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."
"Did he sound like there was a real chance?" Her hand was still clutching my sleeve.
"How do I know?" I was suddenly irritated. I jerked my sleeve out of her grasp.
"If you find out anything–you know, when the doctor comes–will you let me know?" she asked humbly, letting her hand fall.
"Why the hell don't you go home and quit spooking around here in the dark? Why don't you go home?"
She shook her head, still humbly.
"You wanted to kick his teeth down his throat, and now you hang around and loose sleep. Why don't you go home?"
She shook her head slowly. "I'll wait," she said.
"You're a sap," I affirmed.
"Let me know," she said, "when you find out anything."
I didn't even say anything to that, but walk on away, back upstairs, where I rejoined the party. Things hadn't changed in the atmosphere of the room.
After a spell, a nurse came back to say that the plane was expected at the port in about thirty or forty minutes. Then a little later she came back to say that there was a telephone call for me.
"Who is it?" I asked the nurse.
"It's a lady," she said, "but she wouldn't give her name."
I figured that one out, and when I got to the phone at the floor desk I found I was right. It was Anne Stanton. She had stood it as long as she could. She didn't seize me by the sleeve, for she was a few miles away in her apartment, but her voice did pretty near the same thing. I told her what I knew, and answered her repetitious questions. She thanked me and apologized or bothering me. She had had to know, she said. She had been calling at my hotel all evening, thinking I would come in, then she had called me at the hospital. There wasn't anybody else she could ask. When she had just called the hospital and had asked for news, they had been noncommittal. "So you see," she said "so you see I had to call you."