settling
in his chest and his temperature was 101. At his orders I got his
assistant, Dr. Withers, who in the presence of Dr. MacArthur, Mattus
and myself, performed the autopsy, the findings of which will be given
by Dr. Heddis, who came in when it was half finished and later took
the organs for examination.

“Because of the excellent forethought of Mattus, we borrowed an
operative patient from Surgical Clinic and rolled her bed into the
place where Rose Standish’s had stood and left orders to say to the
patients that Miss Standish had hemorrhaged and been put in a private
room. From the time the ward awoke until the operation was called, the
new patient was in the process of preparation and did not realize the
change.

“From the time of the discovery of Rose Standish’s corpse, until
Mattus and I had rolled the bed toward the elevator, the deportment of
William, the orderly, was most praiseworthy and the demeanor of Miss
Evelina Kerr astonishingly calm.

“While the autopsy was still in progress, my mother called to say that
Dr. Sterling’s temperature had risen to 103, his breathing was labored
and he was requesting I come to him. Dr. MacArthur insisted that I go.
I found him with a definite case of pneumonia, both lungs seriously
involved, pulse irregular, and breathing labored, semi-delirious. I
immediately called an ambulance and brought him into the hospital for
oxygen.

“The response is disheartening. His heart is weakening. I have
remained by his bedside, again through the advice of Dr. MacArthur.

“Dictated to Dr. MacArthur’s secretary, outside room 511, Medicine
Clinic, at 8:30 A. M. Wednesday, May 18th.

“(Signed): Ethridge Sterling, Jr., M.D.
Physician-in-Chief (Pro-tem),
The Elijah Wilson Hospital.”

Dr. MacArthur laid the paper down and looked from the window.

“Questions?” his voice was old and heavy, and he brought his eyes back to the men with an effort.

Dr. Harrison shot a glance around the room and insisted:

“Let’s continue with the evidence.”

Dr. MacArthur pushed a button upon his desk, the door into the corridor opened and Miss Evelina Kerr, night student nurse on Ward B, entered.

It was Princeton Peters who escorted her to the chair beside Dr. MacArthur’s and Dr. Hoffbein who would have liked to question her, had he not felt Dr. Harrison’s eyes judging his every thought; so Dr. MacArthur turned to her and said:

“You have been through another dreadful night. I’m sorry. Please tell about it carefully.”

She sat as she had sat yesterday, her hands primly in her lap and her flat feet carefully together, her stubborn defiance breaking through her voice.

She looked carefully around the large room before she began to speak, and to Dr. MacArthur, Dr. Harrison, and Dr. Barton, there flashed a realization that her eyes were still too close together, and that somehow she was enjoying her importance.

But her survey did not escape Dr. Harrison.

He barked, “Dr. Sterling is not here because his father is desperately ill. Will you be so kind as to tell your story, now?”

“Yes, Dr. Harrison, I will.” The stupid definiteness in her voice was maddening. She turned her eyes upon Dr. Hoffbein and told her story to him. She said:

“When I went on duty at nine I found Miss Standish a patient in Bed 11, Ward B. She said Dr. Sterling thought she might have a tubercular effusion and she was in for observation. I gave her her thermometer and ran to close the windows as the rain had started.”

“And when the lights went out, you were standing by her bed, Miss Kerr,” Dr. Barton announced pointedly.

Her eyes did not leave Dr. Hoffbein, and she replied:

“I had come back for the thermometer.”

The answer crashed like a broken plate, and Dr. Harrison insisted:

“And then?”

“Then I counted her pulse,” her voice was wooden, “gave my medicines. Put out the flowers and called Dr. Mattus about a woman with a heart attack.”

“Why didn’t you give Miss Standish her sleeping potion, when you were distributing medicines?”

“Because, Dr. Barton, Dr. Mattus came up to the heart case and said not to give it to Miss Standish unless she called for it.

“After he went, I dimmed the lights, went to work on my fever charts, made up the midnight medicines, and began studying my nursing manual. William, the orderly, came up the hall twice to ask me about some dishes and the breakfast trays, and then about eleven-thirty, Miss Standish rang and asked for her sleeping potion, and I gave it to her.”

“Are you sure you gave her the right prescription?” Dr. Harrison’s eyes had bored past Dr. Hoffbein and into her.

She pouted her thick lips and lifted her ugly chin.

“Yes, sir, I’m positive. She went to sleep right away. You don’t think, Dr. Harrison...?”

“What I think does not concern your story, Miss Kerr. Please continue.”

There was a slight tightening of her jaw, and had she had sense enough to cry then, every man in the room would have felt beaten. She continued woodenly:

“After I gave Miss Standish her medicine, the next patient had to have her linen changed, and when I had finished with that, Miss Standish was asleep. I could tell by her breathing.

“It was then almost midnight and I went to boil my syringes for the midnight hypodermics, and while I was boiling them Mrs. Witherspoon, the patient whose bed I had just changed, rang again, and I ran to see about her.

“And as I reached her bed, I found Dr. Cub Sterling leaning over Miss Standish. He looked up and nodded, and....”

“Repeat your last three sentences, Miss Kerr. Repeat them twice! And look at me while you do it.” Dr. Hoffbein’s voice was mesmeric.

Miss Kerr repeated them ... twice....

They filled the room and permeated the senses of every man present like poison gas.

Dr. Harrison shot his gimlet-like brown eyes into the narrow, close ones of the student nurse.

“You are wrong, Miss Kerr. Dr. Ethridge Sterling, Junior, was in his rooms.”

“I’m not! He was bending over Miss Standish. I know it. His bushy hair, his funny shoulder....”

“Did he speak?”

“No, Dr. Harrison. He just nodded. Like he always does.”

“Why didn’t you _make_ him speak?”

“I couldn’t stop to. We had no more clean linen and I had to run for a bed-pan for Mrs. Witherspoon.”

MacArthur’s hand beat upon his desk ... hopelessly....

“Go on, Miss Kerr.” His voice was like a death-knell.

“And when I came back he was gone. He had hurried off the ward while I was getting the bed-pan. And I went to Miss Standish as soon as I could. She was still asleep. And I ran to William. He was asleep. And then I started to ’phone the night supervisor, but it was time to give my medicines ... and Aunt Roenna always told us even if the building were burning down, the medical patients must have their medicines on time. So I began giving them their hypodermics. And when I could, I went to look at Miss Standish. She was still sleeping.