At her question the light flared up in the Boss's eyes, and he rose violently from the chair. "Look here," he said, "he's all right–he's going to be all right. You understand that!"
"How is he? She repeated.
"I told you–I told you he's going to be all right," he said with a grating voice.
"You say it," she said, "but what do the doctors say?"
The blood apoplectically flushed his face and I heard the snatch of his breathing before he said, "You wanted it this way. You said you did. You said you had rather see him dead at your feet. You wanted it this way. But–" and he stepped toward her–"he'll fool you. He's all right. Do you hear? He will be all right."
"God grant it," she said quietly.
"Grant it, grant it!" he burst out. "He's all right, right now. That boy is tough, he can take it."
She made no answer to that, but stood and looked at him while the blood subsided in his face and his frame seemed to sag with the weight of the flesh on it. The she asked, "Can I see him?"
Before answering, the Boss stepped back to the chair and sank into it. Then he looked at me. "Take her down to Room 305," he directed. He spoke dully, and apparently without interest now, as though in a railway waiting room answering foolish questions about the schedule for some traveler.
So I took her down to Room 305, where the body lay like a log under the white sheet and the breath labored through the gaping mouth. At first, she did not approach the bed. She stood just inside the door, looking across at it. I thought she was going to keel over, and put my arm out to prop her, but she stayed on her legs. Then she moved to the bed and reached down with a timid motion to touch the body there. She laid her hand on the right leg, just above the ankle, and let it test there as though she could draw, or communicate, some force by the contact. Meanwhile, the nurse, who stood on the other side of the bed, leaned down to wipe from the brow of the patient the drops of moisture which gathered there. Lucy Stark took a step or two up the bed, and, looking at the nurse, reached out her hand. The nurse put the cloth into it, and Lucy finished the job of wiping the brow and temples. Then she handed the cloth back to the nurse. "Thank you," she whispered. The nurse gave a sort smile of professional understanding out of her plain, good, anonymous, middle-aged face, like a light flicked on momentarily in a comfortable, shabby living room.
But Lucy wasn't looking at that face, but at the sag-jawed face below her where the breath labored in and out. There wasn't any light on there. So after a while–the nurse said D. Stanton wouldn't be back for some little time and she would notify us when he did come–we went back to the room where the Boss sat with his heavy head in the middle of th floral design.
Lucy sat in another chintz-covered chair (the waiting room was very cozy and cheerful with potted plants on the window ledge and chintz on the chairs and water colors on the walls in natural-wood frames and a fireplace with artificial logs in it) and looked at her lap or, now and then, across at the Boss, and I sat on the couch over by the wall and thumbed through the picture magazines, from which I gathered that the world outside our cozy little nook was still the world.
About eleven-thirty Adam came in to say that the doctor from Baltimore who was coming for the consultation had been forced down by fog and would fly in as soon as the ceiling lifted.
"Fog!" the Boss exclaimed, and came up out of the chair. "Fog! Telephone him–you telephone him–tell him to come on, fog or no fog."
"A plane can't fly in fog," Adam said.
"Telephone him–that boy in there–that boy in there–my boy–" The voice didn't trail off. It simply stopped with a sound like something of great weight grinding to a stop, and the Boss stared at Adam Stanton with resentment and a profound accusation.
"Dr. Burnham will come when it is possible," Adam said coldly. Then after a moment in which he met the resentment and accusation, he said, "Governor, I think that it would be a good thing for you to lie down. To get some rest."
"No," the Boss said hoarsely, "no."
"You can do no good by not lying down. You will only waste your strength. You can do no good."
"Good," the Boss said, "good," and clenched his hands as though he had tried to grasp some substance which had faded at his touch and dissolved to air.
"I would advise it," Adam said quietly, almost softly. Then he turned and inquiring glance upon Lucy.
She shook her head. "No, doctor," she almost whispered. "I'll wait. Too."
Adam inclined his head in acceptance, and went out. I got up and followed him.
I caught up with Adam down the hall. "What is it like?" I asked.
"Bad." he said.
"How bad?"
"He is unconscious and paralyzed," Adam said. "His extremities are quite limp. The reflexes are quite gone. If you pick up his hand it is like jelly. The X-ray–we took a skull plate–shows a fracture and dislocation of the fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae."
"Where the hell is t?"
Adam reached out and laid a couple of fingers on the back of my neck. "There," he said.
"You mean he's got a broken neck?"
"Yes."
"I thought that killed them."
"It usually does," he said. "Always if the fracture is a little higher."
"Has he got a chance?"
"Yes."
"To just live or to be all right?"
"To be all right. Or almost all right. Just a chance."
"What are you going to do?"
He looked at me directly, and I saw that his own face didn't look much different from the way it would have looked if somebody had kicked him in the head, too. It was white and drawn.
"It is a difficult decision," he said. "I must think. I don't want to talk about it now."
So he turned from me, and squared his shoulders, and went off down the hall, over the polished composition floor, which glittered in the soft light like brown ice.
I went back to the room where Lucy Stark sat across from the Boss, in the midst of the chintz and potted plants and water colors. Now and then she would lift her gaze from her lap, where the hands were clasped together with the veins showing blue, and would look across the intervening distance into her husband's face. He did not meet her gaze, but stared into the heatless illumination of the artificial logs on the hearth.
After one o'clock a nurse came down to the room with the message that the fog had cleared and that Dr. Burnham's plane was on the way again. They would let us know as soon as it came in. Then she went away.
The Boss sat silent for a minute or two, then said to me, "Go down and call up the airport. Ask what the weather is like here. Tell 'em to tell Sugar-Boy I said for him to get here quick. Tell Murphy I said I meant quick. By God! By God–" And the oath was left suspended, directed at nothing.
I went down the corridor and down to the telephone booths on the first floor, to give that crazy message to Sugar-Boy and Murphy. Sugar-Boy would drive like hell anyway, and Murphy–he was the lieutenant in charge of the motorcycle escort–knew he wasn't out there for fun. But I called the port, was told that the weather was lifting–a wind had sprung up–and left the message for Murphy.
When I stepped out of the booth, there was Sadie. She must have been hanging around in the lobby, probably sitting on one of the benches back in the shadow, for I hadn't seen har when I entered.
"Why didn't you say boo and give me real heart failure and finish the job?" I asked.
"How is it?" she demanded, seizing my coat sleeve.
"Bad. He broke his neck."
Has he got any chance?"
"Dr. Stanton said he did, but he wasn't wreathed in smiles."
"What are they going to do? Operate?"
"There is another big-shot doctor coming in from Johns Hopkins for a consultation. After he gets here they will flip a nickel and find out what to do."